Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —“Fleet! Fleet!” The Fleet is the big bead on your rosary. Fleet and sailors. Oh! Mother of Mercy tonight, I must have little respect for myself to be talking to you at all, you So-an’-so …

  Interlude Six

  THE KNEADING OF THE CLAY

  1

  I am the Trump of the Graveyard! Let my voice be heard! It must be heard … Here in the graveyard is the autocratic policeman that is darkness. His baton is the melancholy that will not be broken by the sweet smile of a maiden. His bolt is the bolt of insensibility that will not be loosened by the glitter of gold or the smooth words of authority. His eye is the shadow of misfortune across the path through the wood. His judgement is the harsh judgement that no sword of a knight at arms will thwart on the sod of death.

  Above ground Brightness is dressed in his suit of valour. He wears a mantle of sunshine with buttons of roses, hem of sea song, seam of birdsong, tassels of butterfly wings and a belt of stars from the Milky Way. His shield is made of bridal veils. His sword of light is made of children’s toys. His reward of valour is the corn stem that is ripening at the ears, the cloud that is impregnated by the virgin morning sun, the fair maiden whose eyes are alight with love’s young dream …

  But the sap is drying in the tree. The golden voice of the thrush is turning to copper. The rose is fading. The black rust that blunts, rots and decays is infesting the sword edge of the knight.

  Darkness is overcoming brightness. The graveyard demands its due … I am the Trump of the Graveyard. Let my voice be heard! It must be heard …

  2

  —Who have I here? Máirtín Pockface, upon my word! It was time for you to come! I’m a long time here and I was the same age as you … Yes, I’m that same woman, Caitríona Pháidín …

  Bedsores is what you had, you tell me …

  —Caitríona, dear, the bed was very hard. Very hard indeed on my poor buttocks, Caitríona. My back was completely blistered. There wasn’t a shred of skin left on my thighs and I had an old injury in my groin. It was no wonder, Caitríona, dear, after being bedridden for nine months. I couldn’t twist or turn. My son used to come in, Caitríona, and turn me over on my other thigh. “I can’t give my body a proper stretch,” I’d say. “It’s a long time to be bedridden,” I’d say. “A long time laid up never lied,”1 he’d say. Caitríona, dear, the bed was awfully hard on my poor buttocks …

  —Your buttocks were well able for it, Máirtín Pockface. You had some surplus there … If you had bedsores it’s all the better for getting used to the boards here … Bid Shorcha, you said. She’s still above ground. Rather her there than here. Not wishing to demean her, but she was an ugly sight above ground and I don’t think this place would improve her looks much either … You and Bid were vying with each other to see which of you would live longest, you say? Yes, indeed. Yes. That’s how it goes, Máirtín Pockface … And she buried you before her! Those things can’t be helped, Máirtín dear. Bad luck to her, but isn’t she long-lived! She should have died long ago, if she had any shame … That’s true, Máirtín, it’s a great wonder she didn’t get bedsores, she was so fond of the bed. She was sick every day of her life except on funeral days. All the other days she’d be hoarse with a cold. But there’d be nothing wrong with her voice on a funeral day. “Only for my being throaty,” she’d say after the funeral, “I’d be the one to keen him …” The brazen scold! Drawing pensions and half-crowns still, and heaping them into her son’s wife’s apron. As long as she keeps putting money in the apron her son’s wife won’t let a bedsore near her, I’m telling you! There’ll be butter rubbed on that one’s thighs and buttocks … She doesn’t keen anybody now, you say. The spouter! … Red-haired Tom is laid up. He’s another one … The hovel didn’t fall in on Tomás Inside yet, you say … Ababúna! Nell put in a table for him … and a dresser … and a bed. A bed, even! She wouldn’t put a bed in for anybody only for her ill-gotten money. Oh! A stupid judge … Afraid he’d get bedsores in the old bed. Afraid she wouldn’t get his land, Máirtín Pockface …

  Big Brian, you say? That fellow will never die till a jar of paraffin is poured over him and a match put to him. That’s the truth, Máirtín Pockface. That ugly streak of misery won’t get bedsores … He’ll die all of a sudden. True for you. All of a sudden, indeed. May his heap of bones steer clear of us here! …

  What’s that? … Another bad illness in Lower Hillside! That’s nothing new to them, not wishing to demean them. They’re going to be a great asset to this graveyard, indeed! They’ll fatten it and deafen it …

  Our Baba is laid up in America! Had Dad! … What do you mean! Bedsores on that one, Máirtín Pockface! She has thighs twice as fat as yours. And she can afford to keep a soft bed under her, unlike you, Máirtín Pockface … Have an ounce of sense, my good man … You think because you felt your own old bed hard that every bed is hard … May God give you sense, there are soft beds in America for anybody with money … You didn’t hear if she wrote home? You didn’t hear if Nell was with the priest recently? … You may be sure she was, Máirtín. She’ll gobble up the will by hook or by crook … The priest is writing for her? Who else!

  Of course, that schoolmaster who’s writing for our crowd is no use … He has no learning, Máirtín. True for you. Things are not too bad if he doesn’t tell the priest about it … The priest and the schoolmaster often go strolling together, you say … The new road up to Nell’s is nearly finished. Oh, wasn’t that little fool of a son of mine unfortunate when he let her have Flagstone Height! …

  Nell is talking of building a slate-roofed house? A slate-roofed house! May she not live to enjoy her slate-roofed house, then, the cocky bitch! Unless she’s got some of the will already? That crowd in Wood of the Lake got a share before their brother died at all … But, of course, she had the money from the court. She’ll be buried in the Pound Plot now, for certain …

  Jack is still ailing. The poor thing! Oh, didn’t Nell and that lanky lump of a daughter of Big Brian’s play a trick on him with the St. John’s Gospel! You didn’t hear about the St. John’s Gospel! Of course you didn’t! You don’t think they’d tell you about it! …

  Pádraig’s wife up at cockcrow every morning! Good for her! … Lots of calves on Pádraig’s land, did you say? … The wife has taken everything over from Pádraig! She does the selling and buying herself now. Look at that now! And me thinking she’d be here any day! You wouldn’t know anything about a child, of course? … You had enough on your mind. Bedsores … Easily known you’re new here, to be talking like that, Máirtín Pockface. Don’t you know that everyone must have some cause of death, and bedsores are no worse than any other cause.

  Ababúna! You heard that plans for my cross have been abandoned! … Is that what you heard? … Now, Máirtín Pockface, maybe that’s not what you heard, and you picked up the story wrong on account of your bedsores … You heard it was abandoned … That Nell was talking to Pádraig about the cross … You don’t know, for fear of telling a lie, what she said to him. Now, Máirtín Pockface, none of your “fear of telling a lie.” “Fear of telling a lie!” Nell would have no fear of telling a lie about you if it suited her … God blast yourself and your old bed! You won’t be seeing that bed any more. Tell the story straight out. You don’t know how the story went! You had bedsores! Listen here a moment now. Maybe Nell said something like this to my Pádraig: “Faith then, Pádraig dear, you have enough calls on you without a cross …” Oh, Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter said that! Pádraig’s wife said that! … “We’ll be well off in the world before we go buying crosses … many a person as good as her is without a cross … She should be thankful to be buried in a cemetery, even, the way things are nowadays.” She would say that! The Filthy-Feet Pullet! But she learned it all from Nell. May no corpse come into the graveyard ahead of her! … Pádraig won’t pay any heed to them …

  Pádraig’s daughter is at home … Máirín at home! Are you sure she’s not on holidays from school? … She failed at school. She failed
! … She’s not going to be a schoolmistress at all … Oh, bad scran to her! Bad scran to her! …

  Nóra Sheáinín’s grandson from Mangy Field has gone off … On a ship out of Brightcity … He got a job on board … He’s taking after his granny if he’s fond of the sailors …

  Say that again … Say it again … That Nell’s grandson is going to be a priest. The son of Big Brian’s daughter going to be a priest! A priest! That cocky little blackguard going to be a priest … That he’s gone to a seminary … that he wore the soutane at home … And the collar … And a huge great big Prayer Book under his oxter.2 That he was reading his office going up and down the new road at Flagstone Height! You’d think he wouldn’t become a priest straight off like that … Oh, he’s not a priest yet, he’s only going to college. The devil a priest they might ever make of him, Máirtín Pockface …

  Yes, what did Big Brian say? … Don’t be mumbling your words but speak up … You don’t like to, you say! You don’t like to … On account of Big Brian being related to me by marriage! He’s not related to me. He’s related to that cocky sister of mine. Out with it … “My daughter has money to spend on making priests.” “To spend on priests.” The streak of misery! … Out with it, and to hell with you! Hurry up or they’ll have carried you off with them again. Surely you don’t think I’m going to let you into this grave, a man who’s infested with bedsores for the past nine months … “Unlike Caitríona Pháidín’s son …” Out with the rest of it, Pockface … “who hadn’t enough to put a little rag of a college petticoat on his daughter …” Brian the wretch! Oh, Brian the wretch! …

  The devil flay you! You’re mumbling again. Nell sings “Eleanor of the Secrets” going up the new road every day! Clear off, you raw-arsed Pockface. You seldom brought good news, nor did any of your kind….

  3

  —… Do you think this is the War of the Two Foreigners? …

  —… Me giving the Gaelic Enthusiast a word for each pint and he giving me a pint for each word …

  Over and back again the following day. The third day he brought the car to rest his bottom in. The journey over and back was tiring us.

  “Pól, dear,” said my mother to myself that evening, “the hay should be reasonably dry by now.”

  “Arrah, how could it be dry, mother dear?” said I. “It’s impossible to dry that weedy old hay …”

  I was two weeks at it before I made meadow cocks of it. I let it out3 of the cocks again, then turned it, gave it another turn, and then top-turned it.

  That’s how it was when the sudden shower came, as the two of us were in Peadar the Pub’s. I had to let it all out again then to give it some more sun. Then I cleared the ditches, knocked down the stone walls and built them up again. I cut the grass margins, the ferns and the briars. I made gullies. We spent the best part of a month in the field altogether, except that we were over and back to Peadar the Pub’s in the motor car.

  I never saw a decenter man. And he was no dimwit either. He took between twenty and thirty Irish words from me every day. He had lashings of money. A high-ranking job with the Government …

  But one day, when he went over without me, Peadar the Pub’s daughter brought him into the parlour and hoodwinked him …

  I missed him terribly. A week after he left I was laid low with the sickness that killed me … But, Postmistress … Hey! Postmistress … how did you know he hadn’t paid for his lodging? You opened the letter my mother sent up after him to the Government …

  —How did you know, Postmistress, that An Gúm wouldn’t accept my collection of poems, The Yellow Stars? …

  —Indeed, you don’t deserve any sympathy. They’d be published long ago if you took my advice and wrote from the bottom of the page up. But look at me, my short story “The Setting Sun” was rejected by The Irishman, and the Postmistress knew about it …

  —And the Postmistress knew about the advice I gave Concannon about maiming the Kerry team, in the letter I sent him two days after the semi-final …

  —How did you know, Postmistress, what I wrote to the judge about the One-Ear Breed the time I went to law with them?

  —And, Postmistress, how did your daughter, who’s postmistress herself now, know before I knew it myself, that I wouldn’t be allowed into England, and that T.B. was the reason? …

  —You opened a letter Caitríona Pháidín sent to Mannion the Counsellor about Tomás Inside. The whole world knew what was in it:

  “We’ll bring him to Brightcity in a motor car. We’ll make him drunk. If you had a few good-looking girls in the office to excite him, maybe he’d sign over the land to us. He’s very fond of the girls when he’s merry …”

  —Ababúna! …

  —You opened letters a lady in a bookie’s office in Brightcity used to send to the Small Master. You’d have the tips for the horses before he got them …

  —You opened a letter Caitríona Pháidín sent to Big Brian offering to marry him …

  —Ababúna-búna-búna! That I’d marry Brian the wretch …

  —Indeed, Postmistress, I had no reason to be grateful to you. You always had the kettle on the boil in the back room. You opened a letter my son wrote to me from England telling me he married a Jewess. The whole country knew about it, and we never said a word about it. Why would we? …

  —You opened a letter my son wrote to me from England to say he married a black. The whole country knew about it while we didn’t mention it to anybody …

  —I wrote a letter to Éamon de Valera, advising him on the sort of proclamation he should send out to the People of Ireland. You kept it in the post office. It was an awful shame …

  —All the love letters Pádraig Chaitríona wrote to my daughter, you opened them beforehand. I myself never opened one of them without seeing where you had torn it. Honest! They reminded me of the letters I used to get years before. I got the postman to deliver them into my own hand. Foreign fragrance. Foreign paper. Foreign writing. Foreign stamps. Foreign postmarks that were poetry in themselves: Marseilles, Port Said, Singapore, Honolulu, Batavia, San Francisco … Sun. Oranges. Blue seas. Golden complexions. Coral islands. Gold-embroidered mantles. Ivory teeth. Lips that were aflame … I’d press them to my heart. I’d kiss them with my lips. I’d shed a salt tear on them … I’d open them. I’d take out the billet doux. And then, Postmistress, I’d see your clumsy, greasy fingermark on them. Ugh!

  —You opened the letter I sent home to my wife, when I was working on the turf4 in Kildare. There were nine pounds in it. You kept them …

  —Why wouldn’t I? Why didn’t you register it? …

  —Don’t you think the oldest resident of the graveyard should have something to say? Permission to speak. Permission …

  —Indeed, Postmistress, I have no reason to thank yourself or your daughter, or Billyboy the Post who used to give you a hand in the back room. After I came back from London there wasn’t a letter I got from there you didn’t open. There was an affaire de coeur, as Nóra Sheáinín would say. You told the whole country about it. The priest and the Schoolmistress—my wife—heard about it …

  —That’s defamation, Master. If I were above ground I’d have the law on you …

  —The time Baba wrote to me from America about the will, that chatterbox Nell was able to tell Pádraig what she had to say:

  “I haven’t made my will yet. I hope I don’t meet with an accidental death, as you imagined I might in your letter …”

  You opened it, mangy buttocks. You took a backhander from Nell.

  —Not at all, Caitríona Pháidín. The letter about the will wasn’t the one I opened at all; it was the letter O’Brien the Attorney in Brightcity sent you, threatening to sue you within seven days if you didn’t pay Holland and Company for the roundtable you bought five or six years previously …

  —Ababúna! Don’t believe her, the mangy little bitch! Muraed! Muraed! … Did you hear what the Postmistress said? I’ll explode! I’ll explode …

  4


  —… I’ll tell you a story now, my good man:

  “Columkille5 was in Aran the time St. Paul came to visit him there. Paul wanted to have the whole Island to himself.

  “‘I’ll open a pawnshop,’ said Paul.

  “‘Faith then, you will not,’ said Columkille, ‘but I’m telling you now in plain Irish you’ll have to clear off.’

  “Then he spoke to him in the ancient legal language of Féne.6 He spoke to him in Latin. He spoke to him in Greek. He spoke to him in baby-language. He spoke to him in Esperanto. Columkille knew the seven languages of the Holy Ghost. He was the only one to be left that gift by the other apostles when they died …

  “‘Very well,’ said Columkille, ‘if you won’t clear off, in pursuance of the powers invested in me, we’ll solve the problem thus. You’ll go to East Aran and I’ll go to the West End of the island at Bungowla. Each of us will say Mass at sunrise tomorrow. We’ll then walk towards each other, and each of us can have as much of the island as he has walked by the time we meet.’

  “‘It’s a bargain,’ said Paul, in Yiddish. Columkille said Mass and then he walked towards East Aran, which accounts for the old saying, ‘to come on you from the northwest’ …”

  —But, Cóilí, Seán Chite in Donagh’s Village used to say that Columkille didn’t say Mass at all …

  —Seán Chite said that! Seán Chite is a heretic …

  —Seán Chite should mind what he’s saying! Didn’t God—praise be to Him forever!—give a revelation there and then. The sun was up when Columkille was saying Mass. It set again then, and God kept it set till Columkille had walked the island to East Aran. That’s when St. Paul saw it rising for the first time! …

  “‘Clear off now and be quick about it, you Jew-man,’ said Columkille. ‘I’ll leave a castration mark on you, on your way back to the Wailing Wall: I’ll give you a horsewhipping like the one Christ gave you out of the Temple. Have you no shame at all! I wouldn’t mind but you’re so slithery and greasy looking! …’