THE GREAT SILENCE
"Where the people toil like beasts in the field till their bones
are strained and sore,
There the landlord waits, like the plumbless grave, calling out for
more
Money to flounce his daughters' gowns or clothe his spouse's hide,
Money so that his sons can learn to gamble, shoot, and ride;
And for every debt of honour paid and for every dress and frill,
The blood of the peasant's wife and child goes out to meet the
bill."
--From _The Song of the Glen People_.
I was nearly twelve years old when Dan, my youngest brother, died. It
was in the middle of winter, and he was building a snow-man in front of
the half-door when he suddenly complained of a pain in his throat.
Mother put him to bed and gave him a drink of hot milk. She did not send
for the doctor because there was no money in the house to pay the bill.
Dan lay in bed all the evening and many of the neighbours came in to see
him. Towards midnight I was sent to bed, but before going I heard my
father ask mother if she thought that Dan would live till morning. I
could not sleep, but kept turning over in the bed and praying to the
Blessed Virgin to save my little brother. The new moon, sharp as a
scythe, was peeping through the window of my room when my mother came to
my bed and told me to rise and kiss Dan for the last time. She turned
her face away as she spoke, and I knew that she was weeping. My brother
was lying on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling with wide-staring eyes.
A crimson flush was on his face and his breath pained him. I bent down
and pressed his cheek. I was afraid, and the kiss made my lips burn like
fire. The three of us then stood together and my father shook the holy
water all over the room. All at once Dan sat up in the bed and gripped a
tight hold of the blankets. I wanted to run out of the room but my
mother would not let me.
"Are ye wantin' anything?" asked my father, bending over the bed, but
there was no answer. My brother fell back on the bed and his face got
very white.
"Poor Dan is no more," said my father, the tears coming out of his eyes.
'Twas the first time I ever saw him weeping, and I thought it very
strange. My mother went to the window and opened it in order to let the
soul of my brother go away to heaven.
"It is all in the hands of God," she said. "He is only taking back what
He sent us."
There was silence in the room for a long while. My father and mother
wept, and I was afraid of something which was beyond my understanding.
"Will Dan ever come back again?" I asked.
"Hush, dearie!" said my mother.
"It will take a lot of money to bury the poor boy," said my father. "It
costs a good penny to rear one, but it's a bad job when one is taken
away."
I had once seen an old woman buried--"Old Nan," the beggarwoman. For
many years she had passed up and down Glenmornan Road, collecting
bottles and rags, which she paid for in blessings and afterwards sold
for pence. Being wrinkled, heavy-boned, and bearded like a man, everyone
said that she was a witch. One summer Old Nan died, and two days later
she was carried to the little graveyard. I played truant from school and
followed the sweating men who were carrying the coffin on their
shoulders. They seemed to be well-pleased when they came in sight of the
churchyard and the cold silent tombstones.
"The old witch was as heavy as lead," I heard the bearers say.
They set down their burden and dug a hole in the soft earth, throwing up
black clay and white bones to the surface with their shovels. The bones
looked like those of sheep which die on the hills and are left to rot.
The air was heavy with the humming of bees, and a little brook sang a
soft song of its own as it hurried past the graveyard wall. The upturned
earth had a sickly smell like mildewed corn. Some of the diggers knew
whose bone this was and whose that was, but they had a hard argument
about a thigh-bone before Old Nan was put into the earth. Some said that
the thigh-bone belonged to old Farley Kelly, who had died many years
before, and others said that it belonged to Farley's wife. I thought it
a curious thing that people could not know the difference between a man
and a woman when dead. While the men were discussing the thigh-bone it
was left lying on the black clay which fringed the mouth of the grave,
and a long earth-worm crawled across it. A man struck at the worm with
his spade and broke the bone into three pieces. The worm was cut in two,
and it fell back into the grave while one of the diggers threw the
splinters of bone on top of it. Then they buried Old Nan, and everyone
seemed very light-hearted over the job. Why shouldn't they feel merry?
She was only an old witch, anyhow. But I did not feel happy. The grave
looked a cold cheerless place and the long crawling worms were ugly.
So our poor Dan would go down into the dark earth like Old Nan, the
witch! The thought frightened me, and I began to cry with my father and
mother, and we were all three weeping still, but more quietly, when the
first dim light of the lonely dawn came stealing through the window
panes.
Two old sisters, Martha and Bride, lived next door. My mother asked me
to go out and tell them about Dan's death. I ran out quickly, and I
found both women up and at work washing dishes beside the dresser.
Martha had a tin basin in her hand, and she let it drop to the floor
when I delivered my message. Bride held a jug, and it seemed for a
moment that she was going to follow her sister's example, but all at
once she called to mind that the jug was made of delft, so she placed it
on the dresser, and both followed me back to my home. Once there they
asked many questions about Dan, his sickness and how he came to die.
When they had heard all, they told of several herbs and charms which
would have cured the illness at once. Dandelion dipped in rock water, or
bogbine[2] boiled for two hours in the water of the marsh from which it
was plucked, would have worked wonders. Also seven drops of blood from a
cock that never crowed, or the boiled liver of a rabbit that never
crossed a white road, were the very best things to give to a sick
person. So they said, and when Bride tried to recollect some more
certain cures Martha kept repeating the old ones until I was almost
tired of listening to her voice.
"Why did ye not take in the docthor?" asked Martha.
"We had no money in the house," said my mother.
"An' did ye not sell half a dozen sheep at the fair the day afore
yesterday?" asked Bride. "I'm sure that ye got a good penny for them
same sheep."
"We did that," said my mother; "but the money is for the landlord's rent
and the priest's tax."
At that time the new parish priest, the little man with the pot-belly
and the shiny false teeth, was building a grand new house. Farley
McKeown had given five hundred pounds towards the cost of building,
which up to now amounted to one thousand five hundred pounds. So the
people said, but they were not quite sure. The cost of building was not
their business, that was the priest's; all the people had to do was to
pay their tax, which amounted to five pounds on every family in the
parish. They were allowed five years in which to pay it. On two
occasions my father was a month late in paying the money and the priest
put a curse on him each time. So my father said. I have only a very
faint recollection of these things which took place when I was quite a
little boy.
"God be good to us! but five pounds is a heavy tax for even a priest to
put on poor people," said Bride.
"It's not for us to say anything against a priest, no matter what he
does," said my father, crossing himself.
"I don't care what ye say, Michael Flynn," said the old woman; "five
pounds is a big tax to pay. The priest is spending three hundred gold
sovereigns in making a lava-thury (lavatory). Three hundred sovereigns!
that's a waste of money."
"Lava-thury?" said my mother. "And what would that be at all?"
"It's myself that does not know," answered Bride. "But old Oiney Dinchy
thinks that it is a place for keeping holy water."
"Poor wee Dan," said Martha, looking at the white face in the bed. "It's
the hard way that death has with it always. He was a lively boy only
three days ago. Wasn't it then that he came over to our house and tied
the dog's tail to the bundle of yarn that just came from Farley
McKeown's. I was angry with the dear little rascal, too; God forgive
me!"
Then Martha and Bride began to cry together, one keeping time with the
other, but when my mother got ready some tea they sat down and drank a
great deal of it.
A great number of neighbours came in during the day. They all said
prayers by Dan's bedside, then they drank whisky and tea and smoked my
father's tobacco. For two nights my dead brother was waked. Every day
fresh visitors came, and for these my father had to buy extra food,
snuff, and tobacco, so that the little money in his possession was
sliding through his fingers like water in a sieve.
On the day of the funeral Dan went to the grave in a little deal box
which my father himself fashioned. They would not let me go and see the
burial.
In the evening when my parents came back their eyes were red as fire and
they were still crying. We sat round the peat blaze and Dan's stool was
left vacant. We expected that he would return at any moment. We children
could not understand the strange silent thing called Death. The oil lamp
was not lighted. There was no money in the house to pay for oil.
"There's very little left now," said my mother late that night, as I was
turning in to bed. She was speaking to my father. "Wasn't there big
offerings?" she asked.
Everybody who comes to a Catholic funeral in Donegal pays a shilling to
the priest who conducts the burial service, and the nearest blood
relation always pays five shillings, and is asked to give more if he can
afford it. Money lifted thus is known as offerings, and all goes to the
priest, who takes in hand to shorten the sufferings of the souls in
Purgatory.
"Eight pounds nine shillings," said my father. "It's a big penny. The
priest was talking to me, and says that he wants another pound for his
new house at once. I'm over three weeks behind, and if he puts a curse
on me this time what am I to do at all, at all?"
"What you said is the only thing to be done," my mother said. I did not
understand what these words meant, and I was afraid to ask a question.
"It's the only thing to be done," she remarked again, and after that
there was a long silence.
"Dermod, asthor[3]!" she said all at once. "Come next May, ye must go
beyont the mountains to push yer fortune, pay the priest, and make up
the rent for the Hallow E'en next coming."
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Marsh trefoil.
[3] Darling.