The Green Grave and the Black Grave

I

IT was a body, all right. It was hard to see in the dark, and the scale-back sea was heaving up between them and the place where they saw the thing floating. But it was a body, all right.

‘I knew it was a shout I heard,’said the taller of the two tall men in the black boat, that was out fishing for mackerel. He was Tadg Mor and he was the father of the less tall man, that was blacker in the hair than him and broader in the chest than him, but was called Tadg Beag because he was son to him. Mor means big and Beag means small, but Mor can be given to mean greater and Beag can be given to mean lesser than the greater.

‘I knew it was a shout I heard,’said Tadg Mor.

‘ I knew it was a boat I saw and I dragging in the second net,’said Tadg Beag.

‘I said the sound I heard was a kittiwake, crying in the dark.'

' And I sa id the boat I saw was a black wave blown up on the wind.'

’It was a shout, all right.'

‘It was a boat, all right.'

‘It was a body, all right.’

‘But where is the black boat?’ said Tadg Beag.

‘It must be that the black boat capsized,’ said Tadg Mor, ‘and went down into the green sea.’

‘ Whose boat was it, would you venture for to say?’ said Tadg Beag, pulling stroke for stroke at the sea.

‘I’d venture for to say it was the boat of Eamon Og Murnan,’ said Tadg Mor, pulling with his oar at the spittle-painted sea.

The tall men rowed against the sharp up-pointing waves of the scaly, scurvy sea. They rowed to the clumsy thing that tossed on the tips of the deft green waves.

‘Eamon Og Murnan,’said Tadg Mor, lifting clear his silver-dripping oar.

‘ Eamon Og Murnan,’ said Tadg Beag, lifting his clear, dripping, silver oar.

It was a hard drag, dragging him over the arching sides of the boat. His clothes logged him down to the water, and the jutting waves jostled him back against the boat. His yellow hair slipped from their fingers like floss, and the fibres of his island-spun clothes broke free from their grip. But they got him up over the edge of the boat, at the end of a black hour that was only lit by the whiteness of the breaking wave. They laid him down on the boards of the floor on their haul of glittering mackerel and they spread the nets out over him. But the scales of the fish glittered up through the net, and so too the eyes of Eamon Og Murnan glittered up through the nets. And the live glitter of those dead eyes put a strain on Tadg Mor and he turned the body over on its face among the fish, and when they had looked a time at the black corpse with yellow hair set in the silver and opal casket of fishes, they put the ends of the oars in the oarlocks and turned the oar blades out again into the scurvy waves and turned their boat back to the land.

‘How did you know it was Eamon Og Murnan, and we forty pointed waves away from him at the time of your naming his name?' said Tadg Beag to Tadg Mor.

‘Whenever it is a thing that a man is pulled under by the sea,’ said Tadg Mor, ‘think around in your mind until you think out which man of all the men it might be that would be the man most missed, and that man, that you think out in your mind, will be the man that will be netted up on the shingle.’

‘This is a man that will be missed mightily,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘He is a man that will be mightily bemoaned,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘He is a man that will never be replaced.’

‘He is a man that will be prayed for bitterly and mightily.’

‘And food will be set out for him every night in a bowl,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘The Brightest and the Bravest!’ said Tadg Mor. ‘Those are the words will be read over him — “The Brightest and the Bravest.'”

The boat rose up on the points of the waves and clove down again between the points, and the oars of Tadg Mor and the oars of Tadg Beag split the points of many waves.

‘How is it the green sea always greeds after the brightest and the bravest?’ Tadg Beag asked Tadg Mor.

‘And for the only sons?’ asked Tadg Mor.

‘And the men with one-year wives?’

‘The one-year wife that’s getting this corpse tonight,’ said Tadg Mor, pointing down with his eyes, ‘will have a black sorrow this night.’

‘And every night after this night,’ said Tadg Beag, because he was a young man and knew about such things.

‘It’s a great thing that he was not dragged down to the green grave, and that is a thing will lighten the nights of the one-year wife,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘It isn’t many are saved out of the green grave,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘Kirnan Mor wasn’t got,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘And Murnan Beag wasn’t got.’

‘Lorcan Mor wasn’t got.’

‘Tirnan Beag wasn’t got.’

‘It was three weeks and the best part of a night before the Frenchman with the leather coat was got, and five boats out looking for him.’

‘It was seven weeks before Lorcan Mac Kinealy was got, and his eye sockets emptied by the gulls and the gannies.’

‘And by the waves. The waves are great people to lick out your eyeballs!’ said Tadg Mor.

‘It was a good thing, this man to be got,’ said Tadg Beag, ‘and his eyes bright in his head.’

‘ Like he was looking up at the sky! ‘

‘Like he was thinking to smile next thing he’d do.’

‘He was a great man to smile, this man,’ said Tadg Mor. ‘He was ever and always smiling.’

‘He was a great man to laugh, too,’ said Tadg Beag. ‘He was ever and always laughing.’

‘Times he was laughing and times he was not laughing,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘Times all men stop from laughing,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘Times I saw this man and he not laughing. Times I saw him and he putting out in the black boat looking back at the inland woman where she’d be standing on the shore and her hair weaving the wind, and there wouldn’t be any laugh on his face those times.’

‘An island man should take an island wife,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘An inland woman should take an inland man.’

‘The inland woman that took this man had a dreadful dread on her of the sea and the boats that put out in it.’

‘I saw this woman from the inlands standing on the shore, times, from his putting out with the hard dry boat to his coming back with the shivering silverbelly boat.’

‘He got it hard to go from her every night.’

‘He got it harder than iron to go from her if there was a streak of storm gold in the sky at time of putting out.’

‘An island man should not be held down to a woman from the silent inlands.’

‘It was love talk and love looks that held down this man,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘The island women give love words and love looks too,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘But not the love words and the love looks of this woman,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘Times I saw her wetting her feet in the waves and wetting her fingers in the waves, and you’d see she was kind of lovering the waves so they’d bring him back to her.’

‘Times he told me himself she had a dreadful dread of the green grave. “There dies as many men in the inlands as in the islands,” I said. “Tell her that,” I said. “I tell her that,” said he. “‘But they get the black-grave burial,’ she says. ‘They get the black-grave burial in clay that’s blessed by two priests, and they get the speeding of the green sods thrown down by the kinsmen,’ she says.” “Tell her there’s no worms in the green grave,” I said to him. “I did,” said he. “What did she say to that?” said I. “She said, ‘The bone waits for the bone,”’ said he. “What does she mean by that?” said I. “She gave another saying as her meaning to that saying,” said he. “She said, ‘There’s no trouble in death when two go down together into the one black grave. Clay binds closer than love,’ she said. ‘But the green grave binds nothing,’ she said. ‘The green grave scatters,’ she said. ‘The green grave is for sons,’ she said, ‘and for brothers,’ she said, ‘but the black grave is for lovers,’ she said, ‘and for husbands in the faithful clay under the jealous sods.’” ‘She must be a great woman to make sayings,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘She made great sayings for that man every hour of the day, and she stitching the nets for him on the step while he’d be salting fish or blading oars.’

‘She’ll be glad us to have saved him from the salt green grave.’

‘It’s a great wonder but he was dragged down before he was got.’

‘She is the kind of woman that always has great wonders happening round her,’ said Tadg Mor. ‘If she is a woman from the inlands itself, she has a great power in herself. She has a great power over the sea. Times and she on the cliff shore and her hair weaving the wind, like I told you, I’d point my eyes through the wind across at where Eamon Og would be in the waves back of me and there wouldn’t be as much as one white tongue of spite rising out of the waves around his boat, and my black boat would be splattered over every board of it with white sea spittle.’

‘I heard tell of women like that. She took the fury out of the sea and burnt it out to white salt in her own heart.’

II

The talk about the inland woman who fought the seas in her heart was slow talk and heavy talk, and slow and heavy talk was fit talk as the scurvy waves crawled over one another, scale by scale, and brought the bitter boat back to the shore.

Sometimes a spiteful tongue of foam forked up in the dark by the side of the boat and reached for the netted corpse on the boards. When this happened Tadg Beag picked up the loose end of the raggy net and lashed out with it at the sea.

‘Get down, you scaly-belly serpent,’ he said, ‘and let the corpse dry out in his dead-clothes.’

‘Take heed to your words, Tadg Beag,’ Tadg Mor would say. ‘We have the point to round yet. Take heed to your words!’

‘Here’s a man took heed to his words and that didn’t save him,’ said Tadg Beag. ‘Here was a man was always singing back song for song to the singing sea, and look at him now lying there.’

They looked at him lying on his face under the brown web of the nets in his casket of fish scales, silver and opal. And as they looked another lick of the forked and venomous tongue of the sea came up the side of the boat and strained in towards the body. Tadg Beag beat at it with the raggy net.

‘Keep your strength for the loud knocking you’ll have to give on the wooden door,’ said Tadg Mor. And Tadg Beag understood that he was the one would walk up the shingle and bring the death news to the one-year wife, who was so strange among the island women with her hair weaving the wind at evening and her white feet wetted in the sea by day.

‘Is it not a thing that she’ll be, likely, out on the shore?’ he said in a bright hope, pointing his eyes to where the white edge of the shore wash shone by its own light in the dark.

‘Is there a storm tonight?’ said Tadg Mor. ‘Is there a high wind tonight? Is there a rain spate? Is there any sign of danger on the sea?’

‘No,’ said Tadg Beag, ‘there are none of those things that you mention.’

‘I will tell you the reason you ask that question,’ said Tadg Mor. ‘You ask that question because that question is the answer that you’d like to get.’

‘It’s a hard thing to bring news to a one-year wife, and she one that has a dreadful dread of the sea,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘It’s good news you’re bringing to the one-year wife when you bring news that her man is got safe to go down like any inlander into a black grave blessed and tramped down with the feet of his kinsmen on the sod.’

‘It’s a queer thing, him to be caught by the sea on a fine night with no wind blowing,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘On a fine night the women lie down to sleep, and if any woman has a power over the sea with her white feet in the water and her black hair on the wind and a bright fire in her heart, the sea can only wait until that woman’s spirit is out of her body, likely back home in the inlands, and then the sea serpent gives a slow turn over on his scales, one that you wouldn’t heed to, yourself, maybe, and you standing up with no hold on the oars, and before there’s time for more than the first shout out of you the boat is logging down to the depths of the water. And all the time the woman that would have saved you, with her willing and wishing for you, is in the deep bed of the dark sleep, having no knowledge of the thing that has happened until she hears the loud-handed knocking of the neighbor on the door outside.’

Tadg Beag knocked with his knuckles on the sideboards of the boat.

‘Louder than that,’ said Tadg Mor.

Tadg Beag knocked another louder knock on the boat sides.

‘Have you no more knowledge than that of how to knock at a door in the fastness of the night, and the people inside the house buried in sleep and the corpse down on the shore getting covered with sand and the fish scales drying into him so tight that the fingernails of the washing women will be broken and split peeling them off him? Have you no more knowledge than that of how to knock with your knucklebones?’

Tadg Mor gave a loud knocking against the wet seat of the boat.

‘That is the knock of a man that you might say knows how to knock at a door, daytime or nighttime,’ he said, and he knocked again.

And he knocked again, louder, if it could be that any knock he gave could be louder than the first knock. Tadg Beag listened and then he spoke, not looking at Tadg Mor, but looking at the oar he was rolling in the water.

‘Two people knocking would make a loud knocking entirely, I would think,’ he said.

‘One has to stay with the dead,’ said Tadg Mor.

Tadg Beag drew a long stroke on the oar and he drew a long breath out of his lungs and he took a long look at the nearing shore.

‘What will I say,’ he said, ‘when she comes to my knocking?’

‘When she comes to the knocking, step back a bit from the door, so’s she’ll see the wet shining on you, and so’s she’ll smell the salt water off you, and say in a loud voice that the sea is queer and rough this night.’

‘She’ll be down with her to the shore, if that’s what I say, without waiting to hear more.’

‘Say, then,’ said Tadg Mor, pulling in the oar to slow the boat a bit, ‘say that there’s news come in that a boat went down off beyond the point.’

‘If I say that, she’ll be down with her to the shore without waiting to hear more, and her hair flying and her white feet freezing on the shingle.’

‘If that is so,’ said Tadg Mor, ‘then you’ll have to stand back bold from the door and call out loudly in the night: “The Brightest and the Bravest!”’

‘What will she say to that?’

‘She’ll say, “God bless them."'

‘And what will I say to that?’

‘You’ll say, “God rest them."'

‘And what will she say to that?’

‘She’ll say, “Is it in the black grave or the green grave?”’

‘And what will I say to that?’

‘You say, “God rest Eamon Og Murrum in the black grave in the holy ground, blessed by the priest and sodded by the people."'

‘And what will she say to that?’

‘She’ll say, likely, “Bring him in to me, Tadg Beag!”’

‘And what will I say to that?’

‘Whatever you say after that, let it be loud and making echoes under the rafters, so she won’t hear the sound of the corpse dragging up on the shingle, and when he’s lifted up on to the scoured table, let whatever you say be loud then too, so’s she won’t be listening for the sound of the water drabbling down off his clothes on the floor!’

III

There was only the noise of the oars, then, till a shoaly sounding stole in between the oar strokes. It was the shoaly sounding of the irritable pebbles that were dragged back and forth on the shore by the tides.

They beached in a little while, and they stepped out among the sprawling waves and dragged the boat after them till it cleft its depth in the damp shingle.

‘See that you give a loud knocking, Tadg Beag,’ said Tadg Mor, and Tadg Beag set his head against the darkness and his feet were heard for a good time grinding down the shifting shingle as he made for the house of the one-year wife. The house was set in a sea field, and his feet did not sound down to the shore once he got to the dune grass of the sea field. But in another little while there was a loud sound of a fist knocking hard upon wood, stroke after stroke of a strong hand coming down on hard wood.

Tadg Mor, waiting with the body in the boat, recalled to himself all the times he went knocking on the island doors bringing news to the women of the death of their men, but island women were brought up in bitterness and they got life as well as death from the sea. They keened for their own, and it would be hard to know by their keening whether it was for their own men or the men of their neighbors they were keening. Island wives were the daughters of island widows. The sea gave food. The sea gave death. Life or death, it was all one thing in the end. The sea never lost its scabs. The sea was there before the coming of man. Island women knew that knowledge, but what knowledge had a woman from the inlands of the sea and its place in the world since the beginning of time? No knowledge. An inland woman had no knowledge to guide her when the loud knocking came on her door in the night.

Tadg Mor listened to the loud, hard knocking of his son Tadg Beag on the door of the one-year wife of Eamon Og Murnan that was lying in the silver casket of fishes; on the floor of the boat, cleft fast in the shingle sand. The night was cold, the fish scales glittered even though it was dark. They glittered in the whiteness made by the breaking wave on the shore. The sound of the sea was sadder than the back of the head of the yellow-haired corpse, but still Tadg Mor was gladder to be down on the shore than up in the dune grass knocking at the one-night widow’s door.

The knocking sound of Tadg Beag’s knuckles on the wooden door was a human sound and it sounded good in the ears of Tadg Mor for a time, but, like all sounds that continue too long, it sounded soon to be as weird and inhuman as the washing sound of the waves tiding in on the shingle, Tadg Mor put up his rounded palms to his mouth and shouted out to Tadg Beag to come back to the boat. Tadg Beag came back running the shingle, and the air was grained with sounds of sliding gravel.

‘There’s no one in the house where you were knocking,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘I knocked louder on the door than you knocked on the boat boards,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘I heard how you knocked,’ said Tadg Mor; ‘you knocked well. But let you knock better when you go to the neighbor’s house to find out where the one-night widow is from her own home this night.’

‘If I got no answer at one door, is it likely I’ll get an answer at another door?’ said Tadg Beag. ‘It was you yourself I heard to say one time that the man that knows how a thing is to be done is the man should do that thing when that thing is to be done.’

‘How is a man to get the knowledge of how to do a thing if that man doesn’t do that thing when that thing is to be done?’ said Tadg Mor.

Tadg Beag got into the boat again, and they sat there in the dark. After four or maybe five waves had broken by their side, Tadg Beag lifted the net and felt the clothes of Eamon Og.

‘The clothes is drying into him,’ he said.

‘If I was to go up with you to the house of Sean-bhean O Suillebheain, who would there be to watch the dead?’ said Tadg Mor, and then Tadg Beag knew that Tadg Mor was going with him and he had no need to put great heed on the answer he gave to him.

‘Let the sea watch him,’ he said, putting a leg out over the boat after the wave went back with its fistful of little complaining pebbles.

‘We must take him out of the boat first,’ said Tadg Mor. ‘Take hold of him there by the feet,’ he said as he rolled back the net, putting it over the oar with each roll so it would not ravel and knot.

They lifted Eamon Og Murnan out of the boat, and the mackerel slipped about their feet into the place where he had left his shape. They dragged him up a boat length from the sprawling waves and they faced his feet to the shore, but when they saw that that left his head lower than his feet, because the shingle shelved greatly at that point, they faced him about again towards the scurvy waves that were clashing their sharp, pointy scales together and sending up spits of white spray in the air. The dead man glittered with the silver and verdigris scales of the mackerel that were clinging to his clothing over every part.

IV

Tadg Mor went up the sliding shingle in front of Tadg Beag, and Tadg Beag put his feet in the shelves that were made in the shingle by Tadg Mor, because the length of the step they took was the same length. The sea sounded in their ears as they went through the shingle, but by the time the first coarse dune grass scratched at their clothing the only sound that each could hear was the sound of the other’s breathing.

The first cottage that rose out blacker than the night in their path was the cottage where Tadg Beag made the empty knocking. Tadg Mor stopped in front of the door as if he might be thinking of trying his hand at knocking, but he thought better of it and went on after Tadg Beag to the house that was next to that house, and that was the house of Sean-bhean O Suillebheain, one to know anything that eye or ear could know about those that lived within three right miles of her.

Tadg Mor hit the door of Sean-bhean O Suillebheain’s house with a knock of his knuckles, and although it was a less loud knock than the echo of the knock that came down to the shore when Tadg Beag struck the first knock on the door of the wife of Eamon Og, there was a foot to the floor before he could raise his knuckle off the wood for another knock. A candle lit up and a shadow fell across the windowpane and a face came whitening at the door gap.

‘You came to the wrong house this dark night,’ said Sean-bhean O Suillebheain. ‘The sea took all the men was ever in this house twelve years ago and two months and seventeen days.’

‘ It may be that we have no corpse for this house, but we came to the right house for all that,’ said Tadg Mor. ‘We came to this house for knowledge of the house across two sea fields from this house where we got no answer to our knocking with our knuckles,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘And I knocked with a stone up out of the ground, as well,’ said Tadg Beag, coming closer.

The woman with the candle flame blowing drew back into the dark.

‘Is it for the inland woman, the oneyear’s wife, you’re bringing the corpse you have below in the boat this night?’ she said.

‘It is, God help us,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘It is, God help us,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘The Brightest and the Bravest,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘Is it a thing that you got no answer to your knocking?’ said the old woman, bending out again with the blowing candle flame.

‘No answer,’ said Tadg Beag, ‘and sturdy knocking.’

‘Knocking to be heard above the sound of the sea,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘They sleep deep, the people from the inland?’ said Tadg Beag, asking a question.

‘The people of the inland sleep deep in the cottage in the middle of the field,’ said Sean-bhean O Suillebheain, ‘but when they’re rooted up and set down by the sea their spirit never passes out of hearing of the step on the shingle. It’s a queer thing entirely that you got no answer to your knocking.’

‘We got no answer to our knocking,’ said Tadg Mor and Tadg Beag, bringing their words together like two oars striking the one wave, one on this side of the boat and one on that.

‘When the inland woman puts her face down on the feather pillow,’ said Sean-bhean O Suillebheain, ‘that pillow is but as the sea shells children put against their cars, that pillow has the sad crying voices of the sea.’

‘Is it that you think she is from home this night?’ said Tadg Mor.

‘It must be a thing that she is,’ said the old woman.

‘Is it back to her people in the inlands she’ll be gone?’ said Tadg Beag, who had more than the curiosity of the night in him,

‘Step into the kitchen,’ said the old woman, ‘while I ask Inghean Og if he saw Bean Eamuin Og go from her house this night.’

While she went into the room that was in from the kitchen, Tadg Beag put a foot inside the kitchen door, but Tadg Mor stayed looking down to the shore.

‘If it is a thing the inland woman is from home entirely, where will we put Eamon Og, that we have below in the boat with his face and no sheet on it, and his eyes and no lids drawn down tight over them, and the fish scales sticking to him faster than they stuck to the mackerels when they swam beyond the nets, blue and silver and green?’

‘Listen to Inghean Og,’ said Tadg Beag, and he stepped a bit further into the kitchen of Sean-bhean O Suillebheain.

‘Inghean Og,’ came the voice of the old, old woman, ‘is it a thing that the inland woman from two fields over went from her house this night?’

‘It is a true thing that she went,’ said Inghean Og, and Tadg Beag spoke to Tadg Mor and said, ‘Inghean Og talks soft in the day, but she talks as soft as the sea in summer when she talks in the night in the dark.’

‘Listen to what she says,’ said Tadg Mor, coming in a step after Tadg Beag.

‘ Is it that she went to her people in the inlands?’ said Sean-bhean O Suillebheain, who never left the island.

‘The wife of Eamon Og never stirred a foot to her people in the inlands since the first day she came to the islands, in her blue dress with the beads,’ said the voice of Inghean Og.

‘Where did she go, then,’ said the old woman, ‘if it is a thing that she didn’t go to her people in the inlands?’

‘Where else but where she said she’d go?’ said the voice of Inghean Og. ‘Out in the boat with her one-year husband.’

There was sound of aged springs writhing in the room where Inghean Og slept, back behind the kitchen, and her voice was clearer and stronger, as if she were sitting up in the bed looking out at the black sea and the white points rising in it by the light of their own brightness.

‘She said the sea would never drag Eamon Og down to the cold green grave and leave her to lie lonely in the black grave on the shore, in the black clay that held tight, under the weighty sods. She said a man and woman should lie in the one grave forever. She said a night never passed without her heart being burnt out to a cold white salt. She said that this night, and every night after, she’d go out with Eamon in the black boat over the scabby back of the sea. She said if ever he got the green grave, she’d get the green grave too, with her arms clinging to him closer than the weeds of the sea, binding them down together. She said that the island women never fought the sea. She said that the sea wanted taming and besting. She said the island women had no knowledge of love. She said there was a curse on the black clay for women that lay alone in it while their men floated in the caves of the sea. She said that the black clay was all right for inland women. She said that the black clay was all right for sisters and mothers. She said the black clay was all right for girls that died at seven years. But the green grave is the grave for wives, she said, and she went out in the black boat this night and she’s going out every night after,’ said Inghean Og.

‘Tell her there will be no night after,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘Let her sleep till day,’ said Tadg Beag. ‘Time enough to tell her in the day,’ and he strained his eyes behind the flutter-flame candle as the old woman came out from Inghean Og’s room.

‘You heard what she said,’ said the old woman.

‘It’s a bad thing he was got,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘That’s a thing was never said on this island before this night,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘There was a fire on every point of the cliff shore,’ said the old woman, ‘to light home the men who were dragging for Kirnan Mor.’

‘And he never was got,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘There was a shroud spun for Tirnan Beag between the time of the putting out of the island boats to look for him and their coming back with the empty news in the green daylight,’ said the old woman.

‘Tirnan Beag was never got.’

‘Kirnan Mor was never got.’

‘Lorcan Mor was never got.’

‘Murnan Beag was never got.’

‘My four sons were never got,’ said the old woman.

‘The father of Inghean Og was never got,’ said Tadg Beag, and he was looking at the shut door of the room where Inghean Og was lying in the dark; the candle shadows were running their hands over that door.

‘The father of Inghean Og was never got,’ said Tadg Beag again, forgetting what he was saying.

‘Of all the men that had yellow coffins standing up on their ends by the gable, and all the men that had brown shrouds hanging up on the wall with the iron nail eating out its way through the yarn, it had to be the one man that should have never been got that was got,’ said Tadg Beag, opening the top half of the door and letting in the deeper sound of the tide.

‘That is the way,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘That is ever and always the way,’ said the old woman.

‘The sea is stronger than any man,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘The sea is stronger than any woman,’ said Tadg Beag.

‘The sea is stronger than women from the inland fields,’ said Tadg Mor.

‘The sea is stronger than talk of love,’ said Tadg Beag, when he was out in the dark. It was too dark, after the candlelight, to see where the window was of Inghean Og’s room, but he was looking where it might be while he buttoned over his jacket.

V

Tadg Mor and Tadg Beag went back to the shore over the sliding shingle, keeping their feet well on the shelving gravel, as they went towards the sprawling waves. The waves were up to the place where the sea-break was made that spring in the graywacke wall. The boat was floating free out of the cleft in the shingle.

The body of Eamon Og, that had glittered with fish scales of opal and silver and verdigris, was gone from the shore. They knew it was gone from the black land that was cut crisscross with grave cuts by the black spade and the shovel. They knew it was gone and would never be got.

‘Kirnan Mor wasn’t got.’

‘Murnan Beag wasn’t got.’

‘Lorcan Mor wasn’t got.’

‘Tirnan Beag wasn’t got.’

‘The four sons of the Sean-bhean O Suillebheain were never got.’

‘The father of Inghean Og wasn’t got.’

The men of the island were caught down in the sea by the tight weeds of the sea. They were held in the tendrils of the sea anemone and the pricks of the sallow thorn, by the green sea grasses and the green sea reeds and the winding stems of the green sea daffodils. But Eamon Og Murnan would be held fast in the white sea arms of his one-year wife, who came from the inlands where women have no knowledge of the sea and have only a knowledge of love.