on the cross so that ye can go around on yeer First Communion day
with the paws clutching for The Collection. Our Lord died so that ye
might be redeemed. It is enough to receive the gift of Faith.Are ye lis-
tening to me?
We are, sir.
And whats enough?
The gift of Faith, sir.
Good. Go home.
At night three of us sit under the light pole at the top of the lane read-
ing, Mikey, Malachy and I. The Molloys are like us with their father
drinking the dole money or the wages and leaving no money for can-
dles or paraffin oil for the lamp. Mikey reads books and the rest of us
read comic books. His father, Peter, brings books from the Carnegie
Library so that hell have something to do when hes not drinking pints
or when hes looking after the family anytime Mrs. Molloy is in the
lunatic asylum. He lets Mikey read any book he likes and now Mikey is
reading this book about Cuchulain and talking as if he knows every-
thing about him. I want to tell him I knew all about Cuchulain when I
was three going on four, that I saw Cuchulain in Dublin, that Cuchu-
lain thinks nothing of dropping into my dreams. I want to tell him stop
talking about Cuchulain, hes mine, he was mine years ago when I was
young, but I cant because Mikey reads us a story I never heard of
before, a dirty story about Cuchulain which I can never tell my father
or mother, the story of how Emer became Cuchulains wife.
Cuchulain was getting to be an old man of twenty-one. He was
lonely and wanted to get married, which made him weak, says Mikey,
and got him killed in the end.All the women in Ireland were mad about
Cuchulain and they wanted to marry him.He said that would be grand,
he wouldnt mind marrying all the women of Ireland. If he could fight
all the men of Ireland why couldnt he marry all the women? But the
King, Conor MacNessa, said,Thats all very well for you, Cu, but the
men of Ireland dont want to be lonely in the far reaches of the night.
The King decided there would have to be a contest to see who would
marry Cuchulain and it would be a pissing contest. All the women of
Ireland assembled on the plains of Muirthemne to see who could piss
the longest and it was Emer. She was the champion woman pisser of
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