Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  Look out for yourself with Nóra Sheáinín. I could tell you things, Master … Oh! Put that bit of news out of your mind, Master, and don’t let it bother you in the least … I’m inclined to agree with you, Master. It was more than letters brought Billyboy round the house … Ah! Master, she was always a little bit flighty, your wife was …

  5

  —… They were sent over as plenipotentiaries to arrange a peace treaty between England and Ireland …

  —I tell you that’s a damned lie. They were only sent as delegates, and they exceeded their authority. They committed treachery and the country bears the marks of it …

  —… A bald-faced mare. She was the best. It was no bother to her to pull a ton and a half …

  —… By the oak of this coffin, Nóra Sheáinín, I gave Caitríona the pound …

  —… “Mártan Sheáin Mhóir had a daughter

  And she was as broad as any man

  She’d stand away up on a height …”

  —… Oh! To hell with your England and her markets. Worried you are about the few pence you have in the bank. Hitler is my darling! …

  —… Now Cóilí, I am a writer. I have read fifty books for every book you have read. I’ll have the law on you, Cóilí, if you suggest that I’m not a writer. Did you read my last book, The Jellyfish’s Vision? … You did not, Cóilí? … I beg your pardon, Cóilí. I’m very sorry. I had forgotten that you cannot read … It is a mighty powerful story, Cóilí … And I have three and a half novels, two and a half plays and nine and a half translations sent to An Gúm,18 and another short story and a half, The Setting Sun. It is my greatest regret that The Setting Sun was not in print before I died …

  If you intend to take up writing, Cóilí, remember that it is taboo for An Gúm to publish anything that a daughter would hide from her father … I beg your pardon, Cóilí. I am sorry. I thought you intended to write. But for fear you should ever experience that divine urge … There is not a single Irish speaker who does not feel it at some time of life … The elements on these western shores are to blame, they say … I’ll give you a few bits of advice. Now, Cóilí, don’t be unmannerly. It is a moral obligation on every Irish speaker to find out if he has the gift of writing, especially the gift of short-story writing, of drama and of poetry … These last two gifts are much commoner even than the gift of short-story writing, Cóilí. Poetry, for example. All you have to do is start writing from the bottom of the page up … or else start writing from right to left, but that is not nearly as poetic as the other way …

  I beg your pardon, Cóilí. I am extremely sorry. I forgot that you cannot read or write … But the short story, Cóilí … I will explain it to you like this. You have drunk a pint of porter, have you not? … Indeed, I understand … You often drank a pint of porter … Never mind how many you drank, Cóilí …

  —I drank two score pints and two, one after the other …

  —I know that … Wait a minute now … Good man! Let me speak … Cóilí, have an ounce of sense and let me speak … You have seen the head on a pint of porter. Froth, is it not? Worthless dirty froth. And yet, the more of it there is the greedier people are for the pint. And when a person is gulping the pint he’ll drink it dregs and all, insipid though it be. Do you see now, Cóilí, the beginning and middle and end of the short story? … Mind you don’t forget, Cóilí, that the end must leave a bitter taste in your mouth, the taste of the divine hangover, the urge to steal fire from the gods, the longing for another bite at the forbidden fruit … Look at the way I would have ended The Re-Setting Sun, which I was working on when I dropped dead with a spasm of writer’s cramp:

  “After the girl had uttered that fateful word, he turned on his heel and went out of the stuffy room into the evening air. The western sky was darkened by thick clouds pressing in from the sea. And a little hang-dog sun was going to ground behind Old Village Hill …” That is the tour de force, Cóilí: “little hang-dog sun going to ground”; and I may as well remind you that after the last word the final line must be generously sprinkled with dots, writer’s dots as I call them … But perhaps you would have the patience, Cóilí, to listen while I read you the whole work …

  —Hold on now, my good man. I’ll tell you a story: “Long long ago there were three men …”

  —Cóilí! Cóilí! There’s no artistry in that story: “Long long ago there were three men …” That’s a hackneyed beginning … Now, Cóilí, hold on a minute. Allow me to speak. I consider myself a writer …

  —Shut your mouth, you windbag. Go ahead, Cóilí …

  —“Long long ago, and a long time ago it was, there were three men. There were three men long ago …”

  —Yes, Cóilí …

  —“There were three men long ago … Indeed there were three men long ago. Apart from that, we don’t know what became of them …”

  —… “And by my book,19 Jack the Scológ20 …”

  —… Five times eleven is fifty-five; five times thirteen … five times thirteen … we don’t learn that one at all … Now then, Master, don’t I remember them! … Five times seven, is that your question, Master? Five times seven is it? … five times seven … seven … hold on a tick now … five times one is five …

  6

  —… But I don’t understand it, Muraed. Honest Engine,21 I don’t. She gave me a bad name with the Big Master, Caitríona Pháidín did. I wouldn’t mind but I never did anything to deserve it. You well know, Muraed, I never interfere in anybody’s business, being always busy with culture. And I have a fine flashy cross over me too. Smashing, as the Big Master says. To insult me, Muraed! …

  —It’s time you were well used to Caitríona’s tongue, Nóra Sheáinín …

  —But honest, Muraed …

  —… “Like an eel in a net Caitríona was set

  To grab by the hair Nóra Sheáinín.”

  —But she’s forever getting at me, time after time. I don’t understand it. Honest …

  —… “Ere the morning grew old Nóra Sheáinín came over,

  Into Tríona she tore in the guise of a shark …”

  — “My fine gentle daughter, if she married your Pádraig,

  Her dowry put order and shape on your shack …”

  — “Caitríona, you’re shameless, you’re mean and outrageous,

  You tried to defame me and ruin my name …”

  —… Her lies, Muraed! Honest to God! I wonder what she said to Dotie … Dotie! … Dotie! … What did Caitríona Pháidín say to you about me? …

  —God bless us and save us forever and ever. I don’t know who ye are at all. Isn’t it a pity they didn’t take my earthly remains back east of Brightcity and lay me down with my own people in Temple Brennan, on the fair plains of East Galway …

  —Dotie! I told you before, that sort of talk is “sentimental drivel.” What did Caitríona say? …

  —She said the most vindictive thing I’ve ever heard, about her own sister Nell. “May no corpse come into the graveyard ahead of her!” she said. You wouldn’t hear talk like that on the fair plains of East Galway …

  —Dotie! But what did she say about me? …

  —About your daughter …

  —… “She had no bodice or a wedding garment

  But what I bought her from out my purse …”

  —She said you were of the Filthy-Feet Breed and infested with fleas …

  —Dotie! De grâce …

  —That sailors used to be …

  —Parlez-vous français, Madame, Mademoiselle …

  —Au revoir! Au revoir! …

  —Mais c’est splendide. Je ne savais pas qu’il y avait une …

  —Au revoir. Honest, Muraed, if Dotie didn’t know me she’d have believed those lies … Dotie! “Sentimentality” again. You are my fellow-navigator on the boundless sea of culture, Dotie. You should be able to filter every misjudgement and every prejudice out of your mind, as Clicks put it in Two Men and a Powder-puff …

  —… It wa
s the Poet composed it, I’d say …

  —Oh, was it that cheeky brat? …

  —Indeed then, it was not. He wouldn’t be able to. It was Big Micil Ó Conaola composed it:

  “Nursing an old Yank there was Baba Pháidín

  And no finer damsel could be found in Maine …”

  —Honest, Muraed, I have forgotten everything concerning Caitríona’s affairs on the plain above us. Culture, Muraed. It elevates the mind to the lofty peaks and opens the fairy palaces in which is stored the protoplasm of colour and sound, as Nibs says in Sunset Tresses. One loses all interest in the paltry trivia of doleful life. A glorious disorder has filled my mind for some time now, brought on by an avalanche of culture …

  —… “And no finer damsel could be found in Maine.

  She came home dressed in gaudy clothing

  For she coaxed the hoard from the grey-haired dame …”

  —… Baba Pháidín never married, as she was looking after the old hag ever since she went to America. What do you think but didn’t the old hag leave her all her money—or almost all—when she was dying … Baba Pháidín could fill every grave in this graveyard with golden guineas, Dotie, or that’s the reputation she has …

  —… Cóilí himself made up that rigmarole. Who else:

  “‘Oh, Baba my dear,’ said Caitríona’s cat,

  ‘Don’t heed her my dear,’ said the cat of Nell.

  ‘If I got the gold,’ said Caitríona’s cat,

  ‘It’s mine now my dear,’ said the cat of Nell.”

  —Caitríona would sooner do Nell out of Baba’s will than get a thousand leases on her own life …

  —… “‘I’ve a lovely pocket,’ said Caitríona’s kitten,

  ‘I’ve a lovely pocket,’ said the kitten of Nell.”

  “‘For an old hag’s money,’ said Caitríona’s kitten,

  ‘You’ve no promise from Baba,’ said the kitten of

  Nell …”

  —She had all the schoolmasters for years back worn out with writing to America for her …

  —And Mannion the Counsellor …

  —The Big Master told me he wrote very cultural letters for her. He picked up a lot of Americanisms from the cinema …

  —The time he used to bring the Schoolmistress into Brightcity in the motor car …

  —What’s galling Caitríona now is that she died before Nell. When I was alive I often heard her going along the boreen muttering to herself, “I’ll bury Nell before me in the graveyard clay” …

  —… Tell the truth, Cóilí. Was it yourself made up that rigmarole?

  —It was Big Micil Ó Conaola composed it. It was he composed “The Song of Caitríona” and “The Song …”

  —… But Nell is still alive. She’ll get Baba’s inheritance now. There’s no other brother or sister but herself …

  —Don’t be so sure of that, Muraed. Baba was very fond of Caitríona.

  —Do you know what my better half used to say about the Páidín clan: “Weathercocks,” he’d say. “If one of them went to the fair to buy a cow he’d come home in half an hour with a donkey. And the first person to pass some remark about the donkey, he’d say to him: ‘I wish I’d bought a cow instead of that old lazybones of a donkey! She’d be of more use …’”

  —… “Would you yourself come home with me?

  There’s room beneath my shawl;

  And by my book, Jack the Scológ,

  We’ll have songs forevermore …”

  —… Why would it be a peculiar nickname for a person, Dotie … Yes. “Jack the Scológ.” He’s up there above the townland where Caitríona and myself lived … I saw the Scológ himself, Jack’s father … The Scológ. He was one of the Ó Fíne clan by right … It’s no laughing matter, Dotie … Dotie! “Scológ” is as good as “Dotie” any day of the year. Let me tell you that even if you are from the fair plains of East Galway we weren’t hatched out under a hen either …

  —De grâce Marguerita …

  —… “‘I’ll marry Jack,’ said Caitríona’s dog,

  ‘I’ll marry Jack,’ said the dog of Nell …”

  —Caitríona refused many a man. Big Brian was one of them. He had a tract of land, and a wealth of stock on it. Her father asked her to move in there, but she wouldn’t have given the potato-water for him.

  —… Begin that song again and sing it properly …

  — “Up got Son of Scológ …”

  —… You wouldn’t think God had put a soul into Jack the Scológ until he began to sing. But if you heard his voice just once it’d haunt you for the rest of your life. I don’t know how to put it now …

  —A dream of music.

  —That’s it, Nóra. Like a strange dream, exactly. You’re in distress on a clifftop. The abyss yawns beneath you. You’re trembling with fear … Then you hear Jack the Scológ’s voice coming up to you out of the depths. The singing overcomes your fear. You’re letting yourself go … Feeling yourself sliding down … down … to draw closer to that voice …

  —Oh my, Muraed! How thrilling! Honest …

  —I never saw anyone who could remember which song it was she heard Jack the Scológ sing. We’d forget everything but the passion he could put into his voice. There wasn’t a young woman in the neighbouring townlands who wasn’t wearing the rugged path smooth up to his house, tracing his footprints. I often saw young women above on the bogs, and as soon as they got a sight of Jack the Scológ on his own bog or working round the house, they’d be stealing away, crawling through mud-holes and marshes for love of hearing him singing to himself. I saw Caitríona Pháidín doing it. I saw her sister Nell doing it …

  —Smashing, Muraed! The eternal triangle is the cultural name for that …

  —… “Up got Son of Scológ in the morning with the day,

  And flirting after women he headed for the fair …”

  —… It was indeed on the Day of the Great Pig Fair that Nell Pháidín and Jack the Scológ eloped. Her people were raging, for all they could do about it. I don’t know if you had that custom in East Galway, Dotie, that the eldest daughter must marry first …

  —… “She carried him through swamp-holes,

  Through marshes and through mud,

  And no one cared but curlews

  That were driven off their brood …”

  —Up on the moor Jack lived, with nothing but wasteland and quagmires …

  —Well, Muraed Phroinsiais, I never in all my life saw a path as rocky as the one up to the Scológ’s house. Didn’t I twist my ankle that night coming home from the wedding …

  —… You did, because you made a glutton of yourself there, as you often did …

  —… The night before the wedding in Páidín’s, Caitríona was stuck in a corner of the back room, with a face on her as long as a shadow at midnight. There was a bunch of us there. Nell was there. She started a bit of fun with Caitríona: “Bedamn, Caitríona, but I think you should marry Big Brian,” says she. Caitríona had refused him before that …

  —I was there, Muraed. “I’ve got Jack,” says Nell. “We’ll leave Big Brian for you, Caitríona.”

  —Caitríona went crazy. She tore out, and she wouldn’t go near the room again till morning. Nor would she go near the chapel next day …

  —I was cutting a ropeful of heather that day, Muraed, and where did I see her but wandering about up in the marsh at Yellow Hillock, even though the wedding was going on in the Scológ’s house …

  —She didn’t set foot across the threshold of Jack the Scológ’s that day or any day since. You’d think Nell had the spotted plague the way Caitríona used to pass her by. She never forgave her about Jack …

  —… “Briany is handsome, with land, stock and wealth,

  And outside of marriage he won’t get his health …”

  —… But in spite of all his wealth that same Big Brian was a complete failure at getting a wife. Devil a bone in his body but came asking Caitríona again …

&n
bsp; —… “‘By the devil,’ says Tríona, ‘Here’s a fine pig for scalding,

  The kettle off the fire, to welcome the stalwart.’”

  —The pot-hook is what they used in cases like that east of Brightcity. The time Peats Mac Craith came …

  —That mode of refusal is found west of Brightcity too, Dotie. Honest. Myself, for example …

  —Did you hear what the Tailor’s sister did when some old loafer from Wood of the Lake came in asking her to marry him? She got a long knife out of the chest and began to sharpen it in the middle of the house. “Hold him down for me,” she said …

  —Oh, she would do that indeed. The One-Ear Breed …

  —What do you think, after all that, but didn’t Caitríona marry Seán Thomáis Uí Loideáin from our neighbourhood without a yea or a nay when he came to ask for her …

  —By God, Muraed, Seán Thomáis was too good for her …

  —He had a big holding of the best sandy land …

  —And he was the man to work it too …

  —He had a grand big house …

  —It was the place she coveted, of course. To have more means and money than Nell. To be close enough for Nell to see, every day that dawned, that Caitríona had more means and money than she herself would ever have …

  —… “‘I’ve a fine big haggard,’ says Caitríona’s kitten,

  ‘I have strippings22 of cows, butter and fat …’”

  — “‘I’m gentle and useful, loving and decent,

  Which cannot be said for Nell’s little cat …’”

  —To show Nell it wasn’t Caitríona that drew the short straw, and that Nell was welcome to the leavings and the longings. From Caitríona’s very own mouth I heard it. That was her revenge …

  —Oh my, but that’s an interesting story. I think I won’t bother with the Big Master’s reading session today … Hey, Master … We won’t bother with the novelette today … I have other intellectual work on hand. Au revoir …

  —Caitríona was hard-working and thrifty and clean in Seán Thomáis Uí Loideáin’s house. I should know it, since I lived next door to her. The rising sun never caught her in bed, and her card23 and her spinning-wheel often chattered into the night …