Watch: Concertina loving bullocks famous in a galaxy far away
My bullocks have now been viewed on the internet more than 15 million times, .
Tis crazy but true. A woman came up to me in Macroom last Thursday morning while I chewed on a sausage and informed me that Mark Hamill had just liked them on twitter. And Mark Hamill, in case you don’t know, is the star of that film made in Kerry a few years back. No alas, not The Field. The other one, Star Wars.
So my bullocks might well have an impact on the next Star Wars movie. Possibly titled Star Wars: The return of the Jersey, if I have anything to do with it.
The whole business began when my little daughter Grace was filmed by myself last July playing her concertina to the raggle taggle bunch. She wanted to emulate her hero Sharon Shannon who did something similar in Dungarvan. So Grace played a few tunes to the bullocks who she felt might like the interlude from crewing grass on this farm and further afield.
At the time my cattle were on a right rampage, not helped at all, I might add, by the wondrous grass on my neighbours farms.
It had them spellbound. This was especially the case with regards the half squeezed ones, who had nothing on their minds but my neighbours grass and other delights that awaited once over the boundary ditch.
Anyhow fair play, they liked Grace and her concertina and for one afternoon over the summer, the cattle stayed put. There was grace and harmony all around.
To cut a long story short, Sharon Shannon spotted the very clip on the internet and subsequently drove it bananas with the height of views and what have you.
Millions have now seen it. Everyone from Chris O’Dowd on twitter to the Pope himself, I suspect, if he has a computer in the Vatican. Grace had the cattle in the palm of her hand and the world of the internet too. They were all mesmerised with her and her tune.
Anyhow knowing nothing about the value of such publicity, didn’t I sell the very bullocks in the mart last week. I sold them because I’m an utter fool. And worse again, I sold them for a song.
And make no mistake, rounding them up on a cold March morning was a far cry from Grace’s antics back in the summer.
No amount of roaring, shouting or banjo playing by myself could encourage them to the gate.
I dare say, even if Liberace himself sat by the gate playing his grand piano in a jovial fashion with candelabras and all the rest, they wouldn’t have budged. Grace, it would seem, is the only one with the magic touch. But alas, she was in school.
Eventually I corralled the lot and duly sent them off to the mart, only to be told after the sale that I had made the greatest mistake of my life.
“You’re a fool, a damn fool!” An old man cried to me after the mart had concluded, for he had heard that they were an internet sensation. “Them boys,” says he, “are the most popular bullocks in the world. Your fortune could have been made from that half castrated old bunch of Jersey steers.”
“You could have been on the Late Late Show on Friday night, with your old bullocks on display,” says he. “And once seen by the TV masses they would have gone from worthless to priceless. You could have named your price,” he scowled before shaking his old walking stick in dismay at my foolishness.
I suppose the old man was right. If a fellow from Star Wars likes the bullocks, I could surely have sold them for an out of this world sum.
