The Tale of the Rope Gig

And the bad Cajun joke that goes with it

One gig that Kevin O'Gallagher has often taken part in is the rope gig. This involves sitting near the front of the encampment, holding one end of a rope which has a big loop out on the ground (see above picture), waiting to "trap" something. The real value of this gig was not in catching people but in freaking them out as they came by and edged around the lane to avoid it . . . "Gawrsh, Martha, he's tryin' to cotch peeple!"

Well, one year at Ojai faire Keely saw him doing this and broke into laughter. Y'see, (in her mundane persona of Laura), she'd recently been told a bad Cajun joke by her dad, Robert Seiver, who lives with the rest of her family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It seemed to apply. So, obviously we gotta post the joke here. Please bear with us - to be told properly it should be told in the Cajun accent, which is hard enough to imitate, let alone to type.

Ahem. Yes. Well, anyway, after having told this joke to Kevin and several others in the encampment, Keely headed off with our friend Jennifer to find the privies. Ojai Faire is pleasantly sited on the very edge of the lake. Said lake is encircled with tall water plants. Including cattails. After a bit of discussion Keely and Jennifer decided that these were an acceptable substitute for pussy willows. Jennifer, a talented costumer, had her heavy iron scissors in a sheath on her belt as always, so the thing was no sooner thought of than accomplished, and Keely and Jennifer headed back to camp, a large bouquet of cattails hidden behind Keely's back, giggling uncontrollably.

Said cattails were presented to Kevin as "bait". Kevin took the bait (sorry about that), and laid it in the middle of the rope. Whenever someone asked "What are you huntin' for?" Kevin replied "Look what I'm using for bait." Husbands tended to take longer than wives to get it . . .

Presently two pirates and a wench from our neighbors, the Black Griffin, ambled by and confronted the rope. Being too drunk to safely go around it, they started talking with Kevin about his intentions with it. Kevin cagily refused to reveal any intentions and the banter continued until the wench was informed that we were calling the bait "pussywillow."

"Pussywillow! Oh, I must have some!" she said, and leapt into the middle of the trap. Kevin pulled tight the noose around her ankles and proclaimed his possession of the wench. The pirates replied that she was still on their side of the rope that marked the boundary of the Irish camp and therefore she was theirs. Kevin acknowledged this and took the wench's hand.

This let him lower her down gently as he yanked her feet into his camp with the rope. The pirates watched in horror as they saw their wench disappearing from their grasp and grabbed hold of her arms. Liam joined the struggle by grabbing a leg, and soon the wench was heard objecting to being used as the rope in a tug-of-war. The pirates started waving their guns about and threatening. Our chief picked his gun up and started threatening. Kevin warned them "Don't you doubt he'll shoot--he's always loaded."

The wench did not appreciate being in the middle of an incipient brawl and protested her capture. Kevin asked, "Well, if you didn't want to be here, why did you step in the noose?"

"Well, I wanted some pussywillow," she replied.

"And why did you want the pussywillow?"

"I didn't have one."

"You don't have one!" and WHOOSH! out she went.

So after this commotion it was decided that men had been playing with the rope long enough and the women of the camp set out the noose. Lovely Michaela was set out as the bait (with cries of "Cleavage! Cleavage!") and soon a passing lad from Black Griffin had been caught, dragged in, and tied up with the rope.

Now at this the pirates decided that they'd had enough of being roped in by the Irish, and a half dozen of them stormed out of their camp and into ours, picked up the lad rope and all, and carried him back to their camp. Kevin, seeing his dear rope disappearing down the lane, grabbed the loose end and pulled as hard as he could, crying, "It's our rope!"

Six against one tug-of-war is not a game that lasts long, and shortly Kevin was being dragged feet-first down the (fortunately) grassy lane. As he was dressed in the traditional style of a kilt this made for a problem of modesty. But it's not like the Black Griffin camp didn't deserve to be mooned anyway, and he soon enough turned around so as not to scandalize the patrons.

Kevin stubbornly held onto the rope until he was dragged through the front gate of the Black Griffin camp, where upon the six pirates dropped their lad, grabbed him, and trussed him up with the same rope he'd been holding. He lay there thinking about the downside of stubbornness until the wench you'll recall from above came over and put her foot on his chest.

"You hurt my ankle. Kiss it and make it better."

Back at the camp Keely was organizing a rescue expedition, reminding all the lasses what a hero Kevin had been (this was not long after the Tale of the Leprechaun took place) and how it was their duty to save him. So with Keely leading and Michaela waving a bloody big sword they all stormed off to the pirate camp.

When they arrived Kevin was done with the ankle. . . and the shin . . . and was moving up the thigh . . . so when the rescue party arrived he cried out piteously "Don't rescue me now!" And Keely saw this said "He doesn't want to be rescued" and turned right around.

She turned around so fast that Michaela didn't have time to move her sword out the way of her head and *BONK* Keely fell down. Well, about this time the captain of the Black Griffin began rousting his crew out for some duties and Kevin was ejected from the camp in time to help carry Keely back home. This was a bit difficult as he had the legs to carry and an Irishwoman's skirts drag some way along the ground where they're hard to avoid stepping on. But all made it home all right, with Keely's skirts still barely on.

And Kevin did get to apologize to the wench, but her ankle bore the scar for life.

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