Lynch Brothers

## Rónán Lynch

### Family

Gráinne (younger sister), Oisín and Conor (younger brothers), unnamed sisters, unnamed parents

### First Mentioned

(in abstract) Season 6, Episode #5: Friday 26 October 1973(by name) Season 6, Episode #10: Samhain

**The Lynch brothers** are secondary characters of season 6 of Within the Wires. They were the brothers of Gráinne Lynch.

## Biography

The Lynch siblings grew up in a village that was about 15 miles from Ballinroche with their mother and father. Rónán was the second-oldest, born in around 1880, and had two or three sisters already before Gráinne was born in 1886. When she was three and he was nine, Rónán died from a sudden onset of illness. According to their mother, he had a headache at breakfast and a rash at lunch. In the evening he was sick enough that their parents took him into town to the doctor, and he died the next day. He was buried in the churchyard.

## Details

### Family

Rónán (older brother), Gráinne (older sister), Conor (brother), unnamed sisters, unnamed parents

### First Mentioned

Season 6, Episode #4: Thursday 25 October 1973

Rónán and Gráinne also had two younger brothers, Oisín and Conor, and a border collie. One of the little brothers was very afraid of thunderstorms, and once attempted to hide behind the curtains without realising how poor a choice it was until the lightning frightened his hair into standing on end. When Gráinne was young, the family bought chickens, and soon had a surplus of eggs. She would take fresh eggs round to their neighbours in the mornings, and when there got to be too many eggs for a single trip, a boy from next door, Pádraig, let her borrow his toy wagon. The two became good friends.

In 1913, Oisín and Conor enlisted in the army. The family received notification of Oisín's death, but never heard what happened to Conor. Pádraig stopped coming around when Oisín died, and he died a year later himself.

## Details

### Family

Rónán (older brother), Gráinne (older sister), Oisín (brother), unnamed sisters, unnamed parents

### First Mentioned

Season 6, Episode #10: Samhain

In 1973, Gráinne's nurse, Clíodhna Byne, was staying in the house. She heard the attic creaking without wind, heavy footsteps downstairs (though Gráinne was in a wheelchair), and voices beyond the walls speaking an unfamiliar dialect of Irish. Clíodhna dreamt of two children with dark curls and green eyes falling into a river, and she jumped in to rescue them. After searching through photographs in waking hours, she was sure that the children she had dreamt of were Gráinne's siblings.

Clíodhna frequently found odd occurrences in the house; after some confusion about a broken window, she found the shed (despite its shabby exterior) neat and stocked with what she needed, when Gráinne claimed she had not touched it for decades. Becoming convinced the house was haunted, Clíodhna attempted to learn more about Gráinne's family. She expected to find a "wrong death" but could only find pictures of the two younger Lynch brothers enlisting to the army and a peaceful death from old age. She began to suspect that part of the wrongfulness of the death was a coverup.

In some photographs, she found a boy who got no older than 7 years old, and when she asked Gráinne about him, she was quiet for a long time before telling Clíodhna to put the photo album back where she found it. Afterwards, Clíodhna remembered a photograph she had found and taken of Gráinne sitting with a young boy on her lap. She went upstairs to get it where she had left it in the box under her bed, but found it was gone.

Nobody came to repair the telephone that had been downed in the storm. At around 11am, she saw a truck parked outside the house and thought someone had come, but found the truck seemingly abandoned when she went to look. The truck looked to be 30 years old, but brand new, and had vanished without a trace by 6:30pm. The phone was not fixed.

The next day, Clíodhna attempted to drive to the village to call the Department of Societal Health, but found that her car wouldn't start. She examined it closely, but could find no fault. She decided to walk to the village instead, but couldn't reach it, and when she got back, Gráinne told her that the phone was fixed, though she couldn't explain how.

That night, Clíodhna dreamt that something banged on her door as she approached it, making her fall backwards, and it opened to reveal the boy from the photograph, holding tansies with damselflies flying around his head. His eyes were completely grey, and when she touched her shoulder, she became sure that his name was Oisín. Clíodhna found herself in the unruined village, and a young Gráinne was standing just outside the front door of the house, smiling. She walked to meet someone, and "Oisín" (his eyes now a normal blue) called after her, asking to come along. She rejected him, and he seemed upset, but after a moment, he followed her anyway.

The scene changed, and Gráinne and her friend took off running away from Oisín, who begged them to wait for him. The scene changed again, and Oisín chased Grainne's laughter only to tumble down a hill and land in a creek. He stood up, and screamed as he tried to put weight on his foot. It began to rain. He was not found until dusk, feverish, and a doctor was called but he did not get better. Gráinne did not come to visit him. Clíodhna forced herself to wake up, drenched in sweat, and immediately recorded her dream, resolving to confront Gráinne when she went downstairs.

She sat Gráinne down at the kitchen table and laid out everything she had seen and experienced, demanding that they put Oisín to rest. Gráinne was quiet throughout, until she finally said that the boy in the photograph was her older brother Rónán, not Oisín or a son she didn't have. Gráinne said that the voices Clíodhna heard were nothing to do with wrongful deaths, just the world being full of things they couldn't understand or change.

## Additional info

* The name "Oisín" comes from the Irish word for deer, "os" and a diminutive suffix, meaning his name translates to "little deer" while "Conor" comes from "dog/hound/wolf" and "Rónán" translates to "little seal"
	+ Conor is the only one of the brothers not to have a diminutive name - he is also the only one who potentially survived to adulthood.
	+ Oisín appears in Irish folklore as a legendary poet. In his most well-known myth, he marries a fairy and travels with her to Tir na nÓg, where he stays by her side as king for 3 years. When he decides to return to his home in the mortal realm for a visit, he is warned that 300 years have passed, and if he steps down from his horse, all of that time will catch up with him and he will die. He also appears as a minor character in some versions of *The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne* from the Fenian Cycle.
* Clíodhna mentions the landline being in the living room, but Gráinne fell down in her kitchen - this begs the question of how she called for help. Some fans have speculated that Conor in fact did return from the war, and was hidden in the house without ever being registered with the Society.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Season 6, Episode #1: Monday 22 October 1973
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Season 6, Episode #5: Friday 26 October 1973
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Season 6, Episode #10: Samhain
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Season 6, Episode #7: Sunday 28 October 1973
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Season 6, Episode #4: Thursday 25 October 1973
6. ↑ Season 6, Episode #2: Tuesday 23 October 1973
7. ↑ Season 6, Episode #6: Saturday 27 October 1973
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Season 6, Episode #8: Monday 29 October, 1973
9. ↑ Season 6, Episode #9: Tuesday 30 October 1973
10. ↑ Oisín - Wikipedia