Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— That’s a damned lie, you So-an’-so! I died not leaving a penny of debt any more than the bird in the sky, thanks be to the Eternal Father. You bitch. “The goods she left unpaid for …”!

Hello, Muraed! Hello, Muraed! … Did you hear what porter-swigging Nóirín said? I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …

1

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

Here in the graveyard the shuttle is in perpetual motion: weaving blackness over whiteness, ugliness over beauty, weft of green scum, mildew, mould, slime and mist-coloured lichen over the entwined golden plaits of silken tresses. The coarse veil of indifference and negligence is being woven from the golden threads of sunlight, from the silver tissue of moonlight, from the jewel-studded mantle of fame, and from the soft down of irretentive memory. For this weaver’s material is the smooth, ductile clay. His loom is the withered rubbish out of which arose the dreams of the one who hitched his chariot to the brightest star in the zenith, or who plucked a cluster of the most forbidden fruit from the deepest darkness. Anxiety of dream, sheer radiance of unattainable beauty, longing of tormented desire, these are the usual fulling-waters of this ancient weaver.

Above ground everything is dressed in the cloak of everlasting youth. Every shower miraculously creates a multitude of mushrooms in the grass. Opium poppies cover meadow and field like a dream of the goddess of growth. The mouth of the corn is smudged with gold from constant kissing of the sun. The waterfall’s voice is drowsy as it pours its cascade into the salmon’s parched beak. The parent wren hops happily under the dock leaves, watching over the fluttering leaps of its fledgling. The forager puts to sea with a song on his lips that is full of the vigour of tide, wind and sun. The young maid, skimming the dew by the first ray of sunlight, searches for the elf with the inexhaustible purse, that she might dress herself in the bright clothes and the jewels and precious stones her heart yearns for.

But some sorcerer has scorched the green apparel of the trees with his wicked wand. The golden crest of the rainbow has been clipped by the shears of the east wind. The rosy flush of consumption has appeared in the sunset sky. The milk is thickening in the cow’s teat as she seeks shelter in a nook of the stone wall. The dumbness of inexpressible grief is in the voices of the young men weaning lambs up yonder on the moor. The stack-builder descends from his well-thatched cornstack and slaps his hands under his armpits, because black boils of bad matter are heaping up in the northern sky and caravans of noisy greylag geese head hurriedly southwards …

For the graveyard exacts its tithe from the living …

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

2

… Who are you? … What sort of old carcass are they shoving down on top of me now? … My son’s wife for sure. But no. You’re a man. You’re not a Loideáin anyhow. You’re fair-haired. None of the Loideáin were fair. Dark-haired they were. As black as the berry. Nor my own people either, except for Nell, that pussface …

You’re one of Pádraig Labhráis’s. I should recognize you so. Are you Pádraig Labhráis’s second lad or the third? … The third lad … You’re only nineteen … a bit young indeed to be starting this caper, son … Nine months you were ailing … Consumption. That’s the killer! This cemetery is fat with it.

You were to go to England only for you were struck down … You were all set to go, you say … The young men and women of Donagh’s Village left last week … And of Mangy Field! … May they not return, then! … True for you, my son. I believe there’s great money to be made there …

You tell me you heard nothing about a cross to go over me. There’s no talk of it now … Not even a word, you say … He brought it up when he was in to see you. What did he say? Don’t be embarrassed to tell me, my son. Indeed, you should know yourself I have no love or liking for Big Brian … The Sive’s Rocks people have all gone to England! Indeed, son, weren’t that same crowd wandering labourers and hired hands every day of their lives … Only for you were struck down you’d have gone too … to earn money. It’s a bit late for you now to be talking of earning money … But what did Big Brian say? Why don’t you spit it out? … “That dolt of a woman doesn’t deserve a cross,” he said. “Her breed aren’t accustomed to crosses. Pádraig Chaitríona — a man who can’t afford to give his children a bite to eat — talking about putting up a cross of Island limestone!” He said that? He still bears a grudge against me …

You tell me Big Brian was in Dublin. In Dublin! … That ugly streak of misery, up in Dublin! … He saw the man stuck on top of the pillar of stone! 1A pity the man and the pillar of stone didn’t fall down on the ugly streak’s stupid grin! … Great porter there, he said? May the devil take it past his ugly stopped-up nose! … Fine women in Dublin! It’s an awful pity he didn’t go there long ago when I had to refuse him twice. The Dublin women would be very impressed by his flat feet and his slouched shoulders … He saw the wild animals! There was no wilder or uglier animal there than himself, not wishing to demean him! … And the judge praised him to the skies? A witless judge he was, then! … “You’re a wonderful old man voluntarily to travel such a distance at your age, in order to help the court,” says he. A witless judge he was, if it wasn’t obvious to him that he was helping his daughter and her husband, the ugly streak of misery! …

You’d think a young man like you wouldn’t be so silly, and yet you’ll make a Seáinín Liam and a Bríd Terry of yourself if you keep going. I was hoping you’d tell me about the court case, and you told me about the Glen of the Pasture crowd going to England. Let them go to England! Good riddance to the Glen of the Pasture crowd! The beggars wouldn’t come to my funeral …

Ababúna! So Nell’s son got eight hundred pounds … in spite of being on the wrong side of the road. Are you sure? Maybe pussface Nell added five or six hundred to it … Oh, it was in the paper! You read it yourself in the paper. Six weeks ago … in The Galwayman . Arrah, nobody should heed that paper … it was in The Reporter and The Irishman as well! … And there’s nothing wrong with him, you say … He has thrown away the crutches altogether now … He’s doing all sorts of work again … And three doctors swore for him that he was in bad health. Good God! Oh, a witless judge he was. Was he told that he was on the wrong side of the road? ’Twas the priest fixed it. Who else! …

She gave the priest fifty pounds for Masses? So well she might, the pussface. Her son is in good health and she has a fistful of money … She also gave him ten pounds to say Masses for my soul! … She handed it to the priest in Pádraig’s presence, you say … Oh, that pussface’s Mass money wouldn’t do me any good, son …

The Wood of the Lake crowd went to England five weeks ago. Well now! It must be a great asset to England to have the Wood of the Lake hooligans over there … they wouldn’t come to a person’s funeral half as fast … Hold on! Don’t go till you tell me more! … Jack the Scológ isn’t well? Easily known. The St. John’s Gospel. He’ll be here any day now. Nell and Big Brian’s daughter prepared that potion for him. They’ll collect insurance money on him …

There’s a road being built up to Nell’s house! Ababúna! I thought devil a road would ever be built up into that rugged wilderness … This new crowd she voted for got it for her, you say. How well the pussface knew who to vote for! A corner of a field of ours is to be given over for the road? Ababúna! That’s the field — Flagstone Height. There’s no other field of ours by the path up to Nell’s … My Pádraig has given away a corner of Flagstone Height! What! I knew since I departed that Pádraig was too easy-going for that pussface … The priest visited the spot. One of Nell’s little tricks … So the priest laid out the boundary … That’s the day Nell gave him the money for the Masses for me. God above, there are no flies on that one! It was a trick to get room for the road. There was no room for a road without going into our Flagstone Height. You think Pádraig got paid for the field? No matter. He shouldn’t have let her have it. How I wish I’d lived a few more years even! … So that’s what Big Brian said: “Oh musha musha, Nell paying out money for a bald tail-end of a shitty old flagstone field, where there’s nothing but stones breeding more stones! … If Pádraig Chaitríona had the slightest spark of common sense he’d dig some sort of hole for that one’s prickly old bones … up on Flagstone Height … and he’d have plenty of tombstones there without the Island limestone … to keep Seáinín Liam and Bríd Terry … away from the hedgehog …” Oh, the ugly streak! The ugly streak of misery! …