— Ababúna! Brian the wretch near me! God forbid tonight! Oh, what would I do? …
— What the Postmistress said about my death was — that she didn’t manage to open a single letter for days, as she had to attend to so many telegrams …
— My death was in the newspaper …
— My death was in two newspapers …
— Listen to this account from the Reporter about my death:
“He was a member of a well-known old local family. He played a prominent part in the national movement. He was a personal friend of Éamon de Valera’s …”
— This is the account that was in the Irishman about me:
“He came from a family that was well-respected in the locality. He joined Fianna Éireann13 as a child, and afterwards the Irish Volunteers.14 He was a close friend of Arthur Griffith’s …”
— … And Cóilí recited “The Tale of the Pullet that Laid on the Dung-heap” at your wake too.
— You’re a liar! What a story to tell at any decent wake! …
— Wasn’t I listening to him! …
— You’re a liar! You were not …
— … A row at your wake! A row where there was nobody but two old-age pensioners!
— And one of them as deaf as Tomás Inside, whenever Caitríona suggested he should come with her to see Mannion the Counsellor about the land.
— Yes indeed, and not a vessel in the house that wasn’t filled with holy water.
— There was a row at my wake …
— There was. Tomás Inside took exception to Big Brian telling him: “You’ve thrown back so much of Éamon of the Hill Field’s ‘fresh milk’ since you came in, Tomás, you should have enough for a churning by now.”
— I had two half-barrels at my wake …
— I had three half-barrels at my wake …
— You had indeed, Caitríona, three half-barrels at your wake. That’s the God’s honest truth, Caitríona. You had three — three fine big ones — and a splash of the waterworks of Éamon of the Hill Field as well … Old and all as I was, I drank twelve mugfuls of it myself. To tell you the truth, Caitríona, I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking that much if I’d known my heart was faulty. I said to myself, Caitríona, when I saw the lashings of porter: “This man would be better off buying a colt than making those loudmouths drunk …”
— You sourpuss! …
— They were nothing else. Some of them were stretched like hulks in everybody’s way. Peadar Nell fell into the bed you were laid out on, Caitríona. His injured leg couldn’t prop him up …
— The dirty sponger!
— That was nothing, till Bríd Terry’s son and Cite’s son began to trounce one another, and they broke the roundtable before they could be separated …
— Ababúna! …
— I went to separate them. Faith then, if I’d known the heart was faulty …
— … Indeed, it seemed to me you were laid out in a very common way, unless there was something wrong with my eyes …
— There must be something wrong with your eyes if you didn’t see the two crosses on my breast …
— There were two crosses and the Scapular Mantle on me …
— Whatever was or was not on me, Cite, there wasn’t a dirty sheet on me as there was on Caitríona …
— Ababúna! Don’t believe that little slut …
— … Your coffin was made by the little carpenter in Mangy Field. He made another one for Nóra Sheáinín and it was like a bird-trap …
— You had a carpenter-made coffin yourself as well …
— If I had, it wasn’t made by the Mangy Field botcher, but by a carpenter who served his full apprenticeship. He had his certificate from the Tech.15 …
— My coffin cost ten pounds …
— I thought you had one of the eight-pound coffins like the one Caitríona had …
— You liar! you dolt! I had the best coffin in Tadhg’s …
— It was Little Cáit laid me out …
— It was Little Cáit laid me out too, and Bid Shorcha keened me …
— Indeed, she keened you badly. There’s some stoppage in Bid’s throat that doesn’t dissolve till she has her seventh glass. That’s when she starts singing “Let Erin Remember” …
— I think Caitríona Pháidín wasn’t keened at all, unless her son’s wife and Nell did a bout of it …
— … Six pounds, five shillings is all the altar-money that was collected at your funeral …
— I had ten pounds of altar-money.
— Hold on now till I see how much was collected at mine: 20 by 10 plus 19, equals 190 … plus 20, equals 210 shillings … equals 10 pounds, 10 shillings. Isn’t that right, Master? …
— Peadar the Pub had a big altar collection …
— And Nóra Sheáinín …
— Faith then, there was a big collection of altar-money at Nóra Sheáinín’s funeral. There would have been a big collection at my funeral too but nobody knew about it, I went off so suddenly. The heart, God help us! If only I’d been bedridden for a long time with bedsores …
— I would have had an even fourteen pounds, only for a dud shilling in the collection. It was only a halfpenny wrapped in silver cigarette paper. It was Big Brian noticed it when he felt the pig on the halfpenny. He says it was Caitríona put it there. Many is the bad shilling like that she left on altars. She wanted to be on every altar, which she couldn’t afford, the poor woman …
— You scrawny little liar …
— Oh, I forgive you, Caitríona. I wouldn’t mind at all, only for the priest: “They’ll be leaving their old teeth on the table for me soon,” he said.
— It was “Pól” here and “Pól” there from yourself and your daughter, Peadar the Pub, the time she played the parlour trick on the Gaelic Enthusiast. But there was no mention of Pól when it was time for you to put a shilling on my altar …
— I tied Tomáisín, although I’d drunk two score pints and two, and still not a single one of that household came to my funeral, though they’re living in the same village as me. They hardly put a shilling on my altar. They all had a cold, they said. That was all the thanks I got, even though he’d grabbed the hatchet. Can you imagine, if he had to be tied again? …
— I didn’t have a big funeral. The people of Donagh’s Village had gone to England, and the people of Mangy Field, Sive’s Rocks …
— … What do you think of Caitríona Pháidín, Cite, who didn’t set foot in my house from the moment my father died till he was put in the coffin, after all the pounds of his tea she drank …
— Those were the days she went to Mannion the Counsellor about Tomás Inside’s land …
— Do you hear that slut Bríd Terry, and mangy Cite of the Ash-Potatoes?
— Three times I had to put my hand over the mouth of that old empty-head over there, when he was trying to sing “Mártan Sheáin Mhóir Had a Daughter” at your funeral, Curraoin.
— The whole country was at our funeral, newspaper people and photographers and …
— For a very good reason! You people were killed by the mine. If you had died in the old bed as I did, there’d be very few newspaper people there …
— There was bien de monde at the funeral à moi. Le Ministre de France came from Dublin and he laid a couronne mortuaire on my grave …