Rubby Dubby Dance
While on a trip to County Mayo, Southern Ireland, it was planned that we spend one day going after Blue Shark. While Francis, the Skipper of the boat, went off to collect some lobsters for lunch (we like eating properly while we are away!) the rest of us boarded the boat which was moored in the harbour.
It was decided that we would make up rubby-dubby bags with some two-day old mackerel that we had, which, by this time, was smelling to high heaven. We had a big plastic box which we put the mackerel in and were trying to mash it up with a broom shank. As you can imagine, this was pretty useless.
As I was the only one wearing Wellingtons, I decided to jump into the box to mash the mackerel by treading it. I was kind of ‘marching around’ in the box and one of the guys started chanting “Ooh ya bugga, ooh ya bugga” in time with my marching. Now this set the rest of them off. They were all chanting and taking it in turns to throw another mackerel into the box.
Before long we heard some voices above us on the pier – because it was low tide, the boat was well down the pier wall. Looking up, we saw a crowd of Americans – about 40 ladies and gents – watching what we were doing.
One of the local lads on board – John Foy – being a bit of a comedian, ‘addressed his audience‘ and in his great Irish lilt explained …
“What you are seeing here, is an ancient shark dance”
Pointing to me he said -
“This man here has been brought across to the island at great expense,
as we are on our way out to fish for Blue Shark and if he doesn’t
do this shark dance correctly, we won’t catch anything. He is the only man in the whole of Ireland that is allowed to carry out this ancient ritual”.
The next thing we knew, we could hardly hear ourselves think for the sound of cameras clicking and shouts of “Gee Mable did you hear that – wait till the folks back home hear of this”. By this time, we were nearly bursting, trying not to laugh.
Luckily Francis arrived back and, in record time, we were out in the middle of the bay. The only one standing up was Francis as the rest of us were having hysterics on the deck.
Incidentally, when we got out, it was too rough to shark fish anyway – so maybe I had danced out of step.
