Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —The devil a word of a lie he said about the slate-roofed houses …

  —Baba left him two hundred pounds in her will, and bloody tear and ’ounds, of course he didn’t take his snout out of the drink since. Nell’s house is too far up from the pubs for him …

  —The useless yoke, Tomás Inside …

  —Useless yoke indeed. That’s the honest truth, Caitríona. Useless yoke indeed. Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t I often say it myself, that he was a useless yoke. Any man who left Nell’s house in a huff because he wasn’t allowed into the motor car …

  —But Beartla, wasn’t he just as good as the rabble who were allowed into it? …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, when Nell first got the motor car he hardly got out of it at all. Taking the air around the countryside with that silly grin on his face every day—to Brightcity, to Lakeside, to Headland Harbour—himself and Big Brian …

  —The streak of misery …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, Peadar Nell couldn’t sit into the car without the two of them sitting in by his thigh. He was trying to earn a bit of money, and it didn’t suit him to have those old scarecrows making their nest in his car. Some say it was the cause of Big Brian’s failing health—being banned from the car. At least it was around that time he began to keep to the house …

  —The wrath of Friday’s King4 on him, but wasn’t it time for him! Blundering Brian was a fine sight in a motor car!

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, wasn’t he as fine a sight in a motor car as Tomás Inside! Road-End’s son hired Peadar Nell one night to bring himself and the priest’s sister to a dance in Brightcity. Tomás Inside had just come home from Peadar the Pub’s, and bloody tear and ’ounds, what do you think he did but sit into the motor car! “I’ll go to the dance too,” he said. “By the docks, there’ll be fine-looking women there.”

  —The old grimacer …

  —He was smoking tobacco for all he was worth, and bloody tear and ’ounds didn’t he throw out a huge gob of spittle! No great remarks were passed, Caitríona, but I heard that Big Brian said afterwards that the priest’s sister had to change her trousers before going to the dance …

  —That was coming to her, the shameless little slut, for getting into nosey Nell’s motor car …

  —Peadar Nell told Tomás to go in home. “By the docks, I won’t,” he said …

  —May God grant him his life and health! …

  —Big Brian’s daughter told him to go in … “By the docks, I’ll go to the dance,” he said.

  —He did right, not to heed ugly Brian’s daughter …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t Road-End’s son grab him by the arse and throw him out head over heels on the road, and give him two good “salamanders”5 of kicks! Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t he go down to your Pádraig’s house, there and then, and he’s sheltering there ever since …

  —That left Nell in a pretty fix! He’ll leave the land outright to Pádraig now.

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, nobody knows who Tomás Inside will leave his patch of land to. When they were going around in the motor car together Big Brian used to be at him to sign it over to his daughter, but to no avail!

  —That’s the stuff for that streak of misery Brian and for mat-haired Nell! You didn’t hear anything about a cross, Beartla?

  —Crosses. Bloody tear and ’ounds, there’s talk of nothing else in the townlands. Seáinín Liam’s cross, Bríd Terry’s cross, Red-haired Tom’s cross, Jack the Scológ’s cross that’s not finished yet … Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, what does it matter beneath the horns of the moon whether a person has a cross or not! “Hoh-roh, my Mary …”

  —You won’t say that, Beartla, when you’ve spent a while here listening to Nóra Sheáinín. You’d think she was the Earl’s mother. But you didn’t hear that Pádraig was to put a cross over me soon?

  —Nell and himself are often away in the motor car, since Jack the Scológ was buried. Business about crosses, or wills …

  —Oh! He won’t do what’s good for him, going around with that sleeky pussface …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, isn’t he thriving, God bless the man! He never had as many cattle on his land. He sold two batches of pigs very recently: huge big pigs with hams as hot as loaves from the oven. Bloody tear and ’ounds, aren’t two children of his going to college …

  —Two ?

  —Two. Yes. The eldest girl and the one after that …

  —May God spare them! …

  —And the one after that again will be going in the autumn, they say. Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t that what Big Brian said! … “Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags …”

  —What did the streak of misery Brian say?

  —“Hoh-roh, my Mary, your wares and your bags and belts …”

  —But what did he say, Beartla?

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, that was a slip of the tongue, Caitríona! “Hoh-roh …”

  —But what harm, Beartla. You know I won’t be able to throw it back in his face. The blessings of God on you, Beartla, and tell me. It’ll do me good …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, it won’t do you any good, Caitríona, any good at all. “Hoh-roh, my Mary …”

  —It’ll do me good, Beartla. You wouldn’t believe the good a bit of news does a person here. The people of this graveyard wouldn’t tell you anything, not even if it brought them back to life again. Jack the Scológ, for example, who’s in the graveyard for the past three weeks. Jack the Scológ! Jack …

  —“Hoh-roh, my Mary …”

  —Ah, tell me. Good man, Beartla Blackleg! … Quickly now. Those people up above us will soon find out this is the wrong grave …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, it doesn’t make any difference to a person which grave his old bones are thrown into …

  —Ah! tell me, Beartla, what Brian the Blubberer said …

  —If there’s going to be trouble, let there be trouble, Caitríona: “Everything’s going well for Pádraig,” he said, “since he left that little bess of a mother of his in that hole back there. A long, long time ago he should have turned a pot upside-down on her, put a red ember under it and have her die like a cat in the smoke …”

  —They’ve swept you off again, Beartla Blackleg! … Jack the Scológ! Jack the Scológ! … Jack the Scológ! …

  3

  —… My heart turned to dust when the Graf Spee6 was sent to the bottom. I was here a week from that day …

  —The mine barely managed to kill us. Only for that, Murchaín would have robbed the Five of Trumps …

  —… To stab me through the edge of my liver. The foul blow was always the hallmark of the One-Ear Breed …

  —… A cold I caught from sweat and sleeping in the open, the time I cycled to Dublin to see Concannon …

  —… I fell off a stack of oats and broke my thigh …

  —A pity you didn’t break your tongue as well! …

  —Wasn’t it a long way up your legs brought you, on a stack of oats!

  —I’ll bet you won’t fall off a stack of oats again. You may be sure you won’t …

  —Only for you fell off a stack of oats you’d die some other way. A horse would kick you; or your legs would give up …

  —Or your man would give you a bad bottle …

  —Or you wouldn’t get enough to eat from your son’s wife, on account of losing the pension for having money in the bank.

  —You may be sure you’d die in any case …

  —Falling is a bad thing …

  —If you’d fallen in the fire as I did …

  —The heart …

  —Bedsores. If methylated spirits had been rubbed on me …

  —You cowardly Siúán! You were the cause of my death. For the want of fags …

  —Your coffee, you ugly Siúán …

  —Faith then, as you said, the cause of death I had was …

  —
Bloody tear and ’ounds, I had no cause of death at all but stretched out, with no life left …

  —The cause of death the Big Master had was …

  —Piteous love. He thought if he died the Schoolmistress wouldn’t consider life worth living without him …

  —No, he thought he’d be doing Billyboy the Post an injustice if he stayed alive any longer …

  —Not at all, it was Caitríona put a curse on him after he wrote a letter to Baba for her. “May no corpse go into the graveyard before that fellow in there!” she said. “Going from table to window …”

  —The cause of death Jack the Scológ had was that Nell shifted him with the St. John’s Gospel …

  —Shut your mouth, you little brat!

  —’Tis true for him. ’Tis true for him. The little bitch got the St. John’s Gospel from the priest …

  —… Shame is what caused your death. Your son having married a black in England …

  —It would be twice as shameful if he had married an Eyetalian as your son did. From that day on, you drank no drop of the milk of good health. I saw you going the road one day. “That man is a goner,” says I to myself. “Rigor mortis is setting in already. Once the news came that his son had married an Eyetalian he began to go downhill. Pure shame. And little wonder …”

  —… Heartbreak is what the East-Side-of-the-Village Man felt about our losing the English market …

  —… That fellow was disgruntled, after spending a whole month without managing to twist his ankle …

  —Big Brian said that Curraoin died of regret that he didn’t manage to make two halves of Glutton’s donkey by splitting it with the adze along the cross on its back, when he found it in his field of oats …

  —I thought it was Road-End’s donkey …

  —May the devil pierce him, it was Road-End’s donkey, but I’d much prefer if it was his daughter instead of the donkey! …

  —Big Colm’s daughter died of …

  —The Lower Hillside epidemic …

  —No fear of that. But once the epidemic hit her nobody but the doctor came near the house, so she couldn’t hear any rumours …

  —You’re insulting the faith. You’re a black heretic …

  —… The Insurance Man was only one letter short of winning the Crossword. That’s what hastened his death …

  —Red-haired Tom’s cause of death was the length of his tongue …

  —What cause did I have? What cause did I have, is it? What cause did I have? It’s a wise man could say …

  —Sweet-talking Stiofán died of regret that he didn’t hear about Caitríona Pháidín’s funeral …

  —… Faith then, as you say, the cause of death I had was the intestines …

  —… Oh! Do you hear him? The intestines indeed! The intestines! Oh! It was God’s revenge that you died, Road-End Man. You stole my turf …

  —… Upset that he wasn’t appointed Chief Inquisitor …

  —… God’s revenge, Peadar the Pub. You were watering the whiskey …

  —I was robbed in your house, Peadar the Pub …

  —And so was I …

  —… God’s justice, Glutton. Drinking two score and two pints …

  —“Nobody can ever say that I’m a windbag,” said I. “Getting between that raging madman and the hatchet! Not only had I not made an Act of Contrition, but I was only on the second bar of the Creed when the little girl came over to the house for me. I’m telling you, Tomáisín’s family, you may thank your lucky stars I had two score pints and two inside me …”

  —… It was God’s revenge on you, Insurance Man, for tricking Caitríona Pháidín and Tomás Inside …

  —Ababúna! He did not. He did not …

  —True for you, Caitríona. I did and I didn’t. The tricks of the trade …

  —… Because An Gúm wouldn’t accept my collection of poems The Golden Stars …

  —You’re better dead than alive, you impudent brat. There on your own in the house by the hearth, praying to the ashes. “Oh, Sacred Ashes! … Oh, congealed blood that was spilled to broil my vitals in the embers! …”

  —He’s a black heretic …

  —… The Irishman was unwilling to publish The Setting Sun. Nobody in the six townlands would listen to me read it …

  —God’s justice for certain! You said Columkille made a prophecy to lead the people astray …

  —… It’s no wonder you died. I heard the doctor say that nobody could stay healthy in those nettly groves of Donagh’s Village …

  —The priest told me that nineteen families used to pay him on the flea-bitten hillocks of your village twenty years ago, but now …

  —Jack the Scológ’s funeral was the cause of my death. I got up off my bed to go and keen him. I collapsed on my way home. I began to perspire. The perspiration was pouring off me from then till the time I expired …

  —Jack the Scológ’s funeral was the cause of my death too. I began to swell up after it …

  —Ababúna! It was no wonder, the way you stuffed that shameless stomach of yours. Tell me, Bid Shorcha the sponger, how long have you been here, and you, Little Cáit the grinner? …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, Caitríona, they were nearly neck and neck with myself coming here. I had six days’ start on Bid Shorcha, and ten days on Little Cáit.

  —That’ll teach them to stay in their beds the next time! Why did they want to go to mat-haired Nell? Curiosity. They wouldn’t come to decent people half as willingly …

  —There’ll be nobody left now to stretch or keen Tomás Inside or Nell Pháidín …

  —Oh! Isn’t it great to have the pussface in a fix! …

  —… It was God’s vengeance for certain that was the cause of Caitríona Pháidín’s death. Honest…

  —You’re a damned liar, Nóirín …

  —He wreaked vengeance on her for robbing Tomás Inside, and for stealing Bríd Terry’s father’s tea, Cite’s potatoes and Seáinín Liam’s periwinkles …

  —Not at all, Nóra Sheáinín, it was the St. John’s Gospel that Nell got from the priest for your daughter. They sent Caitríona to her death instead of her. Only for that, your daughter would have been here on that childbirth. She was sickly all her life till Caitríona died. But then she began to thrive …

  —Ababúna búna! The devil a word of a lie you’re saying! By the book, it never crossed my mind!

  —… The death I’d give Siúán the Shop is to make her drink her own coffee …

  —… To wear her own clogs.

  —The death I’d give you, Glutton, is to make you drink pints of porter till it came out your nostrils, your eyes, your ears, under your nails, in your armpits, under your eyebrows, between your toes, in the hollows at the back of your knees, in your elbows, in the roots of your hair, till you’d sweat the seven perspirations of porter …

  —… The most fitting death for you would be to be let live to see Kerry beat Galway in the All-Ireland final of 1941, with “The Rose of Tralee” being played on Concannon’s backside …

  —… The death I’d give you and every single one of your treacherous One-Ear Breed, is to make you …

  —To make them shout “Up de Valera” …

  —… No, but the death I’d give Road-End Man …

  —To leave him to me till I’d ram one of my thatching scallops down his throat, into his gullet and through that gut of his …

  —To leave him to me till I’d crack him with the lump-hammer he stole from me …

  —I would gladly and promptly cut the head off him with my reaping hook …

  —No more gladly than I would hang him with my rope …

  —… Peadar the Pub? Drown him in his own worthless watered whiskey …

  —… Pól? Make him wait with parched throat for the Gaelic Enthusiast to finish reading the “lesson” …

  —… May the devil pierce himself and his trivial verses! Not to give that impudent brat, that good-for-nothing, anything to eat but his ow
n “Sacred Ashes” …

  —The death Caitríona would give to Nóra Sheáinín would be to make her disinfect herself, especially her feet …

  —Shut your mouth, you brat …

  —… The writer, is it? He insulted Columkille, the measly pup. To be compelled to make as many pilgrimages as the Schoolmistress makes for Billyboy the Post …

  —To make him stuff Sixty-One Sermons down his throat …

  —To make him recant in public his heresy and his insult to Columkille; to make him humbly ask forgiveness for all he has ever written; for all the young innocent maidens led astray by his evil writings; for the many married couples he drove apart; for all the happy families he split up; for being the precursor of the Antichrist. Then to excommunicate him and then burn him at the stake. Nothing less would teach heretics a lesson …

  —… The death the Big Master would give to Billyboy …

  —The thieving scoundrel! The death I’d give that cocky lout …

  —… The Postmistress! To keep her from reading anybody else’s letters but her very own for a week …

  —’Tis true for you. A week without gossip caused Big Colm’s daughter’s death …

  —They say the Schoolmistress said the Big Master’s cause of death was …

  —That he was too good for this world …

  —Faith then, she did. I’ll never forget what she said. “Whom the gods love …”

  —Oh! The harlot! The draggle-haired slut! The cocksnout!

  —De grâce, Master. You’re behaving like Caitríona!

  —… Don’t you remember that I am the oldest inhabitant of the graveyard! Permission to speak …

  —… Little Cáit! To keep her away from corpses …

  —You must be joking! Even the Afrika Korps couldn’t do that, once she got their scent …

  —The death Big Brian would give to Caitríona Pháidín …

  —The thieving cat’s death under the pot! …

  —To make her stand outside her own house; Nell in her flowery hat going past in her motor car; a little crescent of a smile on her face as she looks in at Caitríona, and Nell blowing the horn for all she’s worth …