The Irish Tales

The following tales were made up every night by me to send my daughter off to sleep snugly, when she was about five or six.
She recently asked me to commit them to print, so that she could read them to her two boys, Alex and Charlie.
And here they are............................................

The Life and Times of Patsy Scaremonster.

Chapter One


Once upon a bedroom, when boys were boys, girls were girls and packs of foxhounds roamed free in the countryside, there lived a lucky little girl called Jay.
She was lucky because, not only did she have a smashing name, (short, memorable and feisty) but she had as her bestest friend, a Scaremonster called Patsy.
You don’t know what a Scaremonster is ? Well then, my petals, I shall just have to tell you.
A Scaremonster does exactly what it say on the tin : it scares away monsters. You know, the monsters who lurk under the bed, hide behind the curtains, sometimes live in the cupboard where your socks should be or just pop out of your sleepy mind, fully formed.
Every child has their own kind of monster but all monsters are scared of Scaremonsters and the mere presence of one is enough to turn them into fairy cakes, which can then be eaten in perfect safety.
(Or jelly, if you prefer; please, don’t let’s fret over trifles.)
A pretty useful friend to have, you’ll admit ?
Now, you’ll be wanting to know what a Scaremonster looks like and where it lives and all that nonsense, I suppose. Well, I’ll try my best to tell you, but don’t blame me if you find it all a little hard to swallow.
Firstly, a Scaremonster is bigger than the biggest thing you can imagine – and yet it lives in the attic of your house. (If you don’t have an attic, well shame on you, but just for the sake of this tale, pretend you do okay ?)
Scaremonsters sleep up there during the day – and woe betide any who wake them ! – and only emerge at night, when their working day begins.
They are a little like horses to look at, although no horse ever looked like this ; for they have six legs and seats on their backs and speak 678 different languages, including monstereese, which is very useful, given what they do for a living.
They live on love from children and tapwater, which is cheap, I grant you, but also explains why there are so few Scaremonsters around these days.
Y’see, too many children are not allowed to love what their parents scathingly call "imaginary friends". It’s frowned upon and ridiculed and so the offspring are sent to bed with no protection from them, other than a sound talking to, a fizzy drink and TeeVee, which, as we all know, don’t quite cut it with monsters.
But…we were talking about gentler, more generous times and about Jay and Patsy and the good things they did together and oh gracious me, much more besides.
So……..
One evening, as the owls hooted and the hounds sang and small creatures rustled in the hedgerows, Jay woke up yelling with fear.
Not, I hasten to say, because of some bad dream or other, but because Patsy had fallen through the trapdoor in the attic by mistake and landed right on top of her.
"Whoa !" yelled Jay.
"Merde!" yelled Patsy, who always swore in French or Latin when alarmed, to protect the delicate ears of her charges.
For a while, they both stared at each other ; Jay with surprise and shock and Patsy rather grumpily. (Scaremonsters are always grumpy first thing in the evening, especially when they’ve fallen through their trapdoors.)
"Who are you ?" Jay finally said.
"Who are you ?" Patsy replied.
"It’s my bedroom and you’ve invaded it. So you go first,"replied Jay, with all the pluck she could summon.
Well, Patsy harumphed and shuffled and glared a bit, as Scaremonsters do, then muttered under her breath : "I’m Patsy. Your Scaremonster."
Jay frowned. "Do speak up, please".
"I’M PATSY, YOUR SCAREMONSTER !" yelled Patsy in a voice of thunder, not unlike the Master when a hunt follower overtakes him in the field.
Now, I could bore you with the details of how Jay asked what a Scaremonster was and how Patsy told her and how Jay expressed disbelief at first, but I wont insult your intelligence as I’ve already explained these things.
So, suffice to say that, a little while later, Jay was snuggling up to her raggy, listening intently as Patsy recounted past tales of derring-do and monster-squashing and drank tapwater by the gallon, or the litre if you insist on being modern and – but wait.
I take it you all know what a raggy is ?
No ? Sheesh, kids today.
Ok. A raggy is any old piece of cloth, linen, silk or wool that one holds close to one’s face and snuffles into, which is very soothing and reassuring when monsters are in the offing and quite often even when they are not.
All children have raggies of some kind, so please don’t pretend you are any different or I shall halt this story right now.
Good.
To proceed then…but hold again.
I sense you’re getting sleepy now and I absolutely demand your best attention whilst I tell this story, so…
Sleep now…we will continue tomorrow evening.
　
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