Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —The One-Ear Breed were known for stabbing people cleanly! …

  —… A white-faced mare … She was the best …

  —… By the oak of this coffin, Siúán the Shop, I gave Caitríona Pháidín the pound …

  —… I left it at that. Went up to the bookie’s around three o’clock. “‘Golden Apple,’” I said. “It could win,” putting my hand in my pocket and turning it out. Not a farthing in it …

  The clock struck three. The race was run. “Golden Apple” won: a hundred to one. Drew my five pounds. The young girl gave me that smile again: a bright smile from a young heart without guile. That meant more to me than the five pounds. “I’ll buy you sweets, or I’ll take you to the pictures or a dance … or would you prefer …” I felt embarrassed and didn’t finish the sentence. “I’ll meet you outside the Plaza at a quarter past seven,” said I.

  Went home. Shaved, cleaned, washed, preened myself. Didn’t even have a celebratory drop. I had too much respect for that sweet smile from a young heart without guile …

  Went to the Plaza at seven. Broke my five pounds buying her a box of chocolates. The chocolates would bring more joy to that young heart without guile, and her smile would be like a rose in the first virginal sunrays of morning. What a shame I’m such a tough myself! …

  —Hold on now till I read you the Declaration issued by Éamon de Valera to the people of Ireland: “People of Ireland …”

  —Hold on yourself till I read you the Declaration issued by Arthur Griffith to the people of Ireland: “People of Ireland …”

  —… I drank two score pints and two that night, one after the other. And I walked home afterwards as straight as a Spanish reed … as straight as a Spanish reed, I tell you. I pulled a calf out of the speckled cow, that had been stuck between its bones for a couple of hours. I drove the old donkey out of Curraoin’s oats … and it was me who tied Tomáisín. I had taken off my boots on the hearth and I was just going on my knees to say a smattering of prayers, when in comes the little girl. There wasn’t a puff of breath in her. “My Mammy says you’re to come over straight away,” she says, “the madness has struck Daddy again.”

  “The devil take his madness, doesn’t he pick the right time for it,” says I, “and me just about to say my prayers. What the hell is wrong with him this time?”

  “Poteen whiskey,” says she.

  I went over. He was stark raving, and the whole lot of them not able to tie him. A spineless lot, it has to be said.

  “Come on!” says I. “Get me the rope quickly before he grabs the hatchet. Can’t you see he’s got his eye on it …”

  —I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …

  —The game was ours.

  —It mightn’t have been. Only for the mine flattened the house …

  —… “I washed my face with the dew,

  And the comb I had was the wind …”

  It’s still not right, Curraoin. There’s a limp in that line. Hold on now:

  “I washed my face with the dew …”

  That much is beautiful, Curraoin. I used it before in The Golden Stars. Hold on now … Listen now, Curraoin:

  “I washed my face with the dew,

  And I combed my hair with the wind …”

  That’s perfect. I knew I’d get it right in the end, Curraoin … Are you listening now?

  “I washed my face with the dew,

  And I combed my hair with the wind …

  The rainbow was a lace in my shoe …”

  Hold on, Curraoin … hold on … Eureka! …

  “And the Pleiads held up my trews …”

  I knew I’d get it, Curraoin. Listen to the whole verse now …

  —May the devil pierce you and don’t be annoying the people! You have me demented with your trivial verses for the past two years. I have other things on my mind, though if it’s God’s will I shouldn’t complain: my eldest son is keeping company with Road-End’s daughter, and that wife of mine at home could be on the point of handing over the big holding to him. And, for all I know, Glutton’s donkey or Road-End’s cattle could be in my oats at this very moment.

  —’Tis true for you, Curraoin. Why in the name of God didn’t they bury the dirty scoundrel in the east cemetery. That’s where Maidhc Ó Dónaill is buried, the man who made “The Song of the Turnip” and “The Chicken’s Contention with the Grain of Oats” …

  —And Big Micil Ó Conaola, who made “The Song of Caitríona” and “The Song of Tomás Inside” …

  —And “The Lay of the Cats.” “The Lay of the Cats” is a fine piece of work. You wouldn’t be capable of composing it, you impudent brat …

  —… Eight times six, forty-eight; eight times seven, fifty-four … You’re not listening at all, Master. Your mind is wandering these days … I’m making no progress! … Is that what you said, Master? It’s no wonder, Master, and the way you’re neglecting me … Tell me this … How many tables are there, Master? … Is that all? Oh, if that’s all, then! Arrah, I thought they went up to a hundred … to a thousand … to a million … to a quadrillion … We have plenty of time to learn them in any case, Master. I’ve always heard it said that we owe the clay many a day. He who made Time made plenty of it …

  —… God help us! A pity they didn’t take my earthly remains east of Brightcity and lay me down with my own people in Temple Brennan on the fair plains of East Galway! The clay is gentle1 and welcoming there; the clay is crumbly and smooth there; the clay is friendly and tender there; the clay is protective and cosy there. The decay of the grave would not be decay there; corruption of the flesh would not be corruption there. But clay would receive clay; clay would kiss and caress clay; clay would coalesce with clay …

  —She’s having another attack of “sentimentality” …

  —You never saw anyone so full of life till this foolishness comes over her …

  —Her nature, God help us! Caitríona is much worse, once she starts talking about Nell and Nóra Sheáinín …

  —Arrah, Caitríona is completely out of order. Big Brian was right when he called her a jennet2 …

  —Big Brian was not right. Honest, indeed he was not …

  —What’s this? Have you turned against the streak of misery too, Nóra? …

  —Honest, he was not right. The jennet is a very cultured animal. Honest, it is. The Redheads in Donagh’s Village had a jennet when I was going to school long ago, and he used to eat raisin bread out of the palm of my hand …

  —Going to school long ago! Nóra Filthy-Feet going to school! Raisin bread in Mangy Field! O woe, woe forever! Muraed, did you hear what Nóra Filthy-Feet, daughter of Seáinín Robin, said? Oh, I’ll explode …

  2

  … Hey! Nóra Sheáinín! … Nóra Sheáinín! … Nóra Filthy-Feet! … You weren’t content to leave the nasty habit of telling lies above ground but you brought it underground with you too. Indeed, the whole graveyard knows that the devil himself—we renounce him!—gave you the loan of his tongue when you were on your mother’s breast and you’ve used it so well ever since that he never asked for it back …

  As for giving a hundred and twenty pounds of dowry to that little scold of a daughter of yours … Well! Well! … A woman who didn’t have a stitch of clothes to cover herself with on her wedding day, until I bought an outfit for her … A hundred and twenty pounds from Nóra Filthy-Feet … There wasn’t ever a hundred and twenty pounds in the whole of Mangy Field. Mangy Field of the Puddles. I suppose you’re too posh now to milk the ducks … A hundred and twenty pounds … A hundred and twenty fleas! No, more likely a hundred thousand fleas. That was the most plentiful livestock the Filthy-Feet Breed ever had. Indeed then, Nóirín, if fleas were dowry that stupid little fool who married your daughter would have so many lambs he would have been knighted nine times over. She brought a good flock of them into my house with her …

  It was a day of woe for me, Nóirín, the first day I ever saw yourself or your daughter under the roof of my house … T
he scrawny little thing, and that’s exactly what she is. Indeed, Nóra, she’s no credit to you: a woman who’s not able to put a wrap around her child or make her husband’s bed, or clean out the week’s dead ashes or comb her matted head … It was she who put me in the clay two score years before my time. She’ll put my son there too before long, if she doesn’t come here herself on her next childbirth to gossip and keep you company.

  Arrah! Haven’t you the mocking gob today, Nóirín … “We’ll be …” How did you put it? … “We’ll be O.K. then.” … O.K.! That’s like your cheeky rump alright, Nóirín … “We’ll be O.K. then. You’ll have your son and I’ll have my daughter, and all of us will be together again below ground as we were above.” … That devil’s plaything in your gob is full of mockery today, Nóirín …

  When you were in Brightcity … I’m a liar, you say? You’re the one who told a damned lie, Nóirín Filthy-Feet …

  —Stump!

  —Bitch!

  —Whore!

  —Filthy-Feet Breed … Duck milkers …

  —Do you remember the night Nell was sitting in Jack the Scológ’s lap? “We’ll leave Big Brian for you, Caitríona …”

  —I never sat in a sailor’s lap anyway, thanks be to God …

  —You never got the chance, Caitríona … I’m not a bit afraid of you. Your villainy and lies won’t burn a hole in my coat. I’m better known and respected in this graveyard than you are. I have a fine decent cross over me, which is more than you have, Caitríona. Smashing! Honest! …

  —Oh indeed, if you have, it wasn’t your money that paid for it. You can thank that fool of a brother of yours who put it up when he was home from America. It would take a long time to make up the price of a cross from Mangy Field’s duck milk … What are you saying, Nóra? Out with it … You haven’t the courage to say it to me … I have no culture? … I have no culture, Nóirín? … I have no culture, then! That’s true for you, Nóirín. It’s on the Filthy-Feet Breed I’ve always seen the culture of lice and nits …

  What’s that you say, Nóirín ? … You don’t have time to swap insults with me … that you were wasting your time swapping insults with me. Ababúna! You have no time to be swapping insults with me, Nóirín … You have other things to do, then! Now, what do you know? You’ve got to listen to another piece of … what did she call it, Master … Master … He doesn’t hear me. His head is in a whirl since he heard about his wife … yes, on my soul … novelette … this is the time the Master reads a bit of the … novelette to you every day? If the Master heeded me … Oh, Mary Mother of God! … A novelette in Mangy Field … A novelette among the Filthy-Feet Breed … Muraed! Hey, Muraed! Do you hear? A novelette among the Filthy-Feet Breed … I’ll explode! … I will! …

  3

  —… By the oak of this coffin, Glutton, I gave Caitríona Pháidín the pound …

  —… God help us forever and ever! My death would not be death to me there: for it is the warm soft clay of the plain there; robust clay that can be gentle with the strength of its strength; proud clay that does not need to decompose, decay or dissolve the treasure of its womb to fertilise itself; rich clay that can afford to be generous with its takings; productive clay that can change and reshape all it eats and drinks without consuming, deforming and despoiling it … It would recognise its own …

  The pleasant buttercup would grow on my grave there, the gracious hemlock, the conceited primrose and the tough bent-grass …

  I’d have gentle birdsong above me instead of the cacophony of breakers, of waterfall or sedge, or of the cormorant glutting itself on a school of fry. Oh! Clay of the plain, oh! To be under your mantle …

  —The “sentimentality” has come over her again …

  —… Pearse3 said, O’Donovan Rossa said, Wolfe Tone said it was Éamon de Valera was right …

  —Terence McSwiney said, James Connolly said, John O’Leary said, John O’Mahony said, James Fintan Lalor said, Davis, Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Sarsfield said it was Arthur Griffith was right …

  —Owen Roe O’Neill said it was Éamon de Valera was right …

  —Red Hugh O’Donnell said it was Arthur Griffith was right …

  —Art MacMurrough Kavanagh said it was Éamon de Valera was right …

  —Brian Bórú, Malachy, Cormac MacArt, Niall of the Nine Hostages, the two Patricks, Brigid and Columkille and all the saints of Ireland, no matter where they are—on earth, at sea or in the sky—and all the martyrs of Erin from Dunkirk to Belgrade, and Finn McCool, Oisín, Conán, Caoilte, Deirdre, Gráinne, Ollav Fódla and Gael Glas said it was Arthur Griffith was right …

  —You’re a damned liar, they did not …

  —I say you are the liar, and they did. The truth is bitter …

  —You murdered me treacherously, and me fighting for the Republic …

  —It served you right. Neither the Law of God nor that of the Church permits the attempted overthrow by force of a lawful government …

  —I have nothing to do with politics myself, but I do have a fondness for the Old IRA4 …

  —You coward you, under the bed you were when Éamon de Valera was fighting for the Republic …

  —You spineless thing, under the bed you were when Arthur Griffith was …

  —… “And flirting after women he headed …”

  —… Hold on now, my good man, till I finish my story:

  “‘… Send out to me John Jameson,5

  And now I am without that same son.’

  “A fairy lover abducted John Jameson into the fairy fort, out of which there was no deliverance. At that very time the Emerald Isle of Ireland, its islands and territorial waters ran dry, all except two bottles of Portuguese sparkling water washed ashore on the Blasket Island,6 and a keg of Spanish holy water given off a trawler to a fisherman on Brannock Island7 in exchange for half a hundredweight of potatoes …

  “The fair maid of the brown tresses was in Dublin at that time …”

  —The version I heard from the old folks in our own village, Cóilí, is that it was a nurse in Brightcity …

  —A woman in a bookie’s office is what I heard …

  —Oh! How could that be? She was up in Dublin. Where else! “I have an arrow,” she said, “that will release John Jameson if he promises to give me as dowry a hundred and one big barrels, a hundred and one puncheons, and a hundred and one hogsheads of the best poteen whiskey …”

  —Now Glutton, where’s your two score pints and two? …

  —Cóilí, hold on a moment. This is how I would have finished that other story if I hadn’t died …

  —… When Hitler invades England he’ll make them eat dead cats …

  —Indeed, the world will be at its worst ever then. Not a cow nor a calf will be worth a penny. May God help the poor if the price of cattle falls any further. I have a bit of land at the top of the village and it’ll never be beaten for fattening cattle. It’ll go to waste, I’m afraid, if the price of stock slumps …

  —“It’ll never be beaten for fattening cattle!” If you let two rabbits loose on all the land in your village, and left it to themselves for five years, there’d still be only two rabbits, if even the two …

  —You had no blood in you, Peadar. I wish it had been me. By the book, I’d have given him a good answer. If I had a pub, Peadar, and black heretics came in insulting the faith like that …

  —… We—the Half-Guinea8 Corpses—are putting forward a joint candidate in this election too. Like the other two groups—the Pound Corpses and the Fifteen-Shilling Corpses—we have nothing to offer our fellow corpses. But we are taking part in this Graveyard Election because we—the Half-Guinea Party—have a policy also. If an election is of benefit to the community above ground it should be of benefit to us here. Election is the essence of democracy. We here in the graveyard clay are the true democrats.

  The Pound Corpses are the Party of the Gentry, the Party of Conservatism, the Party of Big Shots, the Party of Reactionaries, the
Party of Restraint and Control. The Fifteen-Shilling Corpses are the Party of Commerce and Trading, of the Poets and Artists, of the Bourgeoisie and the Middle Classes, of Property and Wealth. But we, Fellow Corpses, are the Party of the Labouring Class, of the Proletariat, the Rural Rent-Payers, the Party of the Unfree and the Bond Tenants and the Old Thatched Cabin, the Party of the Great Dispossessed: “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” It is our task to fight for our rights boldly and fearlessly as becomes ex-men (knocking of skulls in the Half-Guinea Plot) …

  —… The joint candidate that we—the Fifteen-Shilling Party—put forward in this election is a woman. Don’t let that frighten any of you, friends. Her husband was never a Member of the Irish Parliament. She is a woman who established herself in this cemetery by her own intellect and good sense. Three years ago when she came into the graveyard clay she was as ill-informed as any of those windbags spouting nonsense down there in the Half-Guinea Plot. But in spite of what the Half-Guinea Party says, everybody in this graveyard has equal rights and equal opportunity (knocking of skulls). Our joint candidate is proof of that. She has culture and learning now. My Corpses, I wish to introduce to you our joint candidate … Nóra Sheáinín (great knocking of skulls).

  —Nóra Filthy-Feet! The bitch. Duck milkers … Hey, Muraed! … Hey, Muraed! … Nóra Sheáinín … I’ll explode! … I’ll explode! …

  4

  … Nóra Filthy-Feet standing for election! Good God above, they’ve lost all respect for themselves in this cemetery if the best they can offer is Nóra of the Fleas from Mangy Field … She won’t get in … But then, who knows? Cite, Dotie and Muraed are always talking to her, and Peadar the Pub, and even Siúán the Shop at times. As for the Big Master, of course it’s a public scandal the things he says to her every day … He says they’re in the book, but nobody would have the indecency to put those things in a book: