Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

It was a day of woe for me, Nóirín, the first day I ever saw yourself or your daughter under the roof of my house … The scrawny little thing, and that’s exactly what she is. Indeed, Nóra, she’s no credit to you: a woman who’s not able to put a wrap around her child or make her husband’s bed, or clean out the week’s dead ashes or comb her matted head … It was she who put me in the clay two score years before my time. She’ll put my son there too before long, if she doesn’t come here herself on her next childbirth to gossip and keep you company.

Arrah! Haven’t you the mocking gob today, Nóirín … “We’ll be …” How did you put it? … “We’ll be O.K. then.” … O.K.! That’s like your cheeky rump alright, Nóirín … “We’ll be O.K. then. You’ll have your son and I’ll have my daughter, and all of us will be together again below ground as we were above.” … That devil’s plaything in your gob is full of mockery today, Nóirín …

When you were in Brightcity … I’m a liar, you say? You’re the one who told a damned lie, Nóirín Filthy-Feet …

— Stump!

— Bitch!

— Whore!

— Filthy-Feet Breed … Duck milkers …

— Do you remember the night Nell was sitting in Jack the Scológ’s lap? “We’ll leave Big Brian for you, Caitríona …”

— I never sat in a sailor’s lap anyway, thanks be to God …

— You never got the chance, Caitríona … I’m not a bit afraid of you. Your villainy and lies won’t burn a hole in my coat. I’m better known and respected in this graveyard than you are. I have a fine decent cross over me, which is more than you have, Caitríona. Smashing! Honest! …

— Oh indeed, if you have, it wasn’t your money that paid for it. You can thank that fool of a brother of yours who put it up when he was home from America. It would take a long time to make up the price of a cross from Mangy Field’s duck milk … What are you saying, Nóra? Out with it … You haven’t the courage to say it to me … I have no culture? … I have no culture, Nóirín? … I have no culture, then! That’s true for you, Nóirín. It’s on the Filthy-Feet Breed I’ve always seen the culture of lice and nits …

What’s that you say, Nóirín? … You don’t have time to swap insults with me … that you were wasting your time swapping insults with me. Ababúna! You have no time to be swapping insults with me, Nóirín … You have other things to do, then! Now, what do you know? You’ve got to listen to another piece of … what did she call it, Master … Master … He doesn’t hear me. His head is in a whirl since he heard about his wife … yes, on my soul … novelette … this is the time the Master reads a bit of the … novelette to you every day? If the Master heeded me … Oh, Mary Mother of God! … A novelette in Mangy Field … A novelette among the Filthy-Feet Breed … Muraed! Hey, Muraed! Do you hear? A novelette among the Filthy-Feet Breed … I’ll explode! … I will! …

3

— … By the oak of this coffin, Glutton, I gave Caitríona Pháidín the pound …

— … God help us forever and ever! My death would not be death to me there: for it is the warm soft clay of the plain there; robust clay that can be gentle with the strength of its strength; proud clay that does not need to decompose, decay or dissolve the treasure of its womb to fertilise itself; rich clay that can afford to be generous with its takings; productive clay that can change and reshape all it eats and drinks without consuming, deforming and despoiling it … It would recognise its own …

The pleasant buttercup would grow on my grave there, the gracious hemlock, the conceited primrose and the tough bent-grass …

I’d have gentle birdsong above me instead of the cacophony of breakers, of waterfall or sedge, or of the cormorant glutting itself on a school of fry. Oh! Clay of the plain, oh! To be under your mantle …

— The “sentimentality” has come over her again …

— … Pearse 3said, O’Donovan Rossa said, Wolfe Tone said it was Éamon de Valera was right …

— Terence McSwiney said, James Connolly said, John O’Leary said, John O’Mahony said, James Fintan Lalor said, Davis, Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Sarsfield said it was Arthur Griffith was right …

— Owen Roe O’Neill said it was Éamon de Valera was right …

— Red Hugh O’Donnell said it was Arthur Griffith was right …

— Art MacMurrough Kavanagh said it was Éamon de Valera was right …

— Brian Bórú, Malachy, Cormac MacArt, Niall of the Nine Hostages, the two Patricks, Brigid and Columkille and all the saints of Ireland, no matter where they are — on earth, at sea or in the sky — and all the martyrs of Erin from Dunkirk to Belgrade, and Finn McCool, Oisín, Conán, Caoilte, Deirdre, Gráinne, Ollav Fódla and Gael Glas said it was Arthur Griffith was right …

— You’re a damned liar, they did not …

— I say you are the liar, and they did. The truth is bitter …

— You murdered me treacherously, and me fighting for the Republic …

— It served you right. Neither the Law of God nor that of the Church permits the attempted overthrow by force of a lawful government …

— I have nothing to do with politics myself, but I do have a fondness for the Old IRA 4…

— You coward you, under the bed you were when Éamon de Valera was fighting for the Republic …

— You spineless thing, under the bed you were when Arthur Griffith was …

— … “And flirting after women he headed …”

— … Hold on now, my good man, till I finish my story:

“‘… Send out to me John Jameson, 5

And now I am without that same son.’

“A fairy lover abducted John Jameson into the fairy fort, out of which there was no deliverance. At that very time the Emerald Isle of Ireland, its islands and territorial waters ran dry, all except two bottles of Portuguese sparkling water washed ashore on the Blasket Island, 6and a keg of Spanish holy water given off a trawler to a fisherman on Brannock Island 7in exchange for half a hundredweight of potatoes …

“The fair maid of the brown tresses was in Dublin at that time …”

— The version I heard from the old folks in our own village, Cóilí, is that it was a nurse in Brightcity …

— A woman in a bookie’s office is what I heard …

— Oh! How could that be? She was up in Dublin. Where else! “I have an arrow,” she said, “that will release John Jameson if he promises to give me as dowry a hundred and one big barrels, a hundred and one puncheons, and a hundred and one hogsheads of the best poteen whiskey …”

— Now Glutton, where’s your two score pints and two? …

— Cóilí, hold on a moment. This is how I would have finished that other story if I hadn’t died …

— … When Hitler invades England he’ll make them eat dead cats …

— Indeed, the world will be at its worst ever then. Not a cow nor a calf will be worth a penny. May God help the poor if the price of cattle falls any further. I have a bit of land at the top of the village and it’ll never be beaten for fattening cattle. It’ll go to waste, I’m afraid, if the price of stock slumps …

—“It’ll never be beaten for fattening cattle!” If you let two rabbits loose on all the land in your village, and left it to themselves for five years, there’d still be only two rabbits, if even the two …

— You had no blood in you, Peadar. I wish it had been me. By the book, I’d have given him a good answer. If I had a pub, Peadar, and black heretics came in insulting the faith like that …

— … We — the Half-Guinea 8Corpses — are putting forward a joint candidate in this election too. Like the other two groups — the Pound Corpses and the Fifteen-Shilling Corpses — we have nothing to offer our fellow corpses. But we are taking part in this Graveyard Election because we — the Half-Guinea Party — have a policy also. If an election is of benefit to the community above ground it should be of benefit to us here. Election is the essence of democracy. We here in the graveyard clay are the true democrats.