Her silence did not hinder her from becoming the subject of vigorous
controversy and criticism the instant her back was turned.
‘Auch, my word, just look at the length of her! My word, she is the big
girl that Grania O’Malley, the big girl out and out!’ Rosha exclaimed,
looking after her as she ran down the steep path, her tall vigorous
figure framed for a few minutes by the doorway of the room she had just
left. ‘It is the mighty queer girl that she is, though! God look down
upon us this day, but she is the queerest girl ever I knew on this earth
yet, that same Grania O’Malley. Yes, indeed, _yes_!’ A long-drawn smack
of the palate gave emphasis and expansion to the words.
‘Auch, Rosha Durane, don’t be overlooking the girl! ’Tis a decent
father’s child she is any way,’ said the aunt from the other side of the
island, apparently from an impulse of amiability, in reality by way of
stimulating Rosha to a further exposition of what Grania’s special
queerness consisted in.
‘Did I say Con O’Malley was not a decent man? Saints make his bed in
heaven this day, when did I say it?’ the other answered, apparently in
her turn in hot indignation, but in reality perfectly understanding the
motive of her aunt’s remark. ‘What I do say, and what is well known to
all Inishmaan, and that it is no invention of mine nor yet thought of by
me, is that he was a very wild queer man. And Grania is just the same;
she is a very wild queer girl, and a bold one too, and so I suppose I
may say even in my own house and before you, Mrs. O’Flanagan, though
you _are_ my poor mother’s sister that’s these seven years back gone to
glory! I tell you there is no end to her queerness, and to the bold
things she does be doing. It is well known to all Inishmaan, yes and to
Aranmore, too, that she goes out to the fishing just like a man, so she
does, just like a man, catching the plaice and the mullets and the
conger eels, and many another fish beside I shouldn’t wonder; and if
that is not a very bold thing for a young girl to do, then I do not know
what a bold thing is, although I _am_ your own niece, Mrs. O’Flanagan.
But that is only the half of it. She has no fear of anything, not of
anything at all, I tell you, neither upon the earth nor under it
either--God keep us from speaking of harm, amen! She will as soon cross
a fairies’ ring as not! just the same and sooner, and it is not two
months, or barely three at the most, that I saw her with my own eyes
walk past a red jackass on the road, and it braying hard enough to split
at the time, and not crossing herself, no, nor a bend of the head, nor
spitting even! It is the truth I am telling you, Mrs. O’Flanagan, ma’am,
though you may not choose to believe me, the truth and no lie!’
‘_Ugh! ugh! ugh!_ ’Tis a bad end comes to such ways as those, a bad end,
a bad end,’ said old Peggy Dowd, who up to this had been busily occupied
in eating up the scraps left in the pot, but had now leisure to take her
part, and accordingly entered upon the subject with all the recognised
weight of her years and authority. ‘Did I ever tell you women both,
about Katty O’Callaghan, that lived over near Aillyhaloo when I was a
girl? From the time she was the height of that turf kish there she would
not be bid by anyone, no, not by the priest himself. The first time
ever I saw her she was close upon eighteen years old, for she was not
born on the island, but came from Cashla way to help an uncle of hers
that had a small farm up near Aillyhaloo. A fine big girl she was, just
the moral of that Grania there, with a straight back, and a wide chest,
and the two eyes of her staring up big and bold at you--the very same.
But, Man Above, the impudence of her! She had no proper respect not for
anything, so she had not. She would laugh when you talked of the good
people, and she would say that she would as soon go up at night to the
Phooka’s hole as not, which everyone knows is all but the same as death.
As for the _cohullen druith_, with my own two ears I heard her say she
did not believe that there was such a thing! though my grandfather, God
save his soul! saw one once on the head of a merrow hard by the Glassen
rock. But, faith! I haven’t the time nor the strength to be telling you
the half of her folly and nonsense, nor couldn’t if I took the night to
do it! Anyhow, there she was, straight and strong, a fine handsome girl
just like that Grania there; and her uncle was to give her two cows when
she married, and her father at Cashla, I heard too there was talk of his
giving something, I don’t know whether it was pigs or what. In any case
there was nothing to hinder her settling, only you may guess if any
decent quiet-reared boy would like to go marrying a wife with such ways
and such talk in her mouth as that same Katty O’Callaghan! However, she
was bid for at last by a harmless easy-going young fellow of the name of
Phil Mulcahy, and married him, and went up to live a quarter of a mile
or so beyond Aillyhaloo, at the edge of the big west cliff yonder, and a
year after she had a child, as fine a boy at the start as you’d see in
a day’s walk. Well, you may think she was going to get off clean and
clever, after her goings on; but not a bit of it--so just wait till you
hear. One day she went down the rocks by Mweeleenareeava for the
sea-wrack, and I dare say she was carrying on as usual with her nonsense
and folly, anyway, when she got back the first thing she noticed was
that the child looked mighty queer, and seemed shrunk half its size, and
its face all weazened up like a little old man’s, and the eyes of it as
sharp and wicked as you please. Well, women both of you, from that hour
that creature grew smaller and smaller, and queerer and queerer, and its
eyes wickeder and wickeder, and the bawl never out of its mouth, and it
wanting the breast night and day, and never easy when it got it either,
but kicking and fighting and playing the devil’s own bad work. Of course
the neighbours saw right enough what had happened, and told Katty
plainly the child was changed--and why not? Sure who could wonder at it
after her goings on, which were just as if she’d laid them out for that
very purpose! But she wouldn’t hear a word of it, so she wouldn’t, and
said it was the teeth, or the wind in its stomach, and God only knows
what nonsense besides. But one day a woman was coming along from
Aillinera to Aillyhaloo, a real right-knowing woman she was by the name
of Nora Cronohan, and as she was going she stopped to ask for a potato
and a sup of milk, for she was stravoging the country at the time. So
she looked up and down the cabin, and presently she cast eyes on the
creature, which was laid in a basket by the fire, that being the place
it stayed easiest in, and--
‘“Arrah! what’s that you’ve got at all in there?” says she, staring at
it, and it staring back at her with its two eyes as wicked as wicked.
‘“My child, what else?” says Katty, speaking quite angrily.
‘With that the woman gave a screech of laughter so that you could have
heard her across the Foul Sound with the wind blowing west, and “Your
child!” says she. “Your child! Sure, God save you, woman, you might as
well call a black _arth-looghra_ a salmon any day in the week as that
thing there a child!”
‘Well, Katty was going to throw her into the sea, she was so mad! But
first she looked at the basket, and with that she began to shake and
tremble all over, for the creature was winking up so knowing at her, and
opening and shutting its mouth as no Christian child in this world or
any other ever would or could.
‘“Why, what ails it now, at all, at all?’ says she, turning to the
other, and her face growing as white as the inside of a potato.
‘“Listen to me, woman,” says Nora Cronohan, holding up her hand at her.
“That’s not your child at all, you ignorant creature, as anyone can see,
and there’s but two ways for you to get your own right child back again.
You must either take that up the next time there’s a south wind blowing
and set it to roast on the gridiron with the door open, or if you won’t
do that you must gather a handful of the _boliaun bwee_ and another
handful of the _boliaun dhas_, and put them down to boil, and boil them
both in the pot for an hour, and then throw the whole potful right over
it; and if you’ll do either of those things I’ll be your warrant but it
will be glad to be quit of you, and you’ll get your own fine child
again!”
‘Well, you’d think that would be enough for any reasonable woman! But
no. Katty wouldn’t do either the one thing nor the other, but held to it
that it was her own child, not changed at all, only sick; such fool’s
talk! as if anyone with half an eye, and that one blind, couldn’t have
told the difference! She had ne’er another child, you see, nor the sign
of one, and that perhaps was what made her so set on it. Anyhow the
neighbours tried to get her to see reason, and her husband, too, though
he was but a poor shadow of a man, did what he could. At last her
mother-in-law, that was a decent well-reared woman, and knew what was
right, tried to get at the creature one day when Katty was out on the
rocks, so as to serve it the right way, and have her own fine grandchild
back. But if she did Katty was in on her before she could do a thing,
and set upon the decent woman, and tore the good clothes off her back,
and scratched her face with her nails so that there was blood running
along her two cheeks when the neighbours came up, and but for their
getting between them in time, God knows but she’d have had her life.
After that no one, you may believe, would have hand, act, or part with
Katty Mulcahy! Indeed, it soon came to this, that her husband durstn’t
stop with her in the cabin, what between her goings on and the screeches
of the creature, which got worse and worse till you could hear them upon
the road to Ballintemple, a good half-mile away. Yarra! the whole of
that side of the island got a bad name through her, and there’s many
doesn’t care even now to walk from Aillinera to Aillyhaloo, specially
towards evening, not knowing what they might hear!
‘Well, one day--’ here the narrator paused, looked first at one and then
at the other of her listeners, coughed, spat, twitched the big cloak
higher round her shoulders, and settled herself down again in her chair
with an air of intense satisfaction. ‘One day, it was a desperate wild
afternoon just beginning December, and the wind up at Aillyhaloo enough
to blow the head of you off your two shoulders. Most of the people were
at home and the houses shut, but there were a few of us colleens
colloguing together outside the doors, talking of one thing and another,
when all of a sudden who should come running up the road but Katty
Mulcahy, with the bawl in her mouth, and a look on her face would
frighten the life out of an Inishboffin pig.
‘“Och! och! och!” says she, screeching. “Och! och! och! my child’s
dying! It’s got the fits. It’s turning blue. Where’s Phil? Where’s its
father? Run, some of you, for God’s sake, and see if he’s in yet from
the fishing.”
‘Well, at first we all stared, wondering like, and one or two of the
little girshas ran off home to their mothers, being scared at her looks.
But at last some of us began laughing--I was one that did myself, and so
I tell you women both--you see we knew of course all the time that it
wasn’t her own child at all, only a changeling, and that as for Phil he
had never been near the fishing, but was just keeping out of the way,
not wishing, honest man, to be mixed up with any such doings. Well, when
she heard us laughing she stopped in the middle of her screeching, and
she just gave us one look, and before anyone knew what was coming there
she was in the very thick of us, and her arms going up and down like two
flails beating the corn!
‘Och, Mary Queen of Heaven, but that was a hubbuboo! We turned and we
run, and our blood was like sea-water down our backs, for we made sure
we’d carry the marks of her to our graves, for she had a bitter hard
hand, and God knows I’m speaking the truth, had Katty Mulcahy when you
roused her! Well, at the screams of us a heap more people came running
out of the houses, and amongst them who should put his head out of one
of the doors but Phil Mulcahy himself, with no hat to his head and a
pipe to his mouth, for he had no time to take it out, and she thinking,
you know, he was away at the fishing!
‘At that Katty stood still like one struck, and the eyes of her growing
that round you’d think they must fall out of her head, so big were they,
and her mouth working like a sea pool in the wind. And presently she let
out another bawl, and she made for him! I was the nearest to him, and
there was some three or four more between the two, but you may believe
me, we didn’t stop long! It was something awful, women both, and so I
tell you, to see her coming up the road with that rage on her face, and
it as white as the foam on the sea. Phil stood shaking and shaking,
staring at her and his knees knocking, thinking his hour was come, till
just as she was within touch of him, when he turned and he ran for his
life. He ran and he ran, and she ran after him. Now there’s no place at
all, as everyone knows, to run on that side of Aillyhaloo only along by
the cliff, for the rest is all torn and destroyed, with great cracks
running down God knows where to the heart of the earth. So he kept along
by the edge, and she after him, and we after the two of them presently
to see the end of it. Phil ran as a man runs for his life, but Katty,
she ran like a woman possessed! Holy Bridget! you could hardly see the
feet of her as she raced over the ground! The boys cried out that she’d
have him for sure, and if she had caught him and this rage still on her
God knows she’d have thrown him over the cliff, and you know ’tis
hundreds of feet deep there, and never an inch of landing. Poor Phil
thought himself done for, and kept turning and turning, and far away as
he was now we could see the terror on the face of him, and we all
screeched to him to turn away from the edge, but he did not know where
he was going, he was that dazed. Well, she was just within grip of him
when she stopped all at once as if she was shot, and lifted her head in
the air like that! Whether she heard something, or what ailed her I
can’t tell, but she gathered herself up and began running in the
opposite way, not along by the sea but over the rocks, the nearest way
back to her own house. How she got across nobody knows, for the cracks
there are something awful, but you’d think it was wings she had to see
the leaps she threw in the air, for all the world like a bird! Anyhow,
she got over them at last, and into her house with her, and the door
shut with a bang you might have heard across the Sound at Killeany.
‘Nobody, you may believe me, troubled to go after her or near her _that_
night, and the wind being so cold, after a bit we all went home, and
Phil, too, by-and-by come creeping back, looking like a pullet that had
had its neck wrung, and the boys all laughing at him for being ’fraid of
a woman--as if it was only a woman Katty was, with that black look on
her face and she leaping and going on as no woman in this world ever
could, if she was left to herself! That night there was no more about it
one way or another, nor the next morning either, but by the middle of
the afternoon a man that was passing brought us word that he heard a
noise of hammering inside of the house. Well, at that we all wondered
what was doing now, and some said one thing and some another. But a
boy--a young devil’s imp he was by the name of Mick Caroll--peeped in at
the end window and came running up to say he had seen something like a
coffin standing on the floor, only no bigger he said than the top of a
keg of butter. Well, that was the queerest start of all! For who, I ask
you both, could have made that coffin for her, and what could she have
wanted with a coffin either? For you’re not so ignorant, women, either
of you, as need to be told there wouldn’t be anything to put into it!
’Twasn’t likely that thing she had in the house with her would stop to
be put into any coffin! ’Tis out of the window or up the chimney it
would have been long before it came to that, as everyone knows that
knows anything. Anyhow, ’twas the truth it seems he told, for the very
next day out she came from the house herself, and the coffin or the box
or whatever it was under her arm, and carried it down did she sure
enough to the shore, and paid a man handsome to let her put it in a
curragh--as well she’d need, and him losing his soul on her!--and away
with her to Cashla over the “Old Sea”! And whether she found a priest to
bury it for her is more than I can tell you, but they _do_ say out there
on the Continent there’re none so particular, so long as they get their
dues. As for Phil, he went over only the very next week to her father’s
house, the poor foolish innocent creature, but all he got for his pains
was a pailful of pig’s wash over his head, and back he came to Inishmaan
complaining bitterly, though it was thankful on his two knees to
Almighty God he ought to have been it was no worse, and so we all told
him. However, there was no putting sense into his head, and not a word
would he say good or bad, only cried and talked of his Katty! Lucky for
him his troubles didn’t last very long, for the next thing we heard of
her was that she was dead, and about a year after that, or maybe two
years, he married a decent little girl, a cousin of my own, and took her
to live with him up at the house at Aillyhaloo. And, but that he was
killed through having his head broke one dark night by Larry Connel in
mistake for the youngest of the Lynches, ’tis likely he’d be in it
still! Any way, he had a grand wake, the finest money could buy, for
Larry Connel, that had always a good heart, paid for it himself, and got
upon a stool, so he did, and spoke very handsomely of poor Phil, so that
Molly Mulcahy the widow didn’t know whether it was crying she should be
or laughing, the creature, with glory! And for eating and drinking and
fiddling and jig-dancing, it was like nothing either of _you_ ever saw
in your lives, and a pride and satisfaction to all concerned.
But,’--here Peggy Dowd hitched her cloak once more about her
shoulders and spat straight in front of her with an air of
reprobation--‘but--there was never a man nor yet a woman either, living
upon Inishmaan at the time, that would have danced one foot, and so I
tell you, women both--not if you’d have _paid_ them for doing it--at
_Katty_ Mulcahy’s wake.’