The Sycamore trees... They have their own stories... They have seen much... Heard much... Known much... Witnessed much...

The house was built in 1807 by Reuben McFerguson for his irish wife. McFerguson was a retired scottish  teacher who moved to Ireland to start a new life. They got married in 1805 in Edinburgh. Living a hard life in Edinburgh they decided to move to Kilkenny. There he built her a house which would later be known as The Sycamore. In 1809, three years after the sudden move, their baby boy was born. The only son they ever had. They named him Aindreas Crióstoir McFerguson (anglicized Andrew Christopher Ferguson). Andy grew into a quiet young man. Two weeks after his
21st birthday in 1830, his father died of lung cancer. Despite being so young, he had to take the responsibility for taking a good care of  the house and his mother. Andy was indeed a good looking young man. His being quiet was considered his *** appeal by many. Nobody knew or even had the slightest idea about his troubled soul.
One night he invited a young girl to dine with him. After his mother went to bed, he took the poor girl into the basement and then strangled her to death. He hid the body in one of the barrels of wine. The next two nights he invited two girls again. One girl each night. Killed them in the basement and hid the bodies in the barrels. He killed two more in the attic. His mother lived her days till she died, 7 years after the killings, never knowing about five bodies hidden in the house.
After his mother's death, Andy lived like a ghost. He barely slept and visited his parents' graves regularly three times a week. In 1839, At the age of 30, he married Rachel Moore, whom he met at church (When he met her, he'd been regularly going to church every week to become closer to God). They had two daughters, Marie and Johanna and a son, Jeremy. Each born in 1841,1843,and 1847. Due to The Great Famine, they rented out the house to be used as a temporary mortuary until the famine ended in 1850.
In 1852, being haunted by his crime, and the need (which kept coming back) to **** again, Andy ended his own life by hanging himself in the basement. His wife sold the house and moved to Belfast with her children.
In 1857, Mr.Lowell, the man who bought the house, decided to renovated it. His workers found the bodies of the five women. They also found Andy's old journal and then learnt of how the killings happened. Knowing that Andy's wife had nothing to do with the killings, they didn't bother asking her at all.
In 1884, Andy's son, Jeremy moved back to Kilkenny and bought the house back from Mr.Lowell's son. Another renovation and then (which was already known as 'The house of the dead fairs') 're-occupied', the house was once again owned by a descendant of its first owner.
Jeremy had five children. His oldest son, Matthew inherited the house.
In 1922, Jeremy passed away. Before he died he asked Matthew to take a really good care of the house. Though later Matthew sold the house to an english doctor, his son Reuben bought it back in 1938. Reuben's son, Patrick, from his second marriage, was born in 1950. Armand, another son was born in 1954. At the age of 19 Patrick converted to catholicsm and then became a pastor. Armand moved to Carrickfergus and married a girl he met there in 1980. Armand had three sons. In 1989, three days before christmas, Armand was killed by some unknown men who broke into his house. After his son's death, Reuben moved to his wife's hometown, Edinburgh. Blaming Armand's wife for Armand's death, Reuben never tried to make any kind of contact with her.
In 1990, Reuben and his son's widow reconciled.
He asked her to move back to Kilkenny. In 1994, Emma... Armand's widow.... My mother... Moved back to Kilkenny to occupy The Sycamore, The House..... and start a new life... And with Reuben's permission, she married his husband's cousin, Isaac Ferguson...

There was an Old Man of Kilkenny,
Who never had more than a penny;
He spent all that money,
In onions and honey,
That wayward Old Man of Kilkenny.

One foggy morning i woke up to find my father crying in the living room.
I asked him what was happening, but not a word he said.
I walked out the door and ran into my friend at the gate.
he was crying.
I asked him what was happening.
not a word he said.

I kept walking and i saw 2 women in the park crying.
One of them was sobbing so hard that her body shivered.
Then came another woman, crying, she sat between the two other women and hid her face with her jumper.

As i kept walking I saw a man passing me by in a rush,talking on his phone, crying.
A little boy in his ***** school uniform,crying while his mother, who was crying as well walking them both towards the other side of the busy street.

Then i saw it....
Everybody was crying...
A man driving by in his red car...
4 men pulling a canoe to the river...
A woman in black dress carrying a sheet of paper fluttering in the wind.
2 old men playing chess in front of the department store...
All crying....
While doing their regular daily activities...

I thought to myself....
What is happening????

The answer came unexpectedly from myself...
I was crying as well...
Tears running down my face like sweat.

I was standing in front of my Father's graveyard....
With those gravestones around me....
It was just another cold foggy day in Kilkenny.
Those gravestones looked so sad and old.
I thought to myself....
''These people who died a long time ago.
Forgotten and abandoned...
I used to know these people...
When they were still alive and full of hopes for their lives''

'' Now all dead and sad...
Before me....''

I felt the cold wind blowing the dead leaves away...
The fog hanging heavily in the air....
Not a word i said....

As I was saying . . . (No, thank you; I never take cream with my tea;
Cows weren't allowed in the trenches -- got out of the habit, y'see.)
As I was saying, our Colonel leaped up like a youngster of ten:
"Come on, lads!" he shouts, "and we'll show 'em," and he sprang to the head of the men.
Then some bally thing seemed to trip him, and he fell on his face with a slam. . . .
Oh, he died like a true British soldier, and the last word he uttered was "****!"
And hang it! I loved the old fellow, and something just burst in my brain,
And I cared no more for the bullets than I would for a shower of rain.
'Twas an awf'ly funny sensation (I say, this is jolly nice tea);
I felt as if something had broken; by gad! I was suddenly free.
Free for a glorified moment, beyond regulations and laws,
Free just to wallow in slaughter, as the chap of the Stone Age was.

So on I went joyously nursing a Berserker rage of my own,
And though all my chaps were behind me, feeling most frightf'ly alone;
With the bullets and shells ding-donging, and the "krock" and the swish of the shrap;
And I found myself humming "Ben Bolt" . . . (Will you pass me the sugar, old chap?
Two lumps, please). . . . What was I saying? Oh yes, the jolly old dash;
We simply ripped through the barrage, and on with a roar and a crash.
My fellows -- Old Nick couldn't stop 'em. On, on they went with a yell,
Till they tripped on the Boches' sand-bags, -- nothing much left to tell:
A trench so tattered and battered that even a rat couldn't live;
Some corpses tangled and mangled, wire you could pass through a sieve.

The jolly old guns had bilked us, cheated us out of our show,
And my fellows were simply yearning for a red mix-up with the foe.
So I shouted to them to follow, and on we went roaring again,
Battle-tuned and exultant, on in the leaden rain.
Then all at once a machine gun barks from a bit of a bank,
And our Major roars in a fury: "We've got to take it on flank."
He was running like fire to lead us, when down like a stone he comes,
As full of "typewriter" bullets as a pudding is full of plums.
So I took his job and we got 'em. . . . By gad! we got 'em like rats;
Down in a deep shell-crater we fought like Kilkenny cats.
'Twas pleasant just for a moment to be sheltered and out of range,
With someone you saw to go for -- it made an agreeable change.

And the Boches that missed my bullets, my chaps gave a bayonet jolt,
And all the time, I remember, I whistled and hummed "Ben Bolt".
Well, that little job was over, so hell for leather we ran,
On to the second line trenches, -- that's where the fun began.
For though we had strafed 'em like fury, there still were some Boches about,
And my fellows, teeth set and eyes glaring, like terriers routed 'em out.
Then I stumbled on one of their dug-outs, and I shouted: "Is anyone there?"
And a voice, "Yes, one; but I'm wounded," came faint up the narrow stair;
And my man was descending before me, when sudden a cry! a shot!
(I say, this cake is delicious. You make it yourself, do you not?)
My man? Oh, they killed the poor devil; for if there was one there was ten;
So after I'd bombed 'em sufficient I went down at the head of my men,
And four tried to sneak from a bunk-hole, but we cornered the rotters all right;
I'd rather not go into details, 'twas messy that bit of the fight.

But all of it's beastly messy; let's talk of pleasanter things:
The skirts that the girls are wearing, ridiculous fluffy things,
So short that they show. . . . Oh, hang it! Well, if I must, I must.
We cleaned out the second trench line, bomb and bayonet ******;
And on we went to the third one, quite calloused to crumping by now;
And some of our fellows who'd passed us were making a deuce of a row;
And my chaps -- well, I just couldn't hold 'em; (It's strange how it is with gore;
In some ways it's just like whiskey: if you taste it you must have more.)
Their eyes were like beacons of battle; by gad, sir! they COULDN'T be calmed,
So I headed 'em bang for the bomb-belt, racing like billy-be-******.
Oh, it didn't take long to arrive there, those who arrived at all;
The machine guns were certainly chronic, the shindy enough to appal.
Oh yes, I omitted to tell you, I'd wounds on the chest and the head,
And my shirt was torn to a gun-rag, and my face blood-gummy and red.

I'm thinking I looked like a madman; I fancy I felt one too,
Half naked and swinging a rifle. . . . God! what a glorious "do".
As I sit here in old Piccadilly, sipping my afternoon tea,
I see a blind, bullet-chipped devil, and it's hard to believe that it's me;
I see a wild, war-damaged demon, smashing out left and right,
And humming "Ben Bolt" rather loudly, and hugely enjoying the fight.
And as for my men, may God bless 'em! I've loved 'em ever since then:
They fought like the shining angels; they're the pick o' the land, my men.
And the trench was a reeking shambles, not a Boche to be seen alive --
So I thought; but on rounding a traverse I came on a covey of five;
And four of 'em threw up their flippers, but the fifth chap, a sergeant, was game,
And though I'd a bomb and revolver he came at me just the same.
A sporty thing that, I tell you; I just couldn't blow him to hell,
So I swung to the point of his jaw-bone, and down like a ninepin he fell.
And then when I'd brought him to reason, he wasn't half bad, that ***;
He bandaged my head and my short-rib as well as the Doc could have done.
So back I went with my Boches, as gay as a two-year-old colt,
And it suddenly struck me as rummy, I still was a-humming "Ben Bolt".
And now, by Jove! how I've bored you. You've just let me babble away;
Let's talk of the things that matter -- your car or the newest play. . . .

While reading an article last night about fathers and sons, memories came flooding back to

the time I took me son out for his first pint.

Off we went to our local pub only two blocks from the cottage.

I got him a Guinness.  He didn't like it, so I drank it.

Then I got him a Kilkenny's, he didn't like that either, so I drank it.

Finally, I thought he might like some Harp Lager?   He didn't.   I drank it.

I thought maybe he'd like whiskey better than beer so we tried a Jameson's, nope!

In desperation, I had him try that rare Redbreast,Ireland's finest.   He wouldn't even smell it.

What could I do but drink it!

By the time I realized he just didn't like to drink, I was so feckin ****-faced I could hardly

push his pram back Home.

On the paint chipped pavement we went over the rules:
NO cherry bombs, NO bobbling,
NO lower-ballers, spin-tops,
chalk walkers, twenty fingers,
and especially NO  skyscrapers.
So for a few minutes we played as raw as apple skin knees,
it was the roughest, toughest, hard-nosed game
of four square any fourth grader has ever seen.
But it was all over when someone crossed the line.
There was fussing, cussing, and an accusation of the mustnt’s.
Eyebrows adjacent, we argued and clawed like kilkenny cats,
we were breaking rules, we crossed the chalk.
We took sides and worst of all,
the one crucial act that we regret,
we slammed the ball down.
It towered overhead like window washers
and landed on the school’s roof.
We stopped arguing. Nobody won that day.  

© Matthew Harlovic

If you can spy me like this, with your dreamy eyes,
seemingly closed, in pleasant  languor of amour,
watch my every move on the sly, like a Kilkenny cat
camouflage the aggression latent, on your tired limbs
react with subtle hints,that make me go wild
evade the eyes around you,cast a glance to my table far,
when your lips touch the glass of red wine,
you imply much,some subtle, the rest passion's crazy dictates,
I should seek out your green cat's eyes, gleaming in tbe darkness,
as I look and and say, without words"Let's meet right now, here"

''O your eyes painted a thousand pictures of long journeys, rolling hills, running streams, and rugged coastlines.
O how i miss walking on that road down the hills to the sea''

You used to walk by the river o my handsome rover.
Beautiful and green your eyes looked into mine, barely sober.
My men had all gone home, from Malin to Dursley they called out your name.
You would always find your way, drunk you walked so lame.

These spring leaves, caught by the wind flying as far as the ocean.
Kilkenny, as far as the wind might take you i sang.
I sang my lovely Father's song so sad.
A beautiful man, along the road by the river he used to pad.

I pledged you my only heart
A vow of love to never part
My friend, my heart, my love
I promised you peace and joy