Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— My seven cries of curses on you, tonight and tomorrow and a year from tomorrow, you Communist, you Fascist, you Nazi, you heretic, you red-haired Antichrist , you right mouthful of vulgar-blood, you putrid dregs of rustic table attendants, you remnant of disease, you leavings of fly, maggot and earthworm, you lifeless wretch who frightened death himself till he had to put a bad sickness on you, you worthless creature, you useless boor, you red ruffian …

— De grâce , Master. Control yourself. Remember you’re a cultured Christian gentleman. If you keep on like this you’ll soon be able to keep up a sparring match with that hooligan, Caitríona Pháidín …

— Master, Master, answer her. You have the education, Master. Answer her. Answer Nóirín …

— Let on you don’t hear the So-an’-so at all, Master …

— So-an’-so! So-an’-so! Nóirín Sheáinín calling me a So-an’-so! I’ll explode! I’ll …

5

— … A bad bottle, then. A bad bottle. A bad bottle …

— … Another time I saw the two of them on the roof of the house: Pádraig Chaitríona and Peadar Nell …

— Do you think I don’t know? …

— … Indeed, Bríd Terry, if it cost me my life’s blood, I’d be at your funeral. I owed it to come to Bríd’s …

— Sweet-talking Stiofán blabbering again, or is that him at all? Our Lady knows I have difficulty in hearing any news story here. That earthworm, God blast it! Nowhere would suit it but to go into my earhole! Straight over from Muraed Phroinsiais’s grave it came. That grave is riddled with earthworms. Muraed was used to that, of course. She had a filthy abode above ground too. Dirt on the floors piled high as a ship’s mast, and a coating of filth on every bit of furniture under her roof. No wonder she’s in her element in the clay now. Not to mention herself. You could grow potatoes in her ears, and she never cleaned her shoes going to Mass. You’d recognize the daubs of yellow soil from the swallow hole outside her house, that she left in her trail all the way up the chapel. And she wouldn’t rest till she’d cock herself up beside the altar in front of Siúán the Shop and Nell — the little bitch. If Muraed had married Big Brian the pair of them would have been well matched. He never washed himself either, unless the midwife washed him. They say cleanliness is a virtue, but I wonder. Filthy people thrive too. I kept a clean house every day of my life. There wasn’t a Saturday night in the year that I didn’t wash and scrub everything within the four walls of the house. Even when I wasn’t able to stand up I’d still do it. And all I gained by it was to shorten my life.

What’s this? What sort of commotion is this? Blocked and all as my ears are, they can hear that much at least … Another corpse. The epidemic … The coffin is only an old hen-box. That’s all it is. They’d throw any old tinker down on top of me now …

Who are you? … On the devil’s tracks to hell with you and speak up! My ears are stuffed … They said to bury you in this grave beside your mother? I don’t recognize your voice, then. But you’re a woman. A young woman … You were only twenty-two. I’m afraid you must have gone astray on the “sod of bewilderment.” 8If you could turn your shroud inside out, maybe you’d find your way. My daughters are dead this long while … Why don’t you speak up and tell me who you are! … Do I need any spiritual assistance? What sort of spiritual assistance are you talking about? … What’s spiritual assistance? …

Big Colm’s daughter? Big Brian is your uncle! It’s very unwise of you to try and gate-crash your way into the same grave as me. I have too many of your ilk all around me here as I am. I’m not even distantly related to you. Go down to your mother down there. I heard her whining a short time ago. It was coming home from her funeral that I first caught what killed me. A desperate downpour of a day it was …

Ugh! Keep away from me! The Lower Hillside epidemic. 9Keep away, or God help you. Your uncle Big Brian’s house was an inhospitable place to call on.

What’s that you said, now? … You know only too well how inhospitable it was! … You fell out with him? … You didn’t go near his house for the past year? You were none the worse for that, sister dear … You may say that again, sister dear. Isn’t that what I said a while ago? Devil a drop of water that fellow splashed on himself since he was born … By japers, you could be telling me the truth: that your father was a clean man. You wouldn’t recognise a trace of him in that other streak of misery? Your father took after his mother! He was a mild-mannered man? … You went to Big Brian a year ago? … You asked him if you could give him spiritual assistance? Oh, you were badly employed offering that ugly streak of misery any sort of assistance! … Ah, it was for the Legion of Mary 10you visited him! … True for you, devil a Family Rosary he said since he was born … That’s what he said to you? … That he wouldn’t accept any spiritual assistance from you! … He told you the Legion was full of jennets! That man has no fear of God or the Virgin Mary …

The streak of misery is ailing at last. The devil take him, it’s about time for him … Is that what he said: “I think I’ll take a tour back there any day now … And I’ll guarantee you this much, there’ll be ructions in those holes back there … If Páidín’s mule …” You’re certain he didn’t finish what he was saying …

Haven’t I told you already I don’t want … what’s this you call it? … spiritual assistance… Nell’s talking about building a new slated house? … They’re breaking rocks for it. Ababúna! That’s what the little hunchback said: that they had to do it, now that the new road was built up as far as the door. Oh, the little crupper! … “that there’d be a priest in the house soon, if God spares the people.” Oh, the bitch! … Her legs are giving up? It would serve her right if she was never able to walk the new road … The things you don’t know now, you’ll know all about them in a week’s time. But they were all scared to come to the house to you.

What’s that you said? … That Jack the Scológ was very ill. That’s the fatal illness now. The St. John’s Gospel. Nell and Big Brian’s daughter will get another lump of money … You didn’t hear anything about the St. John’s Gospel … You didn’t know that Jack needed spiritual assistance. He needs all the assistance he can get now, the poor man …

Beartla Blackleg was anointed … Little Cáit and Bid Shorcha are poorly, you say … They don’t stir out of the house at all now. They won’t be stretching or keening any more stiffs from now on, so …

They put up the cross over Máirtín Pockface the other day … and over Red-haired Tom too. Of course, that red good-for-nothing is no length at all here … That’s what you heard: that Nell advised Pádraig not to put a cross of Island limestone over me … You’ll know all about it in a week’s time. Thanks very much! … Oh, you may be sure, sister dear, that it’s true. She would say that — the bitch — and Big Brian’s daughter and Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter urging her on … Big Brian said that: “If I were Pádraig, I’d give that babbling little hag her fill of Island limestone … I’d dig her up out of yonder hole … I’d whisk her into the Island … I’d cock her up on the highest pinnacle of stone there … like the man on the Big Stone in Dublin …” Oh, indeed, it isn’t the word of the Lord that’s on his lips even though death has him on a halter … I tell you I don’t want any spiritual assistance …

Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter, Nell and Big Brian’s daughter talking again? Easily known. Arrah, devil the fight was ever there, just that little prattler of Pádraig Labhráis’s telling lies … True for you, sister dear. The Battle of the Hornless Cows. 11Tinkers, the whole lot of them … You’ll know more in a week’s time …