The idea is, of course, that as soon as one opens up one’s mind, one risks invasion by the massed ranks of divils to whom an ‘open mind’ is akin to the call “Come on in boys! The water’s fine!”

Gaze not into the abyss, lest the abyss gazes into you…and all that.

Hmm…better hurry up and close my mind post haste.

I’ve been toying with the idea of attempting a biography of the bould Dan as there appears to be a dearth of synthesised material around. There seem to be a nice few tomes from the 19th century on O’Connell in the Kings Inns library. I’m not much of an amateur scholar though. Still, it’s begging to be written.

The masons have long since decamped and the Jesuits are flogging/have flogged the Church on the Crescent, so Statue Dan will be fine.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Liberator’s skipping up Henry St. to avoid an intellectual confrontation between simultaneously held contradictions is a pretty good illustration of the Father Brown thesis re the human condition, which we outlined in Part 1 of From Fairies to Freemasons.

Hence the thematic material. I’m dibbing it.

apparently the great dan (o’connell) took to detouring around the crescent in limerick to avoid the clash of loyalties he’d experience passing the old masonic lodge directly opposite the jesuits - (on the left heading for tralee before they moved to the new place on d’island). the liberator being ‘on the level’ was obliged to make some kind of funny sign passing the lodge but bless himself passing the church so he skipped up henry street to avoid the hassle.

shannonside readers will be aware that a statue of the same great dan now stands -where else but - at the centre of the crescent.

“One of us, one of us”, I hear them chant.

Fústarers (well the male ones at any rate) will be interested to note that according to the membership bumpf, the idea that one needs to be nominated or sponsored to join is nonsense.

They encourage you (goys) to ask, and ye shall receive.

The ‘new age’ that the ritualistic killings herald is, of course, an explicitly ‘male’ one, with war, chaos, carnage, and commerce all reaching giddy and previously undreamed of heights.

Aside from the obviously brutal misogyny of the slayings themselves, William Gull (aka The Ripper) is clearly established as a (determined) opponent of women’s suffrage, and a patriarchal reactionary of the most vicious kind: He refers (gloatingly) to Queen Boadicea/Boudica’s defeat at the hands of the Romans, raises his arms in triumph when he has visions of the (phallic) skyscrapers of the 20th century City rising into the sky etc.

Not only that, but as the collection draws to a close his near-death ‘ecstasy’ transports him through time, and he becomes a kind of ghostly/demonic influence in the lives of much more recent serial killers (of women): Peter Sutcliffe etc.

“It is beginning…only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it”.

Incredibly eerie, disturbing, and thoroughly engrossing stuff.