We are in Ireland and it’s an awfully long time ago. Centuries and centuries. The country is supposed to have gone Christian, but there’s still magic in the air, druids in the forest, fairy music in the distance. Manchán’s mother wants to make a monk of Manchán. Manchán most emphatically does not want to be made a monk of. He’d rather sing songs with his father, or go fishing with his friend, Pagan-of the-Six-Toes, or go charging through the forest with his pet pig, Muck, or go bare-back riding over the bog on the chieftain’s mad ram, Balor. Anything fun or adventurous or magical, and absolutely nothing to do with turnips, penance, prayers, monks, and chanting. Poor Manchán! The more he mucks about having fun, the more his mother is determined to tame him.