Liam O'Flaherty: Land

The old woman was telling her rosary beads as she crouched before the fire. A round black cap was perched like a coronet on top of her snow-white hair, that hung down straight on either side of her gaunt face. The rest of her body was clothed in shapeless rags, held together at the waist by a piece of rope. While her lips moved in prayer, her eyes were fixed hungrily on a tiny skillet that stood on the smooth stone round which the fire was built. She was cooking porridge in the skillet.

She put her beads hurriedly into the pocket of her outer skirt when the oatmeal began to simmer. Then she rummaged inside the box on which she sat. She brought out a short, thin stick.

“Musha, it took you a long time to get warm,” she said in a scolding tone as she began to stir the porridge with energy. “Boil up now, you rogue. You have kept me waiting nearly half the night for my supper.”

A deep and narrow stream flowed without sound beneath the centre of the bridge. The water there was pitch black. Some distance further down its course, however, it shimmered in the moonlight and made gay music as it tumbled over the uneven face of a steep ledge.

The sound of many horses trotting came from the west. The old woman turned her head to one side and listened. The goat stopped chewing her cud, thrust her ears forward sharply and bleated on a low note.

“Be quiet there, Sheila,” the old woman said.

She half rose, put her hands on her knees and peered over the top of the wall towards the west. The road was flat and straight for nearly half a mile. It looked white in the moonlight. It was bound by a ragged stone fence that had completely fallen to the ground in many places. The land on either side was barren. An oak forest had once stood there. All the trees died owing to the earth getting washed away. Now the withered stumps and the matted roots lay naked above the bed rock. They were like an army of giant grey crabs squatting on the black earth in the ghostly light of the moon. Farther west, the land rose abruptly towards the sea. The road turned to the right past a rocky bluff.

Six horsemen, riding three abreast, came into view from behind the bluff. They had rifles slung across their backs. With their heads bent low for shelter from the wind, they trotted swiftly towards the bridge through the dead forest.

The old woman sat down as they approached. She began again to stir her porridge.

“Be quiet there now, Sheila,” she scolded, after the goat had bleated a second time. “Don’t let me hear another sound out of you, for fear these men might notice us. They could be bad men that would do us harm.”

She listened anxiously as the horsemen halted on the bridge overhead. There was a short silence. Then she heard two horses gallop towards the north along the Killuragh road. A little while later, two men trudged down along the rough path that led from the road. They came into sight before the mouth of the arch.

The goat snorted and rapped the ground fiercely with her left fore-foot.

“Behave yourself, Sheila,” the old woman said. “Have manners in front of strangers.”

The white goat trotted out a little way towards the advancing men. She had her short tail flat against her back. She snorted belligerently. When they came near her, however, she retreated hurriedly to her former position beneath the ass’s belly. There she stood watching them, timid and silent, with her delicate nostrils quivering.

The two men had their faces masked by black kerchiefs. The man in front advanced with his rifle at the high port. The other man had an unlighted torch in his right hand.

“Stand up there,” said the man in front, as he halted before the old woman’s little wall and levelled his rifle. “Let us have a good look at you.”

She stood erect promptly. Although she was sixty-five years old, her movements were quick and vigorous. The top of the wall reached just above the waist of her tall, lean frame.

“Who are you?” the man said, after peering closely at her.

“I’m Nora Crane of Ballymore,” she said proudly. “Who might you be?”

“We’re Fenians,” the man said.

The other man lit the torch at the fire and held it up before the old woman’s face.

“It’s Nora Crane all right,” he said at once.

Her withered cheeks looked rosy in the torch-light. She had big, strong bones. Her jaws were square. There was a look of madness in her sunken, blue eyes.

“You can sit down now,” said the man who had spoken first as he slung the rifle over his shoulder. “Forgive us for disturbing you, but we had to make sure who was in it. God be with you.”

The old woman watched them in silence as they went out from under the arch and up on to the road with the lighted torch. The goat trotted out, snorted and rapped the ground. She was brave again, now that the strangers were in retreat.

“Stop your jig-acting, Sheila,” the old woman scolded. “Lie down there.”

She sat down, took a saucepan from within the box and poured the cooked porridge into it. She scooped out every morsel from the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon. Then she poured salt on to the smoking meal from a snuff-box. She crossed herself, said grace and began to eat.

“They are gentle people,” she said to the goat after she had eaten some of the porridge. “We need have no fear of them, Sheila. They are our own kind, thank God.”

Overhead, the man with the lighted torch had now climbed on to the top of the narrow wall that flanked the bridge. Two other men held him by the thighs, in order to keep him steady against the wind.

Michael stood at the centre of the bridge, with his arms folded across his chest, looking intently towards the east.

“I’m ready now,” said the man with the torch.

“All right,” Michael said. “Swing it slowly from side to side. Keep on swinging until they answer our signal.”

A shower of sparks flew from the blazing torch as the man began to swing it over his head. The four horses, which were tied to an ash tree by the western end of the bridge, now began to neigh and prance. Excited by their cries, the ass brayed down below.

A volley of rifle shots rang out suddenly far to the east.

“That’s it,” Michael said. “Put out the torch and quieten the horses.”

The man jumped down from the wall, laid the torch against the road and put his foot on the lighted end. The other two men ran to the horses. The rattle of gunfire quickly increased in volume. Then the crash of exploding dynamite came from the north-east.

The man with the smoking torch came over to Michael and said:

“Flatley is at work already. That’s quick.”

The land rose eastwards from the bridge in gently-sloping terraces. There were hardly any trees. The grey stone fences and the white-walled cabins stood out distinctly. Mountains lined the horizon. They looked gigantic in the moonlight.

“That old woman down there,” said the man with the torch as he leaned close to Michael with his back canted against the wind, “has been on the road for more than twenty-five years. Her family was one of the first that Captain Butcher evicted when he bought Manister. The village of Ballymore, where she lived, doesn’t exist now. Butcher swept it off the face of the earth, at one blow. The people that were in it scattered. That old woman down there went to Clash with her husband and seven children. They caught typhus fever. They all died of it within a couple of days except herself. She went out of her mind for a while. Then she took to the road. I’ve been seeing her go back and forth all my life, winter and summer. She hardly ever stays more than one night in the one place. She never sleeps under a roof. She always has an ass and a cart and a goat with her. She is a holy woman. No one ever hears a wicked word out of her. She must have great breed in her to be able to live the way she does, under such terrible conditions. Mind you, she never begs, although she will take whatever is given to her in God’s name. She can make lovely lace when she has a mind for it. She earns a little money that way, here and there.”