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Graveyard Clay: Cré na Cille (1949)

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of Máirtín Ó Cadhain, nor of his masterpiece, until this book was reviewed in the University Bookman. But many of us are not familiar with him because he quite consciously chose to write in the Irish language, indeed to use his writings as a way of preserving it. But Yale University Press has done us all a great service in bringing out not just one but two simultaneous English translations of the book, one rendered in more colloquial language and the other more formal and scholarly (packed with footnotes to guide the reader). They were kind enough to send us this more scholarly edition.

As Ó Cadhain explained the origins of the text thus, he was helping dig a grave one winter (1944-45) when the following occurred:

We dug two graves but we didn't find the right coffins in them. The map of the graves was sent for, but the map was as if a child had been doing his sums with the poker in the ashes of the fire. It was getting late and the funeral was due at any moment. We said that we would dig another grave and that would be that. Going home, one of my neighbours said: 'do you know where we got rid of her in the end, but down on someone whom I'll call Red Micil.' 'Oh', said another, 'Oh dear, but isn't there going to be the grammar down there'.

The resulting novel consists of that imagined "grammar" as it takes place among the dead and buried in a Connemara graveyard.

While many voices are heard from, the core of the story consists of the rantings of Catriona Paudeen, a bitter harpy who carries on her earthly feuds underground and frets constantly about whether she was buried with the expense she believes she deserved. Her chief battle in life, and now in death, was with her surviving little sister, Nell Phaidin, who stole the man she loved, Jack the Scolog, and who is her competition for an expected inheritance from their older sister. Also present and grinding his own axe is the Big Master, who hears--from newer corpses--that his widow is being courted by and eventually marries Billyboy the Post. Ó Cadhain weaves a tapestry of profanity and invective that puts paid to notion of the grave as a "resting place."

Nearly the entire text is in the form of spoken word and, even with the footnotes, it's often hard to tell who is speaking, about what, or the meaning of certain words. But much of it is very funny and there's something to be said for wrestling with a difficult read once in awhile. All credit to YUP for finally getting the book(s) into the hands of English readers, even if there is some irony involved in that translation from Ó Cadhain's beloved Irish.

(Reviewed:17-Jul-16)

Grade: (B+)

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Graveyard Clay: Cré na Cille (1949)

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