Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— I never saw anyone who could remember which song it was she heard Jack the Scológ sing. We’d forget everything but the passion he could put into his voice. There wasn’t a young woman in the neighbouring townlands who wasn’t wearing the rugged path smooth up to his house, tracing his footprints. I often saw young women above on the bogs, and as soon as they got a sight of Jack the Scológ on his own bog or working round the house, they’d be stealing away, crawling through mud-holes and marshes for love of hearing him singing to himself. I saw Caitríona Pháidín doing it. I saw her sister Nell doing it …

— Smashing , Muraed! The eternal triangle is the cultural name for that …

— … “Up got Son of Scológ in the morning with the day,

And flirting after women he headed for the fair …”

— … It was indeed on the Day of the Great Pig Fair that Nell Pháidín and Jack the Scológ eloped. Her people were raging, for all they could do about it. I don’t know if you had that custom in East Galway, Dotie, that the eldest daughter must marry first …

— … “She carried him through swamp-holes,

Through marshes and through mud,

And no one cared but curlews

That were driven off their brood …”

— Up on the moor Jack lived, with nothing but wasteland and quagmires …

— Well, Muraed Phroinsiais, I never in all my life saw a path as rocky as the one up to the Scológ’s house. Didn’t I twist my ankle that night coming home from the wedding …

— … You did, because you made a glutton of yourself there, as you often did …

— … The night before the wedding in Páidín’s, Caitríona was stuck in a corner of the back room, with a face on her as long as a shadow at midnight. There was a bunch of us there. Nell was there. She started a bit of fun with Caitríona: “Bedamn, Caitríona, but I think you should marry Big Brian,” says she. Caitríona had refused him before that …

— I was there, Muraed. “I’ve got Jack,” says Nell. “We’ll leave Big Brian for you, Caitríona.”

— Caitríona went crazy. She tore out, and she wouldn’t go near the room again till morning. Nor would she go near the chapel next day …

— I was cutting a ropeful of heather that day, Muraed, and where did I see her but wandering about up in the marsh at Yellow Hillock, even though the wedding was going on in the Scológ’s house …

— She didn’t set foot across the threshold of Jack the Scológ’s that day or any day since. You’d think Nell had the spotted plague the way Caitríona used to pass her by. She never forgave her about Jack …

— … “Briany is handsome, with land, stock and wealth,

And outside of marriage he won’t get his health …”

— … But in spite of all his wealth that same Big Brian was a complete failure at getting a wife. Devil a bone in his body but came asking Caitríona again …

— … “‘By the devil,’ says Tríona, ‘Here’s a fine pig for scalding,

The kettle off the fire, to welcome the stalwart.’”

— The pot-hook is what they used in cases like that east of Brightcity. The time Peats Mac Craith came …

— That mode of refusal is found west of Brightcity too, Dotie. Honest . Myself, for example …

— Did you hear what the Tailor’s sister did when some old loafer from Wood of the Lake came in asking her to marry him? She got a long knife out of the chest and began to sharpen it in the middle of the house. “Hold him down for me,” she said …

— Oh, she would do that indeed. The One-Ear Breed …

— What do you think, after all that, but didn’t Caitríona marry Seán Thomáis Uí Loideáin from our neighbourhood without a yea or a nay when he came to ask for her …

— By God, Muraed, Seán Thomáis was too good for her …

— He had a big holding of the best sandy land …

— And he was the man to work it too …

— He had a grand big house …

— It was the place she coveted, of course. To have more means and money than Nell. To be close enough for Nell to see, every day that dawned, that Caitríona had more means and money than she herself would ever have …

— … “‘I’ve a fine big haggard,’ says Caitríona’s kitten,

‘I have strippings 22of cows, butter and fat …’”

— “‘I’m gentle and useful, loving and decent,

Which cannot be said for Nell’s little cat …’”

— To show Nell it wasn’t Caitríona that drew the short straw, and that Nell was welcome to the leavings and the longings. From Caitríona’s very own mouth I heard it. That was her revenge …

— Oh my , but that’s an interesting story. I think I won’t bother with the Big Master’s reading session today … Hey, Master … We won’t bother with the novelette today … I have other intellectual work on hand. Au revoir …

— Caitríona was hard-working and thrifty and clean in Seán Thomáis Uí Loideáin’s house. I should know it, since I lived next door to her. The rising sun never caught her in bed, and her card 23and her spinning-wheel often chattered into the night …

— Her house was the better for it, Muraed. She had wealth and means …

— … Dropping into Barry’s the Bookmakers in Brightcity. My hand in my pocket as bold as if there was something in it. And me down to the one shilling. Making a great rattle throwing it down on the counter. “‘Golden Apple,’” I said. “The three o’clock race. A hundred to one … It might win,” says I, putting my hand in my pocket and turning it out …

— … A pity it wasn’t me, Peadar the Pub, I wouldn’t have let him away with it. It wasn’t right of you to let any black heretic insult your religion like that, Peadar.

“Faith of our fathers holy faith,

We will be true to thee till death,

We will be true to thee till death …”

You had no red blood in you, Peadar, to let him away with talk like that. If that had been me …

— To hell with yourselves and your religion. Neither of you has shut his mouth in the last five years but arguing about religion …

— … Indeed, Muraed, they say that after all Caitríona’s bitching about Nell she was glad to have her, after her husband died. She was in a bad state at that time, for Pádraig was still fairly young …

— That I was glad to have Nell! That I was glad to have Nell! That I’d accept anything from Nell! Sweet Jesus tonight, that I’d accept anything from that pussface! I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …

7

— … The nettly groves of Donagh’s Village, you said.

— Even nettles wouldn’t grow on the hillocks of your village, there are so many fleas on them …

— … I fell off a stack of oats …

— Faith then, as you say, the Menlo man and myself used to write to each other …

— … “I wonder is this the War of the Two Foreigners?” 24says I to Paitseach Sheáinín …

— Wake up, man! That war’s over since 1918 …

— It was still going on when I was dying …

— Wake up, I tell you. Aren’t you nearly thirty years dead? The second war is on now …

— I’m thirty-one years here. I can boast of something that none of you can boast of: I was the first corpse in this graveyard. Don’t you think the oldest inhabitant of the graveyard should have something to say? Permission to speak. Permission to speak …

— … Indeed then, Caitríona had wealth and means, Muraed …

— She had. But though her place was much better than Nell’s, Nell never left a tithe unpaid either …

— Oh, God bless your innocence, Muraed. The devil a tap of work herself or Jack ever did but looking into one another’s eyes and singing songs, till their son Peadar was strong enough to cultivate some of the moor and the bog and clear those wild wastelands.