— … Well, even if there is, it didn’t cost you anything. You can thank that fool of a brother of yours who stuck it up when he was home from America. You’d be a long time getting the money for a cross from milking the ducks in Gort Ribbuck … What’s that you’re saying, Nora? … Spit it out. You haven’t the guts to say it to my face … I have no culture? … I have no culture, Noreen? … I have no culture, imagine that! … Too true for you Noreen. I often saw maggots and crawlies on the Toejam Crowd …
What’s that you’re saying, Noreen? … You don’t have the time to be yacking with me … You’re wasting your time yacking with me. For the love of God! You don’t have the time to be yacking with me … You have something else to do, yea! … Now what’s that you’re saying? You have to listen to another episode of … What’s that she called it, Master? … Master … He doesn’t hear me. He’s totally lost it since he heard about his wife … That’s it, got it … Novelette … This is the time that the Master reads a bit of the … novelette to you every day … If the Master paid any attention to me … Oh, Mary Mother of God! … A novelette in Gort Ribbuck … The Toejam thickos with a novelette … Margaret! Hey, Margaret! Can you hear me? The Toejammy Crowd with a novelette … I’m going to burst! I’ll burst! …
3.
— … I swear, Gut Bucket, by the oak of this coffin, I gave her the pound, I gave Caitriona the pound …
— … God save us all! … My death would not be like death to me there: for I would lie in the soft warm clay of the plain; the potent clay which can afford to be kind with its own brute strength; the proud clay whose treasures do not decay, nor rot, nor wither in its fertile womb; the seasonal clay which finds it easy to dispense its gifts generously; the renewing clay which takes all its nourishment of food and drink making it fruitful again without waste, deformity, or metamorphosis … It would recognise its own …
The gentle buttercup, the moist mossy sward, the pleasant primrose and the creeping grass would grow upon my grave there …
The sweet warbling of the birds would sing above me instead of the chatter of the waves or the clatter of the waterfall or the sigh of the sedge or the shriek of the cormorant as she plunges with lust upon the small sprats of the sea. O clay of the plain, wouldn’t it be good to settle beneath your mantle …
— She’s gone all soppy again …
— … Pearse said, O’Donovan Rossa said, Wolfe Tone said, that Eamon de Valera was right …
— Terence McSwiney said, James Connolly, John O’Leary, John O’Mahony, James Fintan Lawlor, Davitt, Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Sarsfield himself, they all said that Arthur Griffith was right …
— Owen Roe O’Neill said that Eamon de Valera was right …
— Red Hugh O’Donnell said that Arthur Griffith was right …
— Art McMorrough Kavanagh said that Eamon de Valera was right …
— Brian Boru, Malachy, Cormac mac Airt, Niall of the Nine Hostages, the two Patricks, Brigid, Colm Cille, and all the Irish saints wherever they are — on land, sea, or sky, and all the Irish martyrs from Dunkirk to Belgrade, and Finn McCool, Oisin, Conan, Caoilte, Deirdre, Gráinne, the Great Professor of Ireland, and Gael Glas all said that Arthur Griffith was right …
— That’s a lie, they didn’t …
— I’m telling you, you’re a liar. The truth hurts …
— You treacherously murdered me when I was fighting for the Republic …
— You had it coming. Neither God’s law nor that of the Church allows the overthrow of a legitimate Government by force …
— I have no interest in politics, but I have some regard for the old IRA …
— You coward, you were skulking under the bed when Eamon de Valera was fighting for the Republic …
— You old bag, you were under the bed when Arthur Griffith was …
— … “And he went off to market for courting …”
— … Wait now, my good man, wait ’til I finish my story:
“… Now send out to me John James
And I’ll be for ever without him.
“The fairy lover captured John James in the magic palace and there was no escape for him. Just then, all the waters of the grey green Isle of Ireland, including those around its islands and about its shores, dried up, all except for two bottles of Portuguese aerated water that was thrown up on the Blaskets, and a cask of holy water from Spain that a fishing trawler swapped for some fifty potatoes from the Island of Hens’ Eggs …
“The maid of the sweet brown ringlets was in Dublin at exactly that time …”
— The version I heard from old people around here, Coley, was that it was a nurse in the Fancy City …
— A woman in a bookie’s shop, I heard …
— Oh, so what? It was up in Dublin, anyway. What else? “‘I have an arrow,’ she said, ‘that will rescue John James if he promises me a hundred and one large barrels, a hundred and one large casks, and a hundred and one of the best hogsheads as a dowry …’”
— Now, you old Gut Bucket, where are your forty-two pints now? …
— Coley, hang on a moment. This is how I would have ended that matter if I hadn’t died …
— … If Hitler gets as far as England, he’ll have them living on dead cats …
— I’m telling you things weren’t as bad until then. You’d hardly get a penny for a cow or a calf. God help the poor man if the cattle get any cheaper. I have a bit of land up on the top of the town, and there’s no telling what it costs to look after the beasts. It’ll go to waste, as there’s not a tosser to be earned on cattle …
—“There’s no point in rearing cattle!” Take the crap land in your place. Let two rabbits loose, let them at it, and after five years there would still only be two rabbits, even if that many …
— You were a gutless pansy, Peter. If it had been me! I swear to Jaysus, I’d have given him what not. If I had a pub, Peter, if I had a pub and dirty heretics coming in through the doors insulting my religion like that …
— … We, — The Cadavers of the Half Guinea — we are putting forward a joint candidate in this election also. Just like the others — The Cadavers of the Pound Place and the Cadavers of the Fifteen Shillings — we have absolutely nothing to offer to our fellow cadavers. However, we are taking part in this Interred Election because we have a policy — the Half Guinea Party — we have a policy also. If those aboveground can have an election, those of us underground can have one also. There is no democracy without an election. Us, we, here, in the cemetery clay, we are the democrats.
The Pound Cadavers are the party of the rich, of the Conservatives, of the Big Cheese, of the Reactionaries, of what they call Stability. The Cadavers of the Fifteen Shillings are the party of commerce and of merchants, of the professional class, the bourgeoisie, the middle class, property and capital. But we, and us here, my fellow Cadavers, we are the party of the working class, of the proletariat, the peasants, the wage slaves, the nothing nobodies, the utter dependents, the party of the completely dispossessed: the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. We are absolutely bound to stand up for our rights as did the men of old (knocking of skulls and gnashing of teeth clearly heard from the Half Guinea Place) …
— …
— … Our candidate, our joint applicant — our own candidate if you like, the Fifteen Shillings — she’s a woman. Don’t let that bother you. Her husband was never a Teachta Dála, a Member of Parliament. She made a name for herself by her own ability and cop on. When she came down into the dirty dust three years ago she knew as little as any of the windbags that are spouting rubbish down in the Half Guinea Place. But despite what the Half Guinea crowd say, there are absolutely equal rights and opportunities in this graveyard (more knocking and clapping of skulls). Our candidate is the living proof of that. She is cultured and wise. Let me introduce her to you … Nora Johnny! (Even more knocking and clapping of skulls.)