Deirbhile Callahan

[Applesintime]

Name: Deirbhile Mary Callahan
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Place of Residence: The Bogside, Derry, County Derry, Northern Ireland
Language/s: English
Hobbies and Interests: Camogie, learning Gaelic, rebel songs, Irish history, science

Appearance: Standing at 5’11 and weighing roughly 155 lbs, Deirbhile is a little taller than average, but is otherwise at a healthy weight. Thanks to her athletic hobbies, her arms and legs are quite toned, and while she isn’t visibly muscular or bulky, her body is also toned. She has peachy skin, which is kept unblemished thanks to an extensive hygiene regiment and plenty of moisturiser – she has a few bruises on her legs and arms from her sports practice, which she normally tries to cover up with makeup, often to no success.

Her face is oval-shaped, with a long, pointed nose, thin rounded eyebrows with a high arch that she fills in with a brow pencil and wide-set, narrow emerald green eyes. Deirbhile has a light dusting of freckles across her face; this is mostly concentrated around her nose and her cheeks, but she also has some on her forehead and on her neck, reaching down to just above her collar bone. She has very feminine facial features, such as high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Deirbhile’s hair, normally reaching down to a few inches below her shoulder, is a natural copper colour – however, she often ties it up in a ponytail to keep it out of her face when playing camogie.

Fashion-wise, Deirbhile likes to look good; she can’t buy the latest and best-looking clothes, so she compensates with skillful application of makeup. This normally consists of some light blush, lipstick, eyeshadow and foundation, nothing too heavy as she prefers a more natural style of makeup to bright colours. Out of school, she tends to wear more colourful items, like skirts, dresses and t-shirts, mostly bought with saved-up allowances, although some come from charity shops.

When she was abducted, Deirbhile was walking back home from a training session with her school’s camogie team. As a result, she was still wearing her camogie uniform; a replica Derry camogie jersey, red skorts and a pair of hand-me-down white and black trainers that originally belonged to her brother. In addition, she also had her hair tied up in a low ponytail with a green hair tie

Deirbhile speaks with a Derry accent, and often uses Northern Irish slang in her speech. She’s very animated when she speaks, often fiddling with stuff like her ponytail or her laces while she does so.

Biography: Deirbhile Callahan was born on the 7th of February, 2003, in Derry, Northern Ireland, to Pádraig Callahan and Mary Callahan nee O’Kane, both from Derry themselves. Pádraig works at a local auto repair shop as a mechanic, while Mary is a homemaker. She has two siblings; John, who is three years older, and Aoife, who is three years younger. John is currently studying International Relations at Queen’s University in Belfast, while Aoife is in Year 11 at the same school Deirbhile goes to.

The Callahan family live in a comfortable, if somewhat small, house in the Bogside area of Derry, a majority Catholic and Republican area as opposed to the Fountain, a majority Protestant and Loyalist enclave nearby. Growing up in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, some of Deirbhile’s first memories are of hearing about the events on the news; her father was very keen on politics. He was a former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer, having been arrested in 1988 for shooting a British soldier dead, sentenced to life and released under the GFA in 1998.

He met her mother at a republican event in 1999 and they became friends, which gradually blossomed into a relationship. They got married in 2001 after having John, and settled down in Derry; Pádraig got a job at a friend’s auto repair shop, and with this money was able to rent a family house in the Bogside, one with plenty of space for future children. They aren’t particularly wealthy, being a working-class family, but they make do with what they have.

Growing up, John and Deirbhile were constant friendly rivals; John would do something like climbing up a tree, and Deirbhile would take that as a challenge and try climbing a taller tree. This often ended with one of them getting scrapes or bruises. Despite their competitiveness, however, they were the best of friends, always sticking up for one another if anyone tried to pick on them. The Bogside was a rough area, and occasionally Loyalist teenagers would shout profanities and sectarian slurs at them from the safety of behind the peace walls separating the Fountain and the Bogside; massive walls erected in the late 60s and 70s to keep the peace between interface areas. This led to her not having a great view of Protestants in her early years, associating them with profanities, slurs and being mean.

Pádraig, from a young age, was quick to try and get them to learn Gaelic and about their culture; he would read them bedtime stories about Cú Chulainn and Irish heroes sprinkled within the traditional bedtime stories. After several failed attempts at teaching them the basics, Mary suggested that it might be better to wait until they were older to teach them. Pádraig compromised with a few Gaelic children’s books, which Deirbhile found boring and didn’t read. John, however, got immersed in them, which she took as an opportunity to tease him.

Soon Deirbhile started at primary school; she was a fairly social, if bossy, young girl, so she had no trouble making friends. Even so, she tended to hang about with her brother in the playground, who was two years above her, as she preferred his company over the friends she had in her class. After a little while, she started to play with her own friends instead. She was rather enthusiastic about the games that were played, often getting a little huffy whenever she was caught or tagged. Academically, Deirbhile was pretty average; she put effort into her work in school, but unlike her brother, who was studious even at home, she would often forget about her
homework entirely and be scolded by her teacher as a result.

One day, her teacher took their class out on a field trip to watch a camogie game between Country Derry’s camogie team and neighbouring County Donegal’s camogie team. Deirbhile didn’t expect much from it; for her, field trips were just a chance to mess around with her friends. But as the match went on, she found herself getting into it, and by the time she came home she was excitedly rambling to Pádraig about it.

Seizing the opportunity to get her more immersed in Irish culture, her father took her to more camogie games. He also tried taking her to a game of hurling, but Deirbhile made it clear that she only really liked camogie, and that hurling didn’t really pique her interest as much; it was the same game, but she liked seeing women rather than men playing, as you didn’t see that much. She also expressed interest in joining a club to her dad, but she was too young to do so. He did buy her a hurley; it was too big for her to actually use, but she still had fun running about with it on the street.

Her primary school education continued, being relatively uneventful. John moved onto secondary school a few years after Deirbhile entered, but by that time she had amassed enough friends to not be upset by this development. She was quite popular in her class, although her bossy and competitive nature caused her to clash with a few people from time to time – particularly in group work and anything to do with sports. She would be selected as a captain of a team and boss about her teammates, or be very demanding in group work, inevitably getting annoyed when someone failed to deliver or was too slow.

Academically, she excelled in physical education and science; she was an athletic kid in general often running around her street with John and her new little sister, Aoife; she often stuck with Deirbhile when they were out on the playground, having just started P1. It was a little annoying, so she gently encouraged her to go play with people in her class instead of hanging out with her.

Meanwhile, Pádraig, continuing to try and get his kids interested in culture, took them to the Gasyard Féile, a music and arts festival. There wasn’t much of interest there for Derbhile – she considered herself too old for face painting, and none of the art stuff interested her. The food was nice, but that was all. As they left, however, they caught the tail end of a band performing, and when she got home she asked Pádraig what they were playing. He responded by playing the song for her, one by the Wolfe Tones, and explained to her what it was and what it was about.

Soon, Deirbhile was moving onto secondary school. She was enrolled in St. Cecilia’s College, a Catholic all-girls school; as much as she wanted to go to the same school as her brother, St. Cecilia was closer, and it had a dedicated camogie team which excited Deirbhile to no end. Over the last few years at primary school, she had become more studious, often listening to rebel songs while she did her homework; in addition, she had developed an interest in Irish history, and was excited to explore it further in secondary.

Most of her friends transferred over to St. Cecilia’s with her, so she didn’t have to make too many new friends, although she did make an effort. Of note, however, was a Protestant girl from the Fountain, Amy Jackson; a rarity in a majority Catholic school. Thanks to her childhood experiences of being shouted at by Loyalists from behind the peace wall and threatened or sworn at, as well as stories from her father of sectarianism from Protestants, Deirbhile was somewhat biased against Protestants, and as such chose not to interact with her much.

Instead, her attention was turned to trying out for the Year 8 camogie team as soon as applications opened. She spent a lot of time practicing in anticipation, and managed to get into the team, much to her delight. Due to her height – she was the tallest in her year – she was designated the full-back, one of the most important roles in camogie, as she was in charge of the defence. Thanks to watching camogie games, she had a good idea of tactics, and as a result their friendly games against other schools often ended with St. Cecilia’s winning.

Meanwhile, Deirbhile continued to exceed academically. John was doing his GCSEs, and so she managed to pick up a few terms and concepts from what he was studying at home; although it wouldn’t help her with her own GCSEs as they would be different from his, it helped her at school. In addition, Pádraig had received a promotion at work, and thus the family had a little more money to spend; some of this was spent on getting Deirbhile her own camogie kit so she didn’t have to wear the school’s tattered kit.

One day, Deirbhile and Amy were paired together on a science project; while initially she was displeased at this, as she didn’t want to work with a Protestant, they soon got to talking and realised that both of them shared an interest in science. At the end of the day, they had become friends, and Deirbhile had shed some of her bias against Protestants, learning that teenagers calling them slurs did not represent everyone in the Fountain.

As they continued chatting during break or outside of school, whether it was just helping each other with homework or chatting about the latest movies that had come out, they grew closer, Deirbhile starting to feel a little ashamed about how she had judged Amy for where she lived. Soon they were best friends, with Amy coming out to watch Deirbhile play against opposing teams.

When it was time for Deirbhile to pick her GCSEs, in Year 10, she picked science and physical education, as well as the required maths and English. With the exception of physical education, Amy had followed suit, and so they took to studying together in Deirbhile’s house. Balancing this with camogie practice was difficult, but she managed. Normally John would have helped them, but he had gone to Belfast to study International Relations at Queen’s University with the intention of becoming a politician when he graduated.

Deirbhile took her GCSEs at the end of Year 11 and all throughout Year 12, and her results came back very positive, with two B*s in English and maths, an A in physical education and an A* in science. Her parents were very pleased, and they had a celebration. When asked what she planned to do after graduating school, she decided that she was staying on to do her A-Levels.

Amy was also doing her A-Levels, although while Deirbhile was planning to go on to university afterwards Amy was content with just doing her A-Levels. They were doing the same subjects; English, maths and science, although on a whim Deirbhile had also decided to do Irish as a subject as well. So they spent a lot of time studying together when Deirbhile wasn’t preoccupied with camogie.

Their friendship eventually started to blossom into something more; Deirbhile had figured out she was gay shortly before she entered secondary school, but she didn’t know that Amy was also gay. This all culminated one night when they shyly confessed to one another, and shortly after that began dating.

They entered Upper Sixth, where Deirbhile is currently studying for her A-levels. Balancing studying with camogie practice and matches is tricky, although she is managing to keep a steady balance of work, practice and other social life, such as spending time with her girlfriend and family. During solo study she often listens to rebel songs while she works, although when she has to concentrate she turns them down.

She has a healthy family life; John is busy studying at uni, so she doesn’t get to talk with him much, but she spends a lot of time with Aoife, trying to teach her how to do her makeup or help her with homework. Her mother takes her out for lunch once a month so they can talk about stuff – mostly just idle chat, although Deirbhile sometimes complains about school. Pádraig, meanwhile, is trying to help her with learning Gaelic, and she has signed up for an online course; she doesn’t expect to get good grades in Irish, but it’s helped her make some new friends.

Deirbhile has came out to her family, who are supporting of her and have met Amy; her parents are homophobic and sectarian, and would not take kindly to her dating a Catholic, let alone a Catholic girl, so Deirbhile has not met Amy’s family with the exception of her older brother, Billy, who is much more relaxed about their relationship than his parents.

Politically, she considers herself an Irish nationalist and democratic socialist; her father has disavowed physical force republicanism, and their family participated in a march against the murder of a journalist in 2019 by a dissident republican group. As a result of her political leanings, she has a fascination with Irish history and the songs that reference it; she tries to stay in touch with her Irish culture, most recently with her interest in learning Gaelic and her camogie playing. She supported Brexit; not because of a desire to leave the EU, but because she believes it will hasten a United Ireland.

In camogie, Deirbhile still plays as the full-back, thanks to her height and skill. She tends to be quite aggressive and competitive on the field, sometimes to her own detriment, and her tendency to boss people around has irritated a few of her teammates. Nevertheless, most of them respect her, as their defence often helps them get the edge against other teams and score a victory.

When Deirbhile graduates from Upper Sixth, she intends to attend university to get a bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, although she’s unsure if she wants to go to Queen’s University in Belfast like her brother or to a university in the Republic of Ireland. She also has aspirations to join the Country Derry camogie team, although she realises that may not be entirely feasible.

Advantages: Deirbhile is quite athletic and sporty thanks to her participation in the school’s camogie team, giving her the stamina to run away from any threats, and the strength to defend herself from anyone she can’t run away from. In addition, the bruises and cuts she gets from playing a sport with minimal protection has given her a little more pain tolerance than other people. She also thrives in a competitive environment and should be able to cope with the situation she’s placed into a little better than others, seeing it as another game to win.
Disadvantages: On the other hand, Deirbhile’s aggressive and competitive style of play may work against her; in pursuit of someone, she might forget to account for any other people or traps in the vicinity or get herself into a situation she can’t easily get herself out of. Her bossy and irritable mannerisms might also turn people off her, leaving her with only the allies that can tolerate her attitude.

[The Honeless Beard]

Now listen here one and all as I shake, stir, blab,
Check this out, her name be the great Deirbhile,
Watch her split and run the defensive field,
When it comes to the game hope she brings her shield.

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