— Your father refusing the Rootey! My mother also refused him a woman! “There’s forty pounds and a cow going with my daughter,” she says, “and there’s no way she’ll be living on the flea-ridden fastnesses of your place with her forty pounds.”
— Your mother refused him a woman! Your mother! My father tried to pawn her off on me, but I wouldn’t touch her. She was half blind. She had a mole under her ear. She only had a dowry of fifteen quid. I wouldn’t touch her …
— I wouldn’t marry Blotchy Brian. He asked me …
— I wouldn’t marry Blotchy Brian either. He asked me twice.
— Nor me neither. He asked me three times. I swear by the oak of this coffin. He nearly completely failed to get any woman at all. Caitriona Paudeen would have married him alright the time that Jack the Lad dumped her, but he never bothered coming looking for her …
— Holy cow! Abooboona! Kitty you dirty liar! Kitty the small potatoes! …
— … Honest, Dotie. No way was the place good enough. There was really no way that I would allow my daughter to go there with her sixty pounds dowry, unless I really had no choice in the matter. I was always possessed of a romantic streak and I couldn’t let inferior worldly affairs be an insurmountable obstacle to their unfulfilled love. Honest. If it wasn’t for that Dotie, do you think I would have allowed my daughter and her sixty pounds to go and live in Caitriona Paudeen’s pokey little hovel? …
— You little blabbering scum shit! You riffraff so-and-so! Don’t believe her! Don’t believe a word! Margaret! Margaret! Do you hear what Toejam Nora is saying? And Kitty the dirty liar? … I’m going to burst!
5.
— … Do you think that this is “The War of the Two Foreigners”?
— … The murdering bastard gave me a bad bottle …
— … There was every single tiny drop of the forty-two pints lining my stomach when I was tying up Tomasheen …
— I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …
—“The doh-og is drinking.” Qu’est-ce que c’est qu’ “the doh-og?”
… Qu’est-ce que c’est qu’ “the doh-og”? Doh-og. Doh-og.
— Bow wow! Bow wow!
— Un chien, n’est-ce pas? Doh-og. Bow wow. Doh-og.
— Dog! Dog! Dog! You headbanger!
—“The dog is drinking.” Le chien boit, n’est-ce pas? “The dog is drinking.” Mais non! “The doh-og is crying.”
— Like dogs cry all the time, you headbanger! Maybe he was whining, or barking, or even drinking. But he wasn’t crying. Crying! I never ever saw a dog crying.
—“The doh-og is crying.”
—“The dog is whining. The dog is whining.”
—“The doh-og is crying.” “Crying: c — r—y — i—i — n—g”! “Crying.” Ces sont les mots qui se trouvent dans mon livre. “The doh-og is crying.” Pas “drinking.”
— Well, if he was crying let him cry away. We can’t do nothing about it, nor about the twit who put it in a book. Maybe the dog went on the drink and then he started to cry about the hangover he got and his empty pockets …
— Je ne comprends pas. Aprés quelques leçons peut-être … “The white cat is on the mat.” “Cat”: qu’est-ce qu’il veut dire? “Cat”? “Cat”?
— Mi-aw! Mi-aw!
— Mee-ou! Mee-ou! Chat! N’est-ce pas? Chatte.
— Shat. Yes, of course. Shat. What else?
—“The wo-od is go-od. The ha-at is a-pt. The ha-at is tall on Paul. T— …”
— You’re a dirty liar! I never wore a tall hat. It was too low for me anyway. Do you think that I was a bishop? …
— Je ne comprends pas. “Young Paul is not …”
— You’re a liar. I was still only a youngster. I’d have been only twenty-eight by the next Peter and Paul’s day.
— Je ne comprends pas. Paul is not drinking …
— He’s not drinking now because he is not thinking, but he drank what he had before this, and that wasn’t much.
— Je ne comprends pas.
— Au revoir! Au revoir! De grâce! De grâce! …
— He’ll never have a word of Irish as long as he lives.
— Nevertheless, he shouldn’t be that long getting the hang of it. There was a guy learning Irish around here the year I died. He hadn’t the least clue from Adam, but he was picking up bits and pieces from those small learning books, the same as your man. He’d be there in the kitchen every morning a full hour before I got up and he’d have made a rat’s nest of the whole place:
“This is a cat. This is a sack. The cat is on the sack. This is a dog. This is a stool. The dog is on the stool.”
He went on like that all day long. He had my mother driven completely round the twist.
“For Jaysus’ sake, Paul, take him away over and into the field,” she’d say to me.
I was cutting hay in the meadow down by the shore at that time exactly. I hauled him along with me. We were barely there when it was time to come back again for dinner as he read the lesson to everyone we met on the way.
Up and away again after dinner. I tried to teach him some small words: “scythe,” “grass,” “ditch,” “rick,” and little bits like that. It was a very hot day. It was a blistering hot day and he couldn’t get his tongue around the words. He spat out a few knotty snots. He asked me how would you say “pint” in Irish.
I said “Pionta.”
He said “Pionta” and nodded to me …
We moseyed off along the shore to Peter’s Pub. He bought two pints.
Then back to the field.
I gave him another word.
“Pionta,” he said.
“Pionta,” I said.
Off we went again. Two more pints. Back again to the field. I gave him another word again.
Off again. Back again.
Over and back like that all day long. It was a pint for a word, and a word for a pint …
— … Fell from a rick of hay, bejaysus …
— Do you think that I was raised in a cabbage patch and never saw a film? …
— An oldfella like you?
— An oldfella like me? But, I wasn’t always old, you know.
— They’re absolutely beautiful. I saw magnificent things like them. Big houses just like the Earl’s …
— And I saw they had fine big crosses, and I’d say they were made of Connemara marble …
— I saw lots of women wearing pants …
— And black women …
— And cultured people, and nightclubs, and down by the quays, and sailing boats and sailors with multicoloured skins. Honest …
— And the occasional nasty bitch …
— And women with sly slippery smiles just like Huckster Joan when she refused you a fag or two …
— And women giving you the “come-here-I-wantcha,” just like Peter the Publican’s young one standing in the door trying to lure some new sucker into her parlour …
— You’d see some fine frisky colts there, I’m telling you! …
— And games of football. Up the yard, boy! Cannon would make shite and onions of any footballer’s arse …
— You’d never see any wrack that came in there …
— Or two thatchers on either side of the house …
— Or nettles like there was in Bally Donough.