— … “Mártan Sheáin Mhóir12 had a daughter
And she was as broad as any man.”
— … Five times eight is forty; five times nine is forty-five; five times ten … I can’t remember, Master …
— … “He went ranting after women
And he headed for the fair.”
— … I was twenty, and I led with the Ace of Hearts. I took the King off your partner. Murchaín hit me with the Knave. But I had the Nine, and my partner had the fall of the play …
— I had the Queen and a saver.
— Murchaín was about to lead with the Five of Trumps and he would have swept your Nine. Wouldn’t you, Murchaín?
— But then the mine13 blew the house up …
— But the game would have been ours all the same …
— Don’t be so sure of that! Were it not for the mine …
— … God help us, now and forever …
— … A bald-faced mare.14 She was the best …
— Muraed, you can’t hear a finger in your ear in this place. Oh! Blessed Son of God tonight … “A bald-faced mare.” May yourself and herself go bald if you don’t stop talking about her …
— I was fighting for the Irish Republic …
— Nobody asked you to …
— … He stabbed me …
— If he did, it wasn’t in the tongue. A plague of baldness on the pair of you! … You have me demented since I came into the graveyard. Oh, Muraed, if only we could find a quiet nook to ourselves! Above ground, if you didn’t like your company you could leave them and go elsewhere. But alas and alack, the dead will never leave their place in the graveyard clay …
3
… And I was buried in the Fifteen-Shilling Plot after all! In spite of my warnings … Nell must have been grinning all over her face! She’ll go into the Pound Plot herself for sure now. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was Nell got Pádraig to bury me in the Fifteen-Shilling Plot instead of the Pound Plot. She wouldn’t have had the cheek to come next or near the house until she knew I was dead. She never set foot inside my door since the day I got married … unless she sneaked in unknown to me when I was in the throes of death …
But Pádraig is a bit simple. He’d give in to her sweet talk. And Pádraig’s wife would go along with her. “Indeed now, you’re perfectly right, Nell dear. The Fifteen-Shilling Plot is good enough for anybody. We’re not landed gentry …”
The Fifteen-Shilling Plot is good enough for anybody. She would say that. What else would she say? Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter. I’ll take it out on her yet. She’ll be here on her next childbirth for certain. I’ll take it out on her, by God. But in the meantime I’ll take it out on her mother — I’ll take it out on Nóra Sheáinín herself.
Nóra Sheáinín. From over there in Mangy Field! Mangy Field of the puddles. We always heard they milk the ducks there. The upstart! Learning from the Master now! Faith then, it was time for her to start, so it was. A schoolmaster wouldn’t speak to her anywhere else in the world but in the graveyard, and he wouldn’t speak to her even there if he knew who she was …
It’s her daughter has left me here twenty years before my time. I’m worn and wasted for the last six months minding her plague of children. She’s sick when she’s having a child and she’s sick when she’s not. The next one will carry her off for certain … Poor Pádraig would be better off rid of her, whatever way he’d manage without her. Pádraig himself was the unbiddable son. “I’ll never have anyone else, mother,” says he. “I’ll go off to America and let the place go to wrack and ruin, since you’ve no liking for her …”
That was when Baba was home from America. She begged and implored him to marry Big Brian’s Mag. Very concerned indeed she was, for that matter, about the ugly little skin-and-bones. “She took good care of me in America,” says she, “when I was very sick and far away from all my own people. Big Brian’s Mag is a good resourceful young woman, and she has a well-lined purse of her own apart from what I’ll be giving her. I was fonder of you, Caitríona,” she says to me, “than of any of my other sisters. I’d rather see my money in your house than with anyone else belonging to me. I’d like to see your son Pádraig bettering himself. The choice is in your hands now, Pádraig,” says she. “I’m in a hurry back to America, but I won’t go till I see Big Brian’s Mag settled here, since she wasn’t getting her health over there. Marry her, Pádraig. Marry Big Brian’s Mag, and I’ll not leave you in want. I have more than I’ll ever see spent. She’s already asked for by Nell’s son. Nell herself was talking to me about it the other day. She’ll marry Nell’s son if you don’t marry her, Pádraig. Either that or go and marry whoever you want, but if you do …”
“I’d sooner go begging for my keep,” says Pádraig. “I won’t marry any woman on the face of the earth but Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter from Mangy Field …”
And he married her.
I myself had to put a shirt on her back. She didn’t even have the marriage fee, not to mention a dowry. A dowry from the Filthy-Feet Breed! A dowry in Mangy Field of the puddles, where they milk the ducks … He married her, and she’s there with him ever since like the shadow of death. She’s not able to raise a pig or a calf, a hen or a goose, not even the ducks she’d have been used to in Mangy Field. Her house is dirty. Her children are dirty. She can’t work the land or the strand15 …
There was full and plenty in that house until she came into it. I kept it scrubbed clean. There wasn’t a Saturday night in the year I didn’t have every stool and chair and table out by the stream to wash. I spun and I carded. I had yarn and I had sackcloth. I raised pigs and calves and fowl … for as long as I had the energy to do it. And when I hadn’t, I shamed Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter into not letting everything go by the board completely …
But how will the house be now without me? … The bold Nell will be satisfied at any rate … So well she may. She has a good woman in her house for baking and spinning: Big Brian’s Mag. It’s easy for her to laugh at that little fool of a son of mine who has nobody but that untidy slut. When Nell’s going up by our house now, won’t she often be saying: “Indeed we got thirty pounds for the pigs … It was a good fair if you had cattle raised for it. We got sixteen pounds for the two calves … Even though it’s not the laying season our Mag still manages to collect eggs. She had four score eggs in Brightcity16 on Saturday … Four broods of chicks hatched for us this year. All the hens are laying a second time. I set another clutch yesterday. ‘The little clutch of the ripening oats,’ Jack called it when he saw me putting them under the hen …” She’ll have a right swagger in her bottom now, going by our house. She’ll know I’m gone. Nell! The pussface! She is my sister. But may no corpse come into the graveyard ahead of her! …
4
— … I was fighting for the Irish Republic, and you killed me, you traitor. Fighting for England you were, the time you fought for the Free State … An English gun in your hand, English money in your pocket, and an English spirit in your heart. You sold your soul and the heritage of your ancestors for the sake of a “bargain,” for the sake of a job …
— That’s a lie! A criminal you were, rising up against a legitimate government …