Epiphany

In Ireland, we're all very familiar with the significance of Halloween as a night when the dead and the supernatural are knocking around the place.

But all festivals are power points of this kind, including Twelfth Night or the Feast of the Epiphany.

It was believed, for instance, that on this night, water was transformed to wine.

Oíche na trí ríthe, sea deantar fíon den uisce, goes the proverb.

Um, you, you often have a more profound, I suppose, moment of illumination, um, i-i- than in that legend at the end of the legend.

You can say that in the legends, the veil over reality is lifted for a moment to reveal a greater truth, which is what Chekhov, I think, is reputed to have said about the literary genre he specialized in and partly invented, the modern short story.

Naturally, any talk about the Feast of the Epiphany and the modern short story will bring only one thing to mind for an Irish writer or reader, which would be? The Dead.

The Dead.