So my family has this long running tradition of telling stories at get togethers, and I can’t stop thinking about the last story my grandfather told me before he passed away.
I mean, we always tried to scare each other, but I never expected Papa Davis (that’s what my whole family calls him) to be the one to instill such a primal fear inside me.
In the middle of the den where we’d meet and tell each other spooky stories as a Thanksgiving and Christmas family tradition was this gorgeous, petrified wood table made from the trunk of a thick Yew tree in Ireland. It was a family heirloom passed down for like almost 300 years or some insane shit; Papa actually left it to me. I’m staring at it as we speak.
It arrived at my place two days ago and I haven’t been able to get the story my Papa told me out of my head since. After knowing the story of how our family acquired this table and the legend associated with it, I wanna fuckin burn this thing. Actually, I’m not even sure that it would burn if I tried.
Instead, let me invite you into a family tradition. Maybe getting it out there will help me understand how silly this all is and how irrational I’m being.
Let me tell you the most fucked up story I’ve ever heard about a table:
The clock had just struck midnight this past Christmas Eve (2022), and most of the family had long since turned in for the night. The only ones left up were myself, my uncle, Jerry, who is my dad’s older brother, and my papa Davis, my paternal grandfather. Uncle Jerry had just sat down with a freshly poured Moscow Mule when Papa Davis opened his mouth excitedly announcing, “now it’s my turn for a story!”
“Alright dad, but just one more and then we all need to head to bed,” my uncle Jerry sputtered out in between pulls of his drink, which he consumed with a neon green bendy straw. Uncle Jerry kicked his feet up on the table in the center of the room, a massive single trunk of Yew that sort of branched up and out into a single lamented, petrified surface.
“I want to tell you about how our family acquired this table.”
“Oh, now that sounds interesting, I’ve actually been wondering how far back we can date it.”
My Uncle Jerry had recently become obsessed with ancestry and genealogy, and had started an account on a subscription-based genealogy site to research the Egan and Westmoreland names (our two family surnames, I’m an Egan lol) in his spare time. It was practically all he talked about anymore.
“Did you know, near where our family settled over in Sligo from Tipperary, that Yew forests grew wild all over Ireland, and many pagan druids used them in their rituals. Just like this one here.”
Papa slapped the table as he stood up and went over to the bar in the far corner of the den and poured himself about three fingers of rye whiskey in a glass and took a big pull before continuing.
“What you’ve probably learned from your genealogy site is that when the Egans moved to Sligo, we did so with the aid of the church. Because of this aid, we were in turn made to act as scriveners and missionaries whose singular mission was to convert local pagans, druids, witches, and whatever else have you to the Christian faith. We can easily trace our lineage back to the early 1300s in County Sligo.
“Even in the early 1900s, centuries after our family settled there, pagan practitioners would perform rituals on sacred days. By this point the Egan name had become established in Sligo and surrounding counties for our vast libraries and collection of historical documentation.
“However, we still owed a debt to the church. Legend has it that for the aid lent to us by the clergy, our family would carry out the church’s own “justice” against non-believers who managed to hang on to their pre-judeo-christian notions, even into the modern day. In fact, rumor has it that’s why my father relocated us to Texas.”
My Uncle busted out laughing, “no, dad, that’s not at all why our family relocated.” He sipped his drink again. “I’ve done hundreds of hours of research, we were simply part of a larger expedition that emigrated into South Texas and Galveston from Ireland in the early 1900s.”
“No, son,” my Papa belabored through gritted teeth as he cut my uncle off, “our family has been settled in Texas for much longer.”
Confused, my uncle sort of shuffled through a handful of tipsy replies that he harbored on the tip of his tongue while my grandpa shuffled through a filing cabinet next to the bar. We heard the clicking of a drawer unlocking, and then my Papa slapped a bunch of old documents on the table before beginning again.
“We come from an ancient indigenous Irish family, documented in the annals of Irish history and lore,” my papa exclaimed as my uncle thumbed through and began reading the documents on the table in front of him, all the while keeping one ear cocked to hear my grandpa out.
“Your research is right that our immediate family left the island during the wave in the early 1900s, but the Egan family has owned the land we’re on since 1712. My parents were so poor, the only way we could afford to move to Texas when we did was the fact that we already owned the land here. After a quick but dirty court battle with the family that operated this land at the time, my father was able to prove our family’s ownership and relocate us to this farm.
“In addition to owning and operating the farm, my father was elected the judiciary tax attorney for the county which afforded him the position to keep copious notes and documentation about our family. Here is all of his clerical work and findings that earned us the land we’re sitting on this very second.”
He motioned over to the paperwork with his index finger as he spoke. All the while, my uncle had this dumbfounded, bewildered smirk on his face as he speed-read through every loose-leaf page sprawled out on the Yew tree table.
“In 1711, there was a series of witch hunts and burnings that occurred in Ireland, similar to the witch hunts across Europe or in Salem here in the states.
“Our specific branch of the Egan family had fell on hard times, long since estranged from our family in Tipperary, we inhabited a small cottage on some land used for grazing sheep near what is nowadays known as Hazelwood.
“Down on our luck, rumor has it that in exchange for hunting down some local druids that inhabited the woods near our land and burning them at the stake, the church offered our family some of the land inhabited by the pagans after they had been rid of the land, as well as some material reward.
“Druids in that specific area were not known for worshipping any well-known fae or Irish deity. No, they kept near the Lough Gill and were often heard whispering together while traveling or taking up in local pubs and taverns about something they worshiped in the lake. Something ancient and Insidious.
“There aren’t any known names for the entity these druids worshiped, and though there were but a few of them, they were zealous. After some children had gone missing from the village a few days earlier, townfolk began muttering under hushed breath that the witches in the wood had something to do with it. Panic was already widespread around Ireland about witchcraft and pagan worship, but the missing children tipped the paranoia into action.
“So, before doing any official inquiry or investigation, our family managed to incite a few stragglers gathered from the local tavern and set out to take some supposed revenge for the children missing, and some ill-deserved land and money for helping in the church’s mission.
“After subduing and tying down the four men in each cardinal direction to the truck of a massive Yew tree near the Lough, our ancestors laid the kindling and began to say a prayer before setting the druids ablaze.
“However, the druids began chanting, at first in ancient Irish, and then in some intelligible and Eldritch tongue, in unison, heads all pointed directly down to where the tree’s roots gripped the solid earth.
“My father told me, just before he died, that the druids died chanting, staring wide-eyed at the ground below. As with most people burned at the stake, they suffocated from the smoke long before they burned to death, and were then cut down and buried under the tree. Then, a few days later, the village’s local woodworker appeared to the Egan farm with this very table in tow.
“He said the man made our family this table because the druids put a terrible curse on the Egan name, one that would echo through generations, until a prophecy was fulfilled. He said that he couldn’t make out everything they were saying, but that they were calling to some entity that didn’t have any sort of identity or name. That they were seemingly communicating with some ethereal essence lingering near the Lough. He said that this curse set a prophecy that stated that the 3rd woman born as the first child in our family’s lineage would become a vessel on her 22nd birthday. For what, he did know or would not say.
“He then confessed to the Egan clan that he was also a practitioner of ancient and pagan magic, and through a blessing from the Morrigan he was able to snare the essence of the four druids into the trunk of the Yew tree they were burned upon and buried beneath under the dark cover of a new moon. That he had turned the tree into functional furniture and brought the table as a peace offering to watch over in exchange for not turning him over to the church, or worse.
“Finally, before heading back to his homestead, he heeded the words to our family that although the essence of the druids had been trapped, the curse they cast was unknown and unnatural, and there was no telling how the mystical Yew would interact if their prophecy ever came true.
“That particular branch of the Egan family, our particular branch of the Egan family, disappeared from Irish history in 1712, shortly after the biggest witch-hunt ever performed on the island’s soil. And a suspiciously wealthy Egan family settled this land here, with title and deed documentation dating back to 1712 at the earliest.
“At some point, our family moved back to Sligo until my father relocated us here once again during the 1940s. As I grew older, my father became increasingly obsessed with this family legend and supposed curse. At the end of his life, my father was convinced that the druid’s prophecy would be fulfilled by one of his offspring, but we all had boys as our first-born children.”
A pregnant pause filled the room, begging for someone or something to break the silence, before my uncle Jerry burst out laughing, barely able to get out a “good story, dad” while crunching the ice from his drink and softly giggling to himself.
But I was absolutely enthralled. Maybe it was the three Moscow Mules I had myself, but I found that I was simultaneously fascinated and scared of this table that I had known and loved my entire life.
“Well, it’s time we all turn in and get some good sleep,” my uncle announced as he headed toward the bedroom hallway from his spot in the den.
“Good night.”
“Night,” my papa and I muttered in unison.
I downed the rest of my glass of water I’d been nursing for the past hour to help lessen the blow of my hangover the following morning, and began to head to my bed as my grandfather stopped me and grabbed me by the arm his eyes meeting mine with intent.
“You know, when my father told me this story before he died, I thought it was maybe dementia, but all of the documentation is there.”
“I know, papa,” I yawned and leaned in to hug him. He stopped me and continued looking me dead in the eyes and said,
“You know if you go through our family tree, you’re the 3rd first-born woman in our lineage.”
I froze. Maybe it was the alcohol, but that actually chilled me to my core. I couldn’t believe he’d done the research involved just to so thoroughly scare me specifically. Then a split second later, I chuckled.
“Okay, you got me, Papa. I’m scared. Goodnight.”
But he didn’t break his stare from mine and kept a firm grip on my arms as he continued,
“You’re the 3rd first-born woman in our lineage and you’ll be 22 next Spring. Be cautious of the prophecy. Dark things lived in the woods before the days of man. Ancient things that even gods fear. I won’t be around to protect you forever.”
That last line stung in a way he probably wasn’t expecting, and even though my grandpa was clearly hammered and fully immersed in his own tale, I gave him a hug and another word of assurance and then shuffled off to bed.
The next morning, Papa Davis woke unusually late but surprisingly was not hungover in the slightest. We exchanged a knowing glance when he came into the kitchen, but never spoke about the story ever again.
At least, not until last week.
On April 14, 2023 at 12:43am, I got a text from my grandfather that read “heed the new moon, repel your body from the void.” I tried to text him back, asking him what that meant, but never got a response. On April 14, 2023 at 7:03am, I received a call from my dad that my beloved Papa had passed away during the night. His text was his final communication with the world before he departed.
The funeral was this past weekend, and that brings us up to date to today. And the fact that my fucking grandfather decided to play one final scare on me by leaving me nothing but his old filing cabinet and the family Yew table in his will.
The table that now stands as a symbol of our family’s supposed fucked up history. The table that was delivered without my knowledge to my apartment two days ago. The table that I am currently using to rest my laptop on as I type this out. Well, that and rolling this blunt.
I should probably apologize retroactively for any spelling or grammar errors; I’m completely baked.
I haven’t smoked in a couple years, but I figured I’d partake for the holiday. Well, that and the fact that I’m trying to forget how scared shitless I am of the story my Papa told me about the table now taking up half my living room. I think maybe just getting it out in the open will help me be less afraid.
Then there’s the ominous and creepy fuckin text he sent me the night he passed away just like less than two weeks ago.
Or the fact that I did some research and Papa was right, I am the 3rd first-born woman in our family’s recorded history, and I just turned 22 a few hours ago on the night of a new moon.
I’m starting to feel a tightness in my chest and in my throat, I genuinely feel like I’m about to have a panic attack. I don’t even recognize my face in the mirror right now. But it’s probably just the weed, right?