Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— And the little fool gave in to the bitch …

— He was busy, but he said he’d put a bit of straw here and a bit there on the worst leaks till he’d get a chance to give it a proper cover … The heart …

—’Tis true for you. The heart. Pádraig has a good heart. Too good … You didn’t hear him say anything about putting a cross over me?

— A brand-new cross of Island limestone, Caitríona …

— Soon?

— Soon indeed …

— And my son’s wife?

— My son’s wife? … My son doesn’t have a wife, Caitríona. I told him that when the new stable for the colt is finished a young fellow like himself could do worse than …

— To go to a doctor about his heart, Seáinín, for fear he had caught the disease from you. My son’s wife. My son Pádraig. Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter. Do you understand me now? …

— I do. Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter. Sickly. The heart …

— That’s a damned lie. It’s not her heart; she was sick …

— Sickly, Caitríona …

— Thanks for the news! I knew that much myself. I thought she might be showing some signs of coming here. She’ll be here on her next confinement for sure. Did you hear anything about Baba?

— Your Baba in America. She wrote to Pádraig sympathising about your death. She sent him five pounds. She didn’t make any will yet. He told me that eldest girl of his — what’s this her name is? I don’t remember. I should remember, but I died too suddenly …

— Pádraig’s eldest girl. Máirín …

— That’s her, Máirín. The nuns somewhere down the country are taking her to make a schoolmistress out of her when she has enough learning …

— Máirín going to be a schoolmistress! May God save her. She was always very fond of the books. That’s great revenge on Nell …

— … Our joint candidate in this Election …

— May the Cross of Christ protect us! Don’t tell me there are elections here too, Caitríona. There was one above ground the other day.

— How did our people vote?

— I gave my side a little wrench. The heart …

— See how he wanders off again! Listen to me! How did our people vote?

— The old way. How else? Everybody in the village voted the old way except Nell’s people. Everybody in her house changed over to this other crowd …

— May God send her no luck, the pussface. Of course she would turn her coat. She was always treacherous …

— They say this other crowd promised her a new road up to the house … But indeed there’s not a bother on her yet. ’Tis younger she’s getting. I never saw her look better than the day you were buried, Caitríona …

— Be off with you, you old sourpuss. None of your people ever had a good word to say, so they didn’t … Be off with you. This isn’t your grave at all … The cemetery must be upside-down entirely when the likes of you was going to be buried in the same grave as me. Be off with you down to the Half-Guinea Plot. That’s where you belong. Look at all the altar-money there was at my funeral. Look at the respect the priest showed me. Your coffin didn’t cost a penny over five pounds. Off with you. You and your old heart. The cheek of you! … Your people seldom brought good news. Clear off now! …

3

… And ten miserable pounds is all the altar-money there was, after all my efforts putting money on altars for every lazy good-for-nothing in the country. Nobody — living or dead — is worth doing a good turn for … And the Mountain crowd didn’t come to my funeral … or the people of Glen of the Pasture or Wood of the Lake … And of course Sweet-talking Stiofán didn’t come, the big-mouth. They’ll answer for this some day. They’ll be coming here …

What chance did anyone have of coming, with that pussface Nell building a nest in Pádraig’s ear, advising him not to tell anyone about my death. And there she was laying me out and handing round drink at my funeral. She knew well I wasn’t alive, so she did. The dead person can’t do a thing about it …

I wouldn’t mind but Little Cáit and Bid Shorcha didn’t come. I’ll let them have it hot and heavy for that. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Nell had approached them beforehand and put them up to not coming to our house at all. She would do it, the pussface. Any woman who said I didn’t have clean grave-clothes set aside to be laid out in … May no corpse come into the graveyard ahead of her! …

But Baba sent five pounds to Pádraig. Even that much is a great help to him. It will coax that hussy of a daughter of Nóra Sheáinín’s, and now she won’t be able to say she’ll be the only one out of pocket with my cross. It’s no bad sign either for Baba to be writing to us … If only I’d lived another few years to bury that bitch Nell before me …

It’s great that Máirín is going to be a schoolmistress. That will madden Nell and Big Brian’s Mag: for us to have a schoolmistress in the house and them not to have one. A schoolmistress earns great money, I believe. That’s what I’ve always heard. I must ask the Big Master how much his wife was earning. Who knows but Máirín might be teaching in our own school, if the Big Master’s wife left, or if anything should happen to her. That’s when we’d have revenge on Nell. Máirín going up the church every Sunday morning with her hat, her pair of gloves, her parasol, a Prayer Book the size of a turf-creel under her arm, walking up to the gallery with the priest’s sister, and playing the piano. Let Nell and Big Brian’s Mag eat their heart out — if they’re still alive. But they say it’s up to the priest to appoint schoolmistresses. If that’s so, I don’t know what to say, as Nell is so friendly with him … But who knows. Maybe it won’t be long till he leaves, or till he dies …

And that hussy of a wife of Pádraig’s is still sickly … It’s a great wonder she doesn’t die. But she will, on her next childbirth for certain …

A pity I didn’t ask Seáinín Liam about the turf and the sowing, and about the pigs and the calves, or how the fox is faring these times. I was all set to ask him, then … But what chance did a person have of asking him anything, with all his gibbering about his old heart? I can easily get a chance to speak to him from now on. He was sneaked in just near here …

— … Patience, Cóilí. Patience. Listen to me. I am a writer …

— Hold on, my good man, till I finish my story: “Oh, the blackguard,” says Fionn. 4“It wouldn’t occur to him to leave Niamh of the Golden Tresses to his poor father whose nights are so lonely since Gráinne, that inconstant lump of a daughter of Cormac son of Conn, took off with Big Macán, son of the Black Warrior from Holly Wood of the Fianna …”

— … The most difficult man I ever dealt with in the line of insurance was the Big Master. There wasn’t a trick in my book I didn’t try. I came at him from the northwest and from the southeast. From sunlit seas and frozen mountains. Out of the eye of the wind and by tacking against it. As a pincers, as a ring, as a sledgehammer, as Cuchulainn’s spear, as an atomic bomb. As a fawning pup and as a thief in the night. With a shipful of human kindness and with a bellyful of satirical reproach worthy of Bricriú. 5I gave him unheeded invitations to the snug in Peadar the Pub’s. I gave him cigarettes for free and lifts in the car for free. I brought him exact reports of the prowling of inspectors and the latest gossip about the rumpus between the Schoolmaster and Schoolmistress of Grassy Upland. I told him mouth-watering stories about young women …

But it was no use. He was afraid that if he took out an insurance policy with me it would be his total ruination. Nobody could persuade him to part with a farthing …