Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

The Pound Corpses are the Party of the Gentry, the Party of Conservatism, the Party of Big Shots, the Party of Reactionaries, the Party of Restraint and Control. The Fifteen-Shilling Corpses are the Party of Commerce and Trading, of the Poets and Artists, of the Bourgeoisie and the Middle Classes, of Property and Wealth. But we, Fellow Corpses, are the Party of the Labouring Class, of the Proletariat, the Rural Rent-Payers, the Party of the Unfree and the Bond Tenants and the Old Thatched Cabin, the Party of the Great Dispossessed: “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” It is our task to fight for our rights boldly and fearlessly as becomes ex-men (knocking of skulls in the Half-Guinea Plot) …

— … The joint candidate that we — the Fifteen-Shilling Party — put forward in this election is a woman. Don’t let that frighten any of you, friends. Her husband was never a Member of the Irish Parliament. She is a woman who established herself in this cemetery by her own intellect and good sense. Three years ago when she came into the graveyard clay she was as ill-informed as any of those windbags spouting nonsense down there in the Half-Guinea Plot. But in spite of what the Half-Guinea Party says, everybody in this graveyard has equal rights and equal opportunity (knocking of skulls). Our joint candidate is proof of that. She has culture and learning now. My Corpses, I wish to introduce to you our joint candidate … Nóra Sheáinín (great knocking of skulls).

— Nóra Filthy-Feet! The bitch. Duck milkers … Hey, Muraed! … Hey, Muraed! … Nóra Sheáinín … I’ll explode! … I’ll explode! …

4

… Nóra Filthy-Feet standing for election! Good God above, they’ve lost all respect for themselves in this cemetery if the best they can offer is Nóra of the Fleas from Mangy Field … She won’t get in … But then, who knows? Cite, Dotie and Muraed are always talking to her, and Peadar the Pub, and even Siúán the Shop at times. As for the Big Master, of course it’s a public scandal the things he says to her every day … He says they’re in the book, but nobody would have the indecency to put those things in a book:

“Your flowing curly hair, 9

Your dewy bright eyes,

Your delicate round white breast

Attracting eye’s desire.”

… That’s fine talk for a schoolmaster! The Schoolmistress and Billyboy the Post are driving him mad. But he must have a screw loose to be singing Nóra Sheáinín’s praises: “Her mind has greatly improved,” he says, “she’s cultured now …”

She wasn’t long reminding me of the cross over her grave. “I have a fine decent cross over me,” says she, “which is more than you have, Caitríona.” Her grave would be a long time without a cross only for that fool of a brother of hers paid for it, and I told her so. Down there in the Half-Guinea Plot among the riff-raff of Sive’s Rocks and Wood of the Lake, without headstone or slab she’d be. And that’s where she should be if justice were done. She most certainly was never praised till she died. When did anyone ever have a good word to say for any of her breed? Never. Never in living memory. It didn’t happen. Out from under the dock leaves that lot crawled …

But a cross over your grave here is as good as having a big slated house above ground, with a name over the door — Badger’s Den View, Paradise Refuge, Banshee Residence, Lovers’ Way, Eye of the Sun, Saints’ Abode, Leprechaun Lawn — and a cement wall around it, trees and blossoms up to the edge of the flower-bed, the little iron gate with the archway of branches above it, success in life and money in the bank … Railings around a grave are equal to the big walls around the Earl’s 10house. Every time I looked in over the Earl’s walls my heart would flutter. I always expected to see some wonderful sight: the Earl and his wife with their wings on, just landed back from dining in Heaven. Or St. Peter, and the Earl and his wife alongside him, escorting him to a table in the shade of the trees; a net in his hand after being fishing on the Earl’s Lake; a golden salmon in the net; his big keys making a clatter; the Saint opening his book and consulting the Earl about which of his tenants should be allowed into Heaven. I thought then that to have a clean sheet in the Earl’s books was to have a clean sheet in the books of Heaven …

Those people above ground are very simple-minded. “What good will it do the dead to put a cross over their grave?” they’ll say. “Devil a bit! The same crosses are nothing but snobbery and vanity and a waste of money.” If they only knew! But they don’t understand till they’re buried in the graveyard themselves, and then it’s too late. If they understood above ground that a cross on your grave here makes even the Filthy-Feet Breed respectable, they wouldn’t be so neglectful …

I wonder when will the cross be put over me? Surely Pádraig wouldn’t let me down. He promised me faithfully:

“It will be up within a year, or even before that,” says he. “It would be ungrateful of us not to do that much for you …”

A cross of Island limestone, with an inscription in Irish … The Irish language is more genteel for crosses nowadays … and nice flowers …

It’s many a warning I gave Pádraig:

“I reared you tenderly, Pádraig,” says I. “I always kept a good house for you. Our Lady knows it wasn’t always easy. I never told you about all the hardship I endured after your father’s death. I never demanded the least thing in return. I would often get the urge to buy a bit of bacon to boil with a head of cabbage; or a handful of raisins to put in the bread; or to go into Peadar the Pub’s when I felt my windpipe parched with dust from spring-cleaning, and order a half-glass from one of those golden bottles that smiled at me from the windows every time I passed …

But, Pádraig, my dear, I didn’t. I put by every penny … I wouldn’t like to give Nell or Big Brian’s Mag the satisfaction that I wouldn’t be buried properly. Get me a grave in the Pound Plot. Put a cross of Island limestone over me. Have it up within a year of my burial at the latest. I know all this will cost money, but God will reward you …

Don’t heed your wife if she’s grumbling about the expense. She is your wife, but I’m the one who brought you into the world, Pádraig. This is the only trouble I’ve ever caused you. Then you’ll be finished with me. Make sure you don’t give Nell the satisfaction …”

And after all that he didn’t bury me in the Pound Plot. The wife … or the wife and that other little pussface, Nell. But Pádraig can be headstrong too, when he wants to. He promised me that cross …

I wonder what sort of funeral I had? I won’t know till the next corpse I’m acquainted with arrives. It’s high time now for someone to come. Bid Shorcha was ailing. But I’d say she’s in no danger of death yet. There’s also Máirtín Pockface, Beartla Blackleg and Bríd Terry, and of course the ugly streak of misery Big Brian, may God protect us from his heap of bones … Tomás Inside should have his death from the leaking roof any day now. His hovel should have fallen in on him by now, if Pádraig heeded my advice.

My son’s wife will be here for certain on her next childbirth. Nell is very stricken since Peadar was injured, and the rheumatism is at her, the pussface. But even if it is, it won’t kill her. According to herself she was often at death’s door, but the seven plagues of Egypt wouldn’t kill some people. May no corpse come into the graveyard ahead of her …

I don’t know if there was any letter from America since. I’m afraid Nell will have an easy ride with Baba’s will now. If only I’d lived another couple of years, even …

Baba was always fonder of me than of any of the rest of us. When we were little girls together long ago, herding the cows in the Little Field of Haws … It would never occur to her to put a cross over me, like Nóra Sheáinín’s brother did for Nóra …