Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

Familiar hands would repair my grave, familiar hands would raise my memorial and familiar tongues would accord my funeral rites. The clay of my native Temple Brennan! Sacred clay of my Zion …

But there can’t be a Kelly in Gallough, or a Mannion in Menlo, or a Clan McGrath left on the Plain, for if there were my earthly remains would not be left to decompose in the rude clay of the granite, in the inhospitable clay of hills and harbours, in the barren clay of stones and cairns, in the sterile clay of bindweed and sandweed, in the lonely clay of my Babylon …

— She’s very bad when the foolishness comes over her …

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

“… The speckled chicken began clucking around the yard at the top of its voice: ‘I laid an egg! I laid an egg! Red hot on the dung-heap. Red hot on the dung-heap. I laid an egg! …’ ‘Bad scran to your little egg, and don’t deafen us with it,’ says an old laying hen that was there. ‘I’ve laid nine clutches, six second clutches, four broods, three score odd eggs and a hundred and one shell-less eggs since the first day I began to cluck on the dung-heap. I was felt for an egg five hundred and forty six times …’”

— I wish it had been me, Peadar. You shouldn’t have allowed a black heretic to insult your faith …

— … I drank two score pints and two, one after the other. You know that, Peadar the Pub …

— … I’m telling you there were no flies on Tomás Inside …

— Do you think I don’t know that …

— May the devil take your futile verses. And for all I know at this very moment the old woman at home could be handing over the big holding to our eldest son and Road-End’s daughter …

— … “Mártan Sheáin Mhóir had a daughter …”

— … A bad bottle the murderer gave me …

— Faith then, as you say …

— The elder of the graveyard here. Permission to speak …

— Qu’est-ce qu’il veut dire : “Permission to speak”? …

— … But I was putting my hand in my pocket and turning it out …

— … Your clogs , you cheating Siúán …

— … Oh, Dotie dear, the Election has me exhausted. Always questioning and quibbling. Votes! Votes! Do you know, Dotie, an election isn’t half as cultural as I expected? Honest it’s not. The talk is barbarous and insulting. Honest! And all lies. Honest! Did you hear what Peadar the Pub said about me: that I used to drink four or five pints of porter every day above ground. Honest! Porter! If he’d said whiskey, even. But porter! The most uncultured drink of all. Ugh! … Of course you don’t believe that I drank porter, Dotie! It’s a lie! Filthy, black, uncultured porter. It’s a lie, Dotie! What else. Honest Engine …

And that I got drink on credit … Scandal-mongering, Dotie. Scandal-mongering. And that I was sponging. Ugh! Lies and scandal, Dotie. Who would think it of Peadar the Pub? I was friendly with him, Dotie. He was a man who had cultured people coming in and out to him … Mud-slinging is what cultured people call it. As the Big Master says, that elemental beast fettered and repressed within us — the “old man” as Saint Paul called it — is let loose at election time … I feel my own culture diminished since I came into contact with the demos 12…

Tomás Inside, Dotie? Peadar said that too. He said that I was never as keen to go in to him as when Tomás Inside was there. It’s easily known what sort of reputation he was trying to give me … Honest , Dotie, I had no need to run after Tomás Inside. It was he who used to run after me. Honest! There are certain people who are destined for romance, Dotie. Did you hear how Kinks expressed it to Blixen in The Red-Hot Kiss? “It was Cupid created you out of his own rib, my tweetie-sweetie …”

There was never a time that there wasn’t a plague of lovers haunting me. In my youth in Brightcity, as a widow in Mangy Field, and now here, I’ve an affaire de coeur , as he calls it himself, with the Big Master. But it’s quite harmless: Platonic; cultural …

Dotie! Sentimentality! Never mind the fair Plains of East Galway. You must understand what I’m saying so that you can rid your mind of every misjudgement and prejudice. That is the first step in culture, Dotie … I was a young widow. I married young too. Romantic fate once more, Dotie. Tomás Inside lost every spark of sense over me when I was a widow:

“By the docks, but I have a cosy cabin,” he would say. “I have indeed, dear, and a nice patch of land. Heads of cattle and sheep. I’m still a strong and supple man myself. But I find it difficult to attend to every call on me: cattle, sowing, thatching. The place is going to wrack and ruin for want of a good housewife … You’re a widow, Nóra Sheáinín, with your son married in the house, and it’s no benefit to you to be in Mangy Field any more. By the docks, marry me …”

“ De grâce , Tomás Inside,” I’d say. But it was no use saying “ De grâce ” to him, Dotie. He was at my heels everywhere. As Pips puts it in The Red-Hot Kiss : ‘True love knows no obstacles.’ He was always pressing me to come in for a drink every time we met in the village. Honest! “ De grâce , Tomás,” I used to say, “I never touched a drop …”

Honest I didn’t, Dotie … But the things he used to say to me about love, Dotie:

I’ll marry you, Nóra Sheáinín …

“My star of light and my sun of harvest,

My locks of amber and my earthly store …”

Honest he did, Dotie. But I knew it was only an Indian summer of romance for both of us, and I used to say:

“Little moon, little moon of Scotland, it’s lonesome you’ll be this night, tomorrow night, and long nights after, and you pacing the lonely sky beyond Glen Lee, looking for the trysting-place of Deirdre and Naoise, 13the lovers …”

He came to Mangy Field to me a few weeks before I died and a bottle of whiskey with him. Honest he did. He was so hot for marriage he was to be pitied. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have encouraged him too, Dotie, but for the obstacles to true love. I told him so:

“The little moon of Scotland will never find our trysting-place,” I said. “Naoise and Deirdre are not fated ever to keep a tryst again, or to taste the harvest festival of their love under the pleasant rocks of Glen Lee of the lovers.” “By the docks, why not?” said he. “The obstacles to true love,” said I. “Others have something to gain by keeping me and my true love apart till death. The only trysting-place in store for us is that of the graveyard. But we’ll spend the harvest festival of everlasting love there for all eternity …”

It broke my heart to tell him, Dotie. But it was true for me. Honest , it was. Caitríona Pháidín came between me and my true love. Petty worldly concerns. She didn’t want to see any woman coming into Tomás Inside’s house. She wanted his land for herself. There wasn’t a thing under the sun she didn’t steal from him. Honest …

— That’s a damned lie, you bitch! I didn’t rob and I didn’t steal from Tomás Inside, or from anyone else. You bitch! You were a secret drinker in the snug in Peadar the Pub’s … A secret drinker! … A secret drinker. Don’t believe her, Dotie! Don’t believe her! …

Hey, Muraed … Muraed … Hey, Muraed … Did you hear what that bitch Nóra Sheáinín said about me? … I’ll explode! I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …

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I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard! It must be heard …