Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

“I’ll marry,” says he. “I’ve a nice patch of land, a half-guinea a week pension, and I’m still in the full of my health. By the docks, I’ll marry. I’ll marry, I will indeed, my friend … Give me a bottle of whiskey there, Peadar,”—Peadar the Pub was alive then—“the very best of whiskey, now. By the docks, I’ll go looking for a wife.”

— It’s well I remember that same day. I twisted my ankle …

— In walks Caitríona and whispers in his ear:

“Come on home with me, Tomás, and our Pádraig will go and ask on your behalf, when the two of you have put your heads together …”

In walks Nell and whispers in his other ear:

“Come on home with me, Tomás dear. I’ve a bit of meat and a drop of whiskey. Our Peadar will go asking for a wife for you as soon as the two of you have a bite to eat …”

Tomás went roaring off over to Nóra Sheáinín’s house in Mangy Field. “A widow she may be,” says he to Nell and Caitríona, “but by the docks she’ll do me fine. She’s still a young woman. Her daughter that’s married to your Pádraig, Caitríona, is not much more than thirty-two or three. By the docks, my dear, that workhorse of a mother of hers is young enough for me.” That’s what he said, faith. Did you know that? …

— Why the hell do you think I didn’t know it? …

— Oh, how would you know it, and you not living in the same village with them … They were lucky Tomás had only a little cabin or they’d be robbed thatching it, because no other house under the sun was thatched as often. Pádraig Chaitríona did the north side from gable to gable one year. Pádraig is the best of thatchers. Sedge is what he put on it. And it wasn’t the worst sedge either. That side wouldn’t need another bit of thatch for fourteen or fifteen years. The next year Peadar Nell came with his ladder and mallet. Up with him on the north side. And do you know what he did with the thatch Pádraig had set the year before? Pulled it all out and threw it about on the ground. May I drop dead right here if I tell a word of a lie. There wasn’t a pick of Pádraig’s sedge between the two gables that he didn’t drag off.

“You’d soon have the rain dripping down on you, Tomás,” says he. I swear by the book I heard him say it! “Last year’s thatch was no good,” he said. “I’m surprised it kept out a drop at all. The half of it is only short heather. You can see it there for yourself. Devil a bit of trouble he gave himself cutting it either, staying on firm ground. If you want good sedge you have to go into the deep hollows and get your feet wet. Have a look at the sedge I have there now; that came out of the middle of the Red Sedge Hollow …”

He thatched both sides of the house and, if he did, a slipshod job he made of it. The worst you ever saw. It didn’t last three years even. It was a complete waste …

— Damn it, anyone listening to you would think I didn’t know that …

— No one would know it, all the same, except one who was in the same village with them …

Another time I saw the two of them on the roof of the house: Pádraig Chaitríona and Peadar Nell. Pádraig was on the north side with his ladder and mallet and his heap of sedge. Peadar was on the south side with his own ladder and mallet and a heap of sedge. And you could call it work, the way those two were hard at it. Tomás Inside was perched on the big rock at the eastern gable, puffing his pipe to his heart’s content and keeping up the chat with both of them at once. I came by, and sat myself down on the big rock beside Tomás. You wouldn’t hear a finger in your ear with the noise of the two mallets.

“You’d think,” says I, “one of you would stop thatching and go and pass the sedge up to the other, seeing that Tomás here is not assisting either of you; either that or take it in turns to thatch and to assist …”

“Hold your tongue,” says Tomás. “By the docks, they’re working neck and neck now, God save their health! They’re great thatchers. I wouldn’t say there’s a nail or an inch between the two of them …”

— To listen to you, anyone would think I didn’t know that …

— Well indeed, you don’t know it, nor a bit of it …

— … “Nell’s a great one for stone-wall building

And Caty’s an expert on roofs to mend …”

— … “Tomás Inside was laughing always

At Caty Pháidín who had paid his rent …”

— He was not! He was not! He was not! Hey, Muraed! Muraed! I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …

6

— … The Gravekeeper! He’s as big an imbecile as he ever was …

— It’s a wonder, Caitríona, if he has a map, that he wouldn’t know one grave from another …

— In the name of God, man, what map! That fellow’s map is no better than the way the man from East-Side-of-the-Village divided the land with the tongs in the ashes, at the time of the “striping” 11long ago …

— Faith then, Caitríona, I held on to my patch of land at the top of the village in spite of you all, when every mother’s son of you wanted it for himself. There’s no beating it for fattening cattle …

— Oh! Do you hear that gadfly at his blustering again? …

— It’s a wonder, Caitríona, if corpses are being buried in the wrong graves, that someone wouldn’t inquire into it: report it to the Government, or tell the priest or the Red-haired Policeman …

— Oh! God help your Government! That’s the sort of Government we’ve had since Griffith’s crowd were thrown out …

— You’re a liar …

— And you’re a damned liar …

— Didn’t Big Brian say: “They’re pitching them into any old hole in that graveyard back there, as if they were fish guts or periwinkle shells …”

— Oh, the ugly streak of misery …

— If you don’t have a cross over you in this graveyard, so that your grave is well marked, not a day will go by without someone opening it …

— I’ll have a cross over me soon. A cross of Island limestone, like there is over Peadar the Pub and Siúán …

— A cross of Island limestone, Caitríona …

— They wouldn’t let any wooden crosses be put up, would they, Caitríona?

— They’d be thrown out on the road the next day …

— Do you think it’s the people who sell the other crosses are responsible for that? …

— Arrah! Who else? Everybody’s drawing water to his own mill. If wooden or cement crosses were allowed there’d be no demand for their own crosses. Then everybody could make his own cross …

— I’d sooner have no cross at all than a wooden or cement one …

— You’re right. I’d die of shame …

— This Government is the cause of all that. They get money in taxes on the other crosses …

— You’re a liar! That game was going on before this Government …

— It’s an awful thing to do, bundling your own kith and kin down into the ground beside a stranger …

— The bones want to be with their own, sure enough …

— That’s the Government for you now …

— You’re a liar …

— I heard they squeezed Tomás the Tailor’s son down on top of Tiúnaí Mhicil Tiúnaí last year …

— Oh, didn’t I kick the murderer off me! Another one of the treacherous One-Ear Breed who stabbed me …

— Last year I was at the funeral of Jude from our own village. She was laid down on top of little Dónall the Weaver from Sive’s Rocks. They didn’t know they were digging the wrong grave until they unearthed the coffin. I’m telling you the honest truth; I was there …