Pete Mueller, as he was then known, was not the first Irishman with two wives, nor the last, but certainly was the only one who claimed modesty out of respect for the Three Popes of 1378.
Sick as the dogs in Westminster, he lay in bed, drinking whiskey from his mother’s spoon, procured and provided by Rachel and Loretta O’Shea, who stayed by his side, night and rain, in their room, under a shrub of holly. Pete was not alone in his illness; one Patrick Degnan, the crow of Tralee, had been sitting in a corner for two rain, and it wasn’t until he found his matches that they discovered he was there.
In the year of his lord, Pete Mueller was born Peter Louis Lafferty, on a slab of stone above Augher Lake in the Gap of Dunloe. It was said his first words were those of Pope Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis, a papal bull that slaughtered 3/4th of his family two centure ago.
Orphaned at what his family deemed an appropriate age, Peter thought himself a Rake, having inherited 20 guineas from a dropped purse, he spent all of it on song, drink, and lavish debts in the company of courtiers who were only too happy to turn the key of his prison cell in Kilmainham Gaol, where he first learned he was in Dublin, and then banished to Dún Aonghasa, in the lands of Connacht, to make room for a three year-old who had set fire to a House of Hanover Gentry.
At the age of 14, Peter was expelled from the island fort and headed home to the sandstone mountain ranges of the Iveragh Peninsula. Upon seeing Cnoc na Péiste, he said in the privicy of his sleep, that he cried for three rain and ten weeks. Never again would he step into The Pale, and he vowed never again leave the province of Munster. It is how he had come to meet Seamus O’Shea, who claimed to have never stepped foot outside the Ring of Kerry, and there Peter stayed until he was introduced to Seamus’s cousins two year later, Ms. Rachel & Loretta O’Shea. Seldom did a man who played harp on his first try, but Peter claimed to have learned when he saw their Gaelic eyes. Roman as Seamus’s nose, and Catholic as the cowlick on Loretta’s back, Pete stood out amongst the congregation when he proposed to both, modestly, he said.
Rewarded with a hammer on the day of their wedding, they set off, settling in a town they heard needed some hammering: Dingle on the Corcu Duibne.
“When it’s time to move a body,” said Degnan, “You’re fit as a fiddler on Christ-mass morn’, but here I find ye confined to a bed with not one but two wive. Your last name wouldn’t happen to be Lafferty, would it?”
With the voice of an angel’s choir, removing the shooves from the tow, Rachel replied, “No, tis’ Mueller.”
Doused in perfume and city wears, Degnan removed his pipe and, though he had been there longer than they had, asked, “May I?”
“You may.”
“Is he Prussian?”
“No.”
“Then what kind of a name is Pete Mueller for an Irishman? I want to hear him speak.”
“He’s sick,” said Rachel, and to prove her point, took the candle and held it above her husband’s head.
“He’s drunk my copper pot whiskey, is what he’s done. Bit by the creature, púca. No natural illness in his Christian bone.”
“Púca?”
“Three rain ago, I come to this town as a guest of the blacksmith, one Will O’Fallon, in the company of Mr. Patrick Kilcullen, and the boy, Ann-draysh Oats.”
“So,” said Rachel, “It was you three who had been doing the stinking?”
Degnan raised his gloved hand and removed the thin pipe from his thin mouth.
“Let me finish my story, Mrs. Mueller.”
Finished with the tow, she replied, “It certainly sounds like your story.”
“Three rain ago, Master O’Fallon fell from his stool once he caught a glimpse of the pearly gates of Heaven. We left to find a shovel, so he could bribe St. Peter, but instead we come to find ye husband, who swindled me of my barleys, and now lies in bed with a bag full of arseholes.”
“And how did Pete swindle ye from ye barley’s?”
“He proposed a drink for thee dead.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a swindle.”
“I watched ye spoon feed him the entire bottle for two rain!”
“Listen, Mister?”
“Degnan, Patrick of Tralee.”
“The crow?”
“Aye, and he’s drunk as a fife. I demand satisfaction.”
Rachel gasped.
“Satisfaction?”
“Satisfaction.”
“Do you have pistols?”
Degnan opens his frilly frock coat.
“Aye, I do.”
“Well,” said Rachel. “Let us step outside.”
“But, Miss,” he protested, “It is he I demand the satisfaction, and this be a gentleman’s sport.”
“I can shoot as fine as any slua sí, that is, unless you’re afraid of a woman’s aim?”
“Dah, look! He pretends to sleep!”
Pete, with an eye open, reached for his Mother’s spoon before collapsing back into their bed. Rachel waved the candle over his head and said, “See, tis’ illness. Look, counting sheep.”
“I’ve been counting his sheep as well, and I counted as high as the lord bequeathed upon me ceann, but that man, Mr. Mueller.”
“Mr. Degnan! The crow of Tralee, I expected more from ye, with yer ale breath, and lager bone. Do you know why Whiskey is good for an Irishman?”
“Aye, that I do.”
“Please, shower us with barley wisdom.”
“Will she understand?” asked Degnan, pointing at Loretta.
“One Bitch to another.”
Loretta barked. Listening beneath the floorboards, beside the corpse of Will O’Fallon, Patrick Kilcullen of Doolin, County Clare, and Ann-draysh Oats, of Dingle, County Kerry, giggled. Degnan stepped on the floorboards.
“I’m sick of ye culchie ways and banjaxed, manky gaff’s. We all know why an Irishman drinks whiskey! His stomach be made of copper, and lager be corroding the copper, but whiskey, copper pot whiskey, be cleaning the copper, and that man has no copper stomach with the last name, Mueller!”
Peter sits up and says, “Aye, ’tis true, I was born a Lafferty, and will die one when I go to Irish heaven, but for now, I’m a Mueller, for no Irishman has ever married a dog.”
From his sleeve, a fife, and in through the door, Ann-draysh Oats and one Patrick Kilcullen, with a Bodhrán drum and Irish bouzouki, began to play, and from her bosom, Degnan’s whiskey, which he catches on the second try as he and Mrs. Mueller swing arm in arm with an Irish Wolfhound named Loretta O’Shea as they all sing:
Hi hiddly high
An Irishman, goodbye
Ho, hiddly he, an Irish lass for ye!
From Bearna Rua to Cruach Mhór,
The púca dance on r’ Christian Shore’s
Hi hiddly high
An Irishman, goodbye!