Free The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain Page B

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.
    â€”… I swear, Gut Bucket, by the oak of this coffin, I gave her the pound, I gave Caitriona the pound …
    â€”… 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 …
    â€”She’s gone all soppy again …
    â€”… Pearse said, O’Donovan Rossa said, Wolfe Tone said, that Eamon de Valera was right …
    â€”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 …
    â€”Owen Roe O’Neill said that Eamon de Valera was right …
    â€”Red Hugh O’Donnell said that Arthur Griffith was right …
    â€”Art McMorrough Kavanagh said that Eamon de Valera was right …
    â€”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 …
    â€”That’s a lie, they didn’t …
    â€”I’m telling you, you’re a liar. The truth hurts …
    â€”You treacherously murdered me when I was fighting for the Republic …
    â€”You had it coming. Neither God’s law nor that of the Church allows the overthrow of a legitimate Government by force …
    â€”I have no interest in politics, but I have some regard for the old IRA …
    â€”You coward, you were skulking under the bed when Eamon de Valera was fighting for the Republic …
    â€”You old bag, you were under the bed when Arthur Griffith was …
    â€”… “And he went off to market for courting …”
    â€”… Wait now, my good man, wait