The art of weaving is one that has been practised upon the Aran isles
for a longer time than it is easy to reckon. It cannot, however, be said
to have, so far, reached any very high point of perfection. At the time
at which this story opened there were no fewer than four professional
weavers upon Inishmaan. Dumb Denny O’Shaughnessy, however, had always
been considered to stand at the top of his profession, especially as the
maker of the thick yellowish-white flannel used by the women for their
bodices and by the men for their entire suits. Dumb Denny had now been
dead some months, but the weaving trade was still carried on by his
nephew Teige, though there were not wanting captious housewives ready
to cry out that the stuff produced by him was of a very inferior quality
to that produced by old Denny. Changes, no matter of what sort or from
what cause, are naturally condemned in such places as Inishmaan.
Grania had for some time back been intending to get Honor the materials
for a new bedgown, the only garment the poor woman now ever needed.
Honor herself had deprecated the expense, declaring that the old one did
well enough, though her elbows had long been through the sleeves--a fact
not to be concealed whenever her old striped shawl, the only other
garment she wore, fell back and left them exposed. Patches might perhaps
have been fitted to them, but unfortunately Grania’s various
accomplishments did not include any very intimate acquaintance with a
needle, her hands being much more at home with an oar or a pitch-fork.
Honor, for an Aranite, had been a fairly neat worker in her day, but
that day was long past. In any case, new flannel Grania was determined
to get, and when she had set her mind resolutely upon anything it was
not likely to be long delayed.
A few days later, therefore, she set off for the O’Shaughnessy cabin to
give the order to Teige, first driving ‘Moonyeen’ down to enjoy an
hour’s illicit feeding upon the bent-grass on the seashore. This small
act of habitual larceny accomplished, she followed the level platform of
rock till she reached the corner of the island, which brought her
opposite to the little spit or isthmus by means of which the islet upon
which the O’Shaughnessys’ cabin stood joined on to its larger neighbour.
The weather was as bad as ever. Though it was now mid-May the day felt
like March. An ill-conditioned blast--easterly rather than
westerly--seemed to be waiting for the passerby at every corner. As she
walked along the prospect was enough to set even native teeth on edge.
In every direction spread the eternal grey sheets of rock, broken into
fissures, battered by the storms, half melted under dissolving torrents
of rain, their few patches of greenery shrunk away into the fissures for
warmth and safety. Beyond lay the unvarying sweep of grey sea, or of
land almost as cheerless. Overhead the same eternal cloud-processions.
No clear sky anywhere. On they went, those clouds; hurrying endlessly;
grey, shapeless masses entangled in one another; clutching at one
another with bodiless fingers, rolling away into the distance for ever
and ever; always going on, and yet never gone.
Especially was the wind cold and boisterous upon the narrow tongue of
rock that linked the O’Shaughnessys’ territory to the rest of the world.
It seemed to be literally sweeping in from all sides at once as Grania
made her way across, avoiding as far as possible the oily coils of
seaweed strewn over it, and, having reached the other side, clambered up
the short steep bit of cliff which intervened between it and the cabin.
The door stood wide open, so that before she reached it she could see
right through the cabin and out to the sea upon the other side. There
were two windows, one on the same side as the door, looking south
towards Inishmaan, the other looking northward. It was through this one
that the grey light of the sea lying below came so distinctly, shining
upon the floor and walls with something of the cold sheen and glitter of
a sea-cave. Between the two windows stretched the loom, a rickety
structure of indistinguishable hue, its beams half rotten, and bent and
warped with time, the very cords on which the work in progress was
stretched being so worn and old that it seemed impossible they could
continue to serve their purpose much longer. In place, too, of a metal
sustainer a small bar of wood held up the work in progress--in the
present case a piece of the usual whitish flannel of the island, the
same that Grania had herself come to order.
Teige O’Shaughnessy was sitting bent double over his work, but he
suddenly lifted his head, and started erect with a look of sheepish joy
when he saw his visitor.
Poor Teige! He was not much less ill-favoured now than he had been six
years earlier. On the contrary, a fall which he had had while
puffin-hunting had resulted in a lameness which, though it did not
hinder him from walking, made it painful to him. As Teige the _boccach_,
or cripple, he was known all over the islands, where his freckled face,
red hair, and halting gait was a familiar object in every cabin, as he
came and went with his bundles of flannel and coarse homespun friezes.
Standing behind his loom, whose beams and pulleys filled nearly the
whole interior of the cabin, his poor, ugly face looked up at his
visitor from under its red thatch with a peculiarly wistful expression,
an expression not often seen on a man’s face, very often upon that of
some affectionate and rather unusually ill-used dog. Yet Grania had
never ill-used Teige O’Shaughnessy. At least, had she? The question is
not so easily answered as may at first sight seem. Given a woman with a
larger share of plain human affection than she can conveniently dispose
of--an impatient woman, hot tempered and vehement--let her have given
away that affection where it is, to say the least, indifferently
responded to; let her have someone else at hand to whom she is as the
sun, moon, and stars shining in their glory--as wonderful and hardly
less unapproachable--what sort of treatment is she likely to mete out to
that person? The experience of larger places than Inishmaan may be taken
to supply the answer!
Grania’s own impression, had she been asked, was that she was very good
indeed to Teige O’Shaughnessy--now. She allowed him, that is to say, to
do a multitude of odd jobs for her that she would never for an instant
have dreamt of troubling Murdough with. When Honor had been well enough,
for instance, it had been his office to help row the two sisters over to
Aranmore to mass upon a Sunday morning, one for which he was well
fitted, as he was as expert in the management of a curragh as she was
herself, though his lameness made him less serviceable in other tasks,
such as digging, or carrying heavy loads up hill.
A patient, hard-working, poor _boccach_, that everyone admitted him to
be--admitted it with the contempt which such grovelling qualities
naturally awaken in Ireland. Indoors, especially, his handiness was
really degrading. The earthen floor of the cabin was actually reported
to be swept by him, not once a month, but every morning before he
settled down to his day’s work. The two tiny-paned windows were both
extraordinarily clean, and the glass literally whole, so that the cabin
was an exceptionally light one, in spite of its space being almost
wholly blocked up by the loom and its various appurtenances.
To anyone entering at that moment, a first glance would have revealed no
figure but that of the weaver himself. As Grania advanced into the
cabin, however, an odd-looking, little, doubled-up, red object rose from
a corner of the hearth where it had been squatting, and came towards
her, making queer bobs, ducks, and uncanny grimaces as it did so.
This was deaf and dumb Biddy O’Shaughnessy, twin sister to the man
lately dead. Biddy had always been reckoned ‘queer’ upon Inishmaan, and
her infirmity had naturally tended to cut her off from her fellows. She
was also said to be malicious, though how a creature so helpless could
be supposed to have the means of injuring anyone, it was hard to say.
Whatever affection she had to give had certainly all been concentrated
upon her twin-brother, and, since his death, she had grown more elf-like
and uncanny than ever, as if the one tie that linked her to humanity had
now been broken. She was asserted by her neighbours to detest her nephew
Teige, though for this assertion also there was probably only the
wildest surmise to go upon, and certainly Teige had never shown any
signs of being aware of the fact himself.
Upon Grania the old woman’s presence had always produced a distinctly
unpleasant impression--not exactly of fear, not exactly of repulsion,
but of something not very far removed from both. She had never got over
that all but insane access of terror which the sight of the two old
twins had inspired in her on the evening when, as the reader will
remember, she had peeped in as a child at the cabin-window, and then
torn madly home in consternation to Honor. Biddy was known, too, to have
the power of seeing the ‘gentry,’ namely, the _shee_ or _sidh_--beings
who creep out from every mouse-hole and from behind every rafter the
minute a family has gone to sleep, but which few people have the power
of seeing and actually holding communication with. Of these privileged
few, Biddy O’Shaughnessy was universally held to be one.
After uttering sundry queer clacking noises, something like the notes
of a bald coot, which were intended to serve as greetings, the old woman
seemed to forget her visitor, going back to her former place and
squatting down again beside the fire. Meanwhile Grania proceeded to
explain to Teige the sort of flannel she wanted to have for Honor,
handing him at the same time a mass of wool which had been spun by
themselves several winters before. The piece of flannel then upon the
loom being of the same character, though coarser than the one she
wanted, she took hold of it to show Teige how she wished it to be
different, explaining that she wanted Honor to have the warmest and
softest flannel possible. Poor Honor! she was so thin that everything
fretted her skin and hurt her nowadays.
While they stood there talking the cold light reflected off the sea
shone upon their two heads bent over the loom, Grania’s dark one, from
which her shawl had dropped, and Teige’s carroty poll, the fiery redness
of which was only modified by the dust that had gathered thickly on it
in the course of his day’s work. The tide rose higher and higher,
wetting the rocks and stranded, half-dry seaweeds, curling round the
small indentations, and shooting noisily upwards in long jets of spray.
It seemed as if the little house on top must presently be overtaken and
washed away by it. They had to raise their voices almost to a shout so
as to hear one another above the tumult.
Old Biddy, vexed perhaps at being left out of the conference, presently
began to move about, uttering the queer, disjointed grunts and croaks
which were her chief contributions to conversation. First she chattered
vehemently to herself; next, apparently, to someone or something sitting
amongst the smouldering embers of the turf; next she began to stare at
the rafters overhead, nodding and blinking at them, as if some friendly
or inquisitive face was peering down from between their interstices.
After a while, growing tired of these entertainments, she crept over
towards the loom, making her way in and out of its crazy woodwork with a
deftness born of long practice. In this way she got by degrees to the
other side, unobserved by the two absorbed over the discussion of the
flannel. For a while she contented herself with gazing up at them, her
wrinkled old monkey-face puckered into a variety of quaint grimaces--a
wonderful old human gargoyle, beyond the imagination of even a Gothic
carver adequately to reproduce. All at once a new notion seemed to seize
her, and the next time the two heads approached one another, bending
over the woof, Teige explaining something and Grania listening, she
darted forward, and, with a sudden, impish clutch, caught at them and
held them tightly together, so that for a few seconds the two faces were
forcibly pushed cheek to cheek, the total unexpectedness of the movement
hindering either of them from resisting.
Grania was the first to pull herself away, and she did it furiously. The
very touch of the old creature was like the touch of a toad or a spider
to her--it sent a shiver of disgust through her whole body. She turned
angrily, her arm was up, she was about to strike. She stopped short,
however, at sight of the crooked, diminutive body and grinning
monkey-face before her. Old Biddy, on her side, bobbed, ducked, and
chattered, blinking her eyes, a little frightened evidently, yet
proud, too, and pleased by her own successful piece of mischief.
Grania, thereupon, swept round upon Teige. _Someone_ should be
responsible--_someone_ should be made to pay for the insult! Teige was
standing in the same place beside the loom, his face red as a lobster,
as red as his hair, but his eyes shining--shining as they had probably
never shone in his life before. The poor, ill-favoured _boccach_ was for
the moment transfigured. Grania stared at him in sheer astonishment.
What did he mean? What was he staring at? What on earth possessed him?
She felt confused and startled. Something was passing through her, a
sudden impression, she did not as yet know what it was, but it was
something new--something at once new and disturbing--something that
meant---- What, she asked herself confusedly, _did_ it mean?
With a sudden, angry clutch she swept up her shawl which was lying on
the floor, and, without another word, ran out of the cabin down the
steep bit of pathway which led to the narrow causeway, now narrower
than ever from the fast encroaching tide.
Lame as he was, Teige, being nearer to the door, contrived to scramble
after her, and caught her up just as she reached the other side.
‘Auch, Grania! Grania O’Malley!--’tisn’t angry you’d be with one who
hasn’t the sense of life in her at all, at all?’ he cried
deprecatingly--‘a creature that can’t speak with her tongue, nor hear
with her ears, nor understand, nor a thing! What is she but a poor old
lost one out and out, old Biddy, God help her! Sure, Grania O’Malley,
’tisn’t yourself would turn upon such a one as that? Arrah, I know you
wouldn’t.’
But Grania was not to be reasoned with. She pulled her hand furiously
away, almost pushing him down the rocks in her anger. What did he mean
by trying to stop her? what did he mean by staring at her? what did he
mean by----? Had they all gone mad to-day--herself into the bargain? Why
did he look at her like that?--look at her as no one else had ever--why
did he--why did she----? Her head spun round; she hurried on.
It was like an idea dropped out of another world, a world remote from
Inishmaan and Aran altogether. It set her whole frame in a whirl, not as
regards Teige--he was a chip, a straw, nothing--but because it chimed in
with something--a tune, a notion--she could not tell what, which had
often sung through her brain and tingled in her ears, been heard now and
then for a moment, sometimes almost distinctly, then lost, then heard
again. What was it? What was the name of that tune? Was it inside
herself or outside, or where was it?
Scrambling over the rocks, she hurried on, forgetting in her excitement
to fetch home Moonyeen, forgetting the flannel, forgetting everything
but this new voice, buzzing, buzzing unceasingly in her ears. Presently
she found that she had overshot the path by a considerable distance, so
stopped a minute, perplexed and giddy, close to the edge of the cliff.
Below her lay the coose where Murdough kept his curragh, and beyond it
she could see the little old villa, standing upon its narrow green
platform, backed up behind and at the side with rocks. On a nearer view
it would have been seen to have grown even more tumbledown than when we
saw it last; its rusty ironwork still more rusty, and still more
fantastic in its decrepitude. At this distance, however, it was
practically unchanged, and, ruined as it was, it shed an air of classic
dignity, of half-effaced importance and prosperity upon the spot where
it stood, such as no other spot on Inishmaan certainly boasted.
Grania stood for a moment on the edge of the cliff, staring down at it;
her black brows almost meeting in the intensity of her gaze, her arms
locked one over the other on her chest, her face working. Suddenly she
turned with a gesture of impatience, and looked away from it towards the
other side, the side where there was no villa, and where there was
nothing to be seen, nothing, that is, but the sea and the bare
sea-washed sheets of limestone. Ledge above ledge, layer above layer,
these last rose; straight, horizontal, clean cut as if laid by some
builder’s hands, a mass of crude, uncompromising masonry. Under that
heavy, lowering sky it was about as cold and as menacing a prospect as
could well be imagined--a prospect, too, that had a suggestion somehow
about it of cruelty. ‘Look well at me,’ it seemed to say, ‘you have only
to choose. Life up there on those stones! death down here upon
these--there, you see, where the surf is licking the mussels!
Choose--choose carefully--take your time--only choose!’
No one was in sight, not even a cow, only a few seagulls overhead, and
with a quick impulse, born of her own hurrying thoughts, the girl
suddenly flung up her arms, uttering at the same time a low cry, half of
anger, half of sheer brain-tormenting perplexity. It was like the cry of
some dumb creature, vague, inarticulate, full of uncomprehended pain,
and of still less comprehended dissatisfaction. She could not have
explained why she did it, what she meant by it, or what was amiss.
Nothing had happened. She was in no trouble, everything was the same as
usual; only--only----
It relieved, yet it startled her. She looked round, fearing to have been
overheard. A tuft of nodding yellow tansy looked up with an air of
impudent intelligence into her face. Whatever its thoughts may have
been, however, it kept them to itself, and merely nodded the harder.
With another shamefaced glance around, Grania turned and made her way,
this time straight home to the cabin where Honor was waiting for her,
and where she had to listen to a long, tender remonstrance upon the
folly of wasting money upon clothes for the likes of her. What was the
good of it at all, at all? Was it for the burying she wanted them?
Didn’t everyone know it was a sin and a shame to be buying clothes for
people that could never live to wear them out? Wickedness, so it was,
God knew!--no better. Grania listened to all this silently, then equally
silently went about her work. All day she experienced a startled sort of
feeling. Something seemed to have happened. And yet no--upon second
thoughts she remembered nothing had happened. It was as if something
had got inside herself, or into the air--she could not tell where. That
tune; what was it? who had sung it to her? what was its name? what did
it all mean? By degrees, however, the impression began to pass away,
till by bedtime it had almost gone.
As for Teige O’Shaughnessy he remained at least ten minutes standing
upon the same spot where they had parted, gazing with the same air of
sheepish remonstrance at the piece of rock where he had seen her last.
Then, with a grunt and a look of perplexity, he returned, scratching his
carroty head, to the cabin, and set to work again upon the piece of
flannel stretched upon the loom. The tide continued to rise; the little
peninsula was presently converted into an island; he and old Biddy were
as effectually cut off from the rest of Inishmaan as though an ocean had
rolled between them and it. She was back now in her usual place beside
the chimney, her eyes fixed with a look of eager, unblinking fascination
upon a particular spot amongst the rafters. All at once she sprang up,
made a dart forward, and caught at something, small enough, apparently,
to be contained in one hand, then retreated, gibbering and chuckling, to
her stool again, as delighted evidently as a child that has captured a
butterfly. Cautiously she opened finger after finger, at last the whole
hand; peeped round each portion of it separately, examined front, back,
and sides, every part of it, her wrinkled old face twisted into an
expression first of high glee, next of incredulity. Finally, with a
grimace of sudden disappointment and malice, she turned, shaking her
fist and chattering her teeth furiously, in the direction of her nephew,
evidently regarding him as in some way or other responsible for the
disappointment.