THE WAKE
I
Several more neighbours, men, women, and children, were now coming in.
With eyes fixed straight ahead they approached the corpse, went down on
their knees on the wet floor by the bedside and said their prayers,
crossing themselves many times. Those who carried the dead body up from
the sea drew near to the fire and dried their sodden garments in the
midst of a cloud of vapour that almost hid them from view. Eamon Doherty
remarked that Ireland would have Home Rule presently, and a loud
discussion mingled with many jokes was soon in progress.
“The Irish will never agree,” said old Oiney Dinchy, a one-eyed ancient
who had just risen from his knees by the bedside. “That is the worst of
the Irish; they never agree. Look at them now in the House of Commons;
one member is always fighting against another member, and it was ever
the same, for contrairiness is in their blood to the very last drop of
it.”
“There is always bound to be two parties,” said Master Diver with
dogmatic assurance. “In England and America there are always two
parties, sometimes more.”
“They’ll never get on, then,” said Eamon Doherty. “There are no two
parties in the holy Church, and that’s why it gets on so well.”
The door opened and Sheila Carrol, the beansho, entered, her child, now
a chubby little boy of three, toddling at her heels. Without looking
round she went down on her knees by the bedside, and a couple of women
who were praying crossed themselves and rose hurriedly. A few of the
younger men winked knowingly and turned their thumbs towards the
new-comer. Old Mary Ryan muttered something under her breath and turned
a look of severe disapproval on the kneeling woman, then on the little
boy who had run forward to the fire, where he was holding out his hands
to the blaze.
“Who’ll be the ones that will go to Greenanore and get tea, bread,
snuff, and tobacco for the wake?” asked Mary Ryan.
“I’ll go if Eamon Doherty comes along with me,” said old Oiney Dinchy,
getting to his feet and putting a live peat to the bowl of his pipe.
“The two of you always get drunk if you go to Greenanore together,” said
the old woman. “I’d as soon send the----” she pointed with her thumb
over her shoulder at the beansho but did not mention her name, “to
Greenanore, as send you two.”
“It is not everyone that would be treated that way if they offered to
help a person,” Eamon Doherty remarked in a loud voice to Oiney Dinchy.
“I’ll go if Willie the Duck comes with me,” said a long, lank, shaggy
youth, rising from one corner of the room and stretching his arms.
“You’re the man for the job, Micky’s Jim,” answered Mary Ryan, coming
from the bedside and tottering through the press of neighbours to the
dresser where the Delft tea-pot stood. She raised the lid, dipped her
hand into the tea-pot and drew out a fistful of money.
“Four shillings for tea,” she began to calculate; “eight-pence for
sugar; five shillings for loaves of bread; four shillings and sixpence
for tobacco, and sixpence for snuff, and--How much potheen did you get
for your father’s wake, Eamon Doherty?”
“Four gallons and no less,” Eamon answered in a surly tone of voice.
“Two gallons of potheen, Micky’s Jim, and get it as cheap as you can,”
said the old woman, turning to the long-limbed youth. “From what I hear
Martin Eveleen sells good potheen. Get it from him, for it was Martin, I
wish him luck! that helped Norah when she took the fargortha on the road
to Greenanore three winters agone.”
The money was handed to Micky’s Jim, and he left the house followed by
Willie the Duck, a small man, dark and swarthy, with a hump on his left
shoulder, and a voice, when he spoke, that reminded one of the quacking
of ducks.
“Thirty-four shillings in all,” mumbled Mary Ryan as she took her way
back to the fireside. “It costs a lot to bury a body, and there will
never be left one at all to bury me, never a one at all. If only the
curragh was left me it would be something.”
Meanwhile Norah had slipped out, and went from house to house borrowing
candlesticks (Meenalicknalore townland consisted of thirty families and
there were only two candlesticks amongst them), baskets of peat, holy
water, a lamp, extra chairs, stools, and many other things required for
the wake.
II
At midnight the cabin was cleared of everybody but the washers of the
dead, Eamon Doherty and Master Diver. Oiney Dinchy was very angry
because Mary Ryan did not ask him to give a hand at the washing of her
husband.
“It wasn’t as if Shemus and me weren’t good friends,” said Oiney. “And
besides, I have washed more dead men in a year of my life than all
washed by Eamon and Master Diver put together.... And to think that I
wasn’t allowed to help at the washin’ to-night!”
The men and women who had left the cabin went down on their knees at the
doorstep and recited the Rosary. The night being very dark the young men
drew near the girls and tickled them on the bare feet while they prayed.
When admittance was again possible the dead man lay in the bed, his body
covered with a white sheet and a large black crucifix resting on his
breast. His clothes were already burned in the fire, it being a common
custom in Frosses to consign the clothes of the dead to the flames on
the first night of the wake.
About two o’clock in the morning provisions came from Greenanore. The
house was now crowded, and several games such as “The Priest of the
Parish,” “Catch the Ten,” and “Put your fingers in the Crow’s Nest” were
in progress. An old man who sat in the corner was telling a story of the
famine, and a few mischievous boys were amusing themselves by throwing
pieces of peat at his hat.
While tea was being made, the rosary was again started. Micky’s Jim, a
trifle the worse for liquor, went down on his knees on a chair and gave
out the prayers. The mischievous boys turned their attentions from the
old man to Jim, who was presently bombarded by a fire of turf. One went
past his ears; one hit him on the back, another on the head, a third on
the brow. Jim got angry.
“Pray away yourselves and be damned to you!” he roared at the kneeling
house and, jumping off the chair, he sat down in a corner from which he
had a view of the whole party. Prayers came to an abrupt conclusion;
the chair was taken by the beansho, who placed her child between its
legs, and the little boy, who had shown a wonderful propensity for
running to the bedside and pulling the corpse by the beard, was held a
fast prisoner. Four or five women moved about hurriedly preparing tea;
whisky was served without skimp or stint, but pipes were found to be
scarce; one had to do for three persons, each pulling at it in turn.
The old man in the corner took up the famine story at a point where the
prayers had interrupted the recital. It told of a corpse that rose from
the bed of death, sat down at the table, lifted a bowl of tea, drank it
and went back to bed again. “And the man was dead all the time,” said
the story-teller.
Willie the Duck, speaking in a quavering voice, began to ask riddles:
“What bears but never blossoms?” he enquired.
“The hangman’s rope,” was the answer.
“What tree never comes to fruit?” he asked.
“The gallows-tree,” was the answer.
“This is the best guess of the night,” said Willie, taking a pinch of
snuff and sneezing violently. “No one will be able to answer it.... In
the morning four legs; at noon two legs; in the evening three legs and
at night four legs; and what would that be?”
“It’s a man,” said Eamon Doherty, looking round with a triumphant
glance. “In his young days a man walks on his hands and knees, when he
grows up he walks on two legs; when he gets older he walks on three
legs, two and a stick; and if he lives long enough he’ll walk on
crutches, God be good to us! and that’s four legs!”
“You’re a man with a head, Eamon,” said Willie the Duck. “And how did
you guess it atall?”
“I heard the same guess often and I knew the answer every time,” Eamon
replied, and a smile of satisfaction lit up his face.
About four o’clock in the morning most of the men and a few of the
ancient females were drunk. Mary Ryan had fallen asleep by the fire, her
head touching the white ashes of her husband’s clothes. Norah placed a
pillow under her mother’s head and took up a seat near her, gazing in
turn at the silent figure which lay in the bed and the blue flames
chasing one another up the black chimney.
Two lamps, one at each end of the house, spluttered dismally; the wind
outside battered loudly against the door and wailed over the chimney.
Oiney Dinchy was asleep and snoring loudly, and two youngsters blackened
his face with soot. The beansho slept, and her child, long since
released from the prison of the chair, was blubbering fitfully. On the
damp earth of the mid-floor a well-made young woman slumbered, the naked
calves of her finely formed legs showing. Micky’s Jim slapped the legs
with his hand; the girl awoke, put down her dress until it covered her
toes, made a face at the tormentor and went to sleep again. Beside
Norah, old Master Diver, now remarkably rotund, was asleep, his bald
head hanging to one side and a spittle slobbering from his lips.
Norah looked round at the sleepers, saw the stiff legs stretched on the
floor, the long, awkward arms hanging loosely over the backs of the
chairs, the bowls and the upturned whisky glasses on the table; heard
the loud snoring, the rustle of petticoats as a woman changed her
position on a stool, the crackle of falling peat on the hearth, the
whimpering of the beansho’s child, and the sound made by the lips of a
sucking babe pulling at its mother’s breast.
The strange fear, that which had taken possession of her three years
before on the rocks of Dooey, seized her again. To her all things seemed
to lack finish as they lacked design. A vague sense of repulsion
overcame the girl as she gazed at the sleepers huddled on form and
floor. She shuddered as if in a fever and approached the bed; there the
awful stillness of the dead fascinated her. She was looking at the dead,
but somehow Death had now lost its terror: it was the living who caused
her fear. She knelt down and prayed.