Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— My own razor and strop! They were kept in the top of the press. How well he knew where to find them, the thief …

— You were darting around the kitchen, Little Cáit, like a dog with fleas …

— As busy as Nóra Sheáinín when she’d come over to Caitríona’s …

— Shut your mouth, you little brat …

—“I must go upstairs and keep him propped up on his side while you’re shaving his cheeks,” you said. “The Schoolmistress will do that,” said Billyboy. “You can rest yourself there, Little Cáit …”

— Oh! The mangy pair! …

— Don’t heed him, Big Master. It was I who laid you out. And a fine-looking corpse you were, God bless you! That’s what I said to the Schoolmistress when we had you decked out. “He’s a credit to you, Mistress,” said I. “He made a fine-looking corpse, may the Lord have mercy on him, but that was to be expected: a fine man like the Big Master …”

— Faith then, Cáit, it wouldn’t matter how the likes of us would be laid out, but it seems to me you’d be too rough and ready to go pawing a schoolmaster …

— … Five days I spent watching over you, East-Side-of-the-Village Man; up and down to your house to see you: up and down to the Little Height to look over at your house to see if there was any sign of your death. Raving in your sleep you were, and the only complaint out of you was about a patch of land at the top of the village that was the best ever for fattening cattle. It seemed to me you’d much prefer not to go at all if you couldn’t take it with you …

— And so much blather out of the gadfly about the English market …

— … It was I who laid you out indeed, Curraoin, and still and all, you were very reluctant to be off. You definitely went through the death-throes. Every time I was about to put the thumbs on you, you’d wake up again. Your wife felt your pulse. “He’s expired, may the Lord have mercy on him!” she said.

“Musha, may his soul have calm and fair sailing!” said Big Brian, who had just come in. “He got his passage money at last. By Dad, I thought he wouldn’t sail without taking Road-End’s daughter on board with him.”

“May his bed be bright in Heaven tonight!” I said myself, and I ordered a tub of water to be prepared. Didn’t you wake back up at that very moment! “Take care that Tom gets the big holding,” you said. “I’d rather see it swept away by the wind than the eldest son to have it, unless he marries some woman other than Road-End’s daughter …” You woke up again: “If the eldest son gets the land from you,” you said to your wife, “the devil mend me but my ghost will have you by the tail of your shirt by day and by night! Isn’t it a pity I didn’t go to an attorney and make a sound will! …”

You woke up the third time: “That spade Tomáisín’s daughter took away with her, the time of the early potatoes, let one of you go and get it back, since they didn’t have the decency to return it themselves. May the devil pierce them! Be sure you issue a summons on Glutton for letting his donkeys into our oats. If you don’t get satisfaction in court, the next time you catch them inside our wall, drive horseshoe nails through their hooves. May the devil pierce himself and his donkeys! Don’t be too lax or lazy to get up before dawn and keep an eye on your turf, and if you should catch Road-End Man …”

— I thought it was the old woman who was stealing it …

— They were all as bad as each other, himself and his old woman and their four children.

— … You were about to surrender your soul when I came in. I knelt down as the litany was being recited. Even at that stage you were still murmuring. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” you kept saying. “How well the poor thing remembers Jack the Scológ,” I said to Nell Pháidín, who was on her knees beside me. “But the two were always great friends.” “God grant you a bit of sense, Little Cáit,” said Nell, “‘ Black, black, black ’ is what he’s saying! The son …”

— I heard, Cáit, that the last warning Caitríona Pháidín gave to her son was …

— To bury her in the Pound Plot …

— To put a cross of Island limestone over her …

— Ababúna!

— To go to Mannion the Counsellor and get him to write a powerful letter about Baba’s will …

— To let Tomás Inside’s house fall down …

— To poison Nell …

— Ababúna! Don’t believe him, Jack …

— If Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter didn’t die on her next childbirth, to divorce her …

— You’re insulting the faith, you little brat. The Antichrist will soon be here …

— … Oh! There was pandemonium all over the village straight away:

“He fell off a stack of oats.”

“He fell off a stack of oats.”

“Your man fell off a stack of oats.”

Up I went to the house to you immediately. I was certain I’d find a brand-new corpse waiting for me there. What did I get instead but yourself there like a lazy lump, telling everyone how your left foot slipped.

— Upon my soul, Cáit, I broke my thigh in two halves.

— What good was that to me? I thought I’d have a brand new corpse waiting for me …

— But I died, Cáit …

— … I never saw a big lazy lump in a bed as restless as you were. You had one leg on the floor …

— I knew, Cáit, that I was dying, and I tried to get up and go to the murderer and kill him. “Drink two spoonfuls from this bottle …”

— Bloody tear and ’ounds , for a story …

— … I probed your throat. “Where’s the bone that choked her?” said I. “The doctor took it out,” said your sister. “May the Lord’s mercy be no less for that!” said I. “Nobody should stuff themselves. If that woman hadn’t been so greedy in eating her food we wouldn’t be laying her out now …”

“She hadn’t tasted a bit of meat since the Feast of St. Martin,” 18said your sister …

— Bloody tear and ’ounds , didn’t Big Brian say she’d still be alive and kicking today if she hadn’t chased Caitríona Pháidín’s dog out of the house before dinner-time? “He was so wild with hunger,” he said, “he’d have easily gone down her windpipe and got up the bone …”

— Oh! Brian the scold!

— … It was summer, and the perspiration was congealed in your skin. “He couldn’t but smell of sweat,” said my mother. “My poor child was a foolish boy, and it shows on him now. Putting himself through that ordeal of going to Dublin on an old bike, and sleeping in the open the same night! I hope God won’t hold it against him …”

— Oh! If I’d been alive a month from that day I’d have seen Concannon beating Kerry …

— In 1941, is it? If it is …

— … You gave myself and Muraed Phroinsiais grey hair. We scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed you, but to no avail. “These spots are not dirt at all,” said I to Muraed at last. “There are five or six of them,” said Muraed. “They’re emblems that have to do with Hitler,” said your daughter. Amn’t I the forgetful one now that I can’t remember what she called them …

— Tattoo.

— Swastika …

— That’s the very word, by all that’s holy. We’d wasted three pots of boiling water on you, four pounds of soap, two boxes of Rinso, a lump of Monkey Brand, two buckets of sand, but they wouldn’t come out. I wouldn’t mind, but you didn’t show the least bit of gratitude after all the trouble you put us to …

— I’d have put you to more trouble, only for the Graf Spee , for I would have branded every little bulge of my body. Hitler was worthy of that much.

—“Arrah! bad luck to him! Leave them,” said Muraed. “He can’t be let go in the condition he’s in,” said I. “Isn’t he as pockmarked as a stray letter! Put another pot of water on the fire, in the name of God.”