Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

Big Brian happened to come in at that very moment. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you two want to scald the poor fellow like a dead pig …”

— Oh! He was the right scald himself, and an ugly scald he was!

— … No more than the fellow a while ago, I was exhausted washing you. There wasn’t the least lump of your body that wasn’t covered with ink. “This fellow is like a man who has been left soaking in a tub of ink,” said I. “He might as well have been,” said your sister. “The ink is what killed him. Sucking it into his lungs from morn till night and from night till morn …”

— Writer’s cramp he had, according to himself …

— Whatever he had, he brought it on himself. He was a black heretic. He shouldn’t be allowed into consecrated ground at all. It’s a wonder God didn’t make an example of him …

— … I got the whiff of it as soon as I walked into the room to you. “Was there porter or something like that spilled here?” said I to Curraoin’s wife. “Not that I know of,” she said.

— And no wonder: a man who used to drink two score and two pints …

— There wasn’t a drop in my belly the day I died. Devil as much as a drop, then! …

— That’s the truth you’re saying. There was not. That was one of Little Cáit’s tricks, the grinner. Expecting a drink she was, when she said that to Curraoin’s wife …

— … That was what was wrong with me, Little Cáit. Siúán the Shop’s coffee. It rotted my intestines …

— … Your legs were as brittle as rotted wood, with black lumps on them, and creaking like a cow with bog lameness …

— Siúán the Shop’s clogs , of course …

— I suppose you couldn’t get a scent as far away as Mangy Field, Little Cáit. If you’d seen Nóra Sheáinín’s feet, who never wore clogs! That is if Caitríona is to be believed, of course …

— Shut your mouth, you little brat …

— … The very moment I reached the door I got the smell of ash-potatoes, Cite. “Put those ash-potatoes away,” said I, “till the dead person is dressed.” “There are no potatoes in the ashes,” said Micil. “And I wish there had been none since morning either. Too many ash-potatoes she ate. They were too heavy on the stomach. They made a rock in her belly …”

— Bloody tear and ’ounds for a story. Cite just lay back, with no life left …

— … They had left you too long and let your body grow cold. There you were, a stiff lump, and four of us working on you to no avail. “Let somebody go and get your man’s lump-hammer,” said Big Brian, “and you’ll see how I’ll stretch his knees for him …” “ Bloody tear and ’ounds ,” said the son of Blackleg, “didn’t Road-End Man steal it from him! …”

— It was he who stole it, indeed. A lovely lump-hammer …

— … The creel of potatoes you brought from the Common Field had left its print on the broad of your back, Seáinín Liam …

— When I was easing it off me inside in the house, the strap handle slipped and it came down lopsided. I gave my side a little wrench. The dresser began to dance. The clock went from the wall to the chimney, the chimney went to the doorway, the colt that was straight in front of me in the House Field rose in the air and went down the boreen and over the road. “The colt!” said I, and I made for the door to go after it. The heart …

— I got the smell of the bed off you immediately, Máirtín Pockface …

— Faith then, the bedsores were what finished me off …

— … It gives me no satisfaction to publicise this, poet, but you were covered in a coat of dirt from the top of your head to the tips of your toes …

— … His “Sacred Ashes.” The devil pierce him, the impudent brat! He never washed himself …

— Myself and your aunt stripped it off you, till you had only a spot left on your thigh. We couldn’t get that off. “The dirt is stuck to him like barnacles here,” said I to your aunt. “Plenty of boiling water and sand.” Your mother had gone out looking for winding-sheets. She came in at that very moment. “That’s a mole,” she said. “Every time my dear boy got a fit of poetry he used to scratch himself there and the words would come with great difficulty …”

— He was a fatty, he was a softy, he was a lump of lard. We were put to the pin of our collar to carry him here at all.

— I never saw a corpse whose eyes were more difficult to close than Road-End Man. I had a thumb on one eye, and his old lady had her thumb on the other, but no sooner I’d have my side closed than the old lady’s side would open …

— To see if there was any lump-hammer going a-begging …

— Or any drift-weed …

— I never got as fragrant a smell as was off the Postmistress …

— The smell of the drugs she used for opening letters and sealing them again. The back room was like a chemist’s shop …

— Not at all! The kettle was O.K. for that. Fragrances for the bathtub. I took a bath just before I died …

— That’s true, Postmistress. There was no need to wash your corpse at all …

— You don’t know whether it was necessary or not, Little Cáit. Gosh! If you’d as much as touched my corpse the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs would have the law on you …

— … Whoever laid you out, I’d say he got the smell of the nettles of Donagh’s Village off you …

— Even that was better than what was off you …

— I never saw a cleaner corpse than Jack the Scológ’s. Rigor mortis never even touched him. He was like a flower. You’d think his skin was silk. You’d think he had just laid down for a rest … Not only that, but every stitch of clothes about him was as pure white as that “flour” 19that was sprinkled on the Earl at the door of the church on his wedding morning! Of course, they wouldn’t be allowed in Nell Pháidín’s house if they were any other way …

— The pussface! The cheeky busybody!

— They say, Cáit, that Caitríona’s corpse wasn’t …

— Caitríona’s corpse! That one! I was sent for, but I wouldn’t go next or near her corpse …

— Ababúna!

— It would turn my stomach …

— Ababúna! Little Cáit, the grinner! Little Cáit, the grinner! I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …

6

… There isn’t a God above or he’ll punish that pair for it! It was easily known! I had no violent pain. The doctor said the kidneys wouldn’t kill me for some time. But that pussface Nell coaxed the St. John’s Gospel from the priest for Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter, and they bought me a single ticket to this lodging, as they did for Jack the Scológ, the poor man. Wasn’t it plain to a stump of bog-deal 20that if there hadn’t been some skulduggery going on Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter would have been here on her next blast of childbirth. Instead of that, the pain and sickness left her completely …

And of course there were no flies on that pussface! She knew that as long as I had the least puff of breath in my body I’d keep tit for tat with her about Baba’s will and Tomás Inside’s land. But she can hoodwink Pádraig to her heart’s content …

Two thousand pounds. A slate-roofed house. A motor car. A hat … Son of Blackleg said Pádraig would get a fistful of money, but what good is that when the whole will isn’t going to him! God blast that one over beyond, I wish she’d left every shiny halfpenny belonging to her to priests! …

Twenty-three pounds of altar-money for Jack the Scológ. And she never let a shilling out of her own house to any funeral! … High Mass. Priests. The Earl. Lord Cockton. Four half-barrels of porter. Whiskey. Cold meat … And how well the little schemer thought of lighting twelve candles over him in the chapel! To be one up on me. What else? I wouldn’t begrudge poor Jack anything, but it was just to show off the pussface did it. It was easy for her — with the old hag’s easy money.