Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— Seán Chite said that! Seán Chite is a heretic …

— Seán Chite should mind what he’s saying! Didn’t God — praise be to Him forever! — give a revelation there and then. The sun was up when Columkille was saying Mass. It set again then, and God kept it set till Columkille had walked the island to East Aran. That’s when St. Paul saw it rising for the first time! …

“‘Clear off now and be quick about it, you Jew-man,’ said Columkille. ‘I’ll leave a castration mark on you, on your way back to the Wailing Wall: I’ll give you a horsewhipping like the one Christ gave you out of the Temple. Have you no shame at all! I wouldn’t mind but you’re so slithery and greasy looking! …’

“That’s why no Jew ever settled on Aran since …”

— The way I used to hear that story, Cóilí, from old people in our own village, was: the time the two Patricks 7—Old Patrick, alias Cothraighe, alias Calprainnovetch, and Young Patrick — were travelling all over Ireland, trying to convert the country …

— The two Patricks. That’s heresy …

— … There was such a day, Peadar the Pub. Don’t deny it …

— … Master, dear, the bed was very hard. Very hard indeed under my poor buttocks, Master …

— I was bedridden for only a month myself, Máirtín Pockface, and I felt it hard enough …

— My back was completely blistered, Master. There wasn’t a shred of skin on my thighs …

— The devil a shred then, Máirtín, you poor thing …

— The devil a shred, indeed, Master, dear, and there was an old injury in my groin. The bed was …

— Let us forget the bed now till some other time. Tell me this now, Máirtín Pockface, how is …?

— The Schoolmistress, Master. In the bloom of youth, so she is. Earning her salary in the school every day, Master, and caring for Billyboy from night till morning. She slips over from the school twice a day to see him, and they say she gets very little sleep, the creature, sitting on the edge of the bed and plying him with medicinal draughts …

— The hussy …

— Did you hear, Master, that she brought three doctors from Dublin to see him? Our own doctor comes to see him every day, but I’d say, Master, the same Billyboy has had it. He’s lying down for so long now that he must have bedsores …

— May his lying be long and without relief! The thirty-seven diseases of the Ark on him! Hardening of the tubes and stoppage on him! Graveyard club-foot and crossed bowel on him! May the pangs of labour consume him! May the Yellow Plague consume him! May the Plague of Lazarus consume him! May the Lamentations of Job consume him! May swine-fever consume him! May his arse be knotted! May cattle-pine, bog lameness, 8warbles, wireworm, haw and staggers consume him! May the squelching of Keelin daughter of Olltár consume him! May the Hag of Beare’s diseases of old age consume him! Blinding without light on him, and the blinding of Ossian on top of that! May the itch of the Prophet’s women consume him! Swelling of knees on him! The red tracks of a tail-band 9on him! The sting of fleas on him! …

— Bedsores are the worst of them all, Master dear …

— May bedsores consume him too, Máirtín Pockface.

— She does the Stations of the Cross for him, day and night, Master, and a visit to St. Ina’s Well once a week. She made the pilgrimage to Knock Shrine for him this year, the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, to St. Columkille’s Well, to St. Mary’s Well, to St. Augustine’s Well, to St. Enda’s Well, to St. Bernan’s Well, to St. Callen’s Well, to St. Mac Dara’s Well, to St. Bodkin’s Well, to Conderg’s Bed, to St. Brigid’s Well, to the Lake of the Saints and to Lough Derg …

— A pity I’m not alive! I’d empty St. Brickan’s Well 10against the thief, against the …

— She told me, Master, only for the shaky state of the world, she’d go to Lourdes.

“Lough Derg 11is worse than any of them, Máirtín Pockface,” she said. “My feet were bleeding for three days. But I wouldn’t mind all the suffering if it did poor Billyboy some good. I’d crawl on my hands and knees from here to …”

— The hussy …

—“I was broken-hearted after the Big Master,” she said …

— Oh, the hussy … If you only knew, Máirtín Pockface! But you wouldn’t understand. It would be no use telling you …

— Well, the way it is, Master, the bed was so hard …

— To hell with yourself and your bed, give it a rest! … Oh, the things that hussy said to me, Máirtín! …

— Faith then, I suppose so, Master …

— The two of us seated below by the Creek. The gentle lapping of the tide licking the flat rock at our feet. A young seagull encouraged by his father and mother on his first flutterings, like a shy bride making her way to the altar. Shadows of nightfall fumbling at the feet of the setting sun on the wave crests, like a blindfolded child groping to “tip” the other children. The plashing of the oars of a currach on its return from the fishing-ground. Holding her in my arms, Máirtín. A lock of her abundant tresses brushing against my cheek. Her arms around my neck. I reciting poetry:

“Glen Masan:

White its stalks of tall wild garlic.

Uneasy was our sleep

Above the long-maned firth of Masan.

“‘If ever you come, love, come discreetly.

Come to the door that makes no creaking.

If my father asks me who are your people,

I’ll tell him you are the wind in the treetops.’”

Either that or telling her love-stories, Máirtín …

— I know what you mean, Master …

— The Sons of Uisneach, Diarmuid and Gráinne, Tristan and Isolde, Strong Thomas Costelloe and Fair Oonagh McDermot Ogue, Carol O’Daly and Eleanor of the Secrets, The Red-Hot Kiss, The Powder-puff …

— I know what you mean, Master …

— I bought a motor car, Máirtín, for the sole purpose of taking her out. I could ill afford it but I didn’t begrudge it to her, all the same. We went together to films in Brightcity, to dances in Wood of the Oxen, to teachers’ meetings …

— Indeed you did, and you went the Mountain Road, Master. One day when I was fetching a cartload of turf, your car was by the roadside at the Steep Hillock and the two of you were over in the glen …

— We’ll forget about that till some other time, Máirtín Pockface …

— Faith then, I remember the day I got the form for the pension. Nobody in the house knew from the soles of the devil what it was. “The Big Master is our man,” says I. I went as far as Peadar the Pub’s and I stayed there till the pupils had gone home. Over I went then. When I got to the school gate there wasn’t a grunt or a groan from inside. “I left it too late,” said I, letting on to be mannerly. “He’s gone home.” I looked in through the window. Faith then, begging your pardon, Master, you were screwing her inside …

— I was not, I was not, Máirtín Pockface.

— Faith then, you were, Master, there’s nothing better than the truth …

— Had Dad, Master!

— You should be ashamed of yourself, Master.

— Who would think it, Bríd?

— Our children were going to school to him, Cite …

— If the priest had caught him, Siúán …

— It was Pentecost Monday, Máirtín Pockface. I had the day off. “You should come to Ross Harbour,” said I to her, after lunch. “The outing will do you good.” Off we went. That night in Ross Harbour I thought, Máirtín Pockface, I got to know the secret of her heart more than ever before … The long summer’s day was losing its light at long last. The pair of us were leaning on a rock, looking at the stars glittering in the sea …

— I know what you mean, Master …