Here we go again: “If only I were in England! If only I were in England!” Did I stop you going? … “All the West Headland crowd went over there six weeks ago.” I don’t give a tinker’s curse where the sun may set on the West Headland crowd. There are a couple of those loudmouths here in the cemetery and they’re no great credit to the place …
You tell me you didn’t hear anything about my sister Baba’s will … Nothing at all … How would you, and you so mad keen on going to England? … that’s all you heard about Tomás Inside, that he’s still in his shack … He comes into our house now every time he goes for the pension. Good man! That’s good news … He sometimes gives the pension book to my son’s wife, to collect it for him? Good man! He’s not as limber as he used to be … Oh, he gives the book to Nell and Big Brian’s Mag too! Huh! …
Little Cáit has a bad back, you tell me. May the woman to stretch her be no nearer than the graveyard clay! … Bid Shorcha is very crippled? She’s another one of them! She wouldn’t come to keen me, the sponger! …
You weren’t interested in anything else but going to England … You’d have gone to England two months ago, seeing that the scroungers from Woody Hillside were going! Nobody who ever followed the example of the Woody Hillside scroungers was the better for it. My son’s wife is still sickly, of course …
God save us! … She was fighting with Big Brian’s daughter … with Big Brian’s Mag! … fighting with her! … She went up to Nell’s, and into her house, and caught Big Brian’s daughter by the hair of the head? You’re not serious! … Oh, it wasn’t Little Cáit at all who said that Máirín’s college clothes were bought from Cheap Jack! What was Bríd Terry on about so, the slut? … Oh, it was Big Brian’s daughter who first said it to Little Cáit! It’s in her nature to talk out of turn, the daughter of that streak of misery. And my son’s wife pulled her hair, in her own house … She knocked her to the floor! I thought she didn’t have the spunk, Nóirín Filthy-Feet’s daughter! …
She threw Nell in the fire? She threw Nell in the fire! Good for her! My life on her! Good man! Good man! You’re sure now she threw Nell in the fire? … Nell went to save Big Brian’s daughter, and my son’s wife threw her in the fire! May God spare her health, then! Good man! Good on you, my son. That’s the first news to lift my heart out of this cold lump of clay.
They were at one another’s throat till Pádraig went up in the evening and brought his wife down home! May God forgive him for not leaving them at it! …
Arrah, we’re better off rid of the Middle Mountain crowd. A pack of hungry savages! They won’t leave a bite uneaten in England. But my son’s wife and Big Brian’s Mag will be going to law now …
They won’t? Why not? Faith then, if she’d gone to Brightcity and engaged Mannion the Counsellor to sue for libel she’d put a good hole in Nell’s money. She might take five or six hundred pounds off her … Nell brought the priest in to make the peace! She would … So that’s what Pádraig said about them: “Let nobody heed the scolding of women.” It was Nell put him up to saying that. She knows I’m gone, the toothless bitch! …
What’s that you said? That my son’s wife is very industrious now … She’s a hard worker since the fight … She has no disease or distress now! That’s a hell of a wonder, then! And I was sure she’d be here any minute … She’s up with the lark, you say … In the field and on the bog … She’s raising piglets again! Good man! They had three or four calves at the last fair! Good man! It’s a joy to listen to you, son! … And you heard your mother say she saw their yard littered with chickens! I wonder how many clutches they hatched this year? … Of course you’re not to blame for not knowing that, son …
You tell me Pádraig’s doing well too. It’ll be a long time before he beats Nell and her eight hundred pounds all the same. The judge they had was a witless judge. But if my son’s wife keeps on at the present rate, and when Máirín becomes a schoolmistress …
That’s right, my son! Pádraig was penniless … What did he say? What did Big Brian say? … That since Pádraig couldn’t pay his rent he should give someone a mortgage on his fistful of clay and his fistful of a wife, and go over to England to earn some money … A fistful of clay, is that what the streak of misery called the big holding? “But it’s a good job that dolt of a mother of his isn’t alive to give him bad advice,” he says. The streak of misery! The streak of misery! The streak …
Where have you gone, young man? Where are you? … They’ve carried you off from me …
3
— … You don’t know, my good man, why the Conamara region is as rugged and bare and shallow-soiled as it is …
— Patience, Cóilí. Patience. The Ice Age …
— Oh, stop it! The Ice Age my foot! Not at all, but the Curse of Cromwell.2 The time God sent the Devil to Hell it very nearly failed Him. This is where he fell down out of Heaven. Michael the Archangel and himself spent a whole summer wrestling with one another. They ripped up the countryside from deep down in the ground …
— That’s right, Cóilí. Caitríona showed me the print of his hoof up there on Nell’s land …
— Shut your mouth, you little brat …
— You’re insulting the faith. You’re a heretic …
— I don’t know how the brawl would have ended if the Devil’s shoes hadn’t begun to fall apart. It was Cromwell made them for him. Cromwell was a cobbler beyond in London, England. The shoes fell off him completely out in Galway Bay. One of them broke in two halves. Those are the three Aran Islands ever since. But even though the Angel of Pride was in a predicament for want of his shoes I swear to the devil he pushed Michael back again as far as Shellig3 Michael. That’s an island to the west, off Carna. Then he let an almighty roar out of him for Cromwell to come over and mend the shoes for him. I don’t know how the brawl would have ended if the shoes had been mended …
Over comes Cromwell to Connacht. Over come the Irishmen following him, and no wonder, because they were always and ever against the Devil. Five miles south of Oughterard, in a place they call the Holes of Laban’s House,4 is where Michael met them, and him still fleeing from the Devil … “Stand your ground, you rascal,” they said, “and we’ll give the Devil a good kicking in the old pants.” That’s where he was sent to Hell, in Sulphur Lake. That’s where Sulphur River5 rises, that flows eastwards through Oughterard. Sulphur is the proper name of the Devil in Old Irish, and Sulphuric is his wife’s name …
Between the jigs and the reels, what do you think but Cromwell got clear away from them to Aran, and he has stayed there ever since. Aran was holy till then …