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† One encounters all manner of ‘unquiet’ beings – comi- cal and menacing in varying degrees – in the two great novels of the Irish writer Flann O’Brien, At-Swim-Two-Birds (1939) and The Third Policeman (written between 1939­–1940, but not published until 1967). The newspaper column he wrote for many years in the Irish Times, under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen, features many dazzling examples of how to find the fantastical in everyday life; but it also contains this story of an encounter with something far more disturbing – as well as suggesting an intriguing alternative way of facing down ‘evil machinations’. 178
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Flann O’Brien – Cruiskeen Lawn column, Irish Times, 4 December 1944 – M any years ago a Dublin friend asked me to spend an evening with him. Assuming that the man was interested in philosophy and knew that immutable truth can sometimes be acquired through the kinesis of disputation, I consented. How wrong I was may be judged from the fact that my friend arrived at the rendezvous in a taxi and whisked me away to a licensed premises in the vicinity of Lucan. Here I was induced to consume a large measure of intoxicating whiskey. My friend would not hear of another drink in the same place, drawing my attention by nudges to a very sinister-looking character who was drinking stout in the shadows some distance from us. He was a tall cadaverous person, dressed wholly in black, with a face of deathly grey. We left and drove many miles to the village of Stepaside, where a further drink was ordered. Scarcely to the lip had it been applied when both of us noticed – with what feelings I dare not describe – the same tall creature in black, residing in a distant shadow and apparently drinking the same glass of stout. We finished our own drinks quickly and left at once, taking in this case the Enniskerry road and entering a hostelry in the purlieus of that village. Here 179

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† One encounters all manner of ‘unquiet’ beings – comi- cal and menacing in varying degrees – in the two great novels of the Irish writer Flann O’Brien, At-Swim-Two-Birds (1939) and The Third Policeman (written between 1939­–1940, but not published until 1967). The newspaper column he wrote for many years in the Irish Times, under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen, features many dazzling examples of how to find the fantastical in everyday life; but it also contains this story of an encounter with something far more disturbing – as well as suggesting an intriguing alternative way of facing down ‘evil machinations’.

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