Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— Do you think so, Caitríona? …

— Isn’t it obvious to yourself, Tomás Inside! A woman who was on the flat of her back for a month, rising up like a butterfly like that! You were courting disaster by ever going near that bitch at any time. Had you stayed in my Pádraig’s house you’d be alive and well today. But what did you do with your patch of land? …

— Musha, Caitríona dear, I left it to the two of them: to Pádraig and to Nell …

— You left them a half each, you useless lout! …

— By the docks, I didn’t, dear. I did not, or anything of the sort. I used to say to myself like this, Caitríona, whenever I got my speech back: “If it were much bigger than it is, I wouldn’t begrudge the whole lot of it to either of them. It’s not worth making halves of it. Big Brian always used to say it wasn’t worth dividing …”

— Of course he’d say that, hoping you’d leave it all to his own daughter …

—“I’ll have to leave it to Pádraig Chaitríona,” says I to myself like that. “I’d have left it to him anyhow, if I had managed to reach his house before I collapsed. But Nell was always kind-hearted. I couldn’t but leave it to her, seeing that I died in her house …”

— Oh, you useless fool! You useless fool! …

— The priest was there, writing down what I said, whenever I found my speech: “Make two halves of it, Tomás Inside,” he said. “Either that or leave it to one of the two houses.”

— Why the devil, Tomás Inside, couldn’t you do a bit better than that! Why didn’t you do the decent thing and go in to Mannion the Counsellor in Brightcity?

— By the docks, Caitríona, I only got my speech back now and again, and faith then, a person would need frost-nails 2in his tongue to go splitting words with Mannion the Counsellor. Apart from that, Caitríona, I never felt much like visiting the same Mannion … Your Pádraig was there: “I don’t want it,” he said. “I’ve already got plenty of my own.”

— Oh, the little fool! I knew that Nell would hoodwink him. He’s lost without me …

— Isn’t that what Big Brian said! …

— Brian blubber-lips! …

— Indeed then, Caitríona, he sent for the motor car and came over to visit me …

— To help Nell get your patch of land. If not, it wasn’t for your sake, Tomás Inside. He sent over for the motor car! He was a fine sight in a motor car! A beard like rolls of unspun wool. Buckteeth. Slouched shoulders. Stopped-up nose. Club-foot. Crusted with filth. He never washed himself …

—“If the go-between who’s laid to rest back there were here,” says he, “I’d say it wouldn’t be you, priest, but Mannion the Counsellor would be escorting Milord Inside past the gander …” Nell put her hand over his mouth. The priest pushed him out the door of the room … “We don’t want your land either, Tomás Inside,” says Nell …

— She’s a damned liar, the cocky little scrounger! Why wouldn’t she want it? …

—“I’ll leave the patch of land to Pádraig Chaitríona and to Nell Sheáinín,” says I when I got my speech back. “I won’t begrudge it to you.” “There’s neither rhyme nor reason to what you’re saying, Tomás Inside,” says the priest. “It would end in wrangling and law, were it not for the good sense of these decent people …”

— Decent people! Oh! …

— I couldn’t speak a word from then on, Caitríona. Devil an ache or a pain I ever had, and isn’t it odd that I died! …

— You’re no great asset, alive or dead, you stupid little fool!

— Listen Tomás! That’s the dote! That tiff with Caitríona won’t make …

— By the docks, tiff?

— That scolding will only vulgarise your mind. I must establish a relationship with you. I am the cultural relations officer of the graveyard. I’ll give you lectures on the “Art of Living.”

— By the docks, the “Art of Living” …?

— A perceptive group of us here felt we had a duty to our fellow corpses, and we founded a Rotary …

— What do you want a Rotary for? Look at me! …

— Exactly, Thomas . Look at you! You’re a romantic roebuck, Tomás. You always were. But romance must have the stilts of culture under its feet, to raise it up out of the wild sod, and to make it the coercive King Stork of the Twentieth Century, graduating to the high sunlit groves of Cupid, as Mrs. Crookshank said to Harry …

— Hold on there now, my good Nóra. I’ll relate to you what Gambolling Naked said to Knotted Bottom in the “Ripping of the Mantle” …

— Culture, Thomas .

— By the docks, this can’t be Nóirín Sheáinín from Mangy Field I have here! … I wonder will I begin to speak like that in the graveyard clay. Indeed then, Nóra, you had fine homely talk in the old days! …

— Nóróg dear, don’t let on you hear him at all.

— Gug-goog, Dotie! Gug-goog! We’ll have a cosy little conversation after a while. Between ourselves, so to speak. A nice friendly chat between ourselves, you know. Gug-goog!

— I always had culture, Tomás, but you weren’t able to appreciate it. That was obvious to me in the first affaire de coeur I ever had with you. Only for that maybe I could have incited you a little. Ugh! A man without culture! A mate should be a companion. I’ll give you a lecture, with the help of the writer and the poet, on platonic love …

— I’ll have nothing to do with you, Nóra Sheáinín. Indeed then, I won’t! …

— That’s my darling, Tomás Inside! …

— I used to rub shoulders with the big shots in Nell Sheáinín’s …

— You useless little fool! …

— Oh! Them foreign ones are great fun, Caitríona. A big yellow stump was fishing with Lord Cockton this year, and she’d smoke all the fags that were ever made. She would, and so would the priest’s sister. She keeps them in big boxes in her trousers pocket. She has Road-End’s son robbed supplying her. Good enough for him, the blackguard. But I must say she’s lovely herself. I sat into the motor car beside her. “Gug-goog, Nancy,” says I …

— Your mind, Tomás, dote , is raw and lumpy clay, but I will mix it, mould it, fire it and polish it, until it’s a beautiful vessel of culture.

— I’ll have nothing whatever to do with you, Nóra Sheáinín. Nothing at all. I got enough of you. I couldn’t put a foot inside Peadar the Pub’s but you’d be in at my heels, sponging drink. Many is the fine pint I bought for you, not begrudging it to you! …

— Nóróg dear, don’t let on …

— Good on you there, Tomás! God grant you life and health! Let her have it now, hot and heavy; let Nóirín Filthy Feet have it. Going around sponging! Were you in Peadar the Pub’s, Tomás Inside, the day she made the billy-goat drunk? … The blessings of God on you, and tell the graveyard about that! …

3

— … I keened you all, my family oh! Woe is me, alas and woe! I keened you all, my family oh! …

— You had a fine tearful wail, Bid Shorcha, to give you your due …

— … Woe is me, alas and woe! You fell off that dreadful stack, my woe! …

— You’d think, listening to you all, that he fell off an aeroplane! He only fell off a stack of oats! Sure, that wouldn’t kill anybody but a person who was half-dead already. If he drank the bottle I drank! …

— Woe is me, alas and woe! You drank that awful bottle, my darling oh! …

— You’ve so much talk about your bottle. If you drank two score pints and two as I did …

— Woe is me, alas and woe! You won’t drink another pint, never ever oh! And many’s the big pint went down your sluice-gate oh!