Máirtín Ó Cadhain - Graveyard Clay - Cré na Cille

— But do you really think, Tomás, that he’ll die? …

— Don’t you know well, Master, that he’ll soon have a dock growing in his ear!

— Do you think so, Tomás?

— Don’t worry, Master. He’ll die, my friend. Look at me! …

— If only God would grant it, the skinny little squirt …

— Ah, musha Master, she’s lovely, herself …

— Oh! The harlot! …

— Do you need any spiritual assistance, Master? …

— I do not. I do not, I tell you. Leave me alone! Leave me alone or I’ll have the skin off your ears! …

— By the docks, Master dear, didn’t I hear that she used to have cottiers 3in the kitchen, and you upstairs on your deathbed …

— Qu’est-ce que c’est que cottiers? What sort of things are cottiers? …

— Tomás Inside is not a cottier, because he had a nice patch of land. Nor is East-Side-of-the-Village Man either. He had a patch at the top of the village that couldn’t be beaten for fattening cattle. But Billyboy the Post was a cottier. The only land he had was the garden of the Master’s house …

— Billyboy used to be inside with her, indeed, Master. I heard that no matter how fierce the day was he’d come to inquire about you …

— Oh, the blackguard! The sweet-toothed cock-of-the-roost!

— Ah, musha, Master, there is no denying the truth when all is said and done. The Schoolmistress is lovely. Myself and herself used to be together in Peadar the Pub’s. If only Billyboy wasn’t sticking his scissor-nose in everywhere, while he was still able to do his rounds! I met her at the Steep Hillock on the Mountain Road a few months after you were buried. “Gug-goog, Schoolmistress,” says I. “Gug-goog, Tomás Inside,” says she. We didn’t have a chance for a cosy little chat because Billyboy the Post was heading down towards us on his bicycle after delivering letters …

— … They say that unless the first form is filled in properly it’s easy to strike you off the dole . 4The Wood of the Lake Master filled mine in for me the first time ever the dole came out. He wrote something in red ink right across the form. Long life to him, the dole was never taken off me since! …

— Faith then, it was taken off me. The Big Master filled it in for me. All he did was to draw a stroke of his pen across the form. It wasn’t red ink he used either …

— The Big Master, the poor man, used to be bad-tempered thinking of the Schoolmistress. Didn’t you hear how he used to keep looking out the window while he was writing letters for Caitríona! …

— May she do him no good, the same Schoolmistress, couldn’t he fill in a dole form properly for a person! …

— I always got eight shillings. The Red-haired Policeman did it for me …

— For a good reason. He was screwing your daughter in the nettly groves of Donagh’s Village …

— I was done out of the dole completely. Somebody wrote in to say I had money in the bank …

— God bless your innocence, my friend! Some people envy any improvement in their neighbour’s circumstances. Don’t you see Nell Pháidín’s son, who used to get the dole throughout the year, as his land wasn’t valued over two pounds, and Caitríona did him out of it …

— He didn’t deserve it! He didn’t deserve it! He had money in a bank and was getting fifteen shillings of dole permanently. It served the pussface right!

— Faith then, as you say, I had a big dole …

— You had a big dole , indeed, Road-End Man …

— A storm never blew but you were the better for it, Road-End Man. The little stray sheep would always end up with you …

— The little wooden plank washed ashore in the Middle Harbour would always end up with you …

— And the drift-weed …

— And the turf …

— And the scallops for thatching …

— Anything left lying around the Earl’s house always ended up with you …

— Even the wooden leg of the Earl’s little black servant, didn’t it end up with you? I saw a pullet of yours laying an egg in its thigh, and you used its foot on Caitríona’s chimney cap …

— Even the priest’s sister who went around in her little trousers whistling and yawning, she ended up with your son …

— Oh, do you hear the tailor boasting? You made a white homespun jacket for me, and a bus would get lost inside it …

— You made trousers for Jack the Scológ and no one in the country could get his feet down them but Tomás Inside …

— God would punish us …

— By the docks, dear, my feet went down them nice and sprightly …

— Didn’t you all know well that’s what would happen, when you brought your cloth to the Breed of the One-Ear Tailor who stabbed me! …

— Arrah, you shouldn’t be talking, Mangy Field Carpenter! Wasn’t the whole country able to look in at Nóra Sheáinín through the coffin you made for her …

— She was the first of the Filthy-Feet Breed to go into any sort of wooden coffin at all …

— She’d be better off, Caitríona, without that particular one. It was as flimsy as the chimneys Road-End Man used to make …

— What could I do about your chimneys when you wouldn’t pay me?

— I paid you …

— As you say, you paid me, but for everyone who did, there were four who didn’t …

— I paid you too, you crook, and you did my chimney more harm than good …

— You paid me, as you say, but there was another house in the village where I fixed a chimney shortly before that, and the devil a word, good or bad, I’ve heard about my money since.

— Was that a reason for making a botch of my chimney, you crook? …

— But I told you to make a chimney-brush …

— And I did. And I scrubbed it clean from top to bottom, but you’d made a botch of it …

— I didn’t know, as you say, who would pay me and who wouldn’t. A woman from the village came up to me. “We’re having the priest,” she said. “The chimney is always puffing whenever there’s an east wind. If there happened to be an east wind the day we’d have the priest I’d be mortified. Nell’s chimney draws on all winds.” “I’ll stop it puffing on an east wind, as you say,” says I. I reshaped the top. “You’ll see for yourself now,” says I, “that it won’t be puffing on the east wind, as you say. I’ll go easy on you, as you say, as you’re a neighbour and all that. One pound and five shillings.” “You’ll get it next fairday, with the help of God,” says she. The fairday came and went, but I didn’t get my one pound, five shillings. Oh, the devil a word, good or bad, did I hear about my money from Caitríona …”

— Isn’t that what I told you, Dotie, that Caitríona never paid for anything! Honest!

— Why should I pay that crook — Road-End Man — for fixing a few little boards on the chimney top to beckon the wind to them! Even though the wind was from the west it was never as short of breath as it was the day the priest came. It would draw the child off the hearth on a west wind before that. When Road-End Man was finished with it, it wouldn’t draw at all on any wind but the east wind. I offered to pay him if it would draw on every wind like Nell’s chimney. But he wouldn’t touch it any more. Nell, the pussface, gave him a backhander …

— That’s the truth, Caitríona. Road-End Man would accept a backhander.

— Any man who stole my seaweed.

— Now, to be fair, Caitríona, it wasn’t Road-End Man, bad and all as he was, who was responsible for your chimney, but Nell who got the St. John’s Gospel from the priest for her own chimney …

— And sent the smoke over to Caitríona’s, as she tried to do with Big Brian …