Then Maggie O’Connor took up the job,
“O Biddy,” says she. “You’re wrong, I’m sure.”
Biddy she gave her a belt in the gob,
And left her sprawlin’ on the floor.
And then the war did soon engage,
’Twas woman to woman and man to man,
Shillelagh law was all the rage,
And a row and a ruction soon began.
Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head,
When a noggin of whiskey flew at him,
It missed, and falling on the bed,
The liquor scattered over Tim!
The corpse revives! See how he raises!
Timothy rising from the bed,
Says, “Whirl your whiskey around like blazes,
Thanum an Dhoul! Do you think I’m dead?”
“Feeling sleepy yet?”
“No.”
“All right, we’ll sing another one.”
They stayed out under the stars for a long, long time.
The Apotheosis
It was whispered among the soldiers of all the Three Kingdoms that Guan Yu could not be killed. The generals of the deceitful Cao Cao and the arrogant Sun Quan tried to laugh at this rumor and executed those who spread it. All the same, when it came time to face Guan Yu on the battlefield, even the invincible Lü Bu hesitated.
But I have gotten ahead of myself. How did the Han Dynasty fall? How did the Three Kingdoms rise? Who were the heroes among whom Guan Yu made his way?
The Yellow Turbans ravaged the land, their rallying rebel cry that the Emperor was a child who had never set foot outside the Palace while his eunuchs preyed upon the blood and flesh of the peasants. Taking up arms against the rebels, the dreaded warlord Cao Cao made the Emperor a hostage in his own capital and ruled in his name from the plains and deserts of the North.
In the South, the rich rice fields and winding rivers propelled Sun Quan, the Little Tyrant, to hold sway over ships, and hunger for the title of Emperor.
Everywhere there was sickness and starvation, and armies marched over fields empty of cultivation.
Liu Bei, a man so full of charm that his earlobes reached his shoulders, was merely a peddler of straw shoes and straw mats when he met Zhang Fei, the butcher, and Guan Yu, the outlaw who was still running. Guan Yu now had the beginning of his famous beard, a bushy and vibrant beard that made him look old and young at the same time. It made a nice addition to a handsome face, whose smooth features looked like they were carved out of the red stone of the Crimson Cliffs of the Yangtze River.
“If I had men who could fight like tigers with me, I would restore the glory of the Han Dynasty,” Liu Bei said to the two strangers who shared a bowl of sorghum mead with him in the peach orchard.
“And what good is that to me?” asked Zhang Fei, whose face was black as coal and whose arms daily wrestled oxen to the ground for the slaughter.
Liu Bei shrugged. “Maybe you do not care. But if I were Emperor, the magistrates would again mete out justice, the fields would be cultivated with industry and virtue, and the teahouses would again be filled with the songs and laughter of scholars and dancing women.” His eyes lingered a moment longer on Guan Yu’s face, which was familiar to him from the many posters putting a price on his head that he had seen around the city. “There are many men who are outlaws in this day and age, but many of them are outside the law only because the laws have not been administered with virtue. Were I Emperor, I would make them the judges, not the criminals.”
“And what makes you think you will succeed?” asked Guan Yu. His face darkened to the color of blood, but he stroked his beard carelessly, like a scholar stroking his brush as he was about to pen a poem about girls collecting flowers in May.
“I don’t know I will succeed,” Liu Bei said. “All life is an experiment. But when I die I will know that I once tried to fly as high as a dragon.”
In the peach orchard then, they became sworn brothers.
“Though we were not born on the same day of the same month of the same year, we ask that Fate give us the satisfaction of dying on the same second of the same minute of the same hour.”
They headed West, and there, in the mountainous Province of Shu, where Guan Yu first tasted mala, they founded the Kingdom of Shu Han.
All-Under-Heaven was thus split into the Three Kingdoms of Cao Cao, Sun Quan, and Liu Bei. Of the three, Cao Cao had the valor and wildness of the Northern Skies while Sun Quan had the wealth and resilience of the Southern Earth, but only Liu Bei had the virtue and love of the People.
Guan ?Yu was his greatest warrior. He had the strength of a thousand men and the love of even more.
“He is not made of flesh and blood.” Cao Cao sighed when he heard the report of how Guan Yu slew six of his best generals and broke through five passes to rejoin Liu Bei on his Long March of a Thousand Li.
“He is a phoenix among swallows and sparrows.” Sun Quan shook his head when he heard how Guan Yu laughed and played wei qi while his bones were scraped free of poison. Guan Yu was back on his horse and swinging his sword the next day.
War raged between the Three Kingdoms for years, neither one able to subdue the other two. Guan Yu’s face never lost its bloodred color, and his dark beard grew longer and longer until he wore it in a silk pouch to keep it clean and out of the way in battle.
Though Liu Bei was virtuous, the Mandate of Heaven was not with him. His armies fought and lost, lost and fought, in battle after battle. During a retreat on one of their campaigns to the North, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were separated from the main army, and their detachment of one hundred scouts became surrounded by the army of Cao Cao, numbering more than ten thousand. Cao Cao asked for parley with the two.
“Surrender and swear fealty to me, and I shall make you into Dukes who do not have to kneel even in the presence of the Son of Heaven,” Cao Cao said.
Guan Yu laughed. “You do not understand why men like me fight. There is the joy of battle, of course, but that is not all.” He opened up his old, faded battle cape to show Cao Cao the holes in the fabric, the frayed edges and patches upon more patches. “This was given to me by my sworn brother Liu Bei. Before I put on the cape, I was nobody, a murderer running from the law. But after I put on the cape, every swing of my sword was in the name of virtue. What can you offer me better than that?”
Cao Cao turned around and rode back to his camp. He ordered his army to begin attack immediately. The generals gave the orders, but the soldiers, thousands upon thousands of them lined up in rank after rank, refused to advance against Guan Yu and Zhang Fei and their small circle of one hundred men.
Cao Cao ordered the soldiers standing in the back killed on the spot. The panicked soldiers pushed against their comrades in front. The tide of men surged slowly forward, closing in on Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.
The battle lasted from morning till night and then throughout the night till the next morning.
“Remember the Oath of the Peach Orchard,” Guan Yu yelled to Zhang Fei. He was riding through Cao Cao’s men on his war stallion, the great Red Hare, whose skin matched the hue of Guan Yu’s face and who sweated blood as he trampled men beneath his giant hooves. “If Fate will have us succumb this day, then we will have at least fulfilled our oath.”
“But then our brother Liu Bei will be late,” replied Zhang Fei as he impaled two men at once on his iron-shafted spear.
“We will forgive him,” Guan Yu said. The Brothers laughed and separated once again for the battle.
Wherever Guan Yu rode, swinging his moon-shaped sword, the soldiers of Cao Cao fell over one another to get away from the rider and his horse, parting before them like a flock of sheep before a tiger or a brood of chickens before an eagle. Guan Yu mowed them down mercilessly, and Red Hare frothed at the mouth, the bloodlust overcoming his exhaustion.