'A lone, dark figure covered almost from head to foot, and carrying the fetid scent of dead fish and rotting seaweed, I weaved silently in and out, with one hand trailing. One by one they shrank from me, from my smell, and the laughter and the calling faded.'
('Fishcoat', Nina Oram, 'The Ogham Stone Literary &Arts Journal', University of Limerick, 2016)
The first short story I had published was called ‘Fishcoat’. Published in ‘The Ogham Stone Literary & Art Journal 2016, University of Limerick, I was thrilled for it to be chosen by the MA students and included in a literary journal.
‘Fishcoat’ began its life on a weekend trip to Wexford. It was spring. Late evening, the sky turning slowly from dark blue to black. Standing on the quay, cars tore along the river bridge above us, their lights flashing. Fishermen faced the water, drinking cheap lager from cans. Turning towards town, we walked over the railway track, and across the road, was the entrance to the covered alley that led up the hill into the centre of the medieval town. It was just that view. The sight of the dark, narrow alley nestling between the old building, as if the centuries hadn’t passed. And it was two, maybe three hundred years ago, and any moment you’d see drunk fishermen staggering down it, on their way home from the inn.
The folklore was very tricky. There was nothing in Irish folklore that would work with what I had in mind. I found the Shellycoat in Scotland and the North of England, but that didn’t work either. Finally, I found what I needed in Finnish mythology: Vetehinen, a genii, who protected the sea for his God, Ahti. And I imagined him in another country, another mythology, servant to another God of the sea, the Irish God Lir. I gave him a new name, and so Fishcoat was born…
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