A Lee Valley Scrap of a Tale

“It’s funny,’ thought the old man, ‘how the more things change; the more they stay the same’.

He stepped from his car and called over his shoulder to the young boy to take the tackle and follow him down to the water’s edge. He felt his excitement quicken as he reached the once-familiar spot.

There was the bay where the river became the lake; here was the spot where his grandfather had helped him hook a big one (and let him take all the credit for it too). Over further, beyond the tangle of low trees on the stony ground, was the place where they would picnic, taking turns in the one canvas chair and feasting on the sandwiches and cold chicken and lemonade that his grandmother had prepared.

His mind raced back as easily as the shimmering line plays out from the rod; a flick of the wrist and he was a boy again. It was like nothing had changed.

Out on the water, the crannog on Mehigan’s Island stood as it had done for hundreds of years. They said it could be reached on foot by a hidden causeway, known only to its defenders; but he had never found it and wondered whether it was just another story, like the ones his grandfather used to tell.

His favourite was the story of the young hero who burnt his thumb whilst cooking the fabled salmon of knowledge and caught all the wisdom of that great fish when he sucked unthinkingly on the blister.

Now that was a great story altogether. He’d looked up and down the banks of the river for the hazel trees that might drop some magical nuts into the mouth of a waiting salmon but there didn’t seem to be any in these parts, and anyway, his grandfather told him that it wasn’t this river but another just like it.

He looked again across the water, but now his mind was running to the many great rivers that he’d seen since following this one down to the harbour at Cobh where he’d taken passage on a ship to places where a man could find all the work he wanted. Over the years, he’d stood on the banks of the mighty Mississippi at New Orleans, seen the Amazon where she finally pours into the Atlantic after her four-thousand-mile journey through a whole continent, and crossed the Nile in flood to see the great pyramids.

He’d settled finally by another great waterway, the Hudson, but even though he’d had a good life there, his stray thoughts would always take him wandering back to this river and to this place near his hometown of Inchigheela.

He looked again about him as he stood by the Lough.

Of course, some things had changed. The salmon were no longer able to leap the steps of the river thanks to the dams at Inniscarra and Carrigadrohid. He himself was no longer a boy, but a man who had lived the greater portion of his life on other riverbanks, far from home yet catching his own knowledge as it dropped into his mouth along the way.

But he had come back to the old place, following the ancient routes across the oceans, pausing now and then to catch his thoughts but moving ever more quickly as he came in sight of home.

The voice behind him brought him back across the years, “Grandad, is this the place you told me about, the very best fishing spot in all the world?”

He smiled to himself; then turned to the boy to lead him towards the tangle of low trees and to the place where they would make their picnic.