Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

Oh! You’ve heard about that already, Muraed … Faith then, he spent six months on the flat of his back … The devil a tap of work he did since he came home, just going about on two crutches. Everybody thought it was all up with him …

The children are no help to him, Muraed, apart from the eldest scamp, who’s a blackguard … Why wouldn’t he be! Taking after his grandfather, his namesake Big Brian, the ugly streak of misery. Not to mention his little granny Nell. Nell’s people haven’t made a spring sowing worth mentioning for the past two years … The injury is a hard blow for Big Brian’s Mag and for Nell. Serves the pussface right! We had three times the potato crop she had this year.

Oh! God bless your innocence, Muraed, wasn’t the road as long and as wide for him as it was for everyone else, to keep out of the lorry’s way … Nell’s son lost the case, Muraed. “I won’t give you a red cent” said the Justice … He took the lorry driver to the Sessions since, but the judge wouldn’t let Nell’s son as much as open his mouth. He’s to take the lorry driver to a High Court in Dublin soon, for all the good that will do him. Mannion the Counsellor told me personally that Nell’s people wouldn’t get a brass farthing. “For what?” says he. “On the wrong side of the road!” … It’s true for you, Muraed. The law will take the last penny off Nell. Serves her right! She won’t be going past our house so often from now on singing “Eleanor of the Secrets” 10…

Poor Jack isn’t keeping at all well, Muraed. Of course, the devil a bit of caring Nell ever gave him, or Big Brian’s daughter either, since she moved in there … Isn’t Nell my very own sister, Muraed, and why wouldn’t I know? She never took the slightest bit of care of poor Jack. She was all for herself. She cared for nobody else in the whole wide world … I’m telling you, Muraed, and I’m telling you the truth, Jack had a hard life at the hands of that little bitch … Tomás Inside, Muraed? The same as ever you saw him … He’s still in his little hovel. But it will fall in on top of him any day now … Well, indeed, didn’t my Pádraig offer to go up and put a layer of thatch on it for him. “Now, Pádraig,” says I, “don’t demean yourself by going thatching for Tomás Inside. Let Nell thatch his house for him if she wants to. If she goes thatching for him, then so will we …”

“But Nell doesn’t have a soul to help her since Peadar injured his leg,” says Pádraig.

“Everyone has enough to do to keep his own house thatched,” says I, “never mind that useless old Tomás Inside’s little hovel.”

“But the house will fall in on him,” says he.

“Then let it fall,” says I. “Nell has enough to do now without stuffing Tomás Inside’s big gob. Hold on now, Pádraig, my fine man!” says I. “Tomás Inside is like a rat in a sinking ship. It’s to our house he’ll have to run from his leaking roof …”

Nóra Sheáinín, did you say? That I would be pleased to get acquainted with her again here! Too well acquainted I am with that one, and with every one of her breed … She’s listening to the schoolmaster every day? To the Big Master, the poor man … The Big Master reading to Nóra Sheáinín! … To Nóra Sheáinín … Ababúna! 11… Isn’t it little respect he has for himself as a schoolmaster, reading to Nóra Sheáinín … Of course, there isn’t a word of learning in that one’s head. Where would she get it? A woman who never set foot in a schoolhouse unless she went there on polling day … Upon my soul it’s a strange world if a schoolmaster is having conversations with Nóra Sheáinín. What did you say, Muraed? … That he’s very fond of her, even? He doesn’t know what sort she is, Muraed … If he had her daughter in the same house with him for sixteen years as I had, then he’d know the sort she is. But I’ll tell him … about the sailor and everything …

— … “Mártan Sheáin Mhóir 12had a daughter

And she was as broad as any man.”

— … Five times eight is forty; five times nine is forty-five; five times ten … I can’t remember, Master …

— … “He went ranting after women

And he headed for the fair.”

— … I was twenty, and I led with the Ace of Hearts. I took the King off your partner. Murchaín hit me with the Knave. But I had the Nine, and my partner had the fall of the play …

— I had the Queen and a saver.

— Murchaín was about to lead with the Five of Trumps and he would have swept your Nine. Wouldn’t you, Murchaín?

— But then the mine 13blew the house up …

— But the game would have been ours all the same …

— Don’t be so sure of that! Were it not for the mine …

— … God help us, now and forever …

— … A bald-faced mare. 14She was the best …

— Muraed, you can’t hear a finger in your ear in this place. Oh! Blessed Son of God tonight … “A bald-faced mare.” May yourself and herself go bald if you don’t stop talking about her …

— I was fighting for the Irish Republic …

— Nobody asked you to …

— … He stabbed me …

— If he did, it wasn’t in the tongue. A plague of baldness on the pair of you! … You have me demented since I came into the graveyard. Oh, Muraed, if only we could find a quiet nook to ourselves! Above ground, if you didn’t like your company you could leave them and go elsewhere. But alas and alack, the dead will never leave their place in the graveyard clay …

3

… And I was buried in the Fifteen-Shilling Plot after all! In spite of my warnings … Nell must have been grinning all over her face! She’ll go into the Pound Plot herself for sure now. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was Nell got Pádraig to bury me in the Fifteen-Shilling Plot instead of the Pound Plot. She wouldn’t have had the cheek to come next or near the house until she knew I was dead. She never set foot inside my door since the day I got married … unless she sneaked in unknown to me when I was in the throes of death …

But Pádraig is a bit simple. He’d give in to her sweet talk. And Pádraig’s wife would go along with her. “Indeed now, you’re perfectly right, Nell dear. The Fifteen-Shilling Plot is good enough for anybody. We’re not landed gentry …”

The Fifteen-Shilling Plot is good enough for anybody. She would say that. What else would she say? Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter. I’ll take it out on her yet. She’ll be here on her next childbirth for certain. I’ll take it out on her, by God. But in the meantime I’ll take it out on her mother — I’ll take it out on Nóra Sheáinín herself.

Nóra Sheáinín. From over there in Mangy Field! Mangy Field of the puddles. We always heard they milk the ducks there. The upstart! Learning from the Master now! Faith then, it was time for her to start, so it was. A schoolmaster wouldn’t speak to her anywhere else in the world but in the graveyard, and he wouldn’t speak to her even there if he knew who she was …

It’s her daughter has left me here twenty years before my time. I’m worn and wasted for the last six months minding her plague of children. She’s sick when she’s having a child and she’s sick when she’s not. The next one will carry her off for certain … Poor Pádraig would be better off rid of her, whatever way he’d manage without her. Pádraig himself was the unbiddable son. “I’ll never have anyone else, mother,” says he. “I’ll go off to America and let the place go to wrack and ruin, since you’ve no liking for her …”

That was when Baba was home from America. She begged and implored him to marry Big Brian’s Mag. Very concerned indeed she was, for that matter, about the ugly little skin-and-bones. “She took good care of me in America,” says she, “when I was very sick and far away from all my own people. Big Brian’s Mag is a good resourceful young woman, and she has a well-lined purse of her own apart from what I’ll be giving her. I was fonder of you, Caitríona,” she says to me, “than of any of my other sisters. I’d rather see my money in your house than with anyone else belonging to me. I’d like to see your son Pádraig bettering himself. The choice is in your hands now, Pádraig,” says she. “I’m in a hurry back to America, but I won’t go till I see Big Brian’s Mag settled here, since she wasn’t getting her health over there. Marry her, Pádraig. Marry Big Brian’s Mag, and I’ll not leave you in want. I have more than I’ll ever see spent. She’s already asked for by Nell’s son. Nell herself was talking to me about it the other day. She’ll marry Nell’s son if you don’t marry her, Pádraig. Either that or go and marry whoever you want, but if you do …”