Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

There’s talk now of building a road in as far as her house? So the priest and the Earl will be able to get to it in a motor car. May she not live to enjoy her road, then! … Arrah, the devil a road or a bit of a road ever, Bríd! What could shift those big boulders?

You want peace and quiet again, do you! You’ll be a laughing-stock here if you keep on talking like that … Bid Shorcha is badly crippled, you say? The kidneys still at her! Good enough for her! Apart from Nell and my son’s wife, there are very few people I’d rather see coming here than her … And Little Cáit’s back is bad again? May the devil take her! She’s as bad as the rest of them … Big Brian is as frisky as a donkey in May, you say. Not wishing to demean him! … He’s still able to go for the pension? Don’t some people have all the luck! He’s old enough to be my grandfather — may God forbid, the ugly streak of misery! …

Now Bríd, it’s many a one as well as you fell into the fire. Your time was up. It’s not too serious, seeing you didn’t burn the house down as well … Two of Pádraig’s calves died? … Of blackleg! 4Musha, God help us! Isn’t it strange that they had to be Pádraig’s calves! … Nell dosed hers in time. Some spirit is watching over that pussface. I wouldn’t mind only that her land was always a nest for blackleg. It’s the priest …

Pádraig cut hardly any turf this year, you say? How could he cut turf when he has to care for that hob-hatching wife of his? He should smother her under a pot like a cat, if she won’t die of her own accord … Five of our hens gone in the one day! By Dad, that hurt! … And it didn’t take as much as one hen from Nell? Weren’t the rocky places around her up there always a breeding-ground for foxes! Of course she has Big Brian’s daughter in her house, a woman who can keep hens, which is more than can be said for Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter from Mangy Field. I believe that even the fox is afraid to touch Nell’s hens. It’s the priest …

Pádraig has no pigs now, is that so? Oh, the pigs went since I went, Bríd. I used to turn out two batches of pigs every year … Nell got thirty-five pounds for her own! Ababúna! … Yours were better than them, and you only got thirty-two pounds fifteen? Nell would get the highest penny, of course. The priest …

No word came from Baba in America recently, you think … Not that you’ve heard of? Big Brian says Nell will get all of Baba’s money … Is that what he said, Bríd? “Who would Baba give her money to, but her only sister Nell? In any case she can hardly give it to a woman who’s thrown into a hole in the ground” … Of course, what else would he say, and his own daughter married to Nell’s son! …

You heard them saying that Tomás Inside is still mad to get married? The useless yoke! He’d be better employed preparing his soul for eternity … You think Pádraig doesn’t visit him as often as he did when I was alive? I always had to keep on at him to do anything at all for Tomás. That’s the sort Pádraig is. He won’t keep house with me gone. Nell will play on him … You tell me Nell paid a man to cut Tomás Inside’s turf for him this year? Ababúna! What’s that you said, Bríd? Don’t mumble like that, I tell you … Tomás Inside said that if he doesn’t marry he’ll leave his patch of land and the cabin to Nell! “Caitríona wasn’t half as good-hearted as Nell,” he says. “Faith, then, she wasn’t. After my patch of land Caitríona was” … Well, the dirty, useless, rattle-brained packman, that same Tomás Inside! …

A fine story you have, Bríd Terry! Doesn’t the whole of Ireland know that Nell’s land lies alongside Tomás Inside’s land? … The way you’re talking, Bríd, you’d think Nell is more entitled to his land than my Pádraig … Don’t I know as well as you do, Bríd, that Nell’s land is all stones and boulders … By God, you have a nerve, Bríd, to say a thing like that up to my face. What is it to you who gets Tomás Inside’s land? What have you got to lose? …

Peace and quiet again! You don’t deserve it, you slut … What are you saying, Bríd? That I should squeeze down in the grave and make room for you? You’d think, listening to you, that the grave was your own. Do you know that I had my fifteen shillings paid for this grave a year before I died? Wouldn’t I have a fine piece of goods stretched alongside me: a scorched woman! … What’s the world coming to that yourself or any of your breed should be buried up here in the Fifteen-Shilling Plot! But it’s easy for you now. There are five of you drawing the dole in your house …

You want me to leave you in peace! Have your peace, so! But you’re not going to sneak yourself up against my thigh here. I had the best coffin in Tadhg’s and three half-barrels of porter, and the priest shook the holy water …

Now, you slut, if you push me that far I’ll tell you in front of everybody in the graveyard who you are … What are you saying? … “As rare as a cat with a straddle, 5one of the Páidín clan buried in the Fifteen-Shilling Plot!” Well now, Bríd, look who’s talking: one of the beggar-folk. Wasn’t it I reared your father? Coming over to me night and day sponging cups of tea, when there was nothing to be had at home but potatoes and salted water? And the stuck-up talk of you now! No doubt about it, the dunghills are coming up in the world these days … What’s that, you slut? … There isn’t a cross over me yet as fine as Nóra Sheáinín’s? Be off with you, you slut …

3

… Bríd Terry, the Slut … Bid Shorcha, the Sponger … Cite of the Ash-Potatoes … Little Cáit, the Grinner … Tomás Inside, the Good-for-Nothing … Big Brian …

It’s easy for the ugly streak of misery to be boasting, now that his daughter’s husband is doing well again. Was that winkle-picker Seáinín Liam telling the truth when he said he’d never do another tap of work as long as he lives? Cured at St. Ina’s Well! Cured indeed! Faith, then, if he was cured, it was that pussface of a mother of his got the St. John’s Gospel from the priest for him. Poor Jack the Scológ is the one who’ll pay the piper. His name will be in the raven’s book now, on account of the St. John’s Gospel. He’ll be here soon. And I’m sure they didn’t even warn him. Good Lord, have they no scruples at all?

The priest and Nell and Big Brian’s daughter whispering in low voices:

“Faith, then, Father,” Nell would say, “if anyone has to go it’s old Jack should be sent on his way. He’ll be off soon anyway. He’s unwell for a long time. But let’s not say a word about it. It would worry him. Nobody wants to part with life, God help us …”

That’s what she’d say, the pussface … My son’s wife had another baby. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill her. But that scullion is tough. Tough as the rocks of Mangy Field, that the roadwork bosses were always cursing because no explosive could break them … But she’ll be here on her next childbirth. I’d bet anything on that …

And they called the infant Nóra! What a pity I wasn’t there! My son’s wife tried the same trick when Máirín was born. I had her in the baby-blanket ready to bring her to the font. Muraed Phroinsiais was there: “What will you call the little bundle, God bless her?” says she.

“Máire,” says I. “What else? My mother’s name.”

“Her mother back there in the bed says to call her Nóra,” said Pádraig.

“Nóra Filthy-Feet!” says I. “Naming her after her own mother. What else would she say? Why should we, Pádraig?”

“You have no shortage of names,” says Muraed. “Caitríona or Nell or …”

“May the pussface smother and drown,” says I. “I’d rather give her no name at all than call her Nell. There’s no name more suitable for her, Pádraig,” says I, “than her grandmother’s name: Máire.”