OUTSIDE, the women who had taken up their stand at dawn were still changing their bundles of stockings from one hand to another and sheltering them under their shawls whenever they changed them. All the time they kept hitting their feet sharply against the gritty street, trying to drive the cold and the numbness away. On the other side of the pavement a policeman stood for a moment and eyed them disdainfully, then marched on, his baton striking soberly against his leg. One of the party, a handsome girl, stepped out from the crowd and lifting her dress well over her ankles wrung the water from her petticoats. A young fellow passing on a donkey-cart looked shyly at the girl and shouted: “Lift them a bit higher, girsha; just a little bit!” Whereupon the maiden blushed, dropped her dress as if it was red-hot and returned hurriedly to her companions.

The Tweedore and Frosses women had gone away, speaking loudly and lamenting over their ill-luck. Many of them were eating white bread (a new importation into Greenanore), but without butter to give it relish or liquid to wash it down. The bread cost a penny a chunk and one penny represented a whole day’s wages to most of the women. Norah Ryan walked with them, but in her lagging gait could be detected great weariness, and in her eyes there were traces of tears. The poor child of twelve, who felt her suffering very keenly, offered to share her dry crust with Maire a Crick, who had no money, and the old woman looked greedily at the bread for a moment but refused to accept it.

The party hurried clear of the town, their bare feet pattering loudly on the road. Suddenly they encountered the parish priest, Father Devaney, an old, grey-haired, sleek-looking fellow, with shiny false teeth and a pot-belly like McKeown. He pulled his rosary from his pocket and began to pray when he observed his parishioners.

“Tweedore and Frosses people,” he cried genially, turning his eyes from the rosary cross to the women, “have ye got no yarn this good day? No. That’s a pity, but believe me when I say that Mr. McKeown is doing his very best for the whole lot of ye. He’s a good man, a sturdy man, a reliable man, and there’s not his equal, barrin’ the priests themselves, in all Ireland. Are you the daughter of James Ryan of Meenalicknalore?” he asked, turning to Norah Ryan.

“That I am, father,” answered the child.

“Does he forget about the money that I’m wanting for the building of my new house?” asked the old man in a severe tone of voice. “I want five pounds from every family in the parish, and I’m not givin’ them one year or two years, but a whole five years in which to pay it. They’re most of them payin’ up now like real good Christians and Catholics, for they want to see their own soggarth’s house a good house, a strong house and a substantial house. But there is some of my own flock, and James Ryan is one of them, that won’t give a penny piece to the soggarth who is goin’ to save their souls for them. Listen, girsha! Tell James Ryan when you get home that the first pound should be paid at Michaelmas and it’s now long past Hallowe’en. Tell him that I pray every night for them that’s not behind in comin’ forward to help the priest at the buildin’ of his house, the soggarth’s house and the house of all his people. Tell James Ryan that there’s no prayer for him as yet, but if he hurries up with just one pound——”

The priest suddenly spied the beansho staring at him, and he noticed that there was a look of unfeigned contempt in her eyes. He observed the bundle in her shawl, and suddenly recollected that it was the woman’s child—the talk of the parish barely six months before. The priest looked at the woman fixedly for a moment, then knowing that all the party was watching him intently, he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross on his forehead. This was as much as to say, “God save me from this woman, for there is nothing good in her.” Old Maire a Crick crossed herself in imitation of the soggarth and cast a look of withering contempt at the beansho. Norah Ryan also raised her hand, but suddenly it was borne to her that the action of Maire a Crick was very unseemly, and she refrained from making the sign of the cross. Of course the priest was right in what he had done, she knew; the people were forbidden to see anything wrong in the ways of the soggarth.

Suddenly the old man turned away. He walked off a short distance, his head sunk on his breast and his hands clasped behind his back, the rosary dangling from his fingers. Perhaps he was deep in thought, or maybe he was saying a prayer for the beansho; the poor woman, buried beneath her weight of sin and sorrow, had no doubt filled him with compassion. What would he, the father of the flock, not do to make lighter the woman’s burden? All at once he paused, turned round and faced the women who were staring after him.

“Norah Ryan!” he called, and his voice was pregnant with priestly gravity. “If yer father doesn’t send me the pound before the end of the next month he’ll have no luck in this world and no happiness in the next. Tell him that I, meself, the parish priest, said these very words.”

Having thus spoken, the good man went on his way, telling his beads; perhaps counting by their aid the number of sovereigns required for the construction of his mansion.

“That will make some people sit up if they don’t sink into their brogues,” said Maire a Crick, glancing in turn at Norah Ryan and the beansho. “Mother of Jesus, to have the priest talking to one like that! Who ever heard the likes of it?”

“Do you know how much the priest is goin’ to spend on a lav-ha-thury for his new house?” asked the beansho drily.

“Lav-ha-thury?” said Judy Farrel. “What’s that?”

“Old Oiney Dinchy of Glenmornan said that it is a place for keeping holy water,” said Maire a Crick.

“Holy water, my eye!” said the beansho. “It’s the place where the priest washes himself.”

“I’ve heard of them washin’ themselves away in foreign parts all over and every day,” said a woman. “But they must be far from clean in them places. They just go into big things full of water just as pigs, God be good to us! go into a midden. Father McKee, I wish him rest! used to wash his hands in an old tub, and that’s all the washin’ ever he did, and wouldn’t ye think that a tub was good enough for this man? But what am I talking about!” exclaimed the woman, making the sign of the cross. “Isn’t it the priest that knows what is best to do?”

“He’s goin’ to spend two hundred and fifty pounds on his lav-ha-thury, anyway,” said the beansho. “Two hundred and fifty pounds on one single room of his house! Ye’ll not fill yer own bellies and ye’ll give him a bathroom to wash his!”

“Mercy be on us!” exclaimed Biddy Wor, staring aghast at the beansho. “Ye’re turnin’ out to be a Prodisan, Sheila Carrol. Talkin’ of the priest in that way! No wonder, indeed, that he puts the cross on his forehead when he meets you.”

“No wonder, indeed!” chimed a chorus of voices.

“The sun, God forgive me for callin’ it a sun! will be near Dooey Head this minute,” Maire a Crick reminded the party, who had forgotten about the tide in the heat of the discussion. Now they hurried off, breaking into a run from time to time, Judy Farrel leading, her little pinched figure doubling up almost into a knot when she coughed. Last in the race were Norah Ryan and Maire a Crick.

THE darkness was falling as the women raced down the crooked road that ran to Dooey foreshore. A few birch bushes, with trembling branches tossing hither and thither like tangled tresses, bounded the road at intervals. The sky was overcast with low-hanging, slatey clouds, and in the intervening distance between foreshore and horizon no separate object could be distinguished: everything there had blended together in grey, formless mistiness. There was hardly a word spoken; the pattering of bare feet, Judy Farrel’s cough and the hard, laboured breathing of the elder women were all that could be heard.

One of the party, well in advance, barefooted and carrying her shoes hung round her neck with a piece of string, struck her toe sharply against a rock.

“The curse of the devil!” she exclaimed; then in a quieter voice: “It’s God’s blessin’ that I haven’t my brogues on my feet, for they would be ruined entirely.”

A belated bird cried sharply and its call was carried in from the sea ... somewhere in the distance a cow lowed—the sound was prolonged in a hundred ravines ... the bar moaned fretfully as if in a troubled sleep ... the snow ceased to fall and some stars glittered bright as diamonds in the cold heavens.

“Mother of God! It’s on the turn,” Maire a Crick shouted, and hurried as rapidly as her legs would permit down the hill. At intervals some of the party following her would stumble, fall, turn head over heels and rise rapidly again. They came to the strand, raced across it, making little noise with their feet as they ran and with their bodies as they fell. Norah Ryan’s head shook fitfully from side to side as she tried to keep pace with her companions.

They were not aware of the proximity of the dhan until they were in the water and splashing it all around them. When half-way across Maire a Crick found the water at her breast; another step and it reached her chin. Those behind could only see a black head bobbing in the waves.

“Come back, Maire a Crick!” Biddy Wor shouted. “Ye’ll be drownded if ye go one step at all further.”

The old woman turned, came back slowly and solemnly, without speaking a word.

On reaching the strand she went down on her knees and raised her eyes to heaven, looking up through the snowy flakes that were now falling out of the darkness. Then she spoke, and her voice, rising shrill and terrible, carried far across the dhan:

“May seven curses from the lips of Jesus Christ fall seven times seven on the head of Farley McKeown!”

The waves rolled up to her feet, stretching out like black, sinuous snakes; a long, wailing wind, that put droumy thoughts into the hearts of those who listened to it, swept in from the sea. Behind on the shore, large rocks, frightful and shapeless, stood out amidst stunted bushes that sobbed in dismal unison. The women went back to the rocks, passing through bent-grass that shook in the breeze like eels. All around the brambles writhed like long arms clutching at their prey with horrible claws. A tuft of withered fern flew by in the air as if escaping from something which followed it, and again the cry of the solitary sea-bird pierced the darkness.

Between the clefts of a large rock, which in some past age had been split by lightning, the women, worn out with their day’s journey, sat down in a circle, their shawls drawn over their heads and their feet tucked well up under their petticoats. The darkness almost overpowered Norah Ryan; she shuddered and the shudder chilled her to the heart. It was not terror that possessed her but something more unendurable than terror; it was the agony of a soul dwarfed by the immensity of the infinite. She was lonely, desperately lonely. In the midst of the women she was far from them. They began to speak and their voices were the voices of dreams.

Maire a Crick, speaking in Gaelic, was telling a story, while wringing the water from her clothes, the story of a barrow that came across the hills of Glenmornan in the year of the famine, and on the barrow, which rolled along of its own accord, there was a large coffin with a door at the bottom of it. Then another of the party told of her grandfather’s wake and the naked man who came to the house in the middle of the night and took up a seat by the chimney corner. He never spoke a word but smoked the pipe of tobacco that was handed to him. When the cock crew with the dawn he got up from his seat and went out and away. Nobody knew the man and no one ever saw him again.

“We might get shelter in one of the houses up there,” said Norah Ryan, rousing herself and pointing to the hill above, where the short-lived rushlights flickered and shone at intervals in the scattered cabins.

“We might,” said Maire a Crick, “we might indeed, but it’s not in me to go askin’ a night’s shelter under the roof of a Ballybonar man. There was once, years ago, a black word between the Ballybonar people and the people of our side of the water. Since then we haven’t darkened one another’s doorsteps, and we’re not going to do it now.”

“Maybe someone on our side will send a boat across,” said the beansho.

“Maybe they’ll do that if they’re not at the fishin’,” Judy Farrel answered. “And when are they not at the fishin’? They’re always out on the diddy of the sea and never catching a fish atall, atall!”

“We’ll walk about; it will keep our feet warm.”

“And maybe fall down between the rocks and break our bits of legs.”

The rushlights on the hill above went out one by one and the darkness became intense. The Ballybonar people had gone to bed. One of the women on the rock began to snore loudly, and those who remained awake envied her because she slept so soundly.

“I suppose Farley McKeown will have a feather bed under him now,” said Maire a Crick with a broken laugh. It seemed as if she was weeping. The beansho, who was giving suck to her babe, turned to Norah Ryan who sat beside her.

“What are you thinking of, Norah?” she asked in Gaelic.

“I’m just wondering if my mother is better,” answered the child.

“I hope she is,” said the beansho. “Are you sleepy? Would you like to sleep like the earth, like the ground under you?”

“In the grave you mean?”

“No, no, child. But like the world at night; like the ground under you? It’s asleep now; one can almost hear it breathing, and one would like to sleep with it. If ever you think that the earth is asleep, Norah, be careful. Maybe when you grow up some man will say to you: ‘I like you better than anyone else in the world.’ That will be very nice to listen to, Norah. Maybe you’ll walk with the man on a lonely moor or on the strand beside the sea. It will be night, and there will be many stars in the sky, and you’ll not say they’re cold then as you said this morning, Norah. All at once you’ll stop and listen. You’ll not know why you listen for everything will be so quiet. But for a minute it will come to you that the earth is asleep and that everything is in slumber. That will be a dangerous hour, child, for then you may commit the mortal sin of love.”

“Was that your sin, Sheila Carrol?” asked Norah Ryan, calling the woman by her correct name for the first time.

“That was my sin, Norah.”

“But you said this morning——”

“Never mind what I said this morning,” answered the woman in a tone of mild reproof. “I’m only saying that the ground under us and around us is now sleeping.”

“The ground sleeping!” exclaimed Maire a Crick, who overheard the last words of the conversation. “I never heard such silly talk coming out of a mouth in all my life before.”

“Neither have I,” said Norah Ryan, but she spoke so low that no one, not even the beansho, heard her.

Maire a Crick sang a song. It told of a youth who lived in Ireland “when cows were kine, and pigs were swine and eagles of the air built their nests in the beards of giants.” When the youth was born his father planted a tree in honour of the event. The boy grew up, very proud of this tree, and daily he watered and tended it, and one day the boy was hung (why the song never stated) from the branches of his own tree.

“There never was a man hung either in Frosses or Tweedore,” said the woman who had just been snoring. “Never a mother’s son!”

“So I have heard,” Maire a Crick remarked, pulling her feet well up under her petticoats. “In Frosses and Tweedore there never was a tree strong enough to bear the weight of a man, and never a man with a body weighty enough to break his own neck.”

Having said this the old woman, who came from the south of Donegal, chuckled deep down in her throat, and showed the one remaining tooth which she possessed in a hideous grin.

III

ABOUT the hour of midnight the heavens cleared and the moon, hardly full, lighted up the coast of Western Donegal. On the bosom of the sea a few dark specks moved to and fro, and at intervals the splash of oars could be heard. When the oars were lifted out of the sea the water, falling from them, looked like molten silver.

“Norah will be warm in bed by now,” said a voice.

“If she caught the tide when it was standing,” a voice clearer and younger replied.

“If she caught the tide,” repeated the first speaker in a thoughtful tone; then after a short silence, “Does not the land look black, back from the sea?”

The youth studied the shore-line attentively, allowing his oar to trail through the water. “Mother of God! but it looks ugly,” he replied. “I hate it! I hate it more than I hate anything!”

On shore most of the women were now asleep amongst the rocks, their shawls drawn tightly over their heads and their feet tucked up under their petticoats. Maire a Crick, still awake, hummed a tune deep down in her throat, and Judy Farrel coughed incessantly. One white, youthful face was turned to the heavens, and the moon, glancing for a moment on the pale cheeks of the sleeper, caused a tear falling from the closed eyelids to sparkle like a pearl.