Once Upon A Time and long, long ago, before there was colour television, WiFi, the Internet, or even disposable nappies there was a terrible sorcerer. By day he was a schoolmaster at a school for unruly children, but by night he studied the dark arts of incantation and transmogrification, staying up well past bedtime reading books without pictures! This mad necromancer, whose name was Master Seamus, almost never slept and he drank so much coffee that the whites of his eyes turned black as ink. His long grey beard was full of shortbread crumbs and his sorcerer’s robe smelt of tinned sardines and cigars.  He was a thoroughly evil wizard.

Now, Master Seamus lived with his mum in a mountaintop cave in the wild hills of Ballylickey.  Every day he rode his pushbike down the mountain to Glengarriff Academy, his robe and beard streaming out behind him. As he flew by, school children held their noses, shouting out taunts and jeers.  Master Seamus wanted more than anything in the world to change those naughty students into amphibians. He dreamt of populating the watershed of Bantry Bay with rude boys and girls he’d turned into toads, frogs, and slimy newts.  ‘By Zeus,’ he shouted, ‘I’ll have my revenge!’

Night after night the wizard stayed up past the Late, Late Show trying out magical spells on Spot, his mum’s socially challenged Jack Russell Terrier. And finally, at the stroke of midnight one stormy, wintery Halloween his wish was granted, Master Seamus discovered a magic incantation. He said ‘Doof Dessecorp Ragus!’ three times, made a face at Spot, and, presto, Spot turned into a gerbil and was promptly eaten by  Rags, Master Seamus’ one-eyed, three-legged cat. I am sorry to have to tell you Spot’s terrible fate, but in the olden days, before tinned cat food and recycling, cats ate smaller animals al fresco. After eating Spot, Rags burped twice and began meowing a feline rendition of ‘Circle of Life.’  He suffered from terrible halitosis, but had no trouble digesting Spot, wee teeth, fur and all. Seamus’ mum, however, was not amused and Seamus got no sweet at teatime for a whole week.

The following day, the sorcerer tried out his incantation on Molly Sweeny, a naughty girl he caught pinching biscuits from his desk drawer. ‘Ragus, Doof Dessecorp Transmogrophis!’ shouted the wizard and little Molly turned into  a tree frog. Next, he tried his magic on Tomas Finn, a ponytail puller. The wizard turned Tomas into a brown spotted newt and left him to live out his days in an aquarium on the bookshelf above the Encyclopaedia Britannica, books with pictures which the children were strictly forbidden to touch because they have sticky, dirty hands.

Within a week, the evil wizard had changed the entire student body into creepy, slimy, semi-aquatic animals. Master Seamus turned the teachers into a flock of geese who paraded honking and flapping around the school, beating their powerful wings, and devouring students willy-nilly. The horror of those times is indescribable, dear children, unimaginable in these days of cell phones, child protective hotlines, and Tic-Tok video. Bad things happened all the time and nobody knew! Everybody was too busy minding their own business to care what some small-town wizard was doing to naughty children in the privacy of his own classroom.

One day, Master Seamus parked up his pushbike and was sitting on a rock just outside the village. He was hoping to encounter some truant children absconding from the National School whom he could change into jellyfish, sea urchins, and flowering peanut worms. And just when he was giving up hope two boys came whizzing up on skateboards and began throwing stones at sea birds and, shortly, each other. The sorcerer was beside himself with delight at the very thought of the spell he might conjure up for them. So, he uttered the mightiest incantation he knew. ‘Transmogrophis Hsiflived’ he shouted, but in his excitement the wizard was careless, and his magic bounced off the water right back at him. He instantly changed into a giant, thirty-foot octopus, a devilfish.

So, the next time you visit Glengarriff watch out for Seamus the Devilfish. On rainy winter nights he rides his tandem bicycle by moonlight along the shores of Bantry Bay.  In tourist season if you’re lucky you might see him gobble up a naughty child. Seamus loves children –especially tartare with fleurettes of Ribbon Kelp.

And so, he lived happily ever after.