In the grape hyacinth blue jersey – yellow strip at V-neck, blue tie, navy trousers of Kinsale Community School, Wesley Loramar would wait in cubicles at the public lavatory at the beginning of Pier Road, Kinsale, aged sixteen, with the look of the bored cherub in Raphael’s The Madonna of the San Sisto.

Kinsale, with its whaling frame houses, was where the pirate, Anne Bonny, was from.

Anne’s lawyer father, William Cormac, got a servant girl, Peg Brennan, pregnant. The three fled to Charleston, North Carolina where William became a plantation owner.

When she was thirteen Anne stabbed a servant girl. At sixteen she married and went off with James Bonny, a pirate. On sea she had a homosexual companion, Pierre Bouspeut.

She decided to elope with another pirate, John ‘Calico’ Rackham. On the ship Revenge she met Mark Read who was really Mary Read and they became lovers.

The ship was captured October 1720, the men executed, the two women spared because they claimed pregnancy.

Wesley, wheaten and auburn hair, Titian red eyebrows, body like a military road, hoping to be picked up, would be seen hitchhiking in school uniform on the Inishshannon Raod, three miles North West of Kinsale, close to Dunderrow, not far from the Bandon River.

Dunderrow – fortress of oak plain.

There is an American chemical factory there now.

Coins left by Elizabeth’s forces before the Battle of Kinsale 1601, have been found here.

In yesteryears Mrs Harrington would travel by pony and trap from Kinsale each day to teach here, picking up pupils on the way.

Her pony was cared for while she was teaching by the Bowen family.

A man named Billy the Butler owned the local manor just prior to Miss Harrington’s career.

Bankruptcy had dogged successive owners of that manor and he too went bankrupt.

Wesley would be seen coming out of Dunderrow wood, which had the sow-like smell of lesser celandine in spring – slight moustache like the down inside the foxglove – where he’d lain with workers from the chemical factory. He was like Orpheus who stole their husbands from the Thracian women.

Some said he’d been doing this since he’d worn the grey jumper and gey trousers of Saint John’s National School.

Some said he’d once been seen coming out of the wood in red PE jerseys of Saint John’s.

Sometimes too he’d be seen hitchhiking at Ballythomas Cross Road.

They described him as the white-headed boy.

This is a short extract, the full article is available to read in Issue 1 [Click here to buy]