Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— It’ll do me good, Beartla. You wouldn’t believe the good a bit of news does a person here. The people of this graveyard wouldn’t tell you anything, not even if it brought them back to life again. Jack the Scológ, for example, who’s in the graveyard for the past three weeks. Jack the Scológ! Jack …

—“Hoh-roh, my Mary …”

— Ah, tell me. Good man, Beartla Blackleg! … Quickly now. Those people up above us will soon find out this is the wrong grave …

— Bloody tear and ’ounds , Caitríona, it doesn’t make any difference to a person which grave his old bones are thrown into …

— Ah! tell me, Beartla, what Brian the Blubberer said …

— If there’s going to be trouble, let there be trouble, Caitríona: “Everything’s going well for Pádraig,” he said, “since he left that little bess of a mother of his in that hole back there. A long, long time ago he should have turned a pot upside-down on her, put a red ember under it and have her die like a cat in the smoke …”

— They’ve swept you off again, Beartla Blackleg! … Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ! … Jack the Scológ! …

3

— … My heart turned to dust when the Graf Spee 6was sent to the bottom. I was here a week from that day …

— The mine barely managed to kill us. Only for that, Murchaín would have robbed the Five of Trumps …

— … To stab me through the edge of my liver. The foul blow was always the hallmark of the One-Ear Breed …

— … A cold I caught from sweat and sleeping in the open, the time I cycled to Dublin to see Concannon …

— … I fell off a stack of oats and broke my thigh …

— A pity you didn’t break your tongue as well! …

— Wasn’t it a long way up your legs brought you, on a stack of oats!

— I’ll bet you won’t fall off a stack of oats again. You may be sure you won’t …

— Only for you fell off a stack of oats you’d die some other way. A horse would kick you; or your legs would give up …

— Or your man would give you a bad bottle …

— Or you wouldn’t get enough to eat from your son’s wife, on account of losing the pension for having money in the bank.

— You may be sure you’d die in any case …

— Falling is a bad thing …

— If you’d fallen in the fire as I did …

— The heart …

— Bedsores. If methylated spirits had been rubbed on me …

— You cowardly Siúán! You were the cause of my death. For the want of fags …

— Your coffee, you ugly Siúán …

— Faith then, as you said, the cause of death I had was …

— Bloody tear and ’ounds , I had no cause of death at all but stretched out, with no life left …

— The cause of death the Big Master had was …

— Piteous love. He thought if he died the Schoolmistress wouldn’t consider life worth living without him …

— No, he thought he’d be doing Billyboy the Post an injustice if he stayed alive any longer …

— Not at all, it was Caitríona put a curse on him after he wrote a letter to Baba for her. “May no corpse go into the graveyard before that fellow in there!” she said. “Going from table to window …”

— The cause of death Jack the Scológ had was that Nell shifted him with the St. John’s Gospel …

— Shut your mouth, you little brat!

—’Tis true for him. ’Tis true for him. The little bitch got the St. John’s Gospel from the priest …

— … Shame is what caused your death. Your son having married a black in England …

— It would be twice as shameful if he had married an Eyetalian as your son did. From that day on, you drank no drop of the milk of good health. I saw you going the road one day. “That man is a goner,” says I to myself. “Rigor mortis is setting in already. Once the news came that his son had married an Eyetalian he began to go downhill. Pure shame. And little wonder …”

— … Heartbreak is what the East-Side-of-the-Village Man felt about our losing the English market …

— … That fellow was disgruntled, after spending a whole month without managing to twist his ankle …

— Big Brian said that Curraoin died of regret that he didn’t manage to make two halves of Glutton’s donkey by splitting it with the adze along the cross on its back, when he found it in his field of oats …

— I thought it was Road-End’s donkey …

— May the devil pierce him, it was Road-End’s donkey, but I’d much prefer if it was his daughter instead of the donkey! …

— Big Colm’s daughter died of …

— The Lower Hillside epidemic …

— No fear of that. But once the epidemic hit her nobody but the doctor came near the house, so she couldn’t hear any rumours …

— You’re insulting the faith. You’re a black heretic …

— … The Insurance Man was only one letter short of winning the Crossword. That’s what hastened his death …

— Red-haired Tom’s cause of death was the length of his tongue …

— What cause did I have? What cause did I have, is it? What cause did I have? It’s a wise man could say …

— Sweet-talking Stiofán died of regret that he didn’t hear about Caitríona Pháidín’s funeral …

— … Faith then, as you say, the cause of death I had was the intestines …

— … Oh! Do you hear him? The intestines indeed! The intestines! Oh! It was God’s revenge that you died, Road-End Man. You stole my turf …

— … Upset that he wasn’t appointed Chief Inquisitor …

— … God’s revenge, Peadar the Pub. You were watering the whiskey …

— I was robbed in your house, Peadar the Pub …

— And so was I …

— … God’s justice, Glutton. Drinking two score and two pints …

—“Nobody can ever say that I’m a windbag,” said I. “Getting between that raging madman and the hatchet! Not only had I not made an Act of Contrition, but I was only on the second bar of the Creed when the little girl came over to the house for me. I’m telling you, Tomáisín’s family, you may thank your lucky stars I had two score pints and two inside me …”

— … It was God’s revenge on you, Insurance Man, for tricking Caitríona Pháidín and Tomás Inside …

— Ababúna! He did not. He did not …

— True for you, Caitríona. I did and I didn’t. The tricks of the trade …

— … Because An Gúm wouldn’t accept my collection of poems The Golden Stars …

— You’re better dead than alive, you impudent brat. There on your own in the house by the hearth, praying to the ashes. “Oh, Sacred Ashes! … Oh, congealed blood that was spilled to broil my vitals in the embers! …”

— He’s a black heretic …

— … The Irishman was unwilling to publish The Setting Sun . Nobody in the six townlands would listen to me read it …

— God’s justice for certain! You said Columkille made a prophecy to lead the people astray …

— … It’s no wonder you died. I heard the doctor say that nobody could stay healthy in those nettly groves of Donagh’s Village …

— The priest told me that nineteen families used to pay him on the flea-bitten hillocks of your village twenty years ago, but now …

— Jack the Scológ’s funeral was the cause of my death. I got up off my bed to go and keen him. I collapsed on my way home. I began to perspire. The perspiration was pouring off me from then till the time I expired …

— Jack the Scológ’s funeral was the cause of my death too. I began to swell up after it …

— Ababúna! It was no wonder, the way you stuffed that shameless stomach of yours. Tell me, Bid Shorcha the sponger, how long have you been here, and you, Little Cáit the grinner? …