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 37 
 
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 7-^
 
 G E A N I A 
 
 VOL. L
 
 By the same Author 
 
 HURRISH: a Study 
 
 IRELAND (Story of the Nations Series) 
 
 MAJOR LAWRENCE, F.L S. 
 
 PLAIN FRANCES MOWBRAY, &c. 
 
 WITH ESSEX I^T IRELAND
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/graniastoryofisl01lawl
 
 G E A N I A 
 
 THE STOEY OF AN ISLAND 
 
 BY THE 
 
 HON. EMILY LAWLESI 
 
 AU^fHOR OP 'HURRISH, A STUDT* 
 
 BTC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1892 
 
 lA/l rights reserved}
 
 I 
 
 V.I 
 
 '^ DEDICATION 
 
 ,ij, . To M. C. 
 
 T 
 
 {^ This story was always inteudeJ to be dedicated to you. It coiild hardly, in 
 fact, have been dedicated to anyone else, seeing that it was with you it was 
 originally planned ; you who helped out its meagre scraps of Gaelic ; you with 
 whom was first discussed the possibility of an Irish story without any Irish 
 brogue in it — that brogue which is a tiresome necessity always, and might 
 surely be dispensed with, as we both agreed, in a case where no single actor on 
 the tiny stage is supposed to utter a word of English. For the rest, they are 
 but melancholy places, these Aran Isles of ours, as you and I know well, and the 
 following pages have caught their full share— something, perhaps, more than 
 . their full share— of that gloom. That this is an artistic fault no one can 
 
 ^^ doubt, yet there are times— are there not ?— when it does not seem so very easy 
 
 ^ to exaggerate the amount of gloom which life is any day and every day quite 
 
 "^ willing to bestow. 
 
 3» Several causes have delayed the little book's appearance until now, but liere 
 
 • it is, ready at last, and dedicated still to you. 
 
 £. L. 
 
 
 
 «5; 
 
 4. 
 
 Lyons, Hazlehatch 
 January, 1892.
 
 Part I 
 SEPTEMBER
 
 PART I 
 SEPTEMBER 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 A MILD September afternoon, thirty years ago, 
 in the middle of Galway Bay. 
 
 Clouds over the whole expanse of sky, 
 nowhere showing any immediate disposition 
 to fall as rain, yet nowhere allowing the sky 
 to appear decidedly, nowhere even becoming 
 themselves decided, keeping everywhere a 
 broad indefinable wash of greyness, a grey so 
 dim, uniform, and all-pervasive, that it defied 
 observation, floating and melting away into 
 a dimly blotted horizon, an horizon which, 
 
 VOL. L B
 
 2 CRANIA 
 
 whether at any given point to call sea or 
 sky, land or water, it was all but impossible 
 to decide. 
 
 Here and there in that wide cloud- 
 covered sweep of sky a sort of break or 
 window occurred, and through this break or 
 window long shafts of sunlight fell in a cold 
 and chastened drizzle, now upon the bluish 
 levels of crestless waves, now upon the bleak 
 untrodden corner of some portion of the coast 
 of Clare, tilted perpendicularly upwards ; now 
 perhaps again upon that low hne of islands 
 which breaks the outermost curve of the 
 bay of Galway, and beyond which is nothing, 
 nothing, that is to say, but the Atlantic, a 
 region which, despite the ploughing of 
 innumerable keels, is still given up by the 
 dwellers of those islands to a mystic con- 
 dition of things unknown to geographers, 
 but too deeply rooted in their consciousness 
 to yield to any mere reports from without.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 3 
 
 One of tliGse momentary shafts of light 
 had just caught in its passage upon the sails 
 of a fishing smack or hooker, Con O'Malley's 
 hooker, from the middle isle of Aran. It 
 was an old, battered, much- enduring sail 
 of indeterminate hue, inclining to coffee 
 colour, and patched towards the top with a 
 large patch of a different shade and much 
 newer material. The hooker itself was old, 
 too, and patched, but still seaworthy, and, as 
 the only hooker at that time belonging to 
 the islands, a source, as all Inishmaan knew, 
 of unspeakable pride and satisfaction to its 
 owner. 
 
 At present its only occupants were 
 Con liimself and his little eleven-year-old 
 daughter, Grania, There was, however, a 
 smaller boat belonging to it a few yards 
 away, which had been detached a short while 
 before for tlie convenience of fishing. The 
 occupants of this smaller boat were two 
 
 B 2
 
 4 CRANIA 
 
 also, a lad of about fourteen, well grown, 
 light haired, fairly well to do, despite 
 the raggedness of his clothes, which in Ire- 
 land is no especial test of poverty. The 
 other was a man of about twenty-eight or 
 thirty, the raggedness of whose clothes was 
 of the absolute rather than comparative 
 order. The face, too, above the rags was 
 rather wilder, more unsettled, more restless 
 than even West Connauc^ht recoonises as 
 customary or becoming. Nay, if you cliose 
 to consider it critically, you might have 
 called it a dangerous face, not ugly, 
 handsome rather, as far as the features 
 went, and lit by a pair of eyes so dark 
 as to be almost black, but with a restlessly 
 moving lower jaw, a quantity of hair raked 
 into a tangled mass over an excessively low 
 brow, and the eyes themselves were sombre, 
 furtive, menacing — the eyes of a wolf or 
 other beast of prey — eyes which by moments
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 5 
 
 seemed to flash upon you like something sinister 
 seen suddenly at dead of night. Shan Daly, 
 or Shan-a-vehonee — ' Shan the vagabond ' — 
 he was commonly called by his neighbours, 
 and he certainly looked the character. 
 
 Even this man's fashion of fishing had 
 something in it of the same furtive and 
 predatory character. Fishing, no doubt, 
 is a predatory pursuit ; still, if any pre- 
 datory pursuit can be said to be legalised 
 or sanctified, it surely is. Shan Daly's 
 manner of fishing, however, carried no 
 biblical suggestions with it. Every time 
 his line neared the surface with a fish 
 attached, he clutched at it with a sudden 
 clawing gesture, expressive of fierce, hungry 
 desire, his lips moving, his eyes glittering, 
 his whole face working. Even when the 
 fish had been cleared from the line and 
 lay in a scaly heap at the bottom of the 
 boat, his looks still followed them with the
 
 6 CRANIA 
 
 same peculiarly hungry expression. Watching 
 him at such a moment you would hardly 
 have been surprised had you seen him sud- 
 denly begin to devour them, then and there, 
 scales and all, as an otter might have done. 
 
 For more than an Jiour the lis^ht western 
 breeze which had carried the hooker so 
 rapidly to Ballyvaughan that morning, with 
 its load of kelp, had been gradually dying 
 away, until now it was all but gone. Far 
 and wide, too, not a sign of its revival ap- 
 peared. Schools of gulls rose and dipped in 
 circles here and there upon the surface of 
 the water, their screams, now harsh and ear- 
 piercing, now faint and rendered almost in- 
 audible by distance. A few other fishing 
 boats lay becalmed at widely separated 
 points in the broad circumference, and, where 
 the two lines of coast, converging rapidly 
 towards one another, met at Gal way, a big 
 merchantman was seen slowly moving into
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 7 
 
 harbour in the wake of a small tug, the trail 
 of whose smoke lay behind it, a long coal- 
 black thread upon the satiny surface. 
 
 Leaning against the taifrail of his vessel, 
 Con O'Malley puffed lazily at his pipe, and 
 watched the smoke disappearing in thin 
 concentric circles, his Irawny shoulders, 
 already bent, less from age than from an 
 inveterate habit of slouching and leaning, 
 showing massively against that watery back- 
 ground. Opposite, at the further end of the 
 boat, the little red-petticoated figure of his 
 daughter sat perched upon the top of a heap 
 of loose stones, which served for the moment 
 as ballast. The day, as has been said, was 
 calm, but the Atlantic is never an absolutely 
 passive object. Every now and then a slow 
 sleepy swell would come and lift the boat 
 upon its shoulders, up one long green watery 
 slope and down another, setting the heap 
 of stones rolling and grinding one against the
 
 8 GRANIA 
 
 other. Whenever this happened the little 
 figure upon the ballast would get temporarily- 
 dislodged from its perch, and sent rolling, now 
 to one side, now to the other, according as 
 the boat moved, or the loose freight shifted 
 its position. The next moment, however, 
 with a quick scrambling action, like that of 
 some small marmoset or squirrel, it would 
 have clambered up again to its former place ; 
 its feet would have wedged themselves securely 
 into a new position against the stones, the 
 small mouth opening to display a row of 
 white teeth with a laugh of triumphant glee 
 at its own achievement. 
 
 A wild little face, and a wild little 
 figure ! Bare-headed, with unkempt hair 
 tossing in a brown mane over face and 
 neck ; a short red flannel petticoat barely 
 reaching to the knees ; another, a whitish 
 one, tied by the strings cloak-fashion about 
 the shoulders, and tumbling backwards
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 9 
 
 with every movement. One tiling would 
 probably have struck a stranger as incongru- 
 ous, and that was the small feet and legs were 
 not, as might have been expected, bare, 
 but clad in comfortable thick knitted 
 stackings, with shoes, or rather sandals, of 
 the kind known as pampooties, made of 
 cow's skhi, the hair being left on, the upper 
 portion sewn together and tied with a wisp of 
 wool in more or less classical fashion across 
 the two small insteps. 
 
 Seen against that indeterminate welter 
 of sea and sky, the little brown face with its 
 rapidly moving glances, strongly marked 
 brows, vividly tinted colouring, might have 
 brought southern suggestions to your mind. 
 Small Italian faces have something of that 
 same outline, that flash, that vividness of 
 colouring : gipsies too. Could the child by 
 any chance, you might have asked yourself, 
 be a gipsy ? But no : a moment's reflection
 
 lo CRANIA 
 
 would have told you it was impossible, for 
 there are no gipsies, never have been any, 
 in Ireland. 
 
 Of course, the real explanation would 
 soon have presented itself to your mind. It 
 lay in that long-unrenewed, but still-to-be- 
 distinguished streak of Spanish blood, which 
 comes out, generation after generation, in so 
 many a West Irish face, a legacy from the 
 days when, to all intents and purposes, yonder 
 little town was a beleaguered fortress, de- 
 pendent for daily necessities upon its boats 
 and the shifting caprice of the seas ; the land- 
 ways between it and the rest of the island 
 being as impracticable for all ordinary 
 purposes and ordinary travellers as any 
 similar extent of mid-Africa to-day. 
 
 Hours pass unobserved in occupations 
 which are thoroughly congenial to our tempe- 
 raments, and it would have been difficult to liit 
 upon one more congenial to such a tempera-
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND ii 
 
 ment as Con O'Malley's than that m which he 
 was at that moment engaged. Had wind, sky, 
 and other conditions continued unchanged, he 
 would in all probability have maintained the 
 same attitude, smoked his pipe with the 
 same passive enjoyment, watched the horizon 
 with the same vaguely scrutinising air, till 
 darkness drove him home to supper and 
 Inishmaan. An interruption, however, came, 
 as interruptions are apt to come when they 
 are least wanted. The fishins^ that afternoon 
 had been unusually good, and for a long 
 time past the two occupants of the smaller 
 boat had been too busily occupied pulling 
 in their lines to have time for anything 
 else. It was plain, however, that strict har- 
 mony was not reigning there. Now and then 
 a smothered ejaculation might have been 
 heard from the elder of the two fishermen 
 directed against some proceeding on the part 
 of the younger one. Presently this would die
 
 12 CRANIA 
 
 away, and silence again set in, broken only by 
 the movements of the fishers, the whisper 
 of the water, the far-off cries of the gulls, and 
 the dull sleepy croak with which the old 
 hooker responded to the swell, which, lifting it 
 upon its shoulders up one smooth grey incline, 
 let it drop down again with a stealthy rocking 
 motion the next moment upon the other. 
 
 Suddenly a loud burst of noise broke 
 from the curragh. It was less like the anger 
 of a human being than like the violent 
 jabbering, the harsh, inarticulate cries of 
 some infuriated ape. Harsher and harsher, 
 louder and louder still it grew, till the discord 
 seemed to fill the whole hitherto peace- 
 enveloped scene ; the very gidls wheeling 
 overhead sweeping away in wider circles as 
 the clamour readied their ears. 
 
 Con O'Malley roused himself, lifted his 
 gaze from the horizon, took the pipe out 
 of his mouth, and, standing erect, flung an
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 13 
 
 angry glance at the curragh, which was only 
 separated from his own boat by some twenty 
 or thirty yards of water. 
 
 Evidently a furious quarrel was raging 
 there. The two fishermen, a minute asro, 
 defined, as everything else, large or small, 
 was defined against that grey, luminous 
 background of water, were now tumbled 
 together into an indistinguishable heap, 
 rolling, kicking, struggling at the bottom 
 of the boat. Now a foot or hand, now a 
 head, rose above the confusion, as one cr 
 other of the combatants came uppermost ; 
 then tlie struggle grew hot and desperate, and 
 the fragile craft rocked from side to side, but 
 nothing was to be seen of either of them. 
 
 Suddenly Shan Daly's face appeared. It 
 was convulsed with rage ; fury and a sort 
 of wild triumph slione in his black eyes ; one 
 skinny arm, from which the ragged sleeve 
 had fallen back, rose, brown, naked, and
 
 14 CRANIA 
 
 sinewy, over the edge of the boat. He 
 had pinned the boy, Murdough Blake, down 
 with his left hand, and with the other was 
 now feeling round, evidently for something to 
 strike him with. Before he could do so, how- 
 ever, Con O'Malley interfered. 
 
 ' Cred thurt, Shan Daly ? Creel thurt 1 ' ^ 
 he exclaimed in loud, peremptory tones. 
 
 There was an instant silence. Shan 
 Daly drew back, showing a very ugly face 
 — a face spotted green and yellow witli 
 passion, teeth gleaming whitely, rage and the 
 desire of vengeance struggling in every line 
 of it. He stared at his interlocutor wildly for 
 a minute, as if hardly realising who he was 
 or what he w^as being asked, his mouth 
 moving as if he was about to speak, but not 
 a word escaping from his hps. In the mean- 
 time, the boy had shaken himself free, had 
 
 1 * What is the matter ? '
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 15 
 
 got upon his feet, and now proceeded to 
 explain tlie cause of the quarreh His face 
 was red with the prolonged struggle, his 
 clothes torn, there was a bad bleeding bruise 
 upon the back of one of his hands, but 
 though he breathed hard, and was evidently 
 excited, it was with a volubility quite remark- 
 able under the circumstances that he 
 proceeded to explain the matter in hand. 
 Shan Daly, he said, had quarrelled with him 
 about the fish. The fish would roll together 
 whenever the boat moved, so that the two 
 heaps, his and Shan's, got mixed. Could he, 
 Murdough Blake, help their rolling .^ No : 
 God knew that he could not help it. Yet 
 Shan Daly had sworn to have his blood if he 
 didn't keep them apart. How was he to keep 
 them apart .^ It was all the fault of the fish 
 themselves ! Yes, it was ! So it was ! He 
 had done his best to keep them apart, but 
 the fish were slimy and they ran together.
 
 i6 GRANIA 
 
 Did he make them shmy ? No, he did not ! 
 It was God Himself who liad made them 
 slimy. But Shan Daly .... 
 
 How much longer he would have gone on 
 it is difficult to say, but at this point his 
 explanations were cut summarily short. 
 
 ' Bedhe hushth^ agus tharann sJio, ^ Con 
 O'Malley said curtly. 
 
 The smaller boat was then pushed up to 
 the other and the boy obeyed. No sooner 
 was he upon the deck of the larger vessel 
 than Con O'Malley silently descended into 
 the curragh. The two boats were again 
 pushed a few yards apart, and Murdough 
 Blake found himself left behind upon the 
 hooker. 
 
 Hold your tongue and come here. '
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 17 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Hakdly had the smaller boat pushed away 
 from the laro-er one and reo-ained its former 
 place, before the little girl upon the ballast 
 scrambled hastily down from her perch, 
 mounted the deck, and went up to the boy 
 as lie stood there astonished, furious, red 
 to the roots of his hair with anger arid in- 
 dignant surprise. 
 
 She had been watching the struggle be- 
 tween him and Shan Daly with breathless 
 interest. She hated Shan with all the hate 
 of her fierce little heart. She loved Mur- 
 dough. He was their nearest neighbour, 
 her playfellow, her big brother — not that 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 ig GRAM A 
 
 they were of any kin to one another — her 
 hero, after a fashion. She adored him 
 as a small schoolboy adores a bigger one, 
 and, like that small schoolboy, laid her- 
 self open to be daily and hourly snubbed by 
 the object of her adoration. 
 
 ' Is it hurt you are, Murdough ? Mur- 
 dough dheelish, is it hurt you are ? Speak, 
 Murdougheen, speak to me ! Did the beast 
 stick you ? Speak, I say ! ' she asked in 
 quick, eager Irish, pouring out a profusion 
 of tliose tender diminutives for which our 
 duller En^^lish affords such a mea^^re and a 
 poverty-stricken equivalent. 
 
 But the boy was too angry, too pro- 
 foundly insulted by the whole foregoing 
 scene, especially the end of it, to make any 
 response. He pushed her from him instead 
 with a quick, angry gesture, and continued 
 to stare at the sea and the other boat 
 with an air of immeasurable offence.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 19 
 
 The little girl did not seem to mind. 
 She kept pressing herself closely against 
 him for a minute or two longer, with all 
 the loving, not-to-be-repulsed, pertinacity 
 of an affectionate kitten. Then, findinjx 
 that he took no notice of these atten- 
 tions, she left him, and trotted back to 
 her former perch, clambering over the big 
 stones with an agility born of practice, 
 and having dived into a recess hidden 
 away between a couple of loose boards, 
 presently found what she was in search of, 
 and, scrambling back, came close up to 
 liim and thrust the object silently into his 
 hands. 
 
 It was only a bit of bread, perfectly stale, 
 dry bread, but then it was baker's bread, not 
 griddle, and as such accounted a liigh deli- 
 cacy upon Inishmaan, only to be procured 
 when a boat went to the mainland, and even 
 then only by the more wealthy of its citizens, 
 
 c 2
 
 20 CRANIA 
 
 such as Con O'Malley, who had a fancy for 
 such exotic dainties, and found an eternal 
 diet of potatoes and oatmeal porridge, even 
 if varied by a bit of cabbage and stringy 
 bacon upon Sundays and saints' days, apt 
 at times to pall. 
 
 It seemed as if even this treasured offer- 
 ing would not at first propitiate the angry 
 boy. He even went so far as to make a 
 gesture with his hand as if upon the point 
 of flinging it away from him into the sea. 
 Some internal monitor probably made him 
 refrain from this last act of desperation, for 
 it was getting late, and a long time since he 
 had eaten anything. He stood still, liowever, 
 a picture of sullen irresolution : his good- 
 looking, blunt-featured, thoroughly Irish face 
 lowering, his under-lip thrust forward, his 
 hands, one of them with the piece of bread 
 in it, hanging by his side. A sharper voice 
 than Grania's came, however, to arouse him.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 21 
 
 ' Monnum oan d'youl! Monnum oaii 
 d'youH' ^ Con O'Malley sliouted angrily from 
 the curragli. ' Go to her helm this minute, 
 ma bouchaleen, or it will be the worse for 
 you ! Is it on to the Inishscattery rocks 
 you'd have us be driving? ' 
 
 Murdough Blake started; then, with 
 another angry pout, crossed the deck of the 
 hooker, and went to take up his place 
 beside the helm, upon the same spot on 
 which Con O'Malley himself had stood a 
 few minutes before. The big boat was 
 almost immovable ; still, the Atlantic is never 
 exactly a toy to play with, and it was 
 necessary for some hand to be upon the 
 helm in case of a sudden capricious change 
 of wind, or unlooked-for squall arising. 
 Little Grania did not go back to her former 
 place upon the ballast, but, trotting after 
 
 ^ ' My soul from the devil.*
 
 22 GRANIA 
 
 him, scrambled nimbly on to the narrow, al- 
 most knife-hke edge of the hooker, twisting 
 her small pampootie-clad feet round a rope, 
 so as to get a better purchase and be able to 
 balance herself. 
 
 The afternoon was closing in quickly 
 now. Clouds had gathered thickly to north- 
 ward. The naked stone-strewn country 
 between Spiddal and Cashla, the wild, 
 almost unvisited, wholly roadless region 
 beyond Greatman's Bay, were all lost to 
 sight in dull, purplish-brown shadows. 
 Around the boat the water, however, 
 was still grey and luminous, and the sky 
 above it clear, but the distance was filled 
 with racing, hurrying streaks of darker 
 water ; while from time to time sudden 
 flurries of wind broke up the hitherto perfect 
 reflections. 
 
 Usually, when these two companions were 
 alone together, an incessant chattering went
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 23 
 
 on, or, to be accurate, an incessant monologue ; 
 for Murdough Blake already possessed one of 
 the more distinctive gifts of his countrymen, 
 and his tongue liad a power of building up 
 castles in the air — castles in which he liim- 
 self, of course, was chief actor, owner, 
 lord, general person of importance — castles 
 which w^ould sometimes mount up, tier above 
 tier, higher and higher, tottering dizzily before 
 the dazzled eyes of his small companion, till 
 even her admiration, her capacity for belief, 
 failed to follow them longer. 
 
 Neither of them knew a single word of 
 Encflisli, for the schoolmaster had not in 
 those days even casually visited Inishmaan, 
 which is still, at the moment I write, 
 the most retrograde spot, probably, within 
 tlie four seas. The loss was none to them, 
 liowever, for they were unaware of it. No 
 one about them spoke English, and had they 
 spoken it, nay, used it habitually, it would
 
 24 GRANIA 
 
 have been less an aid probably than a hind- 
 rance to these architectural glories. To-day, 
 however, Murdough was in no mood to ex- 
 hibit any of liis usual rhetorical feats. He 
 was thoroughly out of temper. His vanity 
 had been badly mauled, not so much by Shan 
 Daly's attack upon him — for, like everyone 
 in and around Inishmaan, he despised Shan 
 Daly — as by the fashion in which Con 
 O'Malley had cut short his own explana- 
 tions. This had touched it to the quick : 
 and Murdough Blake's vanity was already 
 a serious possession, not one to be wounded 
 with impunity. Con being out of reach, 
 and too high in any case for reprisals, he 
 paid back his wrongs, as most of us do, in 
 snubs upon the person nearest at hand. 
 The tete-a-tete^ therefore, was a silent one. 
 From time to time the hooker would give 
 a friendly, encouraging croak, as if to suggest 
 a topic, sloping now a little to the right,
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAJ" D 25 
 
 now to the left, as the soft air began to be 
 invaded by fresher currents coming in from 
 the Atlantic — wild nurse, mother, and grand- 
 mother of storms, calm enough just then, but 
 with the potentiahty of, Heaven only knows 
 how many, unborn tempests for ever and for 
 ever brooding within her restless old breast. 
 
 Occasionally Murdough w^ould take a 
 bite out of the slice of white bread, but care- 
 lessly, and with a nonchalant air, as much as to 
 say that he would just as soon have been doing 
 anything else. Whenever he did this, little 
 Grania would watch him from the ledge upon 
 which she had perched herself, her big 
 dark eyes glistening with satisfaction as the 
 mouthful disappeared down his throat. Now 
 and then too she would turn for a moment 
 towards the curragh, and as she did so and as 
 lier eye caught sight of Shan Daly's slouching 
 figure a gleam of intense rage would sweep 
 across the little brown face, the soft upper
 
 26 CRANIA 
 
 lip wrinkling and curling expressively as one 
 may see a small dog's lips curl when it 
 longs to bite. Ill would it have fared with 
 Shan-a-veehonee or Shan-a-gaddy (' Shan 
 the thief) — which was another of his local 
 names — had her power to punish him been 
 equal to her wish to do so. Her hates 
 and her loves ranged at present over a ridicu- 
 lously narrow compass, but they were not 
 at all ridiculous in their intensity. It was 
 a small vessel, but there was an astonish- 
 ing amount of latent heat, of latent possi- 
 bilities, alike for good and ill, in it.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 2? 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 On board the curragh, meanwhile, the silence 
 had been equally unbroken. 
 
 Con O'Malley did not care about this 
 commonplace hand-line fishing. He always 
 took a prominent part in the herring 
 fisliery, which is the chief fishing event 
 of the year in Gal way Bay, and is carried 
 on on board of the hookers, upon the decks 
 of whicli a small windlass is generally 
 rigged up by the fishermen, so that the net 
 may be more easily hauled on board, when 
 the fish, being cleared from it, tumble 
 down in a great, scaly, convulsive heap 
 upon the deck. The herring fishing was 
 over, however, for this year ; there were no
 
 2g CRANIA 
 
 mackerel in the bay at present ; and this stupid 
 hand-hne fishing hardly, in his opinion, 
 brought in enough to make it worth while to 
 interest himself in it. He was vexed, too, 
 at having had to leave his comfortable 
 perch and open-eyed afternoon snooze in 
 order to separate these two fighting idiots. 
 Though he was not in the least drunk, 
 as you are, please, to understand, he had 
 certainly taken two or three glasses of un- 
 desirably raw wliisky in pretty quick suc- 
 cession before leaving Ballyvaughan, and this, 
 added to the sleepiness engendered by a whole 
 day in the open air, naturally disposed him 
 to the passive, rather than more active, forms 
 of occupation. 
 
 He hardly made a pretence, therefore, of 
 fishing ; merely sat with a line in his 
 hand, staring at the water with an air of 
 almost preternatural sobriety. Shan Daly, 
 on the contrary, for whom this fishing was
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 29 
 
 the chief event of the day, and whose own 
 share of the fish was his principal pay- 
 ment for such services as he was able to 
 render, had resumed his previous attitude of 
 watchful expectation, glancing up from time 
 to time as he did so at Jiis employer 
 with a furtive, somewhat shame-faced 
 expression ; conscious that he was in dis- 
 grace, conscious, too, that he somehow or 
 other deserved to be in disgrace, but with 
 too limited a realisation of things in general, 
 especially of the things we call right and 
 wrong, to be able to define to himself very 
 clearly in what his offence consisted. Beings 
 of so eminently elementary an order as 
 that presented by Shan Daly are apt to be 
 more or less ofienders against whatever 
 society they chance to be thrown into ; 
 nay, are apt to belong in a greater or less 
 degree to what we call the criminal classes ; 
 but their criminality is pretty much upon a
 
 30 GRAN I A 
 
 par with the criminahty of mad dogs or 
 vicious horses. Punish them we must, no 
 doubt, for our own sakes ; restrain them still 
 more obviously, if we can ; but anything 
 of a high tone of moral and abstract con- 
 demnation is, I am apt to suppose, sheer 
 waste of good material in their case. Like 
 most of our poor, overburdened, and un- 
 derprovided humanity, this luckless Shan 
 was not, after all, entirely bad, or, to be 
 accurate, his badness was not of an abso- 
 lutely consistent and uniform character. 
 He had a wretched, sickly, generally 
 starved wife at home upon Inishmaan ; a 
 wretched, sickly, generally starved family, 
 too, and some, at least, of these fish 
 he was so anxious to obtain, and for the 
 preservation of which he would hardly, 
 in the mood, have stopped short at 
 murder, were destined that night for their 
 supper.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 31 
 
 Not much time was given him on 
 this occasion to follow his pursuit, for Con 
 O'Malley was beginning to want to get 
 back to Inishmaan, where he intended to 
 put his small daughter, Grania, ashore, 
 previous to sailing on himself to Aranmore, 
 the largest of the three islands, in the harbour 
 of which he kept his hooker, and where there 
 was a certain already distantly gleaming 
 attraction in the form of the ' Cruskeen Beg ' 
 — largest, best kept, most luxurious of the 
 public-houses upon the three islands, and the 
 chief scene of such not, after all, very wild or 
 seductive conviviality as was attainable upon 
 them. 
 
 Signalling, therefore, to Murdough Blake 
 to pull the two vessels closer together, he 
 presently mounted the hooker, followed by 
 the reluctant Shan, the curragh was let drop 
 back into its former place, and they were 
 soon scudding westward over the bay, all tlie
 
 32 OR AN J A 
 
 four sails — mainsail, foresail, jib, and a 
 small triangular one above the mainsail — 
 being expanded to their utmost to catch the 
 still light and capriciously shifting afternoon 
 breeze.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND i^, 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Tired of trying to conciliate her not-to-be- 
 conciliated companion, little Grania by-and- 
 by trotted over to her father and cuddled up 
 10 him, as he lounged, pipe in mouth, one 
 hand upon a rope, his eye as usual upon the 
 clouds. He was good-natured to her in his 
 way, liked to hare her with him on these 
 occasions, would even now and then when 
 they landed take her for a walk amongst his 
 compeers, the other hooker-owners at Gal- 
 way, Eoundstone, or Bally vaughan, though, 
 at home upon Inishmaan he took no heed to 
 her proceedings, leaving the whole charge, 
 trouble, and care of her bringing up upon the 
 hands of his elder daughter. 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 GRANIA 
 
 Leaning there, idly scanning the grey 
 masses overhead, with floating, carrotty 
 beard, loose-lipped mouth, indeterminate 
 other features, and eternal frieze coat dang- 
 ling by a single button, this big, good- 
 tempered-looking Con O'Malley of Inishmaan 
 might have passed, in the eyes of an ob- 
 server on the look-out for types, as the 
 very picture and ideal of the typical Con- 
 naught peasant — if there are such things as 
 typical peasants or, indeed, any other varie- 
 ties of human beings, a point that might 
 be debated. As a matter of fact, he was 
 not in the least, however, what we mean 
 when we talk of a typical man, for he 
 had at least one strongly-marked trait v/hich 
 is even proverbially rare amongst men of 
 his race and class — so rare, indeed, that it 
 has been said to be undiscoverable amongst 
 them. His first marriage— an event which 
 took place thirty years back, while he wa§
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 35 
 
 still barely twenty — had been of the usual 
 mariage de convenance variety, settled be- 
 tween his own parents and the parent of 
 his bride, with a careful, nay, punctilious, 
 heed to the relative number of cows, turkeys^ 
 feather-beds, boneens, black pots and the 
 like, producible upon either side, but as 
 regards the probable liking or compatibility 
 of the youthful couple absolutely no heed 
 whatsoever. Gon O'Malley and Honor 
 O'Shea (as in western fashion she was called 
 to the hour of her death) had, all the same, 
 been a fairly affectionate couple, judged 
 by the current standard, and she, at any 
 rate, had never dreamt of anything being 
 lacking in this respect. Sundry children 
 had been born to them, of whom only one, 
 a daughter, at the present time survived. 
 Then, after some eighteen years of married 
 life, Honor O'Shea had died, and Con O'Mal- 
 ley had mourned her with a commendable
 
 36 CRANIA 
 
 show of woe and, no doubt, a fair share of its 
 inner reahty also. He was by that time close 
 upon forty, so that the fires of love, if they 
 were ever going to be kindled, might have 
 been fairly supposed to have shown some 
 signs of their presence. Not at all. It was 
 not until several years later that they sud- 
 denly sprang into furious existence. An 
 accident set them alight, as, but for such an 
 accident, they would in all probability have 
 slumbered on in his breast, unsuspected and 
 unguessed at, even by himself, till the day of 
 his death. 
 
 It was a girl from the ' Continent,' as the 
 islanders call the mainland, who set the spark 
 to that long-slumbering tinder — a girl from 
 Maam in the Joyce country, high up in the 
 mountains of Connemara — a Joyce herself by 
 name, a tall, wild-eyed, magnificently hand- 
 some creature, with an unmistakable dash of 
 Spanish blood in her veins. Con had seen
 
 THE STORY OF AM ISLAND 37 
 
 her for the first time at old Malachy 
 OTlaherty's wake, a festivity at which — 
 Malachy having been the last of the real, 
 original O'Flaherties of Aranmore — nearly 
 every man in the three islands had mustered, 
 as well as a considerable sprinkling of more 
 or less remotely connected Joyces and 
 O'Flaherties from the opposite coast. Whole 
 barrels of whisky had been broached, and 
 the drinking, dancing, and doings generally 
 had been quite in accordance with the best of 
 the old traditions. 
 
 Amongst the women gathered together on 
 this celebrated occasion, Delia Joyce, of Maam 
 in Connemara, had borne away the palm, as a 
 Queen's yacht might have borne it away 
 amongst an assembly of hookers and canal 
 barges. Not a young man present on the spot 
 — little as most of them were apt to be troubled 
 with such perturbations — but felt a dim, 
 unexplained trouble awake in his breast
 
 38 CRANIA 
 
 as tlie young woman from Maam swept 
 past him, or danced with measured, stately 
 steps down the centre of the stone floor ; her 
 red petticoat shghtly kilted above her ankles, 
 her head thrown back, her great, dark, 
 slumberous eyes sweeping round the room, 
 as she looked demurely from one strange 
 face to another. Upon Con O'Malley — 
 not amongst the category of young men — 
 the effect was the most marked, most instan- 
 taneous, most overwhelming of all ! Delia 
 Joyce, as everyone in the room discovered in 
 ten minutes, had no fortune, and, there- 
 fore, obviously was no match. She was 
 the orphan niece of a man who had seven 
 living children of his own. She had not a 
 cow, a gridiron, a penny-piece, an inch 
 of land, not a possession of any sort in the 
 world. 
 
 Eegardless of this utterly damning fact, 
 regardless of his own age, regardless of the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 39 
 
 outrage inflicted upon public opinion, regard- 
 less of everything and everybody, Con 
 O'Malley fell hopelessly in love with her ; 
 clung to her skirts like a leech the whole 
 evening ; followed her the next day as she was 
 about to step on board her curragh for the 
 mainland ; carried her, in short, bodily off her 
 feet by the sheer vehemence of his love- 
 making. He was still a good-looking man at 
 the time ; not bent or slouching, but well 
 set up ; a ' warm ' man, ' well come ' and 
 ' well-to-do ; ' a man whose pleadings no 
 woman — short, that is, of a bailiff's or 
 a farmer's daughter — would disdain to listen 
 to. 
 
 Delia Joyce coyly but gladly consented to 
 respond to his ardour. It was a genuine love- 
 match on both sides — that rarest of rare phe- 
 nomena in peasant Ireland. That it would, 
 as a matter of course, and for that very rea- 
 son, turn out disastrously was the opinion,
 
 40 GRANIA 
 
 loudly expressed, of every experienced 
 matron, not in Inishmaan alone, but for 
 forty miles around that melancholy island. 
 A ' Black stranger,' a ' Foreigner,' a girl 
 ' from the Continent,' not related to anyone or 
 belonging to the place ! worse than all, a girl 
 without a penny-piece, without a stool or a 
 feather-bed to add to the establishment ! 
 There was not a woman, young or old, living 
 on the three islands but felt a sense of intense 
 personal degradation whenever the miserable 
 affair was so much as alluded to before her ! 
 
 Marriages, however, are queer things, 
 and the less we prophesy about them the 
 less likely we are perhaps to prove con- 
 spicuously wrong. So it was in this case. 
 A happier, more admittedly successful mar- 
 riage there never was or could be, save, 
 indeed, in one important and lamentable 
 respect, and that was that it came to an end 
 only too soon. About a year after the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 41 
 
 marriage little Grania was born, two years 
 after it a boy ; then, within a few days of one 
 another, the mother and the baby both died. 
 From that day Con O'Malley was a changed 
 man. He displayed no overwhelming or 
 picturesque grief. He left the weeping and 
 howling at the funeral, as was proper, to the 
 professional mourners hired upon that occa- 
 sion. He did not wear crape on his hat 
 — the last for tlie excellent reason that 
 Denny O'Shaughnessy made none, and Denny 
 O'Shaughnessy was much the most fashion- 
 able of the weavers upon Inishmaan. He 
 did not mope, he did not mourn, he did not do 
 anything in particular. But from the day of 
 his wife's death he went to the dogs steadily 
 and relentlessly — to the dogs, that is, so far as 
 it is going to the dogs to take no further 
 interest in anything, including your own 
 concerns. He did not even do this in any 
 very eminent or extravagant fashion : sim-
 
 42 CRANIA 
 
 ply became on a par with the most shift- 
 less and thriftless of his neighbours, instead 
 of being rather noticeably a contrast to them 
 in these respects. Bit by bit, too, the ' Crus- 
 keen Beg,' which had hitherto regarded him 
 as only a very distant and unsatisfactory 
 acquaintance, began to know him better. He 
 still managed to keep the hooker afloat, but 
 what it and his farm brought him in nearly 
 all found its way across the counter of it or 
 some kindred shebeen, and how Honor O'Mal- 
 ley contrived to keep herself and the small 
 Grania, not to speak of a tribe of pensioners 
 and hangers-on, upon the margin left was a 
 marvel to all w^ho were acquainted with the 
 family. Nine years this process had been 
 going on, and it was going on still, and, as 
 the nature of things is, more and more 
 rapidly of late. Poor Con O'Malley ! He was 
 not in the least a bad man ; nay, he was dis- 
 tinctly a good man : kindl}^, religious, faithful.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 43 
 
 affectionate, generous — a goodly list surely of 
 the virtues ? But he had set his foot upon a 
 very bad road, one which, all over the world, 
 but especially in Ireland, there is rarely, or 
 never, any turning back upon.
 
 44 CRANIA 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The hooker had by this time got into the 
 North Sound, known to the islanders as Bea- 
 lagh-a-Lurgan. Tradition talks here of a 
 great freshwater lake called Lough Lurgan, 
 which once covered the greater part of Gal- 
 way Bay. This may be so or it may not, the 
 word anyhow is one for the geologist. What 
 is certain, and more important for the 
 moment, is, that from this point we gain the 
 best view that is to be had of the three Aran 
 isles as a whole, their long-drawn, bluntly- 
 peaked outlines filling the whole eye as one 
 looks to westward. 
 
 Taken together in this fashion, the three 
 isles, with the two sounds which divide them,
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 45 
 
 and an outlying fringe of jagged, vicious- 
 looking rocks and skerries, make up a total 
 length of some fifteen miles, containing, 
 roughly speaking, about eleven thousand 
 acres. Acres ! As one writes down the 
 word, it seems to rise up, mock, gibe, laugh 
 at, and confound one, from its wild inappro- 
 priateness, at least to all the ideas we com- 
 monly associate with it. For, be it known 
 to you, oh prosperous reader — dweller, 
 doubtless, in a sleek land, a land of earth 
 and water, possibly even of trees — that these 
 islands, like their opposite neighbour, the 
 Burren of Clare, are rock, not partially, but 
 absolutely. Over the entire surface, save the 
 sands upon the shore and the detritus that 
 accumulates in the crannies, there is no 
 earth whatsoever, save what has been artifi- 
 cially created, and even this is for the most 
 part but a few inches deep. The conse- 
 quence is, that a droughty season is the
 
 46 CRANIA 
 
 worst of all seasons for the Aranite. Drench 
 him with rain from early March to late 
 November, he is satisfied, and asks no more. 
 Give him what to most people would seem 
 the most moderate possible allowance of sun 
 and dry weather, and ruin begins to stare 
 him in the face ! The earth, so laboriously 
 collected, begins to crack ; his wells — there 
 are practically no streams — run dry ; his 
 beasts perish before his eyes ; his potatoes 
 lie out bare and half baked upon the stones ; 
 his oats — these are not cut, but plucked 
 bodily by hand out of the sands — wither to 
 the ground ; he has no stock, nothing to 
 send to the mainland in return for those neces- 
 saries which he gets from there, nothing to 
 pay his rent with ; worse than all, he has ac- 
 tually to fetch the water he requires to drink 
 in casks and barrels from the opposite shore ! 
 A cheerful picture, you say ! Difficult 
 perhaps to realise, still more difficult, when
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 47 
 
 realised, to contemplate placidly. Who so 
 realising it can resist the wish to become, 
 for a moment even, that dream of philan- 
 thropists — a benevolent despot, and, swoop- 
 ing suddenly upon the islands, carry of! 
 their whole population — priests, people, and 
 all — and set them down in a new place, 
 somewhere where Nature would make 
 some little response, however slight, to so 
 much toil, care, love, so fruitlessly and 
 for so many centuries lavished upon her 
 here? 
 
 ' But would they thank you ? ' you, as an 
 experienced philanthropist, perhaps, ask me. 
 I reply that, it is, to say the least, extremely 
 doubtful. Certainly you might carefully sift 
 the wide world, search it diligently with a 
 candle from pole to pole, without hitting 
 upon another equally undesirable, equally 
 profitless place of residence. CHmate, soil, 
 aspect, everything is against it. Ingenuity
 
 48 CRANIA 
 
 might seek and seek vainly to find a quality 
 for wliicli it could be upheld. And yet, 
 so strangely are we made, that a dozen 
 years hence, if you examined one of the 
 inhabitants of your ideal arcadia, you would 
 probably find that all his, or her, dreams 
 of the future, all his, or her, visions of 
 the past, still clung, limpet-fashion, to these 
 naked rocks, these melancholy dots of land 
 set in the midst of an inhospitable sea, which 
 Nature does not seem to have constructed 
 with an eye to the convenience of so much 
 as a goat ! 
 
 The four occupants of our hooker na- 
 turally troubled their heads with no such 
 problems. To them their islands — especi- 
 ally this one they were approaching, In- 
 ishmaan — were to all practical purposes the 
 world. Even for Con O'Malley, whom busi- 
 ness carried pretty often to the mainland, the 
 latter was, save on the merest fringe, to all
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 49 
 
 intents and purposes an unknown country. 
 The world, as it existed beyond that grey 
 wash of sea, was a name to him, and nothing 
 more. Ireland — sometimes regarded by su- 
 perior persons as the very Ultima Thule 
 of civiUsation — hung before his eyes as 
 a region of dangerous novelties, dazzling, 
 almost wicked in its sophistication, and he 
 had never set foot on a railroad in his life. 
 
 Inishmaan has no regular harbour, conse- 
 quently it was necessary to get the curragh 
 out again so as to set little Grania ashore. 
 The child had been hoping the whole way 
 back that Murdough Blake, too, would have 
 come ashore with her, but he remained 
 sitting, with the same expression of sulky 
 dignity, upon the deck of the hooker, and 
 it was the hated Shan Daly who rowed her 
 to the land ; which done, with a quick, 
 furtive glance towards a particular spot a 
 little to westward, he turned and rowed a.^ 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 CRANIA 
 
 quickly as he could back to the larger vessel 
 again. 
 
 While the boat was still on its way, before 
 it had actually touched shore, a woman who 
 had been Avaiting for it on the edge might 
 have been seen to move hastily along the 
 rocks, so as to be ready to meet them upon 
 their arrival. This woman wore the usual red 
 Galway flannel petticoat, with a loose white 
 or yellowish flannel jacket above, known as 
 a ' baudeen,' and worn by both sexes on the 
 islands, a handkerchief neatly crossed at her 
 neck, with blue knitted stockings and pam- 
 pooties upon her feet. At first sight it would 
 have been difficult to guess her age. Her 
 hair, better brushed than usual, was of a 
 deep, unglossy black, and her skin clear and 
 unwrinkled ; yet there was nothing about her 
 which seemed to speak of youth. It was a 
 plain face and a sickly one, with little or 
 nothing of that play of expression which
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 51 
 
 redeems many an otherwise homely Irish face, 
 yet, if you had taken the trouble to examine 
 it, you would have been struck, I think, with 
 something peculiar about it, something that 
 would have arrested your attention. Elements 
 not often seen in combination seemed to find 
 a meeting-place there. A look of peculiar 
 contentedness, an indescribable placidity 
 and repose, had stamped those homely fea- 
 tures as with a benediction. The mild brown 
 eyes, hfting themselves blinkingly to the sun- 
 light, had something about them, chastened, 
 reposeful, serene, an expression hardly seen 
 beyond the shelter of the convent ; yet, at 
 the same time, there was something in the 
 manner in which the woman ran down to the 
 shore to meet the child, and, lifting her 
 carefully over the edge of the boat, set her 
 on her feet upon the rocks, a manner full of a 
 sort of tender assiduity, a clinging, caressing, 
 adoring tenderness, not often, hardly ever 
 
 £ 2
 
 52 CRANIA 
 
 indeed, to be found apart from the pains and 
 the joys of a mother. 
 
 This was Honor O'Malley, httle Grania's 
 half-sister, the only surviving daughter of 
 Con O'Malley's first marriage. She had been 
 little more than a half-grown girl when 
 her mother died, but for several years had 
 kept house for her father. Then had come 
 the short-lived episode of his second marriage 
 and his wife's death, since which time Honor's 
 one aim in life, her whole joy, her pride, her 
 torment, her absorbing passion, had been her 
 little sister. 
 
 The child had been an endless trouble to 
 her. Honor herself was a saint — a tender, self- 
 doubting, otherwise all-believing soul. The 
 small sister was a born rebel. No priest lived 
 on Inishmaan, or, indeed, lives there still, so 
 that this visible sign of authority was wanting. 
 Even had there been one, it is doubtful 
 whether his mere presence would have had
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 53 
 
 the desired effect, tliough Honor always de- 
 voutly believed that it would. The child 
 had grown up as the young seamew grows. 
 The air, the rocks, the restless, fretting sea ; 
 a few keen loves, a few still keener and more 
 vehement hates ; the immemorial criss-cross 
 of wishes, hindrances, circumstances — these 
 and such as these had made her education, 
 so far as she had had any. As for poor 
 Honor's part in it ! Well, the child was 
 really fond of her, really loved her, and that 
 must suffice. There are mothers who have 
 to put up with less. 
 
 Taking her by the hand the elder sister 
 now attempted to lead her from the shore. 
 It was a slow process ! At every rock she came 
 to httle Grania stopped dead short, turning her 
 head mutinously back to watch the hooker, as, 
 with its brown patched sails set almost to the 
 cracking point, it rounded the first green- 
 speckled spit of land, on its way to Aranmore.
 
 54 GRANIA 
 
 Whenever she did so, Honor waited patiently 
 beside her until her curiosity was satisfied and 
 she was ready to proceed on her way. Then 
 they went on again. 
 
 There were rocks enough to arrest even 
 a more determined laggard. The first 
 barnacle-coated set crossed, they got upon a 
 paler-coloured set, out of reach of the tide, 
 which were tumbled one against another like 
 half-destroyed dolmens or menhirs. These 
 stretched in all directions far as the eye 
 could reach. The whole shore of this side of 
 the island was one continuous litter of them. 
 Three agents — the sea, the weathering of the 
 air, the slow, filtering, sapping action of rain — 
 had produced the oddest effect of sculpturing 
 upon their surface. From end to end — back, 
 sides, every atom of them — they were honey- 
 combed with holes varying from those into 
 which the two clenched fists might be thrust 
 to those which would with difficulty have
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 55 
 
 accommodated a single finger. These holes 
 were of all depths too. Some of them mere 
 dimples, some piercing down to the heart of 
 the blocks, five, six, seven feet in depth, and 
 as smooth as the torrent-worn troughs upon 
 a glacier. 
 
 Ten minutes were spent in clearing this 
 circumvallation ; then the sisters got upon 
 a waste of sand sprinkled with sickly bent, 
 through which thin patches of white flower- 
 ing campion asserted themselves. Here, in- 
 visible until you all but brushed against 
 its walls, rose a small chapel, roofless, 
 windowless, its door displaced, its gable ends 
 awry — melancholy to look at, yet not without 
 a certain air of invitation even in its deso- 
 lation. Sand had everywhere invaded it, 
 half hiding the walls, completely covering 
 the entrance, and forming a huge drift where 
 once the altar had risen. Looking at it, 
 fancy, even in calm weather, seemed in-
 
 56 CRANIA 
 
 voluntarily to conjure up the sweep of the 
 frightened yellow atoms under the flail of the 
 wind ; the hurry-scurry of distracted particles ; 
 the tearing away of the frail covering of 
 bent ; the wild rush of the sand through the 
 entrance ; and, finally, its settling down to 
 rest in this long-set -aside haven of the unpro- 
 tected. 
 
 West of the chapel, and a little to the 
 left of the ruined entrance, stood a cross, 
 though one which a casual glance would 
 hardly have recognised as such, for there 
 were no cross arms — apparently never had 
 been any — and the figure upon the upright 
 post was so worn by weather, so utterly 
 extinguished, rubbed, and lichen- crusted 
 by the centuries, as hardly to have a trace 
 of humanity left. Honor never passed the 
 place without stopping to say a prayer here. 
 For her it had a special sanctity, this poor, 
 shapeless, armless cross, though she would
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 57 
 
 probably have been unable to explain why. 
 Now, as usual, she stopped, almost mechani- 
 cally, and, first crossing herself devoutly, bent 
 her head down to kiss a small boss or ridge, 
 which apparently once represented the feet, 
 and then turned to make her sister do the 
 same. 
 
 This time Grania would willingly have 
 gone on, but Honor was less compliant than 
 before, and she gently bent the child's re- 
 luctant head, coaxing her, till her lips at 
 last touched the right place. Grania did 
 not exactly resist, but her eyes wandered 
 away again in the direction of the hooker, 
 now fast disappearing round the corner. 
 Why had Murdough Blake gone to Aran- 
 more, instead of coming back with her ? she 
 thought, with a sense of intense grievance. 
 The disappointment rankled, and the salt, 
 gritty touch and taste of the boss of lime- 
 stone against her small red lips could not,
 
 58 CRANIA 
 
 and did not, alter the matter an atom, one 
 way or other. 
 
 Leaving the chapel they next began to 
 climb the slope, first crossing a sort of 
 moraine of loose stones which lay at its foot. 
 Like all the Aran isles, Liishmaan is divided 
 into a succession of rocky steps or platforms, 
 the lowest to eastward, the highest to west- 
 ward, platforms which are in their turn 
 divided and subdivided by innumerable joints 
 and fissures. This, by the way, is a fact to be 
 remembered, as, without it, you might easily 
 wander for days and days over the islands 
 without really getting to know or under- 
 stand their topography. 
 
 A curious symmetry marked the first 
 of these steps, that up which the sisters 
 w^ere then mounting: you would have been 
 struck in a moment by its resemblance to 
 the backbone of some forgotten monster, 
 unknown to geologists. A python, say, or
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 59 
 
 plesiosaiirus of undetermined species, but 
 wholly impressive vastness, stretching itself 
 lazily across about a third of the island, till 
 its last joint, sinking towards the sea, dis- 
 appeared from sight in the general mass of 
 loose stones which lay at the bottom of the 
 slope. 
 
 It was at the head of this monster that 
 the O'Malleys' cabin stood, while at the other 
 — the tail-end, so to speak — was hidden away 
 that foul and decaying hovel in which the 
 Shan Daly family squatted, lived, and 
 starved. Though far above the level of 
 the average stamp of Aran architecture, the 
 O'Malleys' house itself would not, perhaps, 
 have struck a stranger as luxurious. It was 
 of the usual solid, square-shaped, two-roomed 
 type, set at the mouth of a narrow gorge 
 or gully, leading from the second to the 
 third of those steps, steps whose presence, 
 already insisted upon, must always be borne
 
 6o GRANIA 
 
 in mind, since they form the main point, the 
 ground lines upon which the whole island is 
 built. 
 
 A narrow entrance between two rocks, 
 steep as the sides of a well, led to the door 
 of the cabin, the result being that, whenever 
 the wind was to the west or south-west — 
 the two prevailing winds — anyone entering it 
 was caught as by a pair of irresistible hands, 
 twirled for a moment hither and thither, 
 and then thrust violently forward. Im- 
 possible to enter quietly. You were shot 
 towards the door, and, if it proved open, 
 shot forward again, as if discharged from 
 some invisible catapult. So well was the 
 state of affairs understood that a sort of 
 hedge or screen, made of heather, and known 
 as a corrag^ was kept between the door and 
 lire, so that entering friends might be checked 
 and hindered from falling, as otherwise they 
 assuredly would have fallen, prone upon the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 6i 
 
 hearthstone. There were a good many 
 other, and all more or less futile contrivances 
 upon that Httle group of wind-worn, wind- 
 tormented islands against their omnipotent 
 master.
 
 62 CRANIA 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Blocking the moutli of the already narrow 
 gully stood a big boulder of pink granite, 
 a ' Stranger ' from the opposite coast of 
 Gal-way. Leaning against this boulder as 
 the sisters mounted the pathway, a group of 
 five figures came into sight. Only one of these 
 was full grown, the rest were children — babies, 
 rather — of various ages from ^yq years old to 
 a few weeks or less. Seen in the twilight 
 made by the big rock you might have taken 
 the whole group for some sort of earth or rock 
 emanation, rather than for things of hving 
 flesh and blood, so grey were they, so wan, so 
 much the same colour, so much apparently 
 the same texture as what they leaned against.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 63 
 
 Honor started forward at a run as soon as 
 she caught sight of them, her pale face Ht 
 with a warm ray of kindhness and hospi- 
 tahty. 
 
 ' Auch, and is it there you are, Kitty Daly ? ' 
 she exclaimed. ' But it is the bad place you 
 have taken to sit in, so it is, and all your poor 
 young children too ! And it is you that look 
 bad, too, this day, God love us ! — yes indeed, 
 but bad ! And is it long that you have been 
 sitting there ? My God, I would have left the 
 door open if I had thought you v^ould come 
 and I not in it ! Yet it is not a cold day either, 
 praise be to God ! — no it is a very fine, warm 
 day. There has not been a finer day this 
 season, if so be it will last till his rever- 
 ence comes next week for the pathern. But 
 what brings you up this afternoon at all, at all ? 
 It is too soon for you to be coming up the hill, 
 and you so weak still — too soon altogether ! ' 
 
 While she was speaking the woman had
 
 64 CRANIA 
 
 got up, her whole Httle brood, save the baby 
 which she held in her arms, rising with her as 
 if by a single impulse. Seen in the strong 
 light which fell upon their faces over the top 
 of the gully they looked even more piteous, 
 more wan and wobegone than when they 
 were squatting in the comparative shadow at 
 the base of the rock. She made no direct 
 reply to Honor's question, but looked up at 
 her with a dumb, wdstful appeal, and then 
 down at the children, who in their turn 
 looked up at what, no doubt, was in their eyes 
 the embodiment of prosperity standing be- 
 fore them. There was no mistaking what 
 that appeal meant. The answer was written 
 upon every face in the whole group. Hunger 
 was written there ; worse — starvation ; first, 
 most clamorous of needs, not often, thank 
 Heaven ! seen so clearly, but when seen 
 terrible — a vision from the deepest, most 
 elemental depths, a cry to pity, full of ancient
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 65 
 
 primordial horrors ; heart-rending ; appaUino- ; 
 impossible not to hasten to satisfy. 
 
 That this was the only possible answer to 
 her question seemed to have immediately 
 struck the kindly-natured Honor. For, 
 without wasting further time, she ran to 
 her own door, taking out a big key as she did 
 so from her pocket. Another minute and she 
 had rummaged out a half-eaten griddle-loaf, 
 and was hacking big morsels off it with a 
 blunt, well-nigh disabled dinner-knife. 
 
 Manners, however, had to be observed, let 
 the need for haste be never so great, and no 
 one was more observant of such delicacies 
 than Honor O'Malley. 
 
 * Then, indeed, it is not very good bread 
 to-day, so it is not,' she observed apologetically. 
 ' It was last Tuesday week I would have wished 
 to ask you to taste of it, Mrs. Daly. The 
 barm did not rise rightly this time, whatever 
 the reason was, still, after your walk you 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 CRANIA 
 
 would, maybe, eat a bit of it, and I would be 
 much obliged to you, and the young children, 
 too. But it is some cow's milk that they 
 must have. Eun, Grania, run quick and fetch 
 some out of the big mether, it is on the top 
 shelf, out of the way of the cat. It is 
 good cow's milk, Mrs. Daly, though it has 
 been skimmed once ; I skim it now in the 
 morning, after Grania has had her breakfast. 
 The child grows so fast it is the best milk she 
 must have, but it is not at all bad milk, only 
 skimmed once, or I would not offer it you, no, 
 indeed, I would not, Mrs. Daly, ma'am.' 
 
 But the poor visitor was past responding 
 to any such friendly efforts to shield her self- 
 respect. She tried to thank her entertainer, 
 but the tears came too fast, and fairly choked 
 her. One after another they gathered and 
 ran down her thin white cheeks, fresh tears 
 continually brimming her poor eyes, once a 
 brilliant blue — not a common colour in the
 
 THE STORY OF A.V ISLAXD 67 
 
 west of Ireland — and which still, thouoji 
 their brightness had waned, seemed all too 
 blue and too brilliant for the poor faded face 
 they shone out of. 
 
 ' Och, then ! Och, then ! Och, then ! ' 
 Honor O'Malley said in a gentle tone, at 
 once soothing and remonstrating. 'Och, 
 then, Mrs. Daly, will you please give me tlie 
 baby for a minute, ma'am ? for it is not lucky, 
 they say, to cry over such a young child. 
 The sidh-^(}o(\ formve me for namin^y such a 
 wicked, heathen word ! — tlie sidh^ old people 
 say, do be looking about, and if they see 
 tears drop on a baby it is they will get 
 it for themselves, so they will — God stand 
 between us and all such work this night, 
 amen ! Well, Phelim sonny, and what ails 
 you ? Is it the milk that is sour ? Then 
 it is not very sour it can be, for it was 
 only milked the morning before last. Grania, 
 fetch some sugar and put it in the child's 
 
 V 2
 
 68 GRAN I A 
 
 milk. Bless me, Mrs. Daly, but he does grow, 
 that child Phelim ! only look at the legs of 
 him ! ' 
 
 The boy she was addressing was the 
 eldest of the pitiful little group, a wistful- 
 faced, shadowy creature of about five. His 
 eyes were blue, like his mother's, though 
 of a paler shade and more prominent. Big, 
 startled eyes they were — the eyes of a child 
 that sees phantoms in the night, that starts 
 in its sleep and cries out, it knows not why 
 or about what. With those big eyes fixed 
 full upon her face he was staring hard at 
 Grania O'Malley, the pannikin of milk which 
 had been put into his hands remaining 
 untasted in the intensity of his contem- 
 plation. 
 
 ' Indeed and indeed it is too good you are 
 to them, Honor O'Malley — too good entirely ! ' 
 poor Mrs. Daly managed to say, finding her 
 voice at last, though still speaking through
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 69 
 
 the sobs which choked her. 'But it is your- 
 self knows where to look for the blessing 
 so it is I And may God shield you and keep 
 you in health and sickness, in joy and sorrow, 
 in this world and in the world to come — yes, 
 indeed, and beyond it too, if need be, amen ! 
 It is ashamed I am, sorry and ashamed, to be 
 troubling you, and you not well yourself. 
 But Shan, you see — it is very bad times 
 Shan has had lately. There is no work at 
 all to do, he says, not anywhere on Inish- 
 raaan, no, nor upon Aranmore even. There 
 was some fish he was to bring in this after- 
 noon, but he has not come back yet, and the 
 evening it is late, and if he did catch the fish 
 itself, it is not young children that can eat fish 
 alone, so it is not. And me so weak still, it is 
 but little I can do ; for it is not, you know, till 
 next Friday will be three weeks that — ' 
 
 She stopped and looked bashfully down 
 at the poor little bundle in her neighbour's
 
 70 GRAMA 
 
 arms. Tlioii<:di this was lier fourth cliild she 
 had a feelincf of delicacy about alludincr to the 
 fact of its birtli which would have seemed 
 not merely inconceivable, but monstrous 
 to a woman of anotlier race and breeding. 
 Honor, however, knew as much, or more, 
 about the matter than she did herself. She 
 had been with her at the time, althouHi 
 old Mrs Flanaghan, Pliil Flanaghan's mother, 
 was the chief official in command on the 
 occasion. It was Honor, however, Avho had 
 baptised the baby — this poor little white- 
 faced object then in her arms, whose birtli 
 and death had seemed likely to be contem- 
 poraneous. It was an office for which she 
 was in great demand on Inishmaan, where, as 
 explained, there was no priest, and where 
 her peculiar piety made her seem to her 
 neighbours specially fitted for such semi- 
 sacerdotal duties. Of course such a baptism 
 was only meant as a preliminary, to serve
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLANTT 71 
 
 till the more regular sacrament could be 
 bestowed, but, from the difficulties of trans- 
 port, it often happened that weeks and 
 months passed before any other could be 
 given ; nay, not infrequently, the poor little 
 pilgrim had found its way to the last haven 
 for all such pilgrims, near to the old church 
 of Cill-Cananach, unguarded from future perils 
 by any more regular rite. 
 
 Looking down at the small waxen face 
 upturned in her lap, Honor O'Malley felt that 
 such a consummation was not in this case 
 far off. She did not say to herself that 
 it was so much the better, for that would 
 have been a sin, but her thoughts certainly 
 ran unconsciously in that direction as, having 
 given it back to its mother, she bustled to 
 and fro in the cabin, putting together all the 
 available scraps of food she could find ; which 
 done, she tied them into a bundle and 
 deposited the bundle in the passive arms
 
 72 CRANIA 
 
 of little Phelim, who accepted it from her 
 with the same dim, wondering stare of 
 astonishment in his pale china-blue eyes — a 
 stare with which every event, good or ill, 
 seemed alike to be received by him. Five 
 years' experience of a very troublesome world 
 had evidently not yet accustomed him to any 
 of its peculiar ways or vicissitudes.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND y^ 
 
 CHAPTER YII 
 
 TuE Daly brood departed with their booty, 
 Honor next bustled about to get their own 
 meal ready. Grania meanwhile had promptly 
 dumped herself down upon her two small 
 heels and sat doing nothing, except staring 
 sulkily at the fire. The child was thoroughly 
 cross. She wanted her playfellow, and poor 
 Honor by no means filled the blank. An old 
 hen, sitting upon a clutch of eggs in a hole in 
 the wall a little to the left of the fire, put its 
 head out, and uttered a friendly interrogative 
 cluck, by way of suggestion that it was there 
 and would not object to a handful of oatmeal 
 if it came in its way. Grania, however, took 
 no notice, but sat, with her small brows
 
 74 CRANIA 
 
 drawn close toi^^etlier, stariiifT at the ash- 
 covered heap of turf, below which a dull 
 red glow still smouldered. 
 
 Inside the cabin everything was warm, turf- 
 scented, chocolate-tinted. Walls, roof, hearth, 
 furniture — what furniture there was — all 
 was dim and worn, blackened with time, 
 smoke, and much friction. Little light came 
 in at the small, closely-puttied windows ; 
 much smoke down the wide, imperfectly- 
 fashioned chimney. It suited its inmates, 
 however, and that, after all, is the main thing. 
 To them, as to the old speckled hen, it was 
 home — the one spot on earth that was theirs, 
 which made the difference between warmth, 
 self-respect, comfort, and a desolate, windy 
 world without. Solid at least it was. There 
 was no scamped work about it : no lath and 
 plaster in the walls ; no dust and rubble in 
 the foundations. Had there been it would 
 not have stood out against the first of the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 75- 
 
 ten thousand storms tliat had beat against 
 its sohd little walls since the first day that 
 they were planted in the mouth of that 
 wicked, squally gully. 
 
 Supper over, Grania watched her oppor- 
 tunity. With a sudden slide, a run, a quick 
 scramble, and a dart through the open door, 
 she managed, while Honor was scouring out 
 the black pot, to escape and run off at the top 
 of her speed to a spot where she knew she 
 Avould be safe, for some time at least, from 
 pursuit. 
 
 This retreat of hers was a stone fort 
 known as the Mothar dun, one of seven or 
 eight so-called Cyclopean forts which stud 
 the islands. This one, which was only a few 
 hundred yards from their own door, was 
 small, as Cyclopean forts go — not towering 
 in air like a great natural cliff, as Dun 
 Aengus does, nor yet covering the whole top 
 of the island, like Dun Connor or Conchobhair,
 
 76 CRANIA 
 
 but forming a comparatively modest circle, 
 set half-way up the slope — an absurd posi- 
 tion, if you reflect on it from a military 
 point of view, since it must have been 
 dominated by any enemy who happened to 
 stand above it. Nobody on Inishmaan 
 troubled themselves, however, about such 
 matters, and little Grania O'Malley naturally 
 least of all. 
 
 Clambering over the big blocks, excited 
 with the sense of escape, and breathless from 
 her run up the perpendicular, ladderlike face 
 of the slope, she had just reached the inner- 
 most enclosure when, out of the darkest part 
 of it, a figure bounced against her so roughly 
 as to cause her to spring backwards, striking 
 her foot, as she did so, against one of the 
 sharp-pointed stones. 
 
 It was a big, red-headed lad of fourteen 
 or, perhaps, fifteen years old, extremely, almost 
 painfully, ugly, possessing one of those faces
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND y-j 
 
 which confront one now and then in the west 
 of Ireland, and which seem to verge to a 
 cruel degree upon the grotesque. So freckled 
 was he that his face seemed all freckle ; an 
 utterly shapeless, and at the same time 
 ridiculously inconspicuous, nose ; a shock head, 
 tangled enough to suggest the historic 'glibbe ' 
 of his remote progenitors ; with all that, 
 a harmless, amiable, not even particularly 
 stupid face, but so dull, and at the same 
 time apprehensive-looking, that its very 
 amiability seemed to provoke and invite 
 attack. Attack was certainly not spared on 
 this occasion. 
 
 ' Auch, and is it you then, Teige O'Shaugh ] 
 nessy ! And why must you be sticking there 
 in the dark, knocking me down for nothing at 
 all — yes, indeed, for nothing at all ? ' the child 
 exclaimed as soon as she had recovered her 
 breath. ' Augh, but it is yourself, Teige 
 O'Shaughnessy, that is the ugly, awkward boy !
 
 78 GRANIA 
 
 the ugliest and awkwardest iu all Inishmaan ! 
 My word, just wait till Murdough Blake 
 comes back from the sea, till I tell him how 
 you run out at me in the dark and I doing 
 nothing ! It is Murdough Bhxke will give 
 you the real good beating, so he will ! — yes, 
 indeed, the best good beating ever you got in 
 your life, just to learn you manners ! That 
 he will, and more too, you ugly, clumsy 
 
 omadhaun! ' 
 
 She stopped, breathless, exhausted by her 
 own volubility. 
 
 The boy so belaboured with words only 
 stood still, his poor ugly face growing 
 redder and uglier in his confusion. 
 
 ' Arrah, is it hurt you are, Grania 
 O'Malley ? ' he stammered sheepishly at last. 
 
 ' And if it is hurt I am or not hurt, it 
 is not to you I will be telling it, Teige 
 O'Shaughnessy,' she replied haughtily. ' And 
 I will be glad for you to go away, so I will,
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 
 
 79 
 
 for I do not want to be looking at your ugly 
 face, nor at your red hair, nor at any 
 piece of you, so I do not ! ' And she flung 
 herself face downwards upon the nearest 
 stone. 
 
 Poor Teige found apparently no effective 
 rejoinder to these observations, for, after 
 staring stupidly at her for about a minute, he 
 turned and proceeded obediently to depart, 
 his heavy feet — heavy even in their soft 
 cow's skin pampooties — lumbering along over 
 the rocks, the sound growing fainter and 
 fainter as he disappeared down the stony 
 hillside. 
 
 Little Grania waited where she was till 
 he was out of sight, then she jumped up 
 from the stone upon which she had thrown 
 herself and clambered nimbly up, till she had 
 reached her favourite perch on the top of the 
 fort, where a small portion of the parapet 
 still existed. Seating herself upon this she let
 
 8o CRANIA 
 
 her feet dangle out over the smooth flagged 
 platform which stretched for some distance 
 beyond. 
 
 She was still sobbing, from anger, how- 
 ever, rather than pain, her suffering being of 
 the kind known in nursery parlance as a 
 pain in the temper, the previous vexation 
 about Murdough having been deepened and 
 brought into fresh prominence by the recent 
 encounter. 
 
 Teige O'Shaughnessy was an orphan, and 
 lived with an uncle and aunt, an old brother 
 and sister who inhabited a cabin upon one of 
 the outlying rocks, one which became an 
 island at high tide and therefore was then un- 
 approachable. The two were twins, and 
 earned their bread, or rather the old man 
 earned it for both of them, by weaving. Ap- 
 parently it was a sorry trade, for the cabin in 
 which they lived was so twisted, sea-battered, 
 brine-encrusted, and generally miserable that.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 8i 
 
 by comparison, most of the other houses 
 upon the island might have been regarded by 
 their owners as quite architectural and dig- 
 nified domiciles. This, one would say, ought 
 to have been a source of popularity, but, 
 for several reasons, tlie O'Shaughnessys 
 were rather pariahs upon Inishmaan. This 
 was not on account of their poverty, which 
 is never a really damning reproach in 
 Ireland, and probably, therefore, was due 
 partly to the fact that, compared to most of 
 its inhabitants, they were new-comers — at 
 least, there were several very old people on 
 Inishmaan who pretended to remember a time 
 when there were no O'Shaughnessys there — 
 partly to their extreme ill-favouredness, and, 
 still more, to the fact that the two old 
 people were deaf and dumb, and could there- 
 fore only communicate with their neighbours 
 and the rest of the world by signs — a sufficient 
 reason surely in a much less superstitious 
 
 VOL. 1. o
 
 82 CRANIA 
 
 community than that of Inishmaan for re- 
 garding them as lying pecuharly under the 
 disfavour of Heaven, and hkely enough to 
 bring that contagion or Wight of disfavour 
 upon other, and more fortunate, people if 
 unduly encouraged and associated with. 
 
 Grania, a born aristocrat — all children are 
 born aristocrats — shared this feeling in the 
 strongest degree, and was well aware that 
 Teige was in some way or other immensely 
 inferior to herself, and therefore a person 
 only to be tolerated wdien no more attrac- 
 tive company was to be had. She sat for 
 some time longer with her feet dangling 
 over the top of the fort, a quaint little 
 red-petticoated figure, the solitary spot of 
 colour in all that desolate greyness. Innne- 
 diately beneath her the ridged platforms 
 of rock showed their upturned edges, one 
 below the other, fluted, worn, and grooved 
 into every variety of furrow. Hardly a speck
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 83 
 
 of green to be seen anywhere. Here and 
 there an adventurous spray of honeysuckle or 
 bryony, grown deep in the hollows, sliowed 
 perhaps a few inches of foliage above the 
 wrinkled surface of the rocks, but that 
 was all. 
 
 The winds were all hushed for that even- 
 ing, but their power and prowess was written 
 at large upon every worn crag, torn fissure, 
 and twisted stump ; upon the whole battered, 
 wind-tormented scene. Inishmaan might from 
 this point have suggested some weather- 
 beaten old vessel, a raft or hulk given over 
 to the mercy of winds and waves, keep- 
 ing afloat still, but utterly scarred and 
 defaced, a derehct, past all possibility of 
 recovery. 
 
 After sitting for about a quarter of an 
 hour upon the same spot, the child began 
 to tire of her solitary perch. A new impulse 
 seized her, and, leaving the rath, she clam- 
 
 o 2
 
 84 CRANIA 
 
 bered down the wall, over the loose blocks 
 scattered outside — remains of a still discern- 
 ible chevaux de /rise — ran across the level 
 slabs of rock, till she reached the end of 
 the one she was upon, when she dropped 
 suddenly down-hill, over, as it were, a single 
 gigantic stair, thereby attaining the one 
 below. 
 
 This brought her to a totally different 
 aspect of the island, and, comparatively 
 speaking, a cheerful and sheltered one. A 
 narrow coose, or horseshoe-shaped bay, run- 
 ning some little way inshore, had created 
 a sort of small sea-facing amphitheatre, 
 backed by a semicircle of rocks, at the 
 bottom and sides of which mountain ash, 
 holly, and fuchsia — the latter still red with 
 flower — grew and flourished, enclosing and 
 sheltering a small, perfectly level green stage 
 or platform. 
 
 At the end of this platform, wliich
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 85 
 
 served it for a terrace, stood a house — 
 not a cabin, and the only habitable abode 
 on Inishmaan that could be called by any 
 other name. It was said to have been built 
 for a relation of the owner of the islands, 
 who, fifty years before, had found here 
 an asylum from his creditors. Whatever 
 its history may have been, it formed un- 
 doubtedly an odd contrast to every other 
 form of architecture to be found in the 
 place. In shape it seemed to have been in- 
 tended to imitate some small Greek or Eoman 
 temple, the front consisting of four cut gran- 
 ite pillars supporting a roof, and led up to by 
 three wide, shallow steps, which steps were 
 also of granite, the reddish feldspathic granite 
 of West Galway. The back and sides of the 
 building, however, were only of the ordinary 
 blue limestone of the island, once plastered 
 with stucco, and white, but long since blis- 
 tered and broken away. .Damp and decay
 
 86 CRANIA 
 
 had, in fact, got possession of the whole 
 building. Not only had the stucco almost 
 entirely fallen off, but even the scrolled iron 
 banisters of a flight of steps which led 
 from the end of the terrace to the sea were 
 in many places worn to a mere thread by the 
 constant friction of water and rust-producing 
 action of the spray. 
 
 No one lived tliere now, though an 
 old woman, the grandmother of Murdough 
 Blake, was paid a trifle for looking after 
 it, and was pretty generally to be found 
 there in the daytime. With Grania it had 
 always been a chief haunt and playground, 
 partly because Murdough Blake had a pre- 
 scriptive right to go there to dig bait and 
 loaf about generally, but also because there 
 was a fascination for her in the tumble- 
 down old house itself, so utterly unlike any 
 other within the range of her experience. 
 
 As might have been expected, it was all
 
 THE STORY OF A A ISLAND 87 
 
 shut up now ; so, having vainl}^ tried each of 
 the doors and windows, and rapped im- 
 patiently at two or three of them, she went 
 down the steps and squatted disconsolately 
 upon a bit of rock at the foot of them. 
 
 The air, mild as milk, had something 
 about it that eveninir which seemed to touch 
 the cheek like a caress. There had been no 
 sunset worth speaking of, but the western 
 sky and sea above and below the rim of 
 the horizon were tinged with faint salmon, 
 through which the grey broke, and into 
 which it was gradually melting. To the 
 north, behind the child's head, the great 
 grey profile of Dun Conchobhair lifted its 
 frowning mass, well defined against the sky — 
 a dark, sinister frag-ment of a lon^x-foro^otten 
 past, looking gloomily down upon the poor, 
 squat, and weatlier-worn habitations of to- 
 day. 
 
 The sea seemed to have grown curiously
 
 88 CRANIA 
 
 small. The ' Old Sea,' as the islanders call 
 the Atlantic, was here hidden completely 
 out of sight, and only the sound between 
 the middle and smallest island, with a frag- 
 ment of the bay beyond, was visible. To 
 the left lay the remains of a small pier, where 
 the owner of the villa had once moored 
 his boats, now broken down and half de- 
 stroyed by storms. Seagulls floated hither 
 and thither in the still water, tame as ducks 
 upon a farmyard pool. Cormorants passed 
 overhead with black outstretched necks, and 
 now and then the white-barred head of a 
 diver rose for a moment, to disappear again 
 into the depths of the water the next. 
 
 As it grew darker, the shapes of every- 
 thing began to change, blend, and melt 
 into one another. The crooked iron sup- 
 ports, bent and red with rust, took on 
 new and more fantastic forms. They seemed 
 now a company of spindle-legged imps,
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 89 
 
 writhing, twisting, tugging to right and 
 left, so as to escape from the weight of 
 what they had undertaken to carry. Eed 
 flakes, fallen from them, lay in all directions 
 upon the ground, mixed with fragments of 
 black oarweed, like so many twists of old 
 worn-out tobacco. Everything breathed a 
 dull calm, a half-stupefied melancholy. The 
 swell slid lazily up one side of the little 
 pier, hiding its stones and rat-holes for a 
 moment, then fell heavily back again down 
 the other, with a movement that was almost 
 suggestive of a shrug, a gesture, of somewhat 
 bored resignation. 
 
 For nearly an hour the child sat on and 
 on, heedless of poor Honor's anxieties, dream- 
 ing dim, formless dreams, such as visit alike 
 all young heads, whatever the measure of 
 so-called education that may have fallen to 
 the lot of their owners. 
 
 She thought over the incidents in the boat
 
 90 GRAMA 
 
 that afternoon, and clenched her two little 
 rows of white teeth afresh at the recollec- 
 tion of Shan Daly's attack on Murdough. 
 Then she took to wondering where Mur- 
 dough was, and whether he was on his way 
 back, a vague dream of floating away some- 
 where or other in a boat, only he and she 
 together, rising blissfully before her mind. 
 A momentary qualm as to Honor came to 
 cross these delights, quickly dispersed, how- 
 ever, by the reflection that Honor had her 
 prayers and her cross, and that she really 
 wanted nothing else, whereas she, Grania, 
 wanted many things, while as for Murdough 
 Blake, that hero's wants were simply insati- 
 able — grew and multiplied, in fact, with such 
 rapidity that even his most faithful admirer 
 could hardly keep pace with them. 
 
 By-and by, as she sat there, the tide began 
 to creep higher up, and nearer and nearer 
 to her feet. There was a smell of salt and
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 91 
 
 slimy things, whicli seemed to be mounting 
 upon the rising water. A rat scuffled and 
 squeaked not far off, and bats flew darkly 
 to and fro overhead. Grania began to think 
 of iioinof home. She was not afraid of rats, 
 bats, sea-water, or anything else. She was 
 used to being alone at all hours, and, as for 
 the sea, it was almost her element. Still, as 
 one had to go back and to bed some time 
 or other, it seemed almost as well to go 
 now. 
 
 On her way home she had to pass close 
 to the half-peninsula, half-island upon which 
 the O'Shaughnessys' cabin stood, barely visible 
 at this distance under its load of black 
 thatch, and looking rather like the last 
 year's nest of some shore-infesting crow or 
 cliough. The tide was stdl low enough to 
 get to it, and the fancy took the child to go 
 across and peep in at the window, which, 
 like every other window upon Inishmaan, was
 
 ^ CRANIA 
 
 sure to be unshuttered. Teige, no doubt, 
 would be at home at this hour, and she 
 would be able, perhaps, to give him a fright, 
 in return for the fright he had given her an 
 hour before. 
 
 The seaweeds were more than usually 
 slimy upon the rocks covering the space 
 which separated this small outlying frag- 
 ment of Inishmaan from the rest of the 
 island, and even in her pampooties little 
 Grania found some difficulty in getting across, 
 and stumbled more than once before she 
 reached the rocks on the other side. No 
 one came to the door, or seemed to hear her 
 footsteps, and, as the door itself was shut, 
 there was clearly nothing to be done but to 
 go up to the cabin and apply her small nose 
 to the one narrow, closely-puttied square of 
 glass which in the daytime gave light to the 
 dwelling. 
 
 Any illumination there was was now
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 93 
 
 from within, not from without, for a bright 
 turf-fire was blazing redly upon the hearth. 
 At first sight the most prominent object vis- 
 ible was the loom, which practically filled up 
 the whole interior of the cabin. Beyond it the 
 child could presently distinguish two figures, 
 a white figure and a red figure, both of 
 them extraordinarily ugly — a frightful little 
 old man, a hideous little old woman — both 
 Df them, too, though utterly, strangely silent, 
 were nevertheless, as she saw to her dismay, 
 gesticulating violently at one another. Now 
 it was the old man who, squatting down 
 towards the ground, would spread out his 
 arms widely, then springing suddenly erect 
 wave them over his head, apparently imitat- 
 ing some one engaged in rowing, fishing, 
 or what not, the whole performance being 
 carried on with the most breathless vehem- 
 ence and energy. Then the old woman 
 would take her turn, and go through a
 
 94 CRANIA 
 
 somewhat similar evolution, expressive seem- 
 ingly of weaving, spinning, walking, eating, 
 or whatever she wanted to express, while, 
 whicliever was the principal performer, the 
 other would respond with quick comprehen- 
 sive jerks of the head, sudden enough and 
 sharp enough apparently to crack the spinal 
 column. 
 
 It was less like a pair of human beings 
 communicating together than like a pair of 
 extraordinary automata, some sort of ugly, 
 complicated toy set into violent action by 
 its proprietor and unable to leave off until 
 its mechanism had run down. To the child, 
 standing outside in the dark, the whole thing, 
 lit as it was by the fitful illumination of the 
 fire, and doubled by a sort of second perform- 
 ance on the part of a still more grotesque 
 pair of shadows painted on the ceiling 
 overhead, had something in it quite extra- 
 ordinarily terrifying, quite indescribably mys-
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 
 
 95 
 
 terious and horrible. She knew, of course, 
 perfectly well that it w^as only dumb Denny 
 and dumb Biddy O'Shaughnessy ; that they 
 always gesticulated like that to one another — 
 not having any other way, poor souls, of 
 communicating. She knew this perfectly 
 well, but as she stood there, a little, quail- 
 ing, shaking figure, peering in through 
 the unshuttered wanclow% she became a 
 prey to all the indescribable terrors, all the 
 dumb, inexplicable, but at the same time 
 agonising, horrors of childhood. She longed 
 as she had never longed before in her life 
 to get her head under some blanket, under 
 somebody's skirt, anywhere, with anyone, 
 no matter where, so only she had some- 
 where to hide, some hand to cling to. Her 
 heart beat, her knees knocked together, 
 her teeth chattered, and with that sudden 
 sense of the necessity of finding some refuge 
 stinjzinj:^ her throuo^h and throuofh like a
 
 96 ' CRANIA 
 
 nettle, she turned and fled — as a scared 
 rabbit flies — down the rocky way, across 
 the shppery tide rocks, over the sHmy, evil- 
 smelhng oarweeds, which seemed to be twining 
 deUberately round her feet and trying to stop 
 her, up hill and down hill till she once more 
 found herself inside their own cabin, and 
 within the sheltering arms of the faithful 
 Honor, who had been watching for her for 
 an hour past from the threshold. 
 
 As for Con O'Malley, the hospitality of 
 Kilronan proved, on this occasion as often 
 before, too much for him, and he had to stay 
 and sleep off the effects of it under the friendly, 
 sheltering roof of the ' Cruskeen Beg.'
 
 Part II 
 A P E I L 
 
 VOL. I, 
 
 H
 
 PAET II 
 APRIL 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 Six years have come and gone since that 
 September evening, and our little twelve- 
 year-old Grania has grown into a tall, broad- 
 chested maiden, vigorous as a frond of bracken 
 in that fostering Atlantic air, so cruel to weak- 
 lings, so friendly to those who are already by 
 nature strong. Other changes have followed of 
 a less benignant character. Con O'Malley is 
 dead. Sundry causes, but chiefly, alas ! whisky, 
 have made an end of the stout master of the 
 hooker, and in consequence that good ship has 
 
 H 2
 
 loo CRANIA 
 
 had to be sold, and Inishmaan has been left 
 hookerless. Honor O'Malley, always delicate, 
 had become a confirmed invalid, had not for 
 many months left her own dusky corner of 
 the cabin, nay, was only too likely before 
 long to change it for a yet duskier abode. 
 The Shan Dalys? — well, there is not much 
 to say about the Shan Dalys. Shan himself 
 had grown even a more confirmed vagrant 
 than before. He lived no one knew how, or 
 where, for he was given to disappearing from 
 Inishmaan for a week or more at a time, 
 reappearing more ragged, if possible, than 
 usual, with bloodshot e3^es, tangled beard, 
 and all the signs of having slept in holes or 
 under the banks of ditches, a vagrant upon 
 the face of the eartli. The poor wife was, 
 if anything, more of a moving skeleton 
 than when we saw her last. Of the many 
 children born to them only two survived, 
 Phehm and a little girl of five. Happy for
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND loi 
 
 the rest that fate had been pitiful, for in any 
 less kindly country those left would literally 
 have starved. Phelim was supported almost 
 wholly by the O'Malley sisters, and not a day 
 in the week passed without his coming, as a 
 matter of course, to share their rations. 
 
 To turn to a more cheerful subject. 
 Murdough Blake had grown up, as he had 
 promised to do, into a tall, active, lissom young 
 fellow. In his archaic clothes of yellowish 
 flannel, spun, woven, bleached, made upon 
 the island, in the cow's skin pampooties which 
 give every Aranite his peculiarly shuffling 
 and at the same time swinging step, he 
 ought to have rejoiced the inmost heart of a 
 painter, had a painter ever thought of going 
 to the Aran isles in search of subjects, a 
 ridiculous supposition, for who would dream 
 of doing so ? He was anything but satisfied, 
 however, with his own clothes, his own 
 standing, his own prospects in life, or, for that
 
 I02 CRANIA 
 
 matter, with anything else about him, ex- 
 cepting with young Murdough Blake himself, 
 who was clearly too exceptional a person 
 to be wasted upon such a spot as Inishmaan. 
 
 A quarter of a century ago no golden 
 political era for promising young Irishmen of 
 his class had yet dawned, and, even if it had 
 done so, the Aran isles are rather remote for 
 recruits to be sought for there, especially 
 recruits who are innocent of any tongue 
 except their own fine, old useless one. There 
 was, consequently, nothing for Murdough to 
 do except to follow in the old track, the 
 same track that his father and grandfather 
 had followed before him — namely, fish a 
 little, farm a little, rear a little cattle for the 
 mainland, marry and bring up a ' long ' family 
 like his neighbours, unless he was prepared to 
 make a bold start for the land of promise on 
 the other side of the Atlantic — a revolutionary 
 measure for which, despite his many dissatis-
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 103 
 
 factions, lie lacked, probably, the necessary 
 courage. 
 
 Whether he would have cared to do so 
 or no, Grania certainly would not, and they 
 were shortly to be married. To her Inish- 
 maan was much more than home, much more 
 than a place she lived in, it was practically 
 the world, and she wished for no bigger, 
 hardly for any more prosperous, one. It was 
 not merely her own little holding and cabin, 
 but every inch of it that was in this peculiar 
 sense hers. It belonged to her as the rock 
 on which it has been born belongs to the 
 young seamew. She had grown to it, and 
 it had grown to her. She was a part of it, 
 and it was a part of her, and the bare idea 
 of leaving it — of leaving it, that is to say, per- 
 manently — would have filled her with nothing 
 short of sheer consternation. 
 
 Perhaps to one whose lot happens to be 
 cast upon an island — a mere brown dot set
 
 I04 CRANIA 
 
 in an angry and turbulent ocean — the act of 
 leaving it seems a far more startling piece of 
 transplantation than any flitting can seem to 
 one who merely shares a mainland dotted 
 over with tens of thousands of homesteads 
 more or less similar to one's own. To sail 
 away, see it dimly receding behind you, be- 
 coming first a mere speck, then vanishing alto- 
 gether, must be a very serious proceeding, 
 one which, since it is not within our power 
 to exchange liabitations with a native, say, 
 of Saturn or of Mars, it is not very easy to 
 imagine exceeded in gravity. 
 
 If all humans are themselves islands, as 
 the poet has suggested, then this tall, red- 
 petticoated, fiercely-handsome girl was de- 
 cidedly a very isolated, and rather craggy 
 and unapproachable, sort of island. In her 
 neighbours' eyes she was a ' Foreigner,' just 
 as her mother had been a foreigner before 
 her, and there was mucli shaking of heads
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 105 
 
 and lifting of hands amongst the matrons of 
 Inishmaan whenever her name was men- 
 tioned. Even to her own sister who adored 
 her, who had adored her from the cradle, 
 she was a source of much disquietude, much 
 sisterly anxiety, less as regards this life — 
 which, from the good Honor's standpoint, was 
 an affair of really no particular moment one 
 way or other — than as regards the future, the 
 only future worthy in her eyes of the name. 
 
 Probably she was right enough. Such a 
 frame as Grania's is a good, ready-made home 
 for most of the simpler, more straightforward 
 virtues. Honesty, strength, courage, love of 
 the direct human kind, pity for the weak — 
 especially the weak that belong to you, 
 that are your own kith and kin, and de- 
 pendent upon you — these were born in her, 
 came to her direct from the hands of Nature. 
 For other, the more recondite, saintlier virtues 
 — faith, meekness, holiness, patience, and the
 
 K>6 CRANIA 
 
 i-est — she certainly showed no affinity. They 
 were not to be looked for — hardly by a con- 
 ceivable process to be acquired or engrafted. 
 
 This, rather than her own broken health, 
 her own fast-approaching death, was the real 
 sting and sorrow of Honor's life, the sorrow 
 that, day after day, impaled her upon its 
 thorns, and woke her up pitilessly a dozen 
 times in the night to impale her afresh. 
 Like some never-to-be-forgotten wound it 
 would be upon her almost before she was 
 well awake. Herself saved, and Grania, 
 perhaps — not! It was a nightmare, a per- 
 manent terror, a horror of great darkness, 
 worse a himdred times to her than if the 
 anticipation had been reversed. 
 
 That in some mysterious way, she could 
 not have explained how, her sister, rather 
 than herself, might benefit by her own pre- 
 sent sufferings, was the only counter-hope 
 that ever for a moment buoyed her up. She
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 107 
 
 had ventured, after long hesitation, to consult 
 Father Tom of Aranmore upon tliis subject 
 the last time she had been able to go to con- 
 fession, and if he had not encouraged, he had 
 not absolutely discouraged, her from treasur- 
 ing the notion. She did treasure it accord- 
 ingly. Every new pang, every hour of inter- 
 minable, long-drawn weakness being literally 
 offered up upon a sort of invisible altar, with 
 much trembling, much self-rebuke at the 
 worthlessness of the offering, and yet with a 
 deep-seated belief that it might somehow or 
 other be accepted, little promising as, it must 
 be owned, matters looked at present. Poor 
 Honor ! poor faithful sisterly soul ! We 
 smile at you, perhaps, yet surely we envy you, 
 too, and our envy cuts short and half shames 
 us out of our smiles. 
 
 As for Murdough Blake, his views about 
 Grania were of the simplest possible descrip- 
 tion. She was immensely strong he knew,
 
 io8 CRANIA 
 
 the strongest girl on Inishmaan, as well as 
 the best off, and, for both reasons evidently, 
 the most suitable one as a wife for himself. 
 If she was ' Foreigner,' out of touch and tone 
 with her neighbours, no such accusation could 
 certainly be laid at his door. A more typical 
 young man it would be difficult to find — 
 typical enough to excuse some abuse of the 
 term — typical in his aspirations, typical in 
 his extravagances, typical, nay conventional, 
 even in his wildest inconsequences, his most 
 extravagant rhodomontades, paradoxical as 
 that may seem to one unused to such flowers 
 of speech. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
 Murdough Blakes had talked just as big, and 
 done just as little, strutted their hour in just 
 the same fashion over the self-same rocks, 
 and felt themselves equally exceptionally fine 
 young fellows long before this one had come 
 into existence. That Grania would be doing 
 very well, really exceptionally well for herself
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 109 
 
 in marrying him he honestly beHeved, though 
 it would have been difficult to show any 
 particular grounds for the conviction. In 
 any case they would have been married before 
 this, only that it happened there was no roof 
 ready for them, Honor being too ill for another 
 inmate to be brought into the O'Malleys' 
 house, while, on the other hand, Grania would 
 not leave her, even if she could have made 
 up her mind to share the two-roomed cabin 
 up at Alleenageeragh in which Murdough 
 himself lived, in company with a widowed 
 mother, a grown-up sister, a couple of younger 
 brothers, sundry domestic animals, and a bed- 
 ridden great aunt. 
 
 As regards his marked desirability as a 
 husband, she fortunately thoroughly agreed 
 with him. To marry anyone but Murdough 
 Blake would have seemed to her as impossible 
 as to be herself anyone but Grania O'Malley. 
 True, there had been troubles between them
 
 no GRAN I A 
 
 of late, some of them rather serious troubles, 
 but no troubles, however serious, could touch 
 that central point, the keystone and cardinal 
 fact of her existence. For money, for instance, 
 Murdough showed a perfectly perennial thirst 
 — money, that is to say, earned by anyone in 
 the world but himself. Another thirst, too, 
 he already showed symptoms of possessing, 
 more apt even than this to deepen and in- 
 crease as the years rolled on. These, and 
 some other matters besides, were a source of 
 no little trouble to Grania, all the more that 
 she never spoke of them to Honor. She had 
 one great panacea, however, for any and every 
 trouble — a panacea which it were well that 
 we all of us possessed. Oh, troubled fellow- 
 mortals, self-tormented, nerve-ridden, live in- 
 cessantly in the open air, live under the varied 
 skies, heedless, if you can, of their vagaries, 
 and, if you do, surely sooner or later you 
 will reap your reward ! Grania O'Malley had
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND in 
 
 reaped hers, or rather it had come to her 
 without any sowing or reaping, which is the 
 best and most natural way. She had a special 
 faculty, too, for such living — one which all 
 cannot hope either to have or to acquire. She 
 could dig, she could chop, she could carry, 
 she could use her muscles in every sort of 
 outdoor labour as a man uses his, and, more- 
 over, could find a joy in it all. For words, 
 unhke Murdough, she had no talent. Her 
 thoughts, so far as she had any conscious 
 thoughts, would not clothe themselves in them. 
 They stood aside, dumb and helpless. Her 
 senses, on the other hand, were exceptionally 
 wide awake, while for sheer muscular strength 
 and endurance she had hardly her match 
 amongst the young men of the three islands. 
 This was a universally-known fact, admitted 
 by everyone, and a source of no small pride 
 to herself, as well as of prospective satisfaction 
 to Murdough. A wife that would work for
 
 112 CRANIA 
 
 you — not spasmodically, but from morning 
 till night — a wife that would take all trouble 
 off your hands ; a wife that actually liked 
 working ! — could brilliant young man with a 
 marked talent for sociability desire anything 
 better ? 
 
 Upon that particular morning, as upon 
 nearly every other morning throughout the 
 year, Grania had left the cabin early, after 
 settling Honor in her usual corner for 
 the day, and had taken down the cow to 
 pasture it upon the bent-grass growing upon 
 the seashore at the foot of the hill, not far 
 from where the two sisters owned a small strip 
 of potato-ground. 
 
 It was a bleak, unfriendly day, bitterly 
 cold, with driving showers, though the month 
 was already April. The sea, whenever she 
 chanced to raise her head to look at it, was 
 of a dull blackish purple, varied with vicious, 
 windy-looking streaks of white along the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 113 
 
 edges of the rocks over which the rollers 
 were sweeping heavily. ' Moonyeen,' tlie 
 short-horned cow, was eagerly croppino- 
 tlie scanty grass, her head turned intelli- 
 gently away from the blast. It was strictly 
 ibrbidden, by the way, for anyone to pasture 
 cattle on this bent-grass, and that for the 
 excellent reason that a breach once made 
 in it the wind got in, and the whole became 
 once more a mere driving waste of sand. 
 The agent for the property, however, lived 
 away on Aranmore, at a safe distance across 
 Gregory's Sound, and everyone upon the 
 Middle island did, therefore, as they pleased 
 in this respect, and Grania O'Maliey did like 
 the rest. 
 
 She had been digging hard in her potato- 
 patch ever since breakfast-time, and her drills 
 were now nearly finished, and she herself felt 
 comfortably tired, and satisfied. There is 
 no room for ploughs upon Inishmaan, since 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 CRANIA 
 
 no horse or even pony could turn upon the 
 tiny spots of tillage so hardly captured from 
 its stones. Donkeys and ponies are, indeed, 
 kept by many of the islanders, but chiefly 
 to carry the loads of kelp to and from the 
 coast. Grania O'Malley had neither one nor 
 the other, though many poorer neighbours 
 possessed both. She was so strong that it 
 would have seemed to her a sheer waste of 
 good fodder, and she carried her own loads of 
 kelp and seaweed persistently up and down the 
 hill, till towards evening she would often find 
 her eyes shutting of themselves from sheer 
 fatigue, and she would fall asleep before the 
 cabin-fire like a dog that has been all day 
 hunting. 
 
 She was only waiting now to begin her 
 midday meal of cold potatoes and griddle- 
 bread for little Phelim Daly, who came with 
 the regularity of a winter-fed roljin to share 
 them with her. She wondered that he had
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 115 
 
 not yet appeared, and sat down upon a piece 
 of rock to wait for him. Before she had 
 been sitting there many minutes she saw 
 the wild Httle figure coming towards her, 
 across the slabs of rock. He was rather 
 tall for his age, with the air of some sickly, 
 ill-thriven plant that has run to waste, his 
 pale blue, restless eyes looking up with the 
 piteous expression of a forlorn, neglected 
 animal for which no one cares, and which 
 has almost ceased to care about itself. He 
 came and squatted down close to her side 
 upon a smaller bit of rock which rose out 
 of the sandy soil, his thin legs stretched 
 out in front of him, his eyes looking 
 piteously up at her out of his small white 
 face. 
 
 ' Is it hungry you are, acushla P ' she 
 asked, noticing his expression ; then, without 
 waiting for an answer, went and fetched a 
 cake of griddle-bread tied up in a hand- 
 
 I 2
 
 lis CRANIA 
 
 kerchief which she had left at a Uttle dis- 
 tance. 
 
 ' Phehm is hungry ; yes, Grania O'Malley, 
 Phehm is very, very hungry,' the boy answered 
 in a curiously forlorn, far-away voice, as if 
 the subject had hardly any special reference 
 to himself. 
 
 ' Here, then ; God help the child ! Here ! ' 
 and she thrust a large lump of griddle-bread 
 into his limp, unchildish hands. 
 
 He began breaking off pieces from it 
 and thrusting them into his mouth, but 
 carelessly and as if mechanically, ^looking 
 before him the while with the same vacant, 
 far-away gaze, 
 
 'Phelim's legs hurt,' he presently said 
 dreamily. ' The wind was bad to Phelim last 
 night. Phelim was asleep and the wind came 
 and said, " Get up, Phelim ; get up, sonny." So 
 Phelim got up. It was dark — och, but it teas 
 dark ; you couldn't see anything only the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 117 
 
 darkness. Pbelim wanted to crawl back to 
 his bed again, but the wind kept calhng and 
 caUing, "- Come out, Phehm ! Come out, 
 Phehm ! " so he went out. And w^hen he 
 ^ot outside the clouds were all runninor 
 races round and round the sky, and he set 
 off running after them, and he ran and he ran 
 till he had run all round Inishmaan. And 
 when he could run no further he fell down. 
 But the wind wouldn't let him lie still, and 
 kept saying, " Get up, sonny ! Get up, 
 Phehm ! " Then when Phelim couldn't get 
 up it went away, quite away. So Phelim 
 lay still a while, and thought he was back 
 in his bed. But by-and-by big crawling 
 things, white things and red things and 
 black, came crawling, crawling up, one 
 after the other, out of the sea and over tlie 
 rocks and over the sands and over Phelim, 
 up his legs and along his back and into liis 
 neck. Then Phelim let a great screech, for
 
 il8 GRANIA 
 
 the fright had hold of him. And he screeched 
 and he screeched and he screeched and — 
 and that's why Phehm's legs are so bad to- 
 day,' and he began slowly rubbing them up 
 and down with one skinny, claw-like hand. 
 
 Grania shivered and crossed herself. She 
 knew it was all nonsense, that he had been 
 only dreaming, still, everyone was aware that 
 there often were wicked things about at night, 
 and it made her uncomfortable to listen to him. 
 
 ' Och, 'tis just the cold that ails you ; 
 nothing else, avic,' she said decisively. ' Here, 
 wrap yourself up in this. God help the child ! 
 'tis a mere bundle of bones he is,' she added 
 to herself as she put the white flannel petti- 
 coat, which served her as a cloak, round the 
 boy as he sat crouched in a bundle upon 
 the bit of rock, the cold wind scourging his 
 legs and blowing the sand into his weary- 
 looking pale blue eyes. 
 
 She left him to go and fetch her spade,
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 119 
 
 which was at the other end of the ridge. 
 When she came back he had shpped behind 
 the larger of the two pieces of rock, and, 
 with her petticoat huddled about him like 
 a shawl, was lying flat upon his stomacli, en- 
 gaged in picking out small morsels of white 
 quartz which had got mixed with the other 
 pebbles, and ranging them in a row, whisper- 
 ing something to each of them as he did so. 
 
 Grania stopped to look at him. ' What are 
 you doing now, avic ? ' she asked ctiriously. 
 
 The boy turned at her voice, and looked 
 up w^ith the same vague, forlorn expres- 
 sion, not having evidently heard or under- 
 stood. Then when she had repeated her 
 
 question : 
 
 ' It was the little stones,' he said dreamily. 
 
 ' Well, and what about the little stones, 
 child?' 
 
 ' 'Twas something the little stones was 
 tellinfT Phelim. The wind is bad to the little
 
 120 CRANIA 
 
 stones. The stones cry, cry, cry. There is 
 one little stone here that cries most of all ; 
 there is no otlier stone on Inishmaan that 
 cries so loud.' 
 
 Grania stooped and looked at the pebbles 
 as if to discover something more than com- 
 mon in them. 
 
 ' Do all the things speak to you, Phehm ? ' 
 she asked inquisitively. 
 
 ' Then they do not ; no, Grania O'Malley. 
 Once Phelim heard nothing. The wind was 
 
 o 
 
 gone ; there was nothing — nothing at all, at all. 
 All at once somethino^ said, " There is nothingr 
 now on Inishmaan but Phelim." Then Phelim 
 was more afraid of Phelim than of anything 
 else, and he began to screech and screech. 
 He screeched — och, but he screeched ! Phelim 
 did screech that night, Grania O'Malley ! ' 
 
 'Arrah, 'tis worse you are getting every 
 day, child, with your nonsense,' she said with 
 a sort of rough motherliness. ' Here, come
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 121 
 
 away with you ; we'll go look for Mur- 
 doiigh Blake on the rocks yonder : maybe 
 he'll give you a lish to take to your mammy. 
 Come ! ' She stuck her spade upright in the 
 soil as she spoke and held out her hand. 
 
 Phelim got up and trotted obediently 
 beside her down the slope. Having crossed 
 the sandy tract, under the broken walls of 
 the old church of Cill-Cananach, they got out 
 upon the rocks beyond, half hidden now by 
 the rising tide. 
 
 At the extreme end, where these rocks 
 broke suddenly into deep water, a figure 
 was standing fishing, a tall, broad-shouldered 
 figure, looking even larger than it actually 
 was, as everything did against that vacant 
 background. 
 
 Grania hastened her steps. A curious 
 look was beginninir to dawn in her face : an 
 habitual, or rather a recurrent, one, as any- 
 one would have known who had been in
 
 122 GRAN I A 
 
 the habit of watching her. It was a look 
 of vague expectation, undefined but unmis- 
 takable ; a look of suppressed excitement, 
 which seemed to pervade her whole frame. 
 What there was to expect, or what there was 
 to be particularly excited about, she would 
 have been puzzled herself to explain. There 
 the feeling was, however, and so far it had 
 survived many disappointments. 
 
 Murdough Blake turned as they came up, 
 vehement displeasure clouding his good-look- 
 ing, blunt-featured face. 
 
 ' It is the devil's own bad fishing it is to-day, 
 so it is ! ' he exclaimed, pointing to the rock 
 beside him, upon which a few small pollock 
 and bream were flapping feebly in their last 
 agonies. ' Two hours, my God ! it is I am 
 here — two hours and more ! I ask you, 
 Grania O'Malley, is that a proper lot of 
 fish for two hours' catching? And Teige 
 O'Shaughnessy that caught seven-and-forty
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 123 
 
 in less time yesterday — seven-and -forty, not 
 one less, and he a hoccach ! ^ Is it fair ? My 
 God ! I ask you is it fair ? ' 
 
 Phelim had squatted down like a small 
 seal upon a flat-topped bit of rock, evidently 
 expecting to wait there for another hour at 
 least. Murdough, how^ever, was delighted at 
 their coming. He had been only pining for 
 an excuse to break off his occupation. 
 
 ' It is not myself will stop any longer 
 for such fishing as that, so it is not ! ' he 
 exclaimed indignantly. ' My faith and word 
 no ! Why would I stop ? Is it to be looking 
 at the sea? God knows I have seen enough 
 of the sea ! Enough and more than enough ! ' 
 
 Grania offering no objection to this very 
 natural indignation, he rolled up his line, col- 
 lected the fish, and they turned back together 
 across the rocks. 
 
 ^ Cripple.
 
 124 CRANIA 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 They were now upon the loneliest piece 
 of the whole island. Far and near not a 
 human creature or sign of humanity, save 
 themselves, was to be seen. The few vil- 
 lages of Inishmaan were upon the other 
 side, the few spots of verdure which might 
 here and there have been discerned by long 
 search were all but completely lost in the 
 prevailing stoniness, and to eyes less accus- 
 tomed than theirs nothing could have been 
 more deplorable than the waste of deso- 
 lation spread out here step above step, 
 stony level above stony level, till it ended, 
 appropriately enough, in the huge ruinous fort 
 of Dun Connor, grey even amongst that
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 125 
 
 greyness, grim even by comparison witli what 
 surrounded it, and upon which it looked 
 austerely down. 
 
 It was one of those days, too, wlien the 
 islands, susceptible enough at times of beauty, 
 stand out nakedly, almost revoltingly, ugly. 
 The low sky ; the slate-coloured waste of 
 water ; the black hanks of driftweed flung 
 hither and thither upon the rocks ; the 
 rocks themselves, shapeless, colourless, half- 
 dissolved by the rains that eternally beat 
 on them ; the white pools staring upwards 
 like so many dead eyes ; the melancholy, roof- 
 less church; the great, grey fort overhead, 
 sloughing away atom by atom like some 
 decaying madrepore ; the few pitiful attempts 
 at cultivation — the whole thing, above, below, 
 everywhere, seeming to press upon the 
 senses with an impression of ugliness, an 
 ugliness enough to sicken not the eyes or 
 the heart alone, but the very stomach.
 
 126 GRANIA 
 
 As Grania and Murdough pursued their 
 way side by side over the rocks httle Phehm 
 gradually lagged behind, and at last drifted 
 away altogether, stopping dreamily first at 
 one patch of sand, then at another, and 
 becominor more and more mer<Ted in the 
 general hue of the rocks, till he finally dis- 
 appeared from sight in the direction of his 
 mother's cabin. 
 
 The other two kept on upon the same level 
 till they had got back to Grania's potato- 
 patch. Here she picked up her spade, and 
 at once resumed her work of clearing out 
 stone-encumbered ridges, Murdough Blake 
 perching himself meanwhile comfortably 
 upon a boulder, where he sat swinging his 
 pampootie-shod feet over the edge and com- 
 placently surveying her labours. 
 
 The girl drove her spade vehemently 
 into the ground with a sort of fierce im- 
 patience, due partly to a sense of having
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 127 
 
 wasted time, but more to a va^^ue feelin<T 
 of irritation and disappointment whicli, like 
 the former feeling, had a fashion of recur- 
 ring whenever these two had been some 
 time together. The sods sprang from before 
 her spade ; the light sandy soil flew wildly 
 hither and thither; some of the dust of it 
 even reached Murdough as he lounged upon 
 his boulder : but he only sat still and watched 
 her complacently, utterly unaware that he 
 had anything himself to say to this really 
 unnecessary display of energy. 
 
 The theory that love would be less felt 
 if it was less talked about certainly finds 
 some justification in Ireland, and amongst 
 such well-developed specimens of youthful 
 manhood as Murdough Blake. It is seldom 
 talked of there, and apparently in conse- 
 quence seldom felt. Marriages being largely 
 matters of barter, irregular connections all 
 but unknown, it follows that the topic loses
 
 i28 CRANIA 
 
 that predominance which it possesses in 
 nearly every other community in the world. 
 Politics, sport, religion, a dozen others 
 push it from the field. Physiologically — 
 you would have said to look at him — he 
 was of the very material out of which an 
 emotional animal is made, and yet — explain 
 the matter how you like — he was not in the 
 least an emotional animal, or rather his emo- 
 tional activity was used up in quite other 
 directions than the particular form called 
 love-making. Of his conversational enter- 
 tainment, for instance, to do him justice, he 
 was rarely lacking. 
 
 ' Begorrah, 'tis the wonderful girl you 
 are for the work, Grania O'Malley ! ' he ob- 
 served, when the silence between them had 
 lasted about three minutes. ' Is it never tired 
 you do be getting of it ; never at all, summer 
 or winter, say, Grania ? ' 
 
 She shook her head. ' And what else
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 129 
 
 would I be doing upon Inishmaan if I did 
 get tired of it itself, Murdough Blake ? ' she 
 asked pertinently. 
 
 There being no very easy answer to this 
 question, Murdough was silent again for 
 another minute and a half. 
 
 ' It is myself that gets tired of it then, 
 so it is,' he replied candidly. ' I would give 
 a great deal if I had it, I would, Grania 
 O'Malley, to be out of Inishmaan, so I 
 would, God knows ! ' he continued, looking 
 away towards the line of coast, low to the 
 south, but rising towards the north in a suc- 
 cession of pallid peaks^ peering one behind 
 the other till they melted into the dis- 
 tance. ' It is a very poor place, Inishmaan, 
 for a young man and a man of spirit to 
 be living in, always, week-days and Sundays, 
 fine days, rain days, always the same. How 
 is he to show what is hi him, at all, at all, 
 and he always in the same place? It 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I30 CRANIA 
 
 is, yes, my faith and word, very hard od 
 him. He might as well be one of these 
 prickly things down there that do take a year 
 to crawl from one stone to another, so he 
 might, every bit as well, my faith and word ! ' 
 
 ' You do go to Galway most weeks in 
 Peter O'Donovan's turf boat,' the girl re- 
 joined, stooping to pick up a stone and 
 tossing it impatiently away from the drill. 
 
 ' And if I do, Grania O'Malley, what 
 then? It is not a very great affair Peter 
 O'Donovan's turf boat. And it is not much 
 time either — not more than three or four 
 hours at the most — that I get in the town, 
 for there is the fastening of the boat to 
 be done, and helping to get the turf on 
 board, and many another thing too. And 
 Peter 'Donovan he is a very hard man, 
 so he is ; yes, indeed, God knows, very. And 
 when I am in the town itself, and walkincr 
 about in the streets of it, why, you see, Grania
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 131 
 
 deelisli, I've o-ot so little of the EnMisli 
 
 Bad luck to my father and to my mother too 
 for not sending me to be learnt it when I was 
 a bouchaleen ! A man feels a born gomoral, 
 so he does, just a gomoral, no better — when he 
 hasn't got the good English. And there are 
 a great many of the quality too in the town of 
 Galway, and it is not one word of the Irish 
 that they will speak — no, nor understand it 
 either — so they will not, Grania, not one word.' 
 
 ' I've got no English either, and I don't 
 want any of it,' she answered proudly ; ' I 
 had sooner have only the Irish.' 
 
 'Arrah, Grania, but you are an igno- 
 rant colleen to go say such a thing ! 'Tis 
 yourself that knows nothing about it, or you 
 would not talk so. Language is grand, grand ! 
 I wish that I kncAv all the languages that ever 
 were upon this earth since the days of King 
 Noah, who made the Flood. Yes, I do, and 
 more too, than ever there were on it ! Then 
 
 K 2
 
 132 GRAMA 
 
 I could talk to all the people, and hold 
 up my head high witli the best in the land. 
 My word, yes, if I knew all the languages 
 that ever were, I promise you I could speak 
 fine — my word, yes ! ' 
 
 It was quite a new idea to Grania that 
 there were more languages in the world than 
 English and Irish, and she meditated silently 
 upon the information for several minutes. 
 
 ' There's what Father Tom speaks in the 
 chapel, when he comes over from Aranmore 
 to say Mass,' she observed reflectively. " Ave 
 Maria" and "Pater Noster." Honor learned 
 me that, and it is not the Irish, I know, 
 and it would not be the English, I suppose, 
 either ? ' 
 
 The remark was put in the form of an 
 interrogation, but Murdough's thoughts had 
 travelled elsewhere. 
 
 ' Young Mr. Mullarky of Ballyhure was 
 in Galway last day I was there, so he was.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 133 
 
 Ocli ! but it is the quality tliat have the 
 grand times, Grania O'Malley, and it is myself 
 would have had the orand times too if I had 
 been born one of them, that I would, the 
 grandest times of them all. He was riding 
 upon a big black horse, the blackest horse 
 ever you saw in your life. Och ! but the 
 noise it made as it came down the street, 
 scattering the people and clattering upon the 
 stones. Wurvali I wurrah I but it did make 
 the noise, I tell you, Grania, and the people 
 all turning round to look at him, and he 
 pretending not to see one of them. My God ! 
 but a horse is a wonderful beast ! I would 
 sooner have a horse of my own, of my very 
 own, that I could ride all over the world 
 upon the back of, than I would have a 
 ship or anything ! Yes, I would, my faith 
 and word, yes.' 
 
 ' A ship would take you a deal further,' 
 Grania replied scornfully. ' When my father
 
 134 CRANIA 
 
 had the hooker he would put up the sails of 
 her here in Inishmaan, and it would not be 
 four hours — no, nor nearly four hours — 
 before we would be sailing into the harbour 
 at Ballj^vaughan, and what horse in the world 
 would do that for you ? ' 
 
 ' A horse wouldn't take you over the sea, 
 of course, but a horse could take you any- 
 where you wanted on tlie dry land — any- 
 where over the whole earth, just for the 
 trouble of skelping it. Arrah my word ! just 
 think how you'd feel sitting on the back of it, 
 and it galloping along the road, and every- 
 one turning round to look at you. That's 
 how the quality feel, and that's how I'd 
 feel if I had been born one of them, as I 
 might have been and as I ought to have been ; 
 for why not ? Why should they have every- 
 \M\YiSl and w^e nothin<]j ? Is that fair ? God 
 Avho is up there in heaven, He knows right well 
 that it is not fair, so it is not. There was a
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 135 
 
 man last year at the Gal way horse fair, and 
 he had a little horse, a yellow-coloured one it 
 was, Grania O'Malley, only the mane and tail 
 of it were black, and I went up to him as 
 bold as bold, and says I — " Cay vadh e luach 
 an coppul shin f " ^ For I wanted to know 
 the cost of it. " Coog poonthe daig, ^ and 
 that's more than you've got about you this 
 minute, I'm thinking, my poor gosthoon," 
 said he, with a laugh. " Gorra, that's true," 
 thought I to myself, and I went away very 
 troubled like, for my heart seemed tied with 
 strings to that little yellow horse. And 
 I watched it all day from a distance, and 
 everyone that went up to look at it ; 'twas 
 just like something of my own that I 
 was afraid of having stolen, just the very 
 same, and I could have leaped out and 
 knocked them down, I was so mad to think 
 
 * What is the price of that horse ? 
 ^ Fifteen pounds.
 
 136 CRANIA 
 
 that another would have it and I not. And 
 about four o'clock in the afternoon there came 
 a young fellow from Gort — a little dotteen 
 he was, not up to my shoulder — and he too 
 asked the price of it, only it was in the 
 Eno'lish he asked it, and the man told him 
 seventeen pounds, for I understood that 
 much. "Can it leap?" says the young 
 fellow. "Is it leap?" says the other. 
 " Yarra, it would leap the moon as ready 
 as look at it, so it would, and higher too 
 if you could find it anything to stand on ! " 
 says he, joking like. " Auch, don't be trying 
 to put your comethers upon me," says the 
 young fellow who was wanting to buy it. 
 " Do you think it was yesterday I was born ? " 
 says he. 
 
 ' Well, with that they went away to a 
 place about a quarter of a mile from there, 
 and I crept after them, hiding behind the 
 walls, and every now and then I would peep
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 137 
 
 over the top of a wall, and the heart 
 inside me it would go hop, hopping, up and 
 down, till I thought it would burst. And 
 every time that little yellow horse lifted its 
 legs or twitched its ear I'd leap as if I was 
 doing it myself. And when the man that 
 was selling it gave it now and then a skelp 
 with a bit of a kippeen that he held in 
 his hand I felt like murdering him — "How 
 dare you be touching another gentleman's 
 horse, you spalpeen ? " I'd cry out, only 
 it was in the inside of me, you understand, 
 under my breath, I'd say it, for there were 
 the two of them, and the one that was want- 
 ing to sell the horse was a big fellow, twice 
 as big as myself and bigger, with a great 
 brown beard on the chin of him. And ever 
 since that day I've been thinking and think- 
 ing of all I'd do if I had a horse, a real live 
 horse of my own. And at night I do be 
 dreaming that I'm galloping down the hill
 
 138 GRAN/A 
 
 over beyond Gort-na-Copple, and the four 
 legs of the horse under me going so fast that 
 you would hardly tell one of them from the 
 other, and the children running out on to the 
 road, and their mothers screeching and bawling 
 to them at the tops of their voices to come 
 out of that, or maybe the gentleman would 
 kill them. Oh ! but it is a grand beast, I tell 
 you, Grania O'Malley, a horse is ! There is no 
 other beast in the whole world so grand as a 
 horse — not one anywhere — no, not anywhere 
 at all.' 
 
 Grania listened to all this in perfect 
 silence. These aspirations of Murdough 
 found her very much colder than his more 
 juvenile ones used to find her. They did 
 not stimulate her imagination, somehow now, 
 on the contrary they merely made her feel 
 vaguely uncomfortable and cross. All this 
 talk about money and fine horses, and the 
 quality, and what he would have done if he
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 139 
 
 himself had been one of the quahty was a 
 mere fairy tale, and moreover a very tiresome 
 fairy tale to her. There was nothing about 
 it that she could attach any idea to ; nothing 
 which seemed to have any connection with 
 themselves, or their own life present or 
 future. She went on steadily cleaning out 
 her drills, scraping the small stones in front 
 of her and laying them in heaps at the 
 side. Murdouo'h meanwhile, havinc^ finished 
 everything he had to say upon the subject 
 of horsemanship, had travelled away to 
 another topic, explaining, expounding, ela- 
 borating, pouring forth a flood of illustra- 
 tions such as his native tongue is rich in. It 
 was a torrent to which there was apparently 
 no limit, and which, once started, could flow 
 as readily and continue as long in one direc- 
 tion as in another. 
 
 Grania was hardly listening. She wanted 
 — she hardly herself knew what she wanted
 
 I40 CRANIA 
 
 — but certainly it was not words. Why 
 would Murdough always go on talk, talk, 
 talking ? she thought irritably. She admired 
 his interminable flow of words of course — 
 she would not have been Irish had she not 
 done so — at the same time she was conscious 
 of a vague grudge against them. They 
 seemed always to be coming between them. 
 They were her rivals after a fashion, and 
 she was not of a temper to put up patiently 
 with rivals, even invisible ones. 
 
 ' Man above ! but it is late 'tis getting ! ' 
 she suddenly exclaimed. ' And I, that 
 ought to have gone home before this ! — yes 
 indeed,' she added, looking up at the sky, 
 in which the light had shifted considerably 
 towards the west since they had been there 
 together. ' Honor will wonder not to see 
 me. It is half an hour ago I should have 
 gone, so it is.' 
 
 ' Is it worse than common she is to-
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 141 
 
 day ? ' Murdough inquired carelessly, getting 
 up from his rock and stretching himself with 
 an air of unmeasurable fatigue. 
 
 'It is not better any way,' the girl 
 answered curtly. 
 
 A great heap of seaweed which she had 
 brought up from the shore was lying close 
 under the low lacework wall of the little 
 enclosure. Taking up her fork she stuck 
 it into the whole mass, twisting it about so as 
 to make it adhere ; then with a sudden lift 
 she raised the fork with all its dangling 
 burden and laid it against her shoulder, 
 and so burdened prepared to mount the 
 hill. 
 
 Murdough watched her proceedings with 
 an air of impartial approval. ' Monnum a 
 Dhea ! but it is yourself that is the powerful 
 strong girl, Grania O'Malley. There is not 
 many of the boys, I tell you, on Inishmaan 
 that is stronger than you — no, nor as strong
 
 142 CRANIA 
 
 either, so there is not,' he observed apprecia- 
 tively. 
 
 Grania smiled proudly. She knew that 
 she was strong, and took an immense pride 
 in her own strength ; moreover, speeches like 
 these were about the nearest approaches to 
 compliments that Murdough ever paid her, 
 and she treasured them accordingly. 
 
 They walked on together over the rocky 
 platform till they had reached its edge, 
 where a low cliff or single gigantic stair rose 
 perpendicularly, leading to the one beyond. 
 Here Murdough, who was a little in front, 
 clambered leisurely up, catching at the over- 
 hanging lip of the step with his hand, and 
 pulling himself easily upwards with its aid till 
 he stood upon the higher level. Then he 
 waited for Grania. 
 
 With her dangling burden of seaweed 
 depending from her shoulder it was not 
 quite so easy for her to do the same. To
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 143 
 
 have handed the whole thing, fork and all, 
 to Murdough until she had in her turn 
 climbed to where he stood would have been 
 the simplest course, but then it was not a 
 course that would have occurred to either 
 of them. Murdough was supposed by Honor 
 and the rest of the world to help Grania at 
 her work, not having any work in particular 
 of his own to do, but in reality their mutual 
 share of tliat work was always exactly what 
 it had been that afternoon. Habits grow 
 as rapidly as ragweeds, especially where life 
 is of the simplest, and where two people 
 are practically agreed as to how that life is 
 to be carried on ; and that Murdough should 
 trouble himself about anything that it was 
 possible for her to do single-handed had 
 long seemed to both of them a sheer absurd- 
 ity. They might and did have differences 
 about other matters, but so far they were 
 absolutely at one.
 
 144 CRANIA 
 
 Now, therefore, as usual, the rule held. 
 Grania lowered the fork on her shoulder, so as 
 to reduce its weight, bringing it down until 
 its burden of seaweed covered her back and 
 head. Then, exerting her muscles to the 
 utmost, she scrambled up, half blinded by the 
 sticky black stuff which dangled over her 
 eyes, helping herself as best she could with 
 her left hand and wedging her knees into the 
 small clefts as they rose one above the other, 
 till at last, her face red and bathed in per- 
 spiration though the day was cold, she stood 
 upon the ridge above. 
 
 This time Murdough did not compHment 
 her in words upon her strength, but his 
 glance seemed to say the same thing, and she 
 was content. 
 
 From this point they had no more steps to 
 chmb, though they had to make a slight cir- 
 cuit to avoid a second and steeper one which 
 lay just below the gully. Following the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 
 
 [45 
 
 course of a small valley, grass-grown and 
 boulder-dotted, they presently found them- 
 selves in the street, if street it could be called, 
 of a tiny hamlet, consisting of some five or 
 six stone cabins upon one side and three or 
 four upon the other, minute cabins, built of 
 materials so disproportionately big that two 
 or three of the stone slabs sufficed for the 
 length of a wall, which walls were grey as 
 the still living rocks around them, and, like 
 them, might have been seen on inspection to 
 be covered with a close-fitting suit of lichens, 
 sedums, and such small crops, with liere 
 and there something taller sprouting where a 
 chink gave it foothold, or a piece of earth, 
 fallen from the decaying thatch above, 
 offered a temporary home. 
 
 This was Ballinlisheen, second or third larg- 
 est of the towns of Inishmaan. A good many 
 of its citizens — most of tliem apparently very 
 old women — were sitting upon their heels at 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 CRANIA 
 
 the doorsteps as the two young people came up 
 the track, Murdough sauntering leisurely along 
 with liis hands in his pockets, Grania with 
 her black load of seaweed dangling half-way 
 down her back. The latter did not stop to 
 speak to anyone. She was in a hurry to get 
 back to Honor, being conscious of having al- 
 ready delayed too long. Murdough, though 
 a young man generally open to all social ad- 
 vances, was beginning to get hungry, so he, too, 
 kept on steadily beside her, giving only an oc- 
 casional nod or word of greeting as first one 
 and then another head craned forward into the 
 narrow space between the opposing doorways. 
 
 Conversation, which had lagged a little in 
 Balliulisheen before their comincr, beg^an to stir 
 and grow brisk again after they had passed on 
 and were moving along the top of the nearest 
 ridge. 
 
 ' She is the big girl, Grania O'Malley ! the 
 powerful big girl, my conscience, yes,' said old
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 147 
 
 Stacia Casey, Mick Halliday's wife, stretching 
 out a neck long and scraggy as a turkey's and 
 looking after them with an air of contemplation. 
 * Murdough Blake tops her by the head,' 
 repHed her neighbour Deb Cassidy from the 
 opposite side of the street, in a tone of con- 
 tradiction. 
 
 ' He does not, then, nor by the half of it,' 
 retorted the other in the same spirit. ' Is it 
 marrying him she'll be, I wonder? ' she added 
 after a minute's pause. 
 
 ' Is it eating her dinner she'll be ? ' 
 exclaimed her friend with a laugh. ' Wurrah I 
 icurrah ! but 'tis the real born fool you must 
 be, woman, to be asking such a question.' 
 
 ' Ugh ! ugh ! but 'tis the real born fool she 
 will be if she does marry him ! ' grunted an enor- 
 mously big old woman, much older than any 
 of the other speakers, Peggy Dowd by name, 
 the professional story teller, and at that time 
 the oldestinhabitant of Inishmaan. She was
 
 148 CRANIA 
 
 supposed to live with a widowed daughter, 
 herself a woman of nearly sixty, but was to be 
 found anywhere else in preference, lier great 
 age and standing reputation making her every- 
 where acceptable, or at all events accepted. 
 
 'Murdough Blake, wisha ! ' she went on, 
 emptying the small black pipe she was 
 smoking with a sharp rap upon the stones. 
 ' Trath, 'tis the poor lot those Blakes of 
 Alleenageeragh are, and always have been, so 
 they have ! There was this one's grandfather 
 — myself remembers him when he was no older 
 than this one — no, nor so old by a year — a 
 fine bouchaleen you'd say to look at him 
 — broad and bulky, and a clean skin, and a 
 toss to his head as if all the rest in the place 
 were but dirt and he picking his steps about 
 amonirst them. Well, what was he ? He was 
 just nothing, that is what he was, and so 
 I tell you, women, not worth a thraneen, no, 
 nor the half of a thraneen. Ugh ! ugh ! ugh !
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 149 
 
 don't talk to me of the Blakes of Allee- 
 iiageerah, for I tell you I know them — I 
 know them, those Blakes of Alleenaofeerairh. 
 St. Macdara ! I do know them, and have rea- 
 son to know them ! There was another — 
 Malachy Blake his name was — a great man, 
 full of gosther and brag ; you'd think it was 
 the world he must have for himself, the whole 
 world, no less, from Liscanor Head to 
 Eenvyle Point out yonder, and farther still. 
 Well, I will tell you now about Malachy 
 Blake. The heart of him was no better than 
 the heart of a pullet — of a sick pullet, when 
 the eyes of it begin to turn up, and it 
 squeaks when you take it in your hand and 
 turns over and dies on the floor. That was 
 what Malachy Blake's heart was like — no 
 better ! I have heard him one day so you'd 
 think the wind flying over the top of the 
 island or the stars shining up in the sky 
 would stoop down to listen to him, and the
 
 ISO GRAN I A 
 
 very next minute I have seen a little pinkeen 
 of a man not up to his shoulder give him the 
 go-by and abuse him before the girls, and he 
 never showing no spirit nor a thing, no more 
 than if he was dead. FJioo I phoo ! phoo ! I 
 know them, those Blakes of Alleenageeragh. 
 There is a story that I could tell you about 
 that same Malachy Blake would make the 
 very eyes of you start out of your head, so it 
 would. But there — 'tis a poor case, God 
 knows, to be telling stories to them that knows 
 nothing ; a poor case, a very poor case ! A fine 
 man he was anyway to look at, I'll say that 
 for him, Mala<"hy Blake, finer than this one, or 
 six of him I and there was a many a girl in 
 the place liked him well enough, though 'tis flat 
 and low in his grave he is now, and has been 
 these thirty years. Phoo ! phoo ! flat and low 
 in his grave he is. Yes, indeed, flat and low 
 for all his boasting ! But I shall be sorry for 
 Grania O'Malley and for that good woman
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 151 
 
 her sister if slie marries young Miirdough 
 Blake, so I shall ; very sorry ! very sorry ! ' 
 
 ' It is not long Honor O'Malley will be in 
 this world, marrying or no marrying,' said 
 anotlier old woman, many years younger 
 than the last speaker, Molly Muldoon by 
 name, a brisk, apple-faced little spinster of 
 fifty-seven or thereabouts. ' It was only yester- 
 day I was with her at their own house yonder, 
 and it was the death-streak I saw plainly 
 under her left eye, the death-streak that no 
 one can live two months once it comes out on 
 them. Oh, a good woman Honor O'Malley is, 
 as you say, Mrs. Dowd, ma'am, none better 
 in this world, nor beyond it either — a real 
 saint, and a credit to Inishmaan and all be- 
 longing to her. It is myself has promised to 
 be w^ith her at the last, and at her laying out 
 and at everything, so I have. " Keep Grania 
 away," says she to me only yesterday. " 'Tis 
 broke the child's heart will be any way, and
 
 152 CRANIA 
 
 what good is it to be tearing tlie life out of her 
 and I past knowing anything about it? Send 
 for Murdough Blake," says she, "the minute 
 the breath is out of my body, and bid him 
 take her with my blessing and comfort her." 
 Those were the very words she said. Oh, yes, 
 a good woman, and a kind woman, and a 
 tender woman is Honor O'Malley, a real saint. 
 It is the loss she will be to Inishmaan, the 
 great loss entirely.' 
 
 Mrs. Dowd grunted. She was not much 
 of a devotee of saints, certainly not of con- 
 temporary ones* 
 
 ' And if it isn't the real out-and-out right 
 wake and funeral she gets it will be the 
 shame of the place, no better,' Molly Muldoon 
 went on in a tone of enthusiasm. ' Candles 
 —the best wax ones— with tobacco and 
 spirits for the men, and a plate of white 
 salt to lay on her breast, and the priest, or 
 may be two priests, over from Aranmore.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND in 
 
 That is the kcast she should have, so it is, 
 for none ever deserved it better than Honor 
 O'Malley, so they did not.' 
 
 'They're rich too, the O'Malleys,' re- 
 marked Deb Cassidy from her side of the path 
 — ' money laid by^ and warm people always 
 from first to last, no warmer anywhere. Oh, 
 a real rich girl is Grania O'Malley — my God ! 
 yes, rich. There are not three girls on 
 Inishraaan as rich as she is — no, not two, 
 nor any other at all, I am thinking.' 
 
 ' Trath, and it is none too rich she'll find 
 herself when she is married to Murdough 
 Blake ! ' old Peggy Dowd said bitterly. ' 'Tis 
 down from the sky or up from the sea those 
 Blakes of Alleenageeragh do expect the money 
 to be coming to them. A gosthering, spend- 
 ing, having brood they are and always have 
 been. Eich is it ? Gorra ! 'tis eight days in 
 the week she'll find herself working for all her 
 money if she means to keep a roof over her
 
 154 CRANIA 
 
 head and Murdough Blake under it — yes, and 
 going a shaughraun most like at the tail of it 
 all, so she will. Mark my words, women, so 
 she will, so she will ! ' 
 
 No one ventured to contradict this pro- 
 phecy, Peggy O'Dowd's age and reputation 
 making the course perilous. There was a 
 few minutes' silence, after which Molly 
 Muldoon was the first to break up the con- 
 clave. She was the chief rearer of chick- 
 ens on Inishmaan, and now got up briskly 
 to see after the various broods to which 
 every corner of her cabin was dedicated. 
 One by one, most of the other women, too, 
 got up and moved indoors on various do- 
 mestic duties, till at last only old Peggy 
 herself remained behind. She had no house- 
 hold duties to see to. She was a mere visitor, 
 a sitter beside other people's hearths and a 
 sharer of other people's victuals. She re- 
 mained, therefore, squatting in the same place
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 155 
 
 upon the doorstep, her big blue patched 
 cloak hitched about her shoulders, her knees 
 nearly on a level with her big projecting chin, 
 her broad face, once immensely fat, now 
 fallen into deep furrows and hollows, growing 
 gradually impassive as the momentary ex- 
 citement of recalling her old grudge against 
 the Blakes faded away or got merged in 
 other and probably equally long-remembered 
 grudges. Sitting there hunched in her big 
 cloak, she miglit at a little distance have 
 been taken for some sort of queer vegetable 
 growth — a fungus, say, or toadstool, which 
 had slowly drawn to itself all the qualities 
 — by preference the less benignant ones — of 
 the soil from which it had sprung. In places 
 like Inishmaan, where change has hardly any 
 existence, the loves, hates, feuds, animosities 
 of fifty or sixty years ago may often be found 
 on examination to be just as green and just 
 as unforgotten as those of yesterday.
 
 156 CRANIA 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 GraXIA and Murdough had parted meanwhile 
 upon the top of the ridge close to the old 
 Mothar Dun, he going west, she east. When 
 she reached home she found the cabin 
 door still shut, a hen and clutch of chickens 
 sitting upon the step waiting to be let in. 
 It was evident that no one had been either 
 in or ouL since she left it five or six hours 
 before. 
 
 Inside the cabin w^as very dark, and 
 Honor's thin white face showed ghost-like 
 against this setting. She was half sitting, half 
 lying, upon her bed, with her eyes closed, 
 though she was not asleep, a board and a 
 pillow covered with a bit of old striped cotton
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 157 
 
 supporting her. Everything around had the 
 peculiarly chocolate hue of peat. The cabin 
 was clean — for an Irish cabin commendably 
 clean — but the whole had the deeply-dyed, 
 almost black, hue of a Eembrandt back- 
 ground. The face of the sick woman herself 
 might have come from the canvas of quite a 
 different master. Early Italian painters have 
 all tried their hands at it. How well we know 
 it ! — that peculiar look, a look of toil-worn 
 peace — peace caught as it were out of tlie 
 inmost heart of pain ; — the hollow cheek, the 
 deeply-marked eye-sockets, the eyes looking 
 out as prisoners' eyes look from their dungeon 
 bars ; — Ave all recognise it when great art 
 shows it to us, tliough rarely, if ever, other- 
 wise. Upon a canvas Honor O'Malley's face 
 might have been the face of a saint or a 
 martyr. It icas the face of a saint or a 
 martyr, as saints and martyrs find their 
 representation in these days of ours. Three
 
 158 CRANIA 
 
 long years the poor woman had lain there 
 dying. Consumption had its hold upon her. 
 It had been very slow and deliberate in its 
 approaches — nay, in its earlier stage miglit 
 have been arrested altogether had there been 
 any means at hand of attempting anything 
 of the sort, which, of course, there were not. 
 Who can say what hours of pain had worn 
 themselves out in that smoke-dyed corner ? 
 Who can say how many supplications had 
 risen out of its recesses, hoAv often the 
 eternal complaint of the sea licking the 
 base of the cliffs had seemed to Honor the 
 voice of her own silent complaining, the 
 unresting cry of the night wind her own 
 dumb cries made audible ? She had won 
 peace now. She was dying comparatively 
 quickly. Mercy was fast coming nearer and 
 nearer, and would presently touch lier with its 
 wings. 
 
 Grania's step sounded on the rocks
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 159 
 
 without, and she looked up suddenly, a smile 
 of welcome w^aking in lier hollow eyes. 
 
 ' Is it yourself, it is, allanah ? ' she ex- 
 claimed joyfully as the younger sister came 
 quickly in, pushed upon the shoulders of the 
 gust which always lurked in the throat of that 
 g^iHy. 
 
 ' 'Tis myself, and 'tis wanting me you have 
 been this while back. Honor, I know,' the 
 girl replied in quick tones of self-reproach. 
 
 ' Augh, no, child, ner a bit ; 'twas only 
 I — ' here her voice was stopped by an access 
 of coughing, which shook her from head to 
 foot and brought a momentary flush to her 
 poor sunken cheeks. 
 
 Grania stood by penitently, helpless till 
 the paroxysm was exhausted and the coughing 
 had ceased. 
 
 ' 'Twas the potatoes,' she said apologeti- 
 cally when Honor again lay back, white and 
 dry-hpped. ' 'Tis a bitter while they take
 
 i6o CRANIA 
 
 this year, whatever the reason is ; and then 
 Phehm, the creature, came, and I got hstening 
 to him, and then Miirdough BLake and — ' 
 
 'Wurrah! whist with the tongue of 
 you, and don't be telhng me, child ! Is it 
 within the four walls of a house I would be 
 keeping my bird all the long day ? ' the sick 
 woman said with tender impatience. ' 'Tis the 
 uselessness of me, I was going to say, kills me. 
 Never a pot cleaned nor a thing done since 
 morning. But there ! God knows, and He 
 sent it ; so 'tis all for the best, sure and 
 certain.' 
 
 Grania without another word picked 
 up the three-legged black pot, and ran to 
 fill it at the well outside, setting it down 
 on the fire when she returned, and beginning 
 to mix in the oatmeal by handfuls for the 
 stirabout which was to serve for their even- 
 ings meal. 
 
 Honor lay watching her, her face still
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND i6i 
 
 flushed from the last fit of coughing, the per- 
 spiration standing out in drops on her fore- 
 head and under her hollow eye-sockets, but 
 a great look of content gradually spreading 
 over her face as her eyes followed her sister's 
 movements. 
 
 As long as it had been possible she had 
 gone on working, long, indeed, after she ought 
 to have ceased to do so. Her spinning wheel 
 still stood near her in a corner, though it was' 
 nearly a year since she had been able to 
 touch it. Her knitting lay close at hand. 
 That she still occasionally worked at, and 
 even managed to mend her own clothes and 
 Grania's, and to keep her own immediate 
 surroundings sweet and clean. 
 
 Irish cabins are not precisely bowers of 
 refinement, yet this corner, where Honor 
 O'Malley's life had been for years ebbing slowly 
 away, told a tale in its way of a purity 
 which, if it did not amount to refinement, 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 i62 CRANIA 
 
 amounted to something better. Outside the 
 wind howled, sweeping with a vicious whirl 
 over the long naked ledges, loosening here 
 and there a thin flake of stone, which 
 spun round and round for a moment lik.e a 
 forest leaf, then fell with a hght pattering 
 noise upon the ridge below. Inside the sods 
 crackled dully, as the fire blown by Grania 
 ran along their ragged brown sides, or shot 
 into a flame whenever a stray fibre helped 
 it on. 
 
 Besides the two owners, and not counting 
 an itinerant population of chickens varying in 
 ages and degrees of audacity, the cabin boasted 
 one other inmate. The dog tax being un- 
 known, nearly every Irish cabin has its cur, 
 and on the Aran isles the dogs are only 
 less numerous than the babies. The 
 O'Malleys, however, had no dog, and their 
 house-friend (the r in the last word might 
 appropriately have been omitted) was a small
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 163 
 
 yellow, or, rather, orange-coloured, cat, noted 
 as having the worst temper of any cat upon 
 Inishmaan. Whether in consequence of this 
 temper, or in spite of it, there was no cat 
 who appeared to have also so constant a train 
 of feline adorers. Eemote as the O'Malleys' 
 cabin stood, it was the recognised rendezvous 
 of every appreciative Tom upon the island, 
 so that at night it was sometimes even a 
 little startling to open the door suddenly 
 and catch the steady glitter of a row of 
 watchful ej^es, or to see three, four, or ^yq 
 retreating forms creeping feloniously away 
 over the rocks. 
 
 ' 'Tis the milk she does be tasting already, 
 the little snaking beast,' Honor said, pointing 
 to it, as it sat furtively licking its lips close 
 to the hearth. 
 
 Grania struck the cat a light tap on tlie 
 nose with the iron spoon she was stirring 
 the pot with, an insult to which it re- 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 CRANIA 
 
 spondee! with a vicious spitting mew, and 
 a backward leap, which seemed to set all 
 its orange-coloured coat on edge in a 
 moment. 
 
 'Was it along by the sea-way you were 
 to-day, allanah ? ' Honor pursued presently. 
 
 ' I was, sister.' 
 
 ' Did you pass by the old chapel ? ' 
 
 ' I did, Honor.' 
 
 ' Then you said, I'll be bound, a prayer at 
 the little old cross for me, as I bade you do ? ' 
 
 'Well, then. Honor, I will not tell you a 
 lie — no, I will not — but I never once thought 
 of it,' Grania replied penitently. ' You see, 
 Murdough Blake he was with me, and we 
 got colloguing. But sure, sister asthor, don't 
 fret, and I'll go to-morrow by the first streak 
 of day and say as many as ever you tell me, 
 so I will. Honor.' 
 
 Honor for answer sighed and lay back 
 against the wooden settle as if some habitual
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 155 
 
 source of trouble was weighing upon her 
 mind. 
 
 ' Grania, it is a bad thing for you that 
 there is no priest on Inishmaan, a very bad 
 thing,' she said, earnestly, an ever-present 
 source of anxiety coming to the front, as it 
 often did when she and Grania were alone. 
 ' How is a young girsha to learn true things 
 if there is no one in it to teach her ? When 
 I lie at night in bed thinking, thinking, I 
 think of you Grania, and I pray to God and 
 the Holy Mother, and to all the tender saints, 
 that it may not be laid against you. Sure 
 how can the child know, I say, and she never 
 taught ? The Holy Mother will know how 
 'twas, and may be when I get there, Grania, 
 she'll let me say the word, and show that it 
 was no fault of yours, allanah, for how could 
 you know and none here to teach you, only 
 me that knows nothing and less than nothing 
 myself?'
 
 1 66 GRAXIA 
 
 Grania's fierce grey eyes filled for a mo- 
 ment. Then with a sudden impulse she flung 
 her head back, lifting the iron spoon she had 
 just tapped the cat's nose with, and holding it 
 defiantly in front of her. 
 
 ' Then I don't want none of them to be 
 learning me, only you, Honor — so, I do not,' 
 she said irritably. ' I couldn't bear to be 
 driven or bid by any of them — so, I couldn't ! ' 
 
 'Is it a priest, Grania? My God! child, 
 you don't know what you're saying ! A 
 priest ! Why, everyone that ever was born 
 into this world, man or woman, must obey 
 a priest. You know that right well yourself, 
 and what would be the end of them if they 
 didn't, so you do.' 
 
 'I don't care. I would not be bid, no, 
 not by anyone,' Grania answered defiantl3^ 
 ' And the priests arn't all so good as you say, 
 Honor, so they are not. . I mind me there 
 was a young girl over by Cashla way told
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 167 
 
 me of the priest where she hved — Father 
 Flood his name was — a terrible hard man 
 he was, and carried a big stick, so he did, 
 and beat the children frightful when they were 
 bould — yes indeed. And one day she was 
 going herself to the chapel and hurt her 
 foot on the way, and couldn't get in till 
 Mass was half over. And Father Flood he 
 saw her coming up, and he frowned at her 
 from the altar to stop by the door, and not 
 dare come nearer. So she waited, treni- 
 bhng all over, and wanting to tell him what 
 happened. But presently he come down 
 the chapel, and when he got close to her 
 he caught her without a word by the side 
 hair — just here. Honor, she told me, above 
 the ear — as he was passing by to the door, 
 and pulled her by it right after him out 
 of the chapel. And when they were out- 
 side he shook her up and down and back- 
 wards and forwards as hard as he could,
 
 168 CRANIA 
 
 yes, indeed, as hard as ever he could, she told 
 me, and she crying all the time, and begging 
 and praying of him to stop, and every time 
 she tried to tell him what hindered her he 
 just shook the harder, till it was time for 
 him to be going in again, when he gave 
 her a great push which laid her flat on the 
 grass, and back with him himself into the 
 chapel again. And she only ten years old and 
 a widow's child ! ' 
 
 Honor sighed. ' 'Tis hard, God knows, 'tis 
 hard,' she said. ' The world is a cruel place, 
 especially for them that's weak in it. There 
 is no end to the pain and the trouble of it, 
 no end at all,' she said in a tone of dis- 
 couragement. ' But, Grania dear, sure isn't 
 it what we suffer that does us the good ? 
 '' Pains make saints ! " I heard a good woman I 
 used to know, that's dead now, say that often. 
 " Pains make saints," " Pains make saints," * 
 she repeated softly over and over to herself.
 
 THE STORY OF AN^ ISLAND 169 
 
 ' 'Tisn't the hurting I'd care about,' Grania 
 said scornfully. ' I've hurt myself often and 
 never minded. 'Tis being bid by them that 
 have no call or care to you. If one done to 
 ine what was done to that girl at Caslila I'd. 
 hit him back, so I would, let him be ten times 
 a priest.' 
 
 Honor gave a sudden scream of dismay. 
 ' Och then, whist ! and whist ! and whist,, 
 child ! ' she cried, piteously. ' What are you 
 raying at all, at all ? Saints be above us, 
 Orania, and keep you from being heard this 
 day, I pray, amen ! Sure a priest's not a man ! 
 You know that well enough. Wurrah ! wur- 
 rah ! that you would speak so ! And I that 
 learned her from the start ! Holy Virgin, 'tis 
 ruy fault, all my fault. The cliild's destroyed, 
 and all through me ! My God, my God, what 
 will I do ? Och, what will I do ? Och, what 
 will I do, at all, at all ? ' 
 
 Grania ran remorsefully and put her
 
 170 CRANIA 
 
 arms about her sister, whose thin form was 
 shaken as if it would fall to pieces by the 
 sudden violence of her trouble. Honor let 
 herself be soothed back to quietness, but her 
 face still worked painfully, and on her pale 
 brow and moving lips it was easy to read 
 that she was still inwardly offering up peti- 
 tions calculated to appease the wrath thus 
 rashly evoked. 
 
 Grania's penitence was real enough so far 
 as Honor was concerned, but it did not alter 
 her private opinion as regards the matter in 
 dispute. 'I'd think him a man if he hit me, 
 let him be what he would ! ' she repeated to 
 herself as she ran into the next room to fetch 
 the milk set out of reach of the cat since the 
 morning's milking.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 171 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The stirabout ready, the two sisters ate their 
 meal together. Honor's was that of a black- 
 bird. In vain Grania coaxed her with the 
 best-mixed corner of the pot ; in vain added 
 milk, breaking in little bits of carefully- 
 treasured white bread, brought from the 
 mainland. The sick woman pretended to eat, 
 but in reality barely moistened her lips with 
 the milk and touched a corner of the bread. 
 When she could persuade her to take no more 
 Grania settled down to her own share, and with 
 the aid of her yellow auxiliary speedily cleared 
 the pot. With a man's power of work she had 
 a man's healthy appetite, and could often have 
 disposed of more food than fell to her share.
 
 172 CRANIA 
 
 The meal over she got up, went to the 
 door, and stood awhile looking down the 
 gully towards the seashore. It was getting 
 dusk, and the night was strangely cold. The 
 wind sweeping in from the north-east felt 
 rough and harsh. No screen or protection 
 of any sort was to be found upon this side of 
 the island. Worse still, fuel was scarce and 
 dear. As a rule, the poor suffer less in Ire- 
 land from cold than from most of the other 
 ills of life. A smoke-saturated cabin is warm 
 if it is nothing else. Turf, too, is generally 
 abundant; often- to be had for the trouble of 
 fetching it home.. In the Aran isles there are 
 no bogs, consequently there is no turf, and the 
 cost of carriage from the mainland has to be 
 added, therefore, to its price. The traffic, too, 
 being in a few hands, those few make their own 
 profit out of it, and their neighbours are more 
 or less at their mercy. 
 . Upon Inishmaan, the most retrograde of
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND ,173 
 
 the three islands, turf is scarcer and dearer 
 than on either Aranmore or Inisheer. Some- 
 times the supply vanishes utterly in the 
 winter, and until fresh turf can be fetched 
 from the mainland the greatest suffering pre- 
 vails ; dried cowdung and every otiher sub- 
 stitute having to be resorted to to supply its 
 place. Grania was always careful to lay in a 
 good supply of turf in the autumn, and the 
 sisters' rick was noted as the tallest and 
 solidest on the island. This year, however, it 
 had melted mysteriously away, much earlier 
 than usual. They had burned a good deal, 
 for the winter had been a severe one, and the 
 sick woman suffered greatly from cold. Still 
 Grania had suspicions that someone had been 
 tampering with their rick, though, so far, 
 she had said nothing about the matter to 
 Honor, not wishing her to be troubled about 
 it. 
 
 It was nearly time now to go down and see
 
 174 GRANT A 
 
 if the kelp fire was burning, and to set it in 
 order for the night — the last task always in 
 the day during the kelp-burning season. 
 Murdough Blake had promised to meet her 
 there, and the consciousness of this made her 
 feel dimly remorseful at the thought of again 
 leaving Honor, although the kelp fire had 
 to be seen to, and she had no intention of 
 lingering a minute longer than she could help. 
 With this idea in her mind she turned to look 
 at her sister, a mere shadow now in her dusky 
 corner, from which the hacking sound of a 
 cough broke, with mournful iteration, upon 
 the silence. A sudden feeling of pity, a 
 sudden intense sense of contrast, swept over 
 the girl's mind as she did so. She would have 
 been incapable of putting the thought into 
 words, but she felt it, nevertheless. Herself 
 and Honor ! What a difference ! Yet why ? 
 Why should it be so ? Honor so good, so 
 patient, she herself so much the contrary !
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 175 
 
 With tliat strong pictorial faculty which 
 comes of an out-of-door life, she already saw 
 herself racing down the hill towards the shore 
 where the kelp fire was built ; already /^/^ the 
 gritty texture of the rocks under her feet, the 
 peculiarly springy sensation that the overhang- 
 ing lip of one ledge always lent as you sprang 
 from it to the next beyond ; saw herself arriv- 
 ing in the narrow stony gorge where the 
 kelp was burnt ; saw the glow of its fire, a 
 narrow trough of red ashes half covered and 
 smothered with seaweed ; saw Murdough 
 Blake coming through the dusk to meet her. 
 At this point a mixture of sensations, too 
 comphcated to be quite comfortable, came 
 over her, and she left her momentary dreams 
 for the reality, which at least was straight- 
 forward enough. 
 
 ' Is there e'er a thing I can do, sister, 
 before I go ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' Ne'er a thing at all, child. 'Tis asleep
 
 nfS CRANIA 
 
 you'll find me most like when you come 
 back,' Honor answered cheerfully. 
 
 Grania left a cup with water in it within 
 the sick woman's reach, covered the fire with 
 ashes, so that it might keep alight, laid her 
 own cloak over Honor, and went out. 
 
 She was already late, and Murdough, she 
 knew, had the strongest possible objections to 
 being kept waiting ; accordingly she hurried 
 dt)wn the rocky incline at a pace that only one 
 accustomed from babyhood to its intricacies 
 could have ventured to go. 
 
 As she hurried along her own movements 
 brought the blood tinghng through her veins, 
 and her spirits rose insensibly. She felt glad 
 and light, she hardly herself knew why. 
 Leaping from one rocky level to another, her 
 feet beat out a ringing response to the clink 
 of the grooved and chiselled rocks against 
 which they struck. Once she stopped a 
 moment to clutch at a tuft of wood sorrel,
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 177 
 
 springing out of a fissure, and crammed it all, 
 trefoiled leaves and half-expanded pale grey 
 flowers, into her mouth, enjoying the sweet 
 sub-acid flavour as she crunched them up 
 between her strong white teeth. 
 
 Better fed than most of her class, her own 
 mistress, without grinding poverty, the mere 
 joy of Hfe, the sheer animal zest and' intoxi^ 
 cation of living was keener in her than it 
 often is in those of her own rank and sex 
 in Ireland; Of this- she was herself dimly 
 aware. Did others find the same pleasure 
 merely in breathings — merely in moving and 
 working — as she did,. she sometimes wondered. 
 Even' her love for Honor — the strongest 
 feeling but one she possessed- — the despair 
 which now and then swept over her at the 
 thought of losing her, could not check this. 
 Nay, it is even possible that the enforced 
 companionship for so many hours of the 
 day and night of that pitiful sick-bed, the 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 CRANIA 
 
 pain and weakness which she shared, so far 
 as they could be shared, lent a sort of reac- 
 tionary zest to the freedom of tliese wild 
 rushes over the rocks and through the cold 
 sea air. She did not guess it herself, but so 
 no doubt it was. 
 
 The dusk lingers long in the far north- 
 west, and upon the Aran islands longer 
 apparently than elsewhere, owing to their 
 shining environment of sea and still more 
 to their treeless rain-washed surfaces, which 
 reflect every atom of light as upon a mirror. 
 It was getting really dark now, however, and 
 the sea below her was all one dull purplish 
 grey, barred at long intervals with moving 
 patches of a yet deeper shadow. Splashes 
 of white or pale yellowish lichens flung 
 upon the dark rocks stood out here and 
 there, looking startlingly light and distinct 
 as she neared them. They might have been 
 dim dancing figures, or strange grimacing
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 179 
 
 faces grinning at her out of the obscurity. 
 Over everything hung an intense sense of 
 saltness — in the air, upon the rocks, on tlie 
 short grass which crisped under foot with 
 the salty particles as with a light hoar-frost. 
 Fragments of dry crumpled-up seaweed, like 
 black rags, lay about everywhere, showing 
 that the kelp fires were not far off. 
 
 She hastened her steps. Was Murdough 
 already there ? she wondered. He was. 
 As she came round the corner she saw him 
 leaning against a big boulder, a ' Stranger ' 
 like the one that blocked the mouth of their 
 own gully ; ice-dropped granite blocks whose 
 pale rounded forms stud by thousands the 
 darker limestone of the islands. 
 
 ' My faith and word, Grania O'Malley, but 
 it is the late woman you are to-night I ' he 
 said, straightening himself from his lounging 
 posture and speaking in a tone of ofience. 
 
 * I know I am, Murdough agra ! *
 
 i8o CRANIA 
 
 There was a tone of unusual submissive- 
 ness about the girl's voice as she advanced 
 towards him through the dusk ; a look 
 almost of shyness in her eyes as she lifted 
 them to his in the dimness. 
 
 ' My faith and word but it is the long 
 time, the very long time, I have been kept 
 waiting. And it is the ugly lonely place 
 for a man to be kept waiting in ! ' he con- 
 tinued in the same aggrieved tone. ' And 
 it was not to please myself I came either. 
 No, it was not, but just to help you with the 
 kelp fire. And it is not one foot of me I 
 would have come — no, nor the half of a foot 
 — if I had thought you would have served 
 me so.' 
 
 'Honor kept me. 'Tis sick she is this 
 evening, worse than common,' Grania an- 
 swered simply. ' Was it wanting me very 
 badly you were, Murdough agra ? ' she added, 
 in the same tone as before.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND i8i 
 
 ' Yes, it was wanting you very badly I 
 was, Grania O'Malley, for it was the Fear 
 Darrig I could not help thinking of, and 
 that it was just the place to see him, and it 
 was that made me want you, for they say two 
 people do never see him at the one time, 
 and it is not I that want to see him now, nor 
 at any time — not at all, so I do not I ' 
 
 ' My grandfather, he saw the Fear Darrig 
 many's the time,' Murdough continued, pre- 
 sently, in a more amicable tone ; ' he would, 
 maybe, be setting his lines at night and it 
 would look up at him sudden out of the water. 
 Once, too, he told my grandmother he was 
 up near the big Worm hole and it run at 
 him on a sudden, and danced up and down 
 before him, for all the world like a red 
 Boffin pig gone mad. Eound and round it 
 ran as clear as need be in the moonliglit, 
 laughing and leaping and clapping its hands, 
 and he praying for the bare hfe all tlie
 
 1 82 GRANIA 
 
 while, and shutting his eyes for fear of what 
 he'd see, and not a single saint in the whole 
 sky minding him, no more than if he'd been 
 an old black Protestant bellringer ! ' 
 
 ' You have never seen the Fear Darrig^ 
 liave you, Murdough?' Grania asked with 
 a shghtly mocking accent, as she began to 
 busy herself with collecting the dry sea- 
 weed and heaping it upon the smouldering 
 lire. 
 
 ' Well, then, I have not, Grania O'Malley, 
 ' but a man that is in Galway and lives 
 near Spiddal — a tall big man he is, by the 
 name of O'EafFerty — he told me that he 
 had seen him not long since. He was going 
 to a fair to sell some chickens that his 
 wife had been rearing — fine young spring 
 chickens they were — and he had them tied 
 in an old basket and it on his back. And 
 he had to go across a place where the sea 
 runs bare, and the tide being out, there were
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 183 
 
 big black rocks sticking up everywhere. It 
 was a strange, lonesome place, he said, full 
 of big hollows between the rocks^ and he 
 didn't half like the look of it, for the day 
 Avas very dark and he was afraid every minute 
 the tide might be coming in on him, and the 
 basket on his back kept slipping and slipping 
 with every step he made, and not another 
 creature near him, good or bad. " Arrah ! 
 what will I do now, at all, at all ? " says he 
 to himself, when, all of a sudden, he heard a 
 sort of a croaking noise behind him, and he 
 turned round, and there on the top of one of 
 the rocks sat a little old man with a face as 
 red as a ferret, and an old red hat on his 
 head, and he croaking like a scald crow and 
 squinting at him out of the two eyes.' 
 
 Murdough paused dramatically, but Grania 
 merely went on stacking her seaweed, and lie 
 had to continue his narrative without any 
 special encouragement.
 
 1 84 GRANT A 
 
 ' Well, O'Eafferty, he just took one look he 
 told me, no more, and with that he dropped 
 the basket that was on his back, with the 
 spring chickens in it and all, and he set to run- 
 ning, and he run and he run till he was over 
 the place, and away with him across the fields 
 beyond, and never stopped till he had run the 
 breath all out of his body, and himself riglit 
 into the middle of the place where the fair 
 was held ! And it was the devil's own abuse 
 he got from his wife, so it was, he said, 
 when he crot home that ni^^ht, for lettini^ her 
 fine spring chickens be drowned on her, which 
 she had been months upon months of rearing.' 
 
 ' Then it is the cowardly man I think 
 he was,' Grania said scornfully, lifting her 
 head from her work for a moment. ' If it 
 had been me, I w^ould have looked twice, 
 so I would, and not anyway have let the 
 young chickens be lost and drowned in tlie 
 sea.'
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 185 
 
 ' Then I do not think he was the cowardly 
 man at all,' Murdoiigh replied warmly ; ' and 
 for chickens, what is the use of fine spring 
 chickens or of money itself, or of a thing good 
 or bad, if a man's life is all but the same as lost 
 with him being terrified out of his senses 
 with looking at what no man ought to be 
 looking at ? It is quite right, I think, Patrick 
 O'RafTerty was, -and it is what I would have 
 done .myself — yes, indeed I would.' 
 
 Grania answered nothing, but her face did 
 not relax from its indifferent, scornful -expres- 
 sion, as with skilful hand she rapidly fed the 
 kelp fire from the big black heap of seaweed 
 hard by. 
 
 Murdough, however, was by ,this time in 
 the full swing of narrative. All he cared for 
 was an audience, whether sympathetic or 
 unsympathetic mattered little. 
 
 'It is a very strange thing, so it is, a 
 very strange thing, but it is not the worst
 
 3S6 CRANIA 
 
 things that give a man often the worst friglits, 
 so it is not,' he said, in a tone of profound 
 redection. ' I have been out in the boats 
 many and many a time when the sea would 
 be getting up, and the other boys about me 
 would be screaming and praying, and in the 
 devil's own fright, fearing lest they'd be 
 droAvned. Well, now, I was not frightened 
 then — no, not one little bit in the world, 
 Grania O'Malley, no more than if I had been at 
 home and in my bed ! The very worst fright 
 ever I got in my hfe — well, I cannot tell you 
 what it was that frightened me so, no, I can- 
 iiot I I was out by myself in Martin Kelly's 
 curragh, fishing for the mackerel, and it was 
 getting a bit dark, but the sea was not wild, 
 not to say wild at all ; there was no reason 
 to be frightened, no reason in life, when all 
 at once — like that — I took the fright ! I did 
 not want to take it, you may believe me, 
 and I cannot tell you, no, I csimiot^ to this
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 187 
 
 day, nor never, what it was frightened me so. 
 It was just as if there were two people in tlie 
 inside of me, and one of them laughed at the 
 other and said, " Why, Murdough Blake, man 
 alive, what the devil ails you to-day ? " but 
 the other he never answered a single word, 
 only shook and sliook till it seemed as if the 
 clothes on my back would be all shaken to 
 pieces.' 
 
 'And what did you do?' Grania asked, 
 pausing in her stacking, and leaning upon her 
 fork to hsten. 
 
 ' Well, then, I will tell you what I did, yes 
 I will, Grania O'Malley. I just shut my eyes 
 tight, and I rowed, and I rowed. How I 
 rowed and my two eyes shut tight, I cannot 
 tell you, but I did. If I had opened them 
 ever so little I made sure I should have seen 
 — God alone knows what I would have seen, 
 but something worse than any living man 
 ever saw before. Once I heard a gull scream
 
 i88 CRANIA 
 
 close to my liead, and I screamed myself too, 
 yes, I did, my faith and honour, never a 
 word of lie. The clothes on my back they 
 were wet as the sea itself with sweat, what 
 with the fright and the way I was rowing, 
 and when I got close to the rocks I just 
 opened my eyes a little weeshy bit — like that 
 — and peeped out between my eyelids, trem- 
 bling all the while from head to foot with what 
 I might see and saying every prayer I could 
 
 remember, and Well! there was nothing 
 
 there — nothing at all, no more than there is 
 on the palm of my hand ! ' 
 
 And he opened it wide, dramatically, to 
 demonstrate his assertion. 
 
 This time Grania hstened without any 
 protest, mental or otherwise. Like every Celt 
 that ever was born she perfectly understood 
 these sudden unexplainable panics, more akin 
 to those that affect sensitive animals, horses 
 particularly, than anything often felt by more
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 189 
 
 stolid and apathetic bipeds. Though not 
 overflowing in words, as Murdough's did, 
 her imagination was perhaps even more alive 
 than his to those dim formless visions which 
 people the dusk, and keep alive in the Celt' 
 a sense of vague presences, unseen but realis- 
 able — survivals of a whole world of forgotten' 
 beliefs, unfettered by logic, untouched by- 
 education, hardly altered even by later and' 
 more conscious beliefs, which have rather 
 modified these earlier ones than superseded! 
 them. 
 
 The kelp fire was by this time made- 
 up, and after beating down the top of it so 
 that it might keep alight all night, they 
 turned and walked back together through 
 the darkness. The wind, which had been 
 rising for an hour past, blew with a dreary 
 raking noise over the naked platforms. Step- 
 ping carefully, so as to avoid the innumer- 
 able fissures, slippery as the crevasses upon
 
 190 GRANT A 
 
 a glacier, they presently reached a narrow 
 track, or ' bohereen,' which led between two 
 lines of loosely-piled walls back to the neigh- 
 bourhood of the O'Malleys' cabin. 
 
 It was almost absolutely pitch dark. 
 Below them the sea was one vast indistin- 
 guishable moanincj waste. A sin^i^le tall 
 standing stone — one of the many relics of 
 the past which cover the islands — rose up 
 against it like some vaguely-warning sign- 
 post. Stars showed by glimpses, but the 
 clouds rolled heavily, and the night promised 
 to be an unpleasant one. 
 
 Grania felt vaguely irritated and un- 
 happy, she did not know why. That sense of 
 elation with which she had run down over 
 the rocks an hour ago had passed away, and 
 was replaced by a feeling of discomfort quite 
 as frequent with her as the other, especially 
 w^hen she and Murdough had been for some 
 time together. Everything seemed to irritate
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 19F 
 
 her — the wind ; the stones against which she 
 stumbled ; the clouds tossing and drifting over 
 her head ; even the familiar moan of the sea 
 had an unexplainable irritation that night for 
 her ear. Looking up at him as he strode 
 along beside her, a dim but substantial 
 shadow in the darkness, this sense of intense,. 
 though causeless, vexation was especially 
 strong. There were moments when it would 
 have given her the deepest satisfaction 
 to have fallen upon him and beaten him 
 soundly then and there with her fists^ so irri- 
 tated was she, and so puzzled, too, by her own 
 irritation. Of all this, fortunately, h© knew 
 and suspected nothing. His own private and 
 particular world — the one in which he hved, 
 breathed, and shone — w^as as far apart as the 
 poles from hers. A vast untravelled sea. 
 stretched between them, and neither could 
 cross from one to the other. 
 
 They parted at last upon the top of the
 
 192 CRANIA 
 
 ridge, close to the head of the sprawling 
 monster which always lay there, half buried 
 beneath the rocks, Murdough keeping straight 
 on along the bohereen towards AUeena- 
 geeragh, Grania turning short off across 
 the lower platform, which speedily brought 
 her home.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 
 
 193 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Honor was not asleep. Her cough had kept 
 her awake ; the restlessness, too, and weari- 
 ness of illness making it difficult for her to 
 find any position endurable for more than 
 a minute or two at a time. 
 
 Grania lifted her up and remade the bed. 
 It was a fairly good one, consisting of a 
 mattress stuffed with sea-grass, a small feather 
 bed over that again, with blankets and a 
 single sheet, coarse but clean. This done, 
 and the sick woman settled again, she pulled 
 off her own pampooties and stockings, un- 
 fastened her skirt, muttered a prayer, and 
 tossed herself w^ithout further ceremony upon 
 her own pallet. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 CRANIA 
 
 The howl of the wind grew as the night 
 wore on. It was not as loud as it often was, 
 but it had a peculiarly teasing, ear-wearying 
 wail. Now shrill and menacing ; now sinking 
 into a whisper — an angry whisper filled with 
 a deep sense of wrong and injury and com- 
 plaint. Then, as if that sense of wrong was 
 really too strong to be suppressed any longer, 
 it swelled and swelled into a loud waspish 
 tone — one which, like some scolding tongue, 
 appeared to rise higher and higher the less it 
 was opposed ; then, when at its highest pitch, 
 it would suddenly drop again to moanings and 
 mutterings, full, it seemed, of impotent rage 
 and dull unuttered mahce. 
 
 Despite her day's work Grania could not 
 sleep. She lay staring up at the blackened 
 rafters, lit here and there by a dim reddish 
 flicker from the almost dead turf. She could 
 hear ' Moonyeen ' stirring in her own private 
 cabin hard by. Now and then came the rattle
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 
 
 195 
 
 of her horns against a beam, or a piilhn^^ 
 noise as the rope slipped up and down the 
 stake to which it was tied. A stealthy 
 scratching, apparently from a mouse, caught 
 her ear, while Honor's laboured breathing, 
 broken now and then by a hard, agonising 
 cough, seemed to fill every pause left mo- 
 mentarily by the wind. 
 
 She was beginning to get drowsy, but she 
 still saw the rafters and heard the scraping 
 noise of the cow on the other side of the 
 partition, only the rafters seemed to be part 
 of a boat, and there were fish now amongst the 
 hay, and nets and tackle dangling overhead. 
 Murdough was there, throwing out a line, 
 and turning round to tell her that he was 
 going to be made king of Ireland. She her- 
 self was leaning over the boat's side, look- 
 ing into the water, deeper, deeper, deeper, 
 watching something like a red spark that 
 was coming up nearer and nearer to meet her. 
 
 2
 
 196 CRANIA 
 
 And as it came close she saw that it was a 
 red hat. and was upon the head of an old 
 man, and then she knew that it was the Fear 
 Darrig. She tried to turn away her eyes, 
 but could not, for they seemed caught some- 
 how and dragged down. And Mur dough 
 shrieked, and pulled her petticoat to draw her 
 back, but, when he found that he couldn't 
 draw her back, he left off pulling, and got out 
 of the boat, and ran away from her across 
 the sea. Then she, too, tried to get out of 
 the boat, and follow him over the water ; 
 but something held her fast, and she could 
 only stretch out her arms to him and beg 
 him to come back. But he never once turned 
 kis head, only ran faster and faster, and 
 she could hear his feet going patter, patter, 
 patter, and getting farther and farther away 
 from h-er over the sea as he ran. 
 
 Suddenly she was wide awake, but that 
 patter of footsteps was still going on. She
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 197 
 
 could hear them quite distinctly — bare feet 
 they seemed to be, moving across the flags 
 outside, rapidly and stealthily, as if some 
 one was passing along under a heavy load. 
 Her thoughts instantly flew to the stolen turf, 
 and, leaping from her bed, she applied lier 
 face to the little narrow square of window 
 which opened above it. She was not mis- 
 taken. The silhouette of a man's figure was 
 clearly distinguishable, showing black for a 
 moment against the white of the granite 
 boulder beyond. He was close to the mouth 
 of the gully when she first caught sight o. 
 him ; another instant and he had passed 
 beyond it, and it had swallowed him up 
 from her sight. 
 
 Grania never hesitated. Barefooted as 
 she was, her clothes hanging loosely around 
 her, she opened the door and ran down the 
 track, calling to the man to stop. It was bound 
 to be an invisible chase as long as she was in
 
 198 CRANIA 
 
 the gully, but slie expected to see the thief, 
 whoever he was, at the other end of it, and 
 possibly to be able to catch him. To her 
 surprise, however, when she emerged breath- 
 less on the other side of the gully not a living 
 thing was to be seen. A flare of wild moon- 
 light was gleaming upon the stunted thorn- 
 bushes ; the platform of rock on which she 
 stood stretched away, grey and level, but 
 living creature of any sort or kind there was 
 none. Overhead the clouds swept to and fro 
 in bewildering masses ; the wind blew coldly ; 
 the moon, which for a moment had shone so 
 vividly, disappearing suddenly between rolling 
 clouds, so that the whole platform became 
 indis tinguish able . 
 
 Grania waited a while, peering eagerly 
 round into all the fissures, hoping for another 
 gleam of moonlight which might enable her 
 to discover the dehnquent. Instead of this 
 a violent storm of rain suddenly burst upon
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 199 
 
 her as she stood there, drenching her to the 
 skin in a moment. So sudden and violent 
 was it, and so quickly had it followed the 
 former gleam, that it had the effect of mo- 
 mentarily confusing her, almost as if it had 
 formed part of her dream. 
 
 Eeluctantly she turned and retraced her 
 steps through the gully. To right and left 
 as she now went up it the rain was beat- 
 irig with a furious pattering noise, dashing 
 upon the flat rocks, shooting out in small 
 spurts of spray, and forcing its way in all 
 directions through a thousand tortuous chan- 
 nels. As she emerged upon the other side 
 of the gully it seemed to her that someone 
 was moving stealthily in the direction from 
 which she had come. There was so much 
 noise around her, however, that it was impos- 
 sible to make certain, and, after pausing for a 
 moment, she came to the conclusion that she 
 had been mistaken.
 
 200 CRANIA 
 
 Turning once more before entering the 
 cabin, it was curious to see how in an instant 
 the whole ground, a minute before dry, had 
 become converted into one vast streaming 
 watercourse. Every little hole and fissure 
 within sight was already choked with water, 
 the supply from above coming down quicker 
 than it could be disposed of, so that hollow 
 groans and chuckles of imprisoned air were 
 heard rising on all sides as from a seashore 
 suddenly invaded by the advancing tide. It 
 seemed as if the fierce little gully itself must 
 at this rate be utterly dissolved and melted 
 away to a mere pulp by the morning.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 But the atmospheric surprises of such spots 
 as Inishmaan are inexhaustible. When next 
 morning she again opened the cabin-door, 
 leaving Honor asleep, the rain and storm had 
 vanished utterly, and serenity reigned supreme 
 over everything. The sky was such a sky 
 as one must go to Ireland — nay, to west 
 Ireland — to see : great rolling masses of 
 clouds above, black or seemingly black by 
 contrast with the pale opaque serenity be- 
 neath. Parallel with and immediately above 
 the horizon spread a belt of sky filled with 
 silvery clouds, pale as ghosts, rising one over 
 the other, tier on tier, like the circles of some 
 celestial amphitheatre. Now and then frag-
 
 202 CRANIA 
 
 ments of the darker region would detach 
 
 themselves and go floating across this silvery 
 
 portion, their shadows flung down one after 
 
 the other as they went. Nowhere any direct 
 
 sunlight, yet the play of hght and shadow 
 
 was endless ; tint following tint, line following 
 
 line, shade following shade in an interminable 
 
 gradation of light and movement. What 
 
 gave tone and peculiarity to the scene was 
 
 that, owing to the wetness of the rocks and to 
 
 their absolute horizontality, the whole drama 
 
 of the sky was repeated twice over ; the same 
 
 shaft of light, seen first far off upon the most 
 
 remote horizon, telling its story again and 
 
 again with absolute faithfulness upon the 
 
 luminous planes of rock as in a succession of 
 
 enchanted mirrors. 
 
 Grania sat down on her accustomed seat, 
 a bit of the upper ledge which ran close to 
 the great boulder and just at the mouth of 
 the gully. She had hardly slept at all, for
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 203 
 
 Honor had awakened coughing, probably 
 on account of the open door, and for hours 
 her cough had hardly ceased, the oppression 
 having been so great that twice it had 
 seemed as if she must suffocate before re- 
 lief came. Grania had accordingly sat the 
 greater part of the night with her arm 
 around her, supporting her in a sitting 
 posture, and it was not till towards six 
 o'clock that Honor had fallen into a doze, 
 and that she had then been able to lie 
 down. 
 
 She was tired out, therefore, as well as 
 vexed by her unsuccessful chase of the night 
 before, and her mind was now busily going over 
 what was to be done about the turf. Already 
 a large hole had been made in the rick, 
 and if this went on there would not be 
 enough left to carry tliem on till they got a 
 fresh supply in the autumn. She ran over in 
 her mind all the evil-doers of the island,
 
 204 CRANIA 
 
 trying to fix upon the one most likely to ba 
 the culprit. At first her thoughts had fixed 
 themselves upon Shan Daly, the black sheep 
 par excellence, and as it were officially, of 
 Inishmaan. But Shan Daly was believed to 
 be away at present, though no one knew 
 where, and on the whole she inclined to think 
 that it was more likely to have been Pete 
 Durane, who lived on the other side of the 
 island, a little above Allinera, and whose 
 record was by no means a blameless one in 
 the matter of petty larceny. The figure of 
 which she had momentarily caught a glimpse 
 seemed more like that of Pete Durane, too, 
 than of Shan. Having come to this con- 
 clusion she decided to go round to tlie 
 Duranes' house that morning, and see if, in 
 the course of conversation, any suspicious 
 circumstances came to light. She also made 
 up her mind to watch again herself that 
 evening. Perhaps Murdough Blake would
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 205 
 
 come and watch with her too. If so, 
 they— 
 
 At this point a cough and faint stirring 
 sound made itself heard from the cabin, and 
 she got up and went in. 
 
 Honor was lying upon her back, her face 
 drawn and white with the long conflict of 
 the night. Her eyes opened, however, and 
 turned, as they always did, with a loving look 
 upon her sister as she entered. Grania lifted 
 her up, propping her on her arm, and pro- 
 ceeded to arrange her for the day. There 
 was only one pillow in the cabin, so that the 
 foundation of the support by means of which 
 she was enabled to sit erect had to be made 
 with the aid of an old fishing kish, which 
 Grania had adapted for the purpose. Eaised 
 upon this and the pillow over it, Honor could 
 see quite comfortably through the open door, 
 here, as in every Irish cabin, the chief means 
 of observation with the outer world.
 
 2o6 CRANIA 
 
 The sun had now struggled through the 
 clouds and shone in at the entrance with 
 a sleepy radiance. In every direction the 
 sound of tinkling water was to be heard, as 
 the residue of last night's deluge dripped from 
 a thousand invisible chinks, falling with a 
 soft, pattering noise upon the platform which 
 served as a sort of natural terrace to the 
 cabin. Against the steep, wet sides of the 
 gully the light broke in soft, prismatic 
 gleams, which played up and down its fluted 
 edges and over the big face of the boulder 
 in an incessant dance of colour. The poor 
 little weatherbeaten spot seemed filled for 
 the moment to an almost unnatural degree 
 with soft movement and tender, playful radi- 
 ance. 
 
 Honor gazed at it all from her bed, an 
 expression of vague yearning growing in her 
 patient eyes. 
 
 Presently the brown sail of a hooker showed
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 207 
 
 for a moment passing between the rocks in 
 the direction of the mainland. 
 
 Her eyes turned to follow it till it had 
 passed beyond their reach. 
 
 'That will be the Wednesday boat for 
 Galway, Grania ! ' she said in a tone of mild 
 excitement. 
 
 Grania was not lookincr. Her thougrhts 
 were still with the turf, and she was going 
 over in her mind the plan for that evening's 
 campaign. She would tell her suspicions, she 
 decided, to Murdough, and they would watch 
 behind the big boulder, or perhaps at the 
 bottom of the gully. 
 
 'Maybe, sister,' she replied indifferently. 
 ' It is up to the Duranes' house I must 
 be going this morning,' she added presently. 
 ' And, Honor, it is not the kelp I need 
 watch this evening. Will I — will I ask 
 Murdough Blake to come over, and sit with 
 us a bit ? It is not for a long time, he says
 
 2o8 CRANIA 
 
 — no, not for a long, long time — that he has 
 seen you.' 
 
 Honor suddenly reddened, and a curious 
 look of embarrassment came into her face. 
 
 'Well, then, honey sweet, of course you 
 can,' she said, but in a tone of such evident 
 reluctance that Grania could not fail to 
 observe it. 
 
 ' What is it ails you about Murdough ? ' 
 she asked curiously. ' It is not the first 
 time, not the first by many, that you did not 
 want him to come here. Is it that you think 
 anyway ill of him? Is it. Honor .^ Say, is 
 it ? ' she persisted anxiously. 
 
 ' Auch ! child, no. Ill ? Why would I 
 think ill of him? 'Tis just — auch, 'tis just — 
 'tis nothing in life but my own foolishness — 
 nothing in life but that. Heart of my soul ! 
 what wouldn't I do if you asked me ? and of 
 
 course he can come. But, 'tis just 
 
 Auch, 'tis laughing at me you'll be, Grania —
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 209, 
 
 but you know when the fit takes me I must 
 cough, and then the phlegm — and — and — 
 well, 'tis shamed I am, dear, shamed outright 
 to be sitting and spitting, you know, and a 
 young man looking at me. That's just it, 
 and nothing else in life, only that ! ' 
 
 Grania stared at her for a second open- 
 eyed, then she, too, reddened shghtly. Such 
 a reason would certainly never have dawned 
 upon her mind. Modest she was — no girl more 
 so — but she took far too sturdy and out-of- 
 doors a view of life for any such fantastic 
 notions of delicacy as this to trouble her — 
 notions which could only, perhaps, lurk and 
 grow up in such a nature as Honor's, conven- 
 tual by instinct, and now trebly, artificially 
 sensitive from ill health. Honor's wishes were 
 to be respected, liowever, even when they 
 were mysterious. 
 
 ' Well, indeed, sister, I never gave thought 
 to that,' she replied, humbly enough. 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 2IO CRANIA 
 
 ' Audi ! and why would you give thought 
 to it ? Sure, why would a young colleen like 
 you, that's niver known ache or sickness, think 
 of such things, no more than the young flowers 
 out there coming up through the rocks ? ' the 
 other answered with eager, loving tenderness. 
 ' And ray prayer to God and the Holy Virgin 
 is that you never may have to think of them, 
 Grania dheelish, alannah, acushla oge ma- 
 chree,' she went on coaxingly, heaping up 
 one term of endearment upon another. She 
 was afraid that her reason, although a perfectly 
 true and, to her mind, a perfectly reasonable 
 one, might somehow have offended Grania. 
 With this idea she presently went on, having 
 first waited long enough to regain her breath. 
 
 ' Think ill of Murdough Blake ? Wish a ! 
 of Murdough Blake is it? a right hrine-oge 
 of a boy and a credit to all that owns him ! 
 A likely story that, when it is a joy to me to 
 think of the two, him and yourself, coming
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 211 
 
 and living liere in the old house and I dead 
 and gone — yes, indeed, and your little children 
 growing up round you — my blessing and 
 the blessing of Heaven be upon them, night 
 and day, be they many or be they few ! And 
 if it was not the next thing to a sin, 'tis 
 fretted and vexed I'd be to be stopping on 
 in the way I am. What for ? Only to be 
 hindering two young creatures that's wanting 
 and wishing to settle down, as is only natural, 
 and they not able to do it, and all because of 
 me ! Sure, sister dear, 'tis begging your par- 
 don I do be often inclined to do — yes, indeed, 
 many 's the time ; only there — 'tis God sends 
 it, you know, and it can't be different, whether 
 or no.' 
 
 Grania's face had run through several 
 variations while Honor was speaking. By 
 tlie time she had finished, however, her eyes 
 were gentle and misty. 
 
 ' A right hrine-oge of a boy,' the other 
 
 p 2
 
 212 CRANIA 
 
 continued complacently, smoothing down her 
 blanket. ' And love is a jewel that's well 
 known all the world over ' — this observation 
 cannot be said to have been uttered with 
 any very fervent conviction, merely in the 
 tone of one who utters an adage, sanctioned 
 by usage, and therefore respectable — ' 'tisn't 
 every colleen, either, gets the one she likes 
 best, so it isn't, and no trouble ; nothing 
 to do but to settle down, and all ready, 
 no questions, nor money wanted, nor a thing. 
 'Tis hard for a girl to have to marry a man 
 and he nothing to her, or worse perhaps — 
 a black stranger out of nowhere — and all 
 for no reason but because of his wanting so 
 many cows, or her father setting his mind on 
 it, or the like of that. I mind me when I 
 was a shp of a child — thirteen years old 
 maybe, or less — there was a httle girl — Mary 
 O'Reilly her name was — barely seventeen 
 years, no more: a soft-faced, yellow-haired
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 213 
 
 little girsha, as slight and tender to look at 
 as one of those fairy-ferns out there, when 
 they come up first through the cracks. And 
 there was a man belonging to Inisheer, whom 
 they called Michael Donnellan — well, he 
 wasn't, to say rightly, old, but he was a big, 
 set-looking man, with a red hairy face on him, 
 and a nasty look, somehow. Well, he and 
 Mat Beilly— that's Mary O'Eeilly's father- 
 settled it up between them one night, over at 
 the " Cruskeen Beg," and the number of cows 
 fixed, and not a word, good or bad, only the 
 wedding-day settled, and the priest told and 
 all. As for Mary, all the notice she got was 
 four days', not one more I And sure enough 
 when the day came they all went over to 
 Aranmore chapel, and married they were 
 — a grand wedding — and back they came in 
 the boats, and up to the house, and the 
 height of eating and drinking going on, 
 and the neighbours all asked in, and every
 
 214 CRANIA 
 
 thing ! I was looking in at the back window, 
 by the same token, and half the other 
 girshas in the place with me, and sorry I was, 
 too, for I was fond of poor Mary O'Eeilly, 
 though I didn't rightly understand what it 
 all meant, being only a child at the time 
 myself. Well, they were just setting out 
 from the cabin, and the neighbours had all 
 gathered round to bid them " God speed ! " 
 when all at once poor Mary, that was standing 
 there quiet and decent as a lamb, gave a 
 sudden screech, and she ran and she twisted 
 her arms round the top of the doorway, that 
 had a little space, mind you, between it and 
 the head of the door, so she could get her 
 arm in. And when they went to unloose 
 her she struck out at them and fought and 
 kicked and bit — the innocent, peaceable crea- 
 ture that never lifted her hand to man or 
 mouse before in her life ! — and she cried out 
 to them that she wouldn't leave her mammy,
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 215 
 
 no, she would not^ and that they might tear 
 her hito Httle pieces but she'd never loose hold 
 of tlie door. Just think of it ! the shame and 
 the disgrace before the whole country ! Her 
 mother tried to unloose her, though she was 
 crying tit to burst all the time herself. And 
 the man that was her husband since the morn- 
 ing went up to her, and spoke rough to her 
 — the beast ! — and told her she must come 
 with liim at once. And she cried out that she 
 would not go with him, no, not unless he took 
 her away in little pieces, for that she hated 
 the sight of him and his red face, and that she 
 would kill herself, and him too, rather than go 
 a foot with him ! Och, w, vo I that was a 
 day — my God ! that was a day ! However, 
 take her away with him he did, somehow or 
 other, and ugly and sulky he looked in his 
 new clothes, and his face redder than ever, 
 being made such a haul (j ore ^ before them all 
 
 ' Laughing-stock.
 
 21 6 GRAMA 
 
 — and she crying and screaming to her mammy 
 to. keep her, and the old man holding back 
 his wife that was fighting to get to her — and 
 away with the two of them in a curragh to 
 Inisheer, where he lived ! ' 
 
 ' And what did she do when he got her 
 there ? Did she kill him? 'Tis /would have 
 killed him, no fear of me but I Avould ! ' 
 Grania exclaimed eagerly, her upper lip raised 
 as she used to raise it when she was a child, 
 showing the white teeth below. 
 
 ' " Kill him " ? Arrah ! nonsense, girl alive ; 
 the creature hadn't it in her to kill a fly, no, 
 nor the hundredth part of the half of a fly. 
 What did she do ? Sure, she did as every 
 other woman has done since the Avorld beixan ; 
 what else had she to do, God help her? Och, 
 vo^ vo ! marrying is a black job for many and 
 many a one, and so I tell you, child, though 
 it's little, I dare say, you believe me. I often 
 tliink that it was seeing poor Mary that
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 217 
 
 same day gave me the first strong turn against 
 it m3'self— so I do,' Honor ended meditatively. 
 
 Grania frowned till her brows met, but 
 made no further comment on the story. 
 
 ' Yes, indeed, I do think that 'twas seeing 
 Mary O'Eeilly hanging on to that old door, 
 and her mother crying and all, set me so 
 against it then, I do really ! ' Honor went on 
 complacently. ' It wasn't that I couldn't have 
 married well enoucrh if I had wanted it, mind 
 you ! There was an old man — you've often 
 heard me talk of him — up by Polladoo way ; 
 rich he was — oh, my God ! he was rich ! 
 — nigh upon two cantrells of land he rented, 
 not a footless, and my father was mad with me 
 to marry him — said once he'd turn me out of 
 the house on to the bare sea rocks if I didn't ! 
 But your mother, Grania, that wasn't long in 
 it then herself, helped me, so she did — may her 
 bed in Glory be the sweeter and the easier for 
 it this day I pray ! That was the worst time
 
 2i8 CRANIA 
 
 ever I had at all, at all ! — the very worst time 
 of all,' Honor added reflectively. 
 
 Grania looked up. A new idea, a sudden 
 curiosity, was stirring in her mind. 
 
 ' But did you never care for e'er a one, 
 Honor?' she asked, reddening and speaking 
 quickly : ' never for e'er a one at all — not when 
 you were young F Sure, Honor, you must ! 
 Think a bit, sister, and tell me. Arrah ! why 
 wouldn't you tell me.^ Isn't it all past and 
 done now ? ' 
 
 '"Care"? Is it I, child? '' Cave'' I God 
 keep you, no ! What would ail me to care ? ' 
 the elder sister asked in tones of genuine as- 
 tonishment. ' Audi ! men is a terrible trouble, 
 Grania, first and last. What with the drink 
 and the fighting and one thing and another, a 
 woman's life is no better than an old garron's 
 down by the seashore once she's got one of 
 them over her driving her the way he chooses.' 
 She paused, and a new look, this time a look
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 219 
 
 of unmistakable passion, came into her face. 
 ' Oh, no, Grania asthore, 'tis a nun I would 
 have loved to be ; oh, my God ! yes, that is 
 the beautiful life ! Pulse of my heart, sister 
 avilish, there's nothing for a woman like 
 being a nun — nothing, nothing ! Praying 
 and praying from morning till night, and 
 nought to do, only what you're bid, and a safe 
 fair walk before you to heaven, without a 
 turn, or the fear of a turn, to right or left ! 
 Sure, 'tis all over now, as you say, but many 's 
 the time, och many 's and many 's the time, 
 Grania, and for years upon years, I cried myself 
 to sleep because I couldn't be a nun. 'Tis on 
 that little bed you do be sleeping on now I'd 
 be lying, and father and poor Phil, that's 
 dead, snoring one against the other as if it 
 was for money, and the wind blowing, and 
 the sea and rocks grinding against each other 
 the way they do, and I would think of the 
 big world and the cruel things that do be
 
 220 GRANT A 
 
 going on in it, and the ugly ways of men that 
 frightened me always, and then of the con- 
 vent, and the chapel and the pictures and 
 the garden — for I saw it all once, at Galway, 
 at the Sisters of Mercy there — and my heart 
 would go out in a great cry : " Oh, my God, 
 make me a nun 1 Oh, my God, won't You let 
 me be a nun ! My God ! my God ! You'll 
 let me be a nun, won't You ? Arrah my 
 God ! wont You ? won't You ? " ' 
 
 She lay back in the bed, her face flushed, 
 her breath came fast ; old passion was stir- 
 ring vehemently within her. For such pas- 
 sion as this, however, Grania had no sympathy, 
 Honor's aspirations in this respect having 
 all her life been a source of irritation to 
 her. 
 
 ' Then it is not myself would like to 
 be a nun,' she exclaimed defiantly. ' And I 
 think it was real bad of you, Honor, so I do, 
 to have wanted to go away. What would
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 221 
 
 have become of any of us without you, and 
 of me most of all? Did you never think 
 of that ? Say, Honor, did you never think of 
 that ? ' 
 
 ' Arrah ! whist ! child, I know it, I know 
 it. You needn't be telling me, for I've told 
 m3^self so a hundred times,' Honor answered 
 eagerly. ' And maybe it's all for the best 
 now the way it is ; anyhow, the end is not 
 far off, and God and the Holy Virgin will 
 know it was not my fault. I had the heart in 
 me to be a nun, if ever a woman had, and it's 
 the heart that's looked to there — the heart 
 and nothing else. And as to my not thinking 
 of you ! why, you little rogora dhu^ you black 
 rogue of the w^orld, God forgive me if I've 
 thought of anything else, child, since the 
 first hour I had you to myself! 'Twasn't in 
 it nor thought of, you were at all, in those 
 times I'm speaking of, nor would have 
 been but for father seeing your mother, a
 
 222 CRANIA 
 
 stranger come over from the Joyce country, 
 dancing at old Malachy OTlaherty's wake, 
 and all the young fellows in the place after 
 her. What ailed him to think of marrying 
 her 1 never could fancy ! A man past forty 
 years of age and a widower, too ! An extra- 
 ordinary thing and scarce decent ! No for- 
 tune to her, neither, nothing but a pair of big 
 black eyes — the very same as those two shin- 
 ing in your own head this minute — and the 
 walk, so people said, of a queen. A good 
 girl she was — I'm not saying anything against 
 her, poor Delia — and I cried myself sick the 
 day she died, for she was a kind friend to me. 
 But there was yourself, Grania, screeching and 
 kicking, and making the devil's own commo- 
 tion with wanting to be fed. Somehow, once 
 I got you into my arms, and no one near you 
 but myself, I disremember ever wanting again 
 to be a nun, so I do.' 
 
 Grania's fierce look softened. ' 'Tis a
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 223 
 
 mother you've been to me, sure enough, all 
 my life, sister,' she said gently. 
 
 ' " Mother " ! Wisha ! child, with your 
 " mother "! 'Tisn't much / think of mothers, 
 I can tell you ! There's mothers enough in 
 the world and to spare, too ! Anyone can be 
 a mother — small thanks to them ! Oh, no, 
 Grania sweet, acushla machree, love of my 
 heart, 'tis your soul^ 'tis the precious, precious 
 soul of you that I've always wanted, and cried 
 after, and longed for, ever since first I had 
 you to myself. Sure, if I could only feel easy 
 about that I'd die tlie happiest woman ever 
 yet had a footboard laid on her face. Oh, 
 my pet, my bird, my little deerfoor asthore, 
 won't you try to turn to Him when I'm gone ? 
 Eemember, I'll be near, maybe, though you 
 won't see me. Sure, if it was to do you any 
 good, I'd stop a hundred years longer than 
 need be in the place Father Tom tells of, or 
 a thousand either, for I don't mind pain.
 
 224 CRANIA 
 
 being so used to it, and think it all joy and 
 sweetness.' Honor lifted her head a little in 
 the bed and raised her soft brown eyes im- 
 ploringly towards her sister. ' Oh, Grania 
 dheelish, pulse of my soul, what's this life 
 at all, at all, short or long, easy or hard — 
 what is it, what is it but a dream? just a 
 dream, no better ! ' she cried with sudden 
 passion, that sisterly passion into which every- 
 thinor else had lono^ been merged. ' If I could 
 only make sure of meeting my bird in heaven, 
 if it was a thousand years off and a thousand 
 on the top of that, and ten thousand more 
 at the hinder end of that, sure, what would 
 it matter? Oh, child asthore, think of us 
 two, you and m^e, standing up there together, 
 holding one another by the two hands, and 
 knowing we'd never be separated no more ! 
 — never, never, sun or shine, winter or 
 summer — never as long as God lived, and 
 that's for ever and ever! Oh, child, child I
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 225 
 
 when that thought comes over me, 'tis Hke 
 new life in my veins and new blood in my 
 poor heart. I feel as if I could get out of my 
 bed, and go leaping and dancing over the 
 rocks to the sea, or up into the air itself 
 like the birds, so I do.' 
 
 Her strength, momentarily sustained, sud- 
 denly broke down, and her voice sank so as 
 to be almost inaudible. ' You wouldn't dis- 
 appoint me, Grania, dear ? Sure you wouldn't 
 disappoint your poor old Honor, tliat never 
 loved man or woman, chick or child, only 
 yourself? ' she whispered, the words coming 
 out one by one with difficulty. 
 
 Grania's eyes filled, and she let Honor take 
 her liand and hold it in her two worn ones, 
 which were grown so thin that they seemed 
 made of a different substance from her own 
 toil-roughened one. But though she was 
 touched and would have done anything to 
 please Honor, she could not even pretend 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 GRANIA 
 
 to respond to the sick woman's eager long- 
 ing. She would have done so if she could, 
 but it was impossible. The whole thing was 
 utterly foreign and alien to her. There w^as 
 nothing in it which she could catch hold of, 
 nothing that she could feel to attach any 
 definite idea to. Fond as she was of Honor, 
 unwilling as she was to vex her, her whole 
 attitude, her excessive urgency, worried her. 
 What ailed her to talk so, to have such queer 
 ways and ideas ? Was it because she was 
 sick, because she was dying ? Did all sick 
 people talk and feel like that? Was it pos- 
 sible that she would ever feel anything of the 
 sort if she were sick, if she were going to 
 die ? She did not believe it for a minute. 
 The youth in her veins cried for life, life ! 
 sharp-edged life, life with the blood in it, 
 not for a thin bloodless heaven that no one 
 could touch or prove. 
 
 Turning away, she made an excuse, there-
 
 THE SrORY OF AN ISLAND 227 
 
 fore, of having to go and see after the calf, 
 and ran liastily out of the cabin door into the 
 sunlight, leaving it open behind her. 
 
 Left alone, Honor's eyes kept dreamily 
 following the yellow bands of light as they 
 spread in ever- widening streams across the 
 rocks. Over tlie top of the gully she could 
 see a space of sky, which seemed to her to 
 be not only bluer, but also higher than 
 usual. She tilted her head a little back- 
 wards so as to be able to look farther and 
 farther up, higher and higher still, into this 
 dim, mysterious distance, gradually forgetting 
 all troubles, vexations, hindrances, as her eyes 
 lost themselves in that untravelled region. 
 
 ' Augh, my God ! what will it be like at all, 
 at all, when we get there ? ' she whispered, 
 looking up and smiling, yet half abashed at 
 the same time by her own audacity. 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 CRANIA 
 
 CHAPTEE VII 
 
 At the extreme south-eastern end of the 
 island, upon the same step or level of rock, 
 but about half a mile farther on than the 
 O'Malleys, lived the Duranes. Their cabin 
 was the smallest and worst, next to Shan 
 Daly's, on Inishmaan, but then they were 
 Duranes, and Durane is one of the best es- 
 tablished names on the island. The family 
 consisted of a father, a mother, five children, 
 a grandfather and an orphan niece. There 
 was only one room in the whole house, and 
 that room was about twenty feet long by 
 twelve or perhaps fourteen feet wide. The 
 walls had, seemingly, never been coated with 
 plaster, and even the mortar between the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 229 
 
 blocks of stone had fallen out, and been re- 
 placed from the inside by lumps of turf or 
 mud as necessity occurred. 
 
 When the family were collected together, 
 space, as may be guessed, was at a pre- 
 mium, since even upon the floor they could 
 hardly all sit down at the same time. 
 There was, however, a sort of ledge, covered 
 w^ith straw, about three feet from the ground, 
 upon which four of the five children slept, 
 and where, when food was being distributed, 
 all that were old enough to sit alone were to 
 lie seen perched in a row, with tucked-up legs 
 and open mouths, like a brood of half-fledged 
 turkeys. At other times they gathered chiefly 
 upon the doorstep, which, in all Irish cabins, 
 is the coveted place, and only ceases to be so 
 in exceptionally cold weather, or after actual 
 darkness has set in. 
 
 There was no land belonging to the cabin 
 beyond a strip of stony potato-ground, and
 
 230 CRANIA 
 
 Peter, or Pete, Durane was forced therefore 
 to earn what he could as day-labourer 
 to his luckier neighbours. Not much em- 
 ployment was given, as may be imagined, 
 on Inishmaan, and had there been Pete would 
 hardly have been able to profit by it. He 
 was a thin dried-up little m.an, looking old 
 already, though he was not yet forty, with 
 soft appealing eyes and a helpless, vacillating 
 manner. His wife Eose, or Eosha, on the 
 contrary, though in reality a year or two 
 older than himself, was a fine-looking woman 
 still, with hard red cheeks and round black 
 eyes, who had only accepted him, as she often 
 loudly asserted, for the sake of charity, and 
 to hinder the creature from throwing himself 
 into the sea. 
 
 Poor Pete had certainly not been regarded 
 as the pearl of bachelors, and had had to 
 seek far and ask often before finding anyone 
 willing to accept him. He was a well-meaning,
 
 THE STORY OF A A ISLAND 231 
 
 haniiless little man, full of the best intentions, 
 and incapable of hurting a fly. Unfortunately 
 for himself he bore a poor reputation in the 
 somewhat important matter of honesty, and 
 it was this that had made Grania think of 
 him in connection with the stolen turf. 
 
 About a year before there had been a 
 scandal about some straw which had been 
 missed by one of the neighbours, and which 
 was finally traced to Pete's door, and although 
 the amount taken had been a trifle, still in so 
 small and so poverty-stricken a community as 
 Inishmaan small things, it will be understood, 
 are readily missed- No steps had been taken 
 to prosecute the culprit — indeed, the ties of 
 kindred are so closely woven and interwoven 
 all over the island that the law is rarely 
 resorted to. The straw had been duly 
 returned to the owner's door early one 
 morning, and it was one of the many jokes 
 against Pete Durane that he had been soundly
 
 232 CRANIA 
 
 thrashed by his wife for the theft — possibly 
 because of the detection of it. 
 
 When Grania entered, the children were 
 still eating their midday meal, an old table 
 having been pushed against their ledge for the 
 purpose — a very old table, almost shapeless 
 from years of ill-usage, but still solid, and 
 the chief article of furniture in the house. 
 Eosha was busily ladling out a fresh supply 
 of potatoes from the big black pot, laying 
 them down in heaps upon the table in 
 sizes varying , according to the age, or pos- 
 sibly the merits, of the recipient. They 
 were not allowed to get cold, the children 
 snatching them up and beginning to eat 
 them almost before they w^ere out of the pot. 
 
 What with the all but total absence of glass 
 in the paper-patched windows, and what with 
 the smouldering eddies of turf-smoke which 
 rolled overhead like some dull domestic cloud, 
 it was at first so dark that Grania could see
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 233 
 
 nothing except the piles of potatoes and the 
 children, or rather the children's hands, which, 
 being fitfully lit by the fire, kept darting 
 into the light and out again, like things en- 
 dowed with some odd galvanic existence of 
 their own. After awhile, as her eyes got more 
 accustomed to the atmosphere, she made out 
 that besides the mistress of the house, there 
 were two other women sitting^ there, one of 
 them an aunt of Eosha's from the opposite 
 side of the island, the other our previous 
 acquaintance, Peggy Dowd, who had dropped 
 in as usual about meal time. 
 
 Xo sooner was that meal snatched up and 
 swallowed down than the children rushed out 
 of doors again in a body, tumbling one over 
 the other as they did so, the eldest girl 
 clutching up her mother's flannel petticoat as 
 she went. A spare petticoat — one, that is to 
 say, not invariably worn upon the person of the 
 mistress of the house — is a highly important
 
 234 CRANIA 
 
 article in an Irish cabin, and fulfils more 
 functions than could be guessed at first sight. 
 It is a quilt by night, a shawl by day, 
 a head -gear, an umbrella for an entire 
 brood of children to run out under in the 
 rain — nay, the man of the house himselt 
 will often not disdain to take a turn of it, 
 especially on occasions which do not bring him 
 too directly into the hght of publicity. This 
 last, by the way, was a privilege which poor 
 Pete Durane had never dared to claim. 
 
 Even after the children had been got 
 rid of Grrania felt it impossible for her to 
 enter upon the subject of her visit — a delicate 
 one in any case — while there were strangers 
 present. Accordingly she did not remain in 
 the cabin many minutes, contenting herself 
 with be<^^infx Eosha to ask Pete to come over 
 and speak to her that evening as soon as 
 his day's work was finished.
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 235 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Her silence did not hinder her from be- 
 coming the subject of vigorous controversy 
 and criticism the instant her back was 
 turned. 
 
 'Auch, my word, just look at the length 
 of her ! My word, she is the big girl that 
 Grania O'Malley, the big girl out and out ! ' 
 Eosha exclaimed, looking after her as she 
 ran down the steep path, her tall vigorous 
 figure framed for a few minutes by the door- 
 way of the room she had just left. 'It is 
 the mighty queer girl that she is, though ! 
 God look down upon us this day, but she 
 is the queerest girl ever I knew on this earth 
 yet, that same Grania O'Malley. Yes, indeed,
 
 236 GRANIA 
 
 yes ! ' A long-drawn smack of the palate 
 gave emphasis and expansion to the words. 
 
 'Auch, Roslia Durane, don't be overlook- 
 ing the girl ! 'Tis a decent father's child she 
 is any way,' said the aunt from the other side 
 of the island, apparently from an impulse of 
 amiability, in reality by way of stimulating 
 Eosha to a further exposition of what Grania's 
 special queerness consisted in. 
 
 ' Did I say Con O'Malley was not a decent 
 man? Saints make his bed in heaven this 
 day, when did I say it ? ' the other answered, 
 apparently in her turn in hot indignation, 
 but in reality perfectly understanding the 
 motive of her aunt's remark. ' What I do 
 say, and what is well known to all Inishmaan, 
 and that it is no invention of mine nor yet 
 thought of by me, is that he was a very wild 
 queer man. And Grania is just the same ; 
 she is a very wild queer girl, and a bold one 
 too, and so I suppose I may say even in my
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 2yj 
 
 own house and before you, Mrs. O'Flanagan, 
 though you are my poor mother's sister that's 
 these seven years back gone to glory ! I tell 
 you there is no end to her queerness, and 
 to the bold things she does be doing. It is 
 well known to all Inishmaan, yes and to Aran- 
 more, too, that she goes out to the fishing just 
 like a man, so she does, just like a man, 
 catching the plaice and the mullets and the 
 conger eels, and many another fish beside I 
 shouldn't wonder ; and if that is not a very 
 bold thing for a young girl to do, then I do 
 not know what a bold thing is, although I 
 am your own niece, Mrs. O'Flanagan. But 
 that is only the half of it. She has no fear 
 of anything, not of anything at all, I tell 
 you, neither upon the earth nor under it 
 either — God keep us from speaking of harm, 
 amen ! She will as soon cross a fairies' rino- 
 as not ! just the same and sooner, and it is 
 not two months, or barely three at tlie most.
 
 238 GRAMA 
 
 that I saw her with my own eyes walk past a 
 red jackass on the road, and it braying hard 
 enough to spht at the time, and not crossing 
 herself, no, nor a bend of the head, nor 
 spitting even ! It is the truth I am telling 
 you, Mrs. O'Flanagan, ma"am, though you 
 may not choose to believe me, the truth and 
 no lie ! ' 
 
 ' Ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! 'Tis a bad end comes 
 to such w^ays as those, a bad end, a bad end,' 
 said old Peggy Dowd, who up to this had 
 been busily occupied in eating up the scraps 
 left in the pot, but had now leisure to take 
 her part, and accordingly entered upon the 
 subject with all the recognised weight of 
 her years and authority. ' Did I ever tell 
 you women both, about Katty O'Calla- 
 ghan, that lived over near Aillyhaloo wdien 
 I was a girl? From the time she was the 
 height of that turf kish there she would 
 not be bid by anyone, no, not by the priest
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 239 
 
 himself. The first time ever I saw her 
 she was close upon eighteen years old, for 
 she was not born on the island, but came 
 from Cashla way to help an uncle of 
 hers that had a small farm up near Ailly- 
 haloo. A fine big girl she was, just the 
 moral of that Grania there, with a straight 
 back, and a wide chest, and the two eyes 
 of her staring up big and bold at you — 
 the very same. But, Man Above, the im- 
 pudence of her ! She had no proper respect 
 not for anything, so she had not. She would 
 laugh when you talked of the good people, 
 and she would say that she would as soon go 
 up at night to the Phooka's hole as not, 
 which everyone knows is all but the same 
 as death. As for the coliullen druith, with 
 my own two ears I heard her say she did 
 not believe that there was such a thing ! 
 though my grandfather, God save his soul ! 
 saw one once on tlie head of a merrow hard
 
 240 CRANIA 
 
 by the Glassen rock. But, faith ! I haven't the 
 time nor the strength to be telhng you the 
 half of her folly and nonsense, nor couldn't if 
 I took the night to do it ! Anyhow, there 
 she was, straight and strong, a fine handsome 
 girl just like that Grania there ; and her 
 iincle was to give her two cows when she mar- 
 ried, and her father at Cashla, I heard too 
 there was talk of his giving something, I 
 don't know whether it was pigs or what. 
 In any case there was nothing to hinder her 
 settling, only you may guess if any decent 
 quiet-reared boy would like to go marrying 
 a wife with such ways and such talk in her 
 mouth as that same Katty O'Callaghan ! How- 
 ever, she Avas bid for at last by a harmless 
 easy-going young fellow of the name of Phil 
 Mulcahy, and married him, and went up to live 
 a quarter of a mile or so beyond Aillyhaloo, 
 at the edge of the big west cliff yonder, and a 
 year after she had a child, as fine a boy at
 
 THE STORY OF AX ISLAND 241 
 
 the start as you'd see in a day's walk. Well, 
 you may think she was going to get off clean 
 and clever, after her goings on ; but not a 
 bit of it — so just wait till you hear. One day 
 she went down the rocks by Mweeleenareeava 
 for the sea-wrack, and I dare say she was 
 carrying on as usual with her nonsense and 
 folly, anyway, when she got back the first 
 thing she noticed was that the child looked 
 mighty queer, and seemed shrunk half its 
 size, and its face all weazened up like a little 
 old man's, and the eyes of it as sharp and 
 wicked as you please. Well, women both 
 of you, from that hour that creature grew 
 smaller and smaller, and queerer and. queerer, 
 and its eyes wickeder and wickeder, and the 
 bawl never out of its mouth, and it wantiiiaf 
 the breast night and day, and never easy 
 when it got it either, but kicking and fighting 
 and playing the devil's own bad work. Of 
 course the neighbours saw right enough what 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 GRANIA 
 
 had happened, and told Katty plainly the 
 child was changed — and wliy not ? Sure who 
 could wonder at it after her goings on, which 
 were just as if she'd laid them out for that 
 very purpose ! But she wouldn't hear a 
 word of it, so she wouldn't, and said it was 
 the teeth, or the wind in its stomach, and 
 God only knows what nonsense besides. But 
 one day a woman was coming along from 
 Aillinera to Aillyhaloo, a real right-know- 
 ing woman she was by the name of Nora 
 Cronohan, and as she was going she 
 stopped to ask for a potato and a sup 
 of milk, for she was stravoging the country 
 at the time. So she looked up and down 
 the cabin, and presently she cast eyes on the 
 creature, which was laid in a basket by 
 the fire, that being the place it stayed easiest 
 in, and — 
 
 ' " Arrah ! what's that you've got at all in 
 there P " says she, staring at it, and it starino-
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 243 
 
 back at her with its two eyes as wicked as 
 wicked. 
 
 ' " My child, what else ? " says Katty, speak- 
 ing quite angrily. 
 
 'With that tlie woman gave a screech of 
 laughter so that you could have heard her 
 across the Foul Sound with the wind blowing 
 west, and " Your child ! " says she. " Your 
 child ! Sure, God save you, woman, you might 
 as well call a black arth-looghra a salmon any 
 day in the week as that thing there a child ! " 
 
 ' Well, Katty was going to throw her into 
 the sea, she was so mad ! But first she looked 
 at the basket, and with that she began to shake 
 and tremble all over, for the creature was 
 winking up so knowing at her, and opening 
 and shutting its mouth as no Christian child in 
 this world or any other ever would or could. 
 
 ' "Why, what ails it now, at all, at all?" 
 says she, turning to the other, and her face 
 growing as white as the inside of a potato. 
 
 R 2
 
 244 CRANIA 
 
 ' " Listen to me, woman," says Nora 
 Cronohan, holding up her hand at her. 
 " That's not your child at all, you ignorant 
 creature, as anyone can see, and there's but 
 two ways for you to get your own right child 
 back again. You must either take that up the 
 next time there's a south wind blowing and 
 set it to roast on the gridiron with the door 
 open, or if you won't do that you must gather 
 a handful of the boliaun hwee and another 
 handful of the boliaun dhas, and put them 
 down to boil, and boil them both in the pot 
 for an hour, and then throw the whole potful 
 right over it ; and if you'll do either of those 
 things I'll be your warrant but it will be 
 glad to be quit of you, and you'll get your 
 own fine child again ! " 
 
 ' Well, you'd think that would be enough 
 for any reasonable woman ! But no. Katty 
 wouldn't do either the one thing nor the other, 
 but held to it that it was her own child, not
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 245 
 
 changed at all, only sick ; such fool's talk ! 
 as if anyone with half an eye, and that one 
 blind, couldn't have told the difference ! She 
 had ne'er another child, you see, nor the sign 
 of one, and that perhaps was what made her 
 so set on it. Anyhow the neighbours tried to 
 get her to see reason, and her husband, too, 
 though he was but a poor shadow of a man, 
 did what he could. At last her mother-in- 
 law, that was a decent well-reared woman, 
 and knew what was right, tried to get at the 
 creature one day when Katty was out on the 
 rocks, so as to serve it the right way, and have 
 her own fine crrandchild back. But if she 
 did Katty was in on her before she could 
 do a thing, and set upon the decent woman, 
 and tore the good clothes off her back, and 
 scratched her face with her nails so that 
 there was blood running along her two cheeks 
 when the neighbours came up, and but for 
 their getting between them in time, God
 
 246 CRANIA 
 
 knows but she'd have had her life. After 
 that no one, you may beheve, would have 
 hand, act, or part with Katty Mulcahy ! 
 Indeed, it soon came to this, that her husband 
 durstn't stop with her in the cabin, what 
 between her goings on and the screeches of 
 the creature, which got worse and worse till 
 you could hear them upon the road to Ballin- 
 temple, a good half-mile away. Yarra ! the 
 whole of that side of the island got a bad 
 name through her, and there's many doesn't 
 care even now to walk from Aillinera to 
 Aillyhaloo, specially towards evening, not 
 knowing what they might hear ! 
 
 ' Well, one day — ' here the narrator 
 paused, looked first at one and then at the 
 other of her listeners, coughed, spat, twitched 
 the big cloak higher round her shoulders, and 
 settled herself down again in her chair with 
 an air of intense satisfaction. ' One day, it 
 was a desperate wild afternoon just beginning
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 247 
 
 December, and the wind np at Ailljdialoo 
 enough to blow the head of you off your two 
 shoulders. Most of the people were at home 
 and the houses shut, but there were a few of 
 us colleens colloguing together outside the 
 doors, talking of one thing and another, wdien 
 all of a sudden who should come running up 
 the road but Katty Mulcahy, with the bawl 
 in her mouth, and a looi^ on her face would 
 frighten the life out of an Inishboffin pig. 
 
 ' '' Och ! och ! och ! " says she, screeching. 
 " Och ! och ! och ! my child's dying ! It's 
 got the fits. It's turning blue. Where's 
 Phil? Where's its father? Eun, some of 
 you, for God's sake, and see if he's in yet 
 from the fishing." 
 
 ' Well, at first we all stared, wondering like, 
 and one or two of the little girshas ran off 
 home to their mothers, being scared at her 
 looks. But at last some of us began laughing 
 — I was one tliat did myself, and so I tell you
 
 248 GRAXIA 
 
 women botli — you see we knew of course 
 all the time that it wasn't her own child 
 at all, only a changeling, and that as for 
 Phil he had never been near the fishing, but 
 was just keeping out of the wa}^ not wishing, 
 honest man, to be mixed up with any such 
 doings. Well, when she heard us laughing 
 she stopped in the middle of her screeching, 
 and she just gave us one look, and before any- 
 one knew what was coming there she was in 
 the very thick of us, and her arms going up 
 and down like two flails beating the corn ! 
 
 ' Och, Mary Queen of Heaven, but that 
 was a hubbuboo ! We turned and we run, 
 and our blood was like sea-water down our 
 backs, for we made sure we'd carry the marks 
 of her to our graves, for she had a bitter hard 
 hand, and God knows I'm speaking the truth, 
 had Katty Mulcahy when you roused her ! 
 Well, at the screams of us a heap more people 
 came running out of the houses, and amongst
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 249 
 
 tliem who should put his head out of one of 
 the doors but Phil Mulrahy himself, with no 
 hat to his head and a pipe to his mouth, for 
 he had no time to take it out, and she thinking, 
 you know, he was away at the fishing ! 
 
 ' At that Katty stood still like one struck, 
 and the eyes of her groAving that round you'd 
 think they must fall out of her head, so big- 
 were they, and her mouth working like a sea 
 pool in the wind. And presently she let out 
 another bawl, and she made for him ! I was 
 the nearest to him, and there was some three 
 or four more between the two, but you may 
 believe me, we didn't stop long ! It was some- 
 thing awful, women both, and so I tell you, to 
 see her coming up the road witli that rage on 
 her face, and it as white as the foam on the 
 sea. Phil stood shaking and shaking, staring 
 at her and his knees knocking, thinking his 
 hour was come, till just as slie was within touch 
 of him, when he turned and he ran for his life.
 
 2 so CRANIA 
 
 He ran and he ran, and she ran after him. 
 Now there's no place at all, as everyone knows, 
 to run on that side of Aillyhaloo only along by 
 the cliff, for the rest is all torn and destroyed, 
 with great cracks running down God knows 
 where to the lieart of the earth. So he kept 
 along by the edge, and she after him, and we 
 after the two of them presently to see the end 
 of it. Phil ran as a man runs for his life, but 
 Katty, she ran like a woman possessed ! Holy 
 Bridget ! you could hardly see the feet of 
 her as she raced over the ground ! Tlie 
 boys cried out that she'd have him for sure, 
 and if she had cauo-ht him and this raore still on 
 her God knows she'd have thrown him over 
 the cliff, and you know 'tis hundreds of feet 
 deep there, and never an inch of landing. Poor 
 Phil thought himself done for, and kept turn- 
 ing and turning, and far away as he was now 
 we could see the terror on the face of him, and 
 we all screeched to him to turn away from the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 251 
 
 edofc, but he did not know where he was troino", 
 he was that dazed. WelL she was just witliin 
 grip of him when she stopped all at once as if 
 she was shot, and lifted her head in the air 
 like that ! Whether she heard somethinor or 
 what ailed her I can't tell, but she gathered 
 herself up and began running in the opposite 
 way, not along by the sea but over the rocks, 
 the nearest way back to her own house. How 
 she got across nobody knows, for the cracks 
 there are something awful, but you'd think it 
 was wings she had to see the leaps she threw 
 in the air, for all the world like a bird ! Any- 
 how, she got over them at last, and into her 
 house with her, and the door shut with a bang 
 you might have heard across the Sound at 
 Killeany. 
 
 ' Xobody, you may believe me, troubled to 
 go after her or near her tltat night, and the 
 wind being so cold, after a bit we all went 
 home, and Phil, too, by-and-by come creeping
 
 252 CRANIA 
 
 back, looking like a pullet that had had its neck 
 wrung, and the boys all laughing at him for 
 being 'fraid of a woman — as if it was only a 
 woman Katty was, with that black look on her 
 face and she leaping and going on as no woman 
 in this world ever could, if she was left to 
 herself! That night there was no more 
 about it one way or another, nor the next 
 morning either, but by the middle of the 
 afternoon a man that was passing brought 
 us word that he heard a noise of hammering 
 inside of the house. Well, at that we all won- 
 dered what was doing now, and some said one 
 thing and some another. But a boy — a young 
 devil's imp he was by the name of Mick 
 Caroll — peeped in at the end window and 
 came running up to say he had seen some- 
 thing like a coffin standing on the floor, only 
 no bigger he said than the top of a keg of 
 butter. Well, that was the queerest start of 
 all! For who, I ask you both, could have
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 253 
 
 made that coffin for her, and what could she 
 have wanted with a coffin either ? For you're 
 not so ignorant, women, either of j^ou, as need 
 to be told there wouldn't be anything to put 
 into it ! 'Twasn't likely that thing she had in 
 the house with her would stop to be put into 
 any coffin ! 'Tis out of the window or up the 
 chimney it would have been long before it 
 came to that, as everyone knows that knows 
 anything. AnyhoAv, 'twas the truth it seems 
 he told, for the very next day out she came 
 from the house herself, and the coffin or the box 
 or whatever it was under her arm, and carried 
 it down did she sure enough to the shore, and 
 paid a man handsome to let her put it in a 
 curragh — as well she'd need, and him losing 
 his soul on her ! — and away with her toCashla 
 over the " Old Sea " ! And whether she found 
 a priest to bury it for her is more than I can 
 tell you, but they do say out there on the 
 Continent there're none so particular, so long as
 
 2 54 CRANIA 
 
 they get their dues. As for Phil, he went over 
 only the very next week to her father's house, 
 the poor foolish innocent creature, but all he 
 got for his pains was a pailful of pig's wash 
 over his head, and back he came to Inishmaan 
 complaining bitterly, though it was thankful 
 on his two knees to Almighty God he ought 
 to have been it was no worse, and so we all 
 told him. However, there was no putting 
 sense into his head, and not a word would he 
 say good or bad, only cried and talked of his 
 Katty ! Lucky for him his troubles didn't 
 last very long, for the next thing we heard of 
 her was that she was dead, and about a year 
 after that, or maybe two years, he married a 
 decent little girl, a cousin of my own, and 
 took her to live with him up at the house 
 at Aillyhaloo. And, but that he was killed 
 through having his head broke one dark night 
 by Larry Connel in mistake for the youngest 
 of the Lynches, 'tis likely he'd be in it still !
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 255 
 
 Any way, he had a grand wake, the finest 
 money conld bny, for Larry Connel, that had 
 always a good heart, paid for it himself, and 
 got npon a stool, so he did, and spoke very 
 handsomely of poor Phil, so that Molly Mulcahy 
 the widow didn't know whether it was crying 
 she should be or laughing, the creature, with 
 glory ! And for eating and drinking and 
 fiddling and jig-dancing, it was like nothing 
 either of you ever saw in your lives, and a 
 pride and satisfaction to all concerned. 
 But,' — here Peggy Dowd hitched her cloak 
 once more about her shoulders and spat 
 straight in front of her with an air of repro- 
 bation — ' but — there was never a man nor yet 
 a woman either, living npon Inishmaan at the 
 time, that would have danced one foot, and so 
 I tell you, women both — not if you'd have 
 paid them for doing it — at Katty Mulcahy's 
 wake.'
 
 256 CRANIA 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The two listeners remained silent a minute 
 after the tale had ended. Peggy Dowd 
 filled her pipe and puffed at it solemnly, with 
 the air of one who has fulfilled a social duty 
 and sustained a widely-known reputation. 
 Suddenly Mrs. Durane, glancing towards the 
 door, uttered an ejaculation of annoyance. 
 
 ' My conscience ! if there is not that Pete 
 Durane ! God help the world, but he's back 
 early from his work this day ! ' 
 
 Almost before she had finished the words 
 the little man came suddenly round the door- 
 way into the cabin, hardly finding room to 
 enter his own house owing to the three 
 women, two of them in their big woollen
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 257 
 
 cloaks, who already filled it to the very walls. 
 His face wore a deprecating smile, which 
 hardly ever left it, and which was the more 
 noticeable from the absence of most of his 
 front teeth. His hair, imhke that of most 
 Irishmen of his rank, was very thin, so that 
 he had the effect of being almost bald, and 
 this with his short stature, bent back, and 
 hesitating air, gave a general look of feeble- 
 ness and ineffectiveness to his whole aspect. 
 A poor pittiogue his wife called him, and as 
 he stood there her two friends mentally en- 
 dorsed the description. 
 
 'Well now, well now, is this yourselves? 
 Bless me, ladies, but 'tis the proud man I am 
 to see you in my poor house,' he exclaimed 
 as he entered. ' Yes, indeed, Mrs. OTlanagan, 
 ma'am ! and how is that good man your 
 husband ? and your fine girl, too ? But it 
 is a sight to see her coming up the road, so 
 it is ! ' 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 2 58 CRANIA 
 
 ' Ocli ! Pete Durane, get along then, with 
 your fine speeches,' said his Avife irritably. 
 ' What a murrain brings you back at this 
 time of day ? Is it to torment me before you 
 need you're wanting ? ' 
 
 ' Arrah, don't be speaking to him like that, 
 Eosha Durane ! ' said the aunt from the other 
 side of the island, with a short derisive laugh. 
 ' I tell you, Pete, there has been a very fine 
 girl asking for you yourself, this day, so 
 there has. Och, but a fine girl, as fine as any 
 in Inishmaan. Saints alive! but 'twas her- 
 self was disappointed not to find you within. 
 " Will he come to see me this evening, do you 
 think, Mrs. Durane ? " says she, putting her 
 head on one side. " 'Tis the unfortunate 
 colleen I am to miss him," says she. So you 
 maybe the proud man, Pete Durane, then you 
 may ! ' 
 
 Poor Pete's face got as red as liis wife's 
 petticoat. His susceptibility was one of the
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 259 
 
 many standing jokes upon Inishmaan, where 
 jokes were rare, and once started lasted long. 
 It was quite true. By one of those humorous 
 freaks of which nature is fond, while his 
 handsome stalwart contemporaries were all 
 but invulnerable in this respect, the poor little 
 pittiogue was known to be intensely susceptible 
 to the tender passion. It had made him a 
 slave all his life to his w^ife Eosha, and even 
 now, after years of consistent ill-usage on her 
 part, he was still slavishly devoted to her, and 
 took her buffets, physical no less than verbal, 
 with all the meekness of an attached and well- 
 broken-in house-dog. 
 
 ' Ugh ! ugh ! 'tis going I must be,' old 
 Peggy Dow^d said suddenly, struggling to 
 rise from her low seat. ' Will you put the 
 cloak around me, Mrs. Durane, ma'am, if you 
 please. Ugh ! ugh ! 'Tis myself is scarce fit 
 to walk back alone, so I am not/ 
 
 *Will I send the girl Juggy Kelly with 
 
 c 2
 
 26o CRANIA 
 
 you to help you up the hill ? Yes, indeed, but it 
 is a great help, so it is. You must make her go 
 behind you and push — push hard. Trouble ? 
 Och ! what are the young people for if not 
 to be of some good to those that's better and 
 older than themselves? But where is she, 
 that girl Juggy Kelly .^ It is always out 
 of the way she is when she is wanted. Eun, 
 Pete, run out down the road and look for her. 
 Quick, man, don't be standing there like a 
 stuck pig over against the door, taking up 
 all the light.' 
 
 Then, as the obedient Pete flew oW 
 hatless down the path — 'It is not known 
 the trouble I have had with that girl ! ' 
 Mrs. Durane continued, turning for sym- 
 pathy to her friends. ' Would you believe 
 it, Mrs. O'Flanagan, ma'am, 'tis sleeping 
 with the chickens now she complains of! 
 There is not a morning of her life but she 
 comes to me with her face all scratched, cry-
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 261 
 
 ing and saying she'll not stop in it. " Then 
 don't," says I ; "go sleep with the crows if 
 you like, since the chickens won't serve you." 
 That is what I say ; yes, indeed ! such impu- 
 dence ! ' 
 
 ' Och ! there is no satisfying the young 
 people, do what you will for them these 
 times,' Mrs. O'Flanagan replied sympathetic- 
 ally. 'Did you hear of young Macdara 
 Kilbride — Manus Kilbride's eldest son, him 
 that's just back from America ? — it is not into 
 his own father and mother's house he will 
 go almost, so it is not. *' Phew ! phew ! " says 
 he; "why, what a lot of smoke I " And 
 so there is some smoke, and why would 
 there not be? It is a very good house, 
 Mary Kilbride's house is, there is no better 
 house in all Inishmaan. It is true it is built 
 on a bit of a slope, and the door is at the 
 top, so that the rain comes into it in wet 
 weather ; God He sends the rain, and it is a
 
 262 CRANIA 
 
 very bad season for Inishmaan when He does 
 not send enough — oh yes, a very bad season, 
 everyone knows that. But Macdara Kilbride 
 is just so. His feet do be sticking in the floor 
 of the house, he says, every time he crosses it. 
 It is a soft floor, there is no denying that, 
 and the chimney never was a good one to 
 draw, being fallen in a good deal at the top, 
 and the stones ofl*. But, Man Above ! does he 
 think his father can be going into Galway 
 every day in the week for more bricks ? 
 Besides, it is a good house ; a very good 
 house is Mary Kilbride's.' 
 
 ' Ugh ! ugh ! what did I tell you just now ? 
 'Tis the same everywhere. Young people 
 they are the same, all the same ; there is 
 no good in them at all, so there is not ! ' 
 Peggy Dowd again spat vigorously into 
 the fire to emphasise her disgust, then 
 hitched her big cloak about her shoulders, 
 and began preparing with many groans and
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 263 
 
 wheezing sighs to depart witliout the aid of 
 her proffered assistant. 
 
 Just as she had hobbled across to the 
 doorway it was again filled by a figure, and 
 the elder Durane, Pete's father, came in. 
 
 He was a curious contrast to his insignifi- 
 cant-looking little son. A tall, stately old man, 
 with that peculiarly well-bred air not un- 
 frequently still to be seen amongst the elder 
 Irish peasants. His white hair was very thick, 
 and hung over his foreliead and around his 
 hat in a dense silky thatch. His eyes were 
 drooping and tired-looking, and his whole 
 air that of a man who has done his work 
 in the world, and asks for nothing now but 
 to be left in peace. By an arrangement 
 common enough in the west of Ireland, when 
 the parent is old, and the son or sons 
 married, he had surrendered all ownership in 
 the house and all rights of possession, with 
 a few trifling exceptions. The single stuffed
 
 264 GRANIA 
 
 <jhair, for instance, was liis, so was the one 
 drinking-glass, and an old two-handled black 
 oak mether bound with brass, a relic this of 
 unknown antiquity. These and a few similar 
 articles of personal use were his own private 
 property, and to these he clung punctiliously, 
 and in case of a dispute would doubtless have 
 defended them to the death. 
 
 On the whole his daughter-in-law and 
 he got on better than might have been ex- 
 pected. Eosha, to tell truth, was rather 
 in awe of her father-in-law. His old world 
 politeness, combined with a certain power 
 he occasionally showed of being uncomfort- 
 ably caustic if provoked, were not without 
 effect upon the rough-tongued, coarse-natured 
 woman. In the endless domestic storms 
 between her and her husband — storms, it 
 must be said, which raged almost exclus- 
 ively on one side — old Durane never took 
 his son's part, though often appealed to by
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 265 
 
 that much-bullied person to do so. On the 
 other hand he had a way of dreamily watch- 
 inof Eosha as she racked about the cabin 
 which had more effect upon the virago than 
 might have been expected from so very 
 neo^ative a form of attack. He now stood 
 perfectly silent upon the threshold, and hav- 
 ing politely removed his hat, bent his white 
 head first to one and then to the other of the 
 visitors, leaning as he did so upon the big 
 black stick which he held in his hand. He 
 was still in the same attitude when his son 
 Pete returned hastily, without the girl he had 
 been sent for, but dragging two of the child- 
 ren after him by the hand. 
 
 ' Augh, then, Pete Durane, will you never 
 get the sense ? ' his wife exclaimed furiously. 
 ' Who bade you bring back the children, 
 and they sent out on purpose? Pulling 
 them up the rocks, too, like that, and Patsy 
 smoking red with the heat this minute,
 
 266 CRANIA 
 
 the creature ' — passing her hand over her 
 offspring's forehead, and turning the pahn 
 round to the company to prove her asser- 
 tion. ' Auch, Mr. Durane, sir, but it is tlie 
 fool you have for a son, God love you ! yes, 
 indeed, the very biggest fool on all Inishmaan, 
 and it was myself v^as the next biggest 
 ever to go and marry him, so I was, God 
 knows.' 
 
 The elder Durane looked at his son, and 
 then at his daughter-in-law, an air of vague 
 disturbance beginning to cloud his face, but 
 he said nothing. Then, equally silently, his 
 eyes began to wander slowly round the cabin, 
 as if he were calculating the probabilities of 
 any food being forthcoming. Not seeing 
 signs of anything of the sort at present, he 
 again lifted his hat with the same air of 
 dreamy civility, and backing cautiously out 
 of the doorway, beyond which he had not 
 yet ventured, retraced his steps a little way
 
 THE STORY OF AN ISLAND 267 
 
 down the pathway, until he had reached a 
 spot where the planes of rock had got acci- 
 dentally worn away into the likeness of a 
 sort of roughly-hewn arm-chair. Here he 
 seated himself, his legs stretched out in 
 front of him, his eyes beginning, evidently 
 from long habit, to seek out one particular 
 spot in the far-reaching, dull-tinted horizon. 
 Gradually as he did so the serenity, dis- 
 turbed by Eosha's appeal and by the general 
 sense of disturbance which was apt to sur- 
 round that vigorous w^oman, returned to 
 his face, a look of reminiscence, undefined 
 but on the whole pleasurable, settling 
 down upon his handsome weather-beaten old 
 features. 
 
 The aunt from the other side of the island 
 had nearly reached her own home again, and 
 even Peggy Dowd had long disappeared, 
 wheezing and grunting up the craggy path- 
 way, before he ventured to leave his arm-
 
 268 GRANIA 
 
 chair and contemplative gaze at the horizon, 
 and once more seek out the cabin and that 
 atmosphere of storm which seemed to hang 
 about it as closely and almost as persistently 
 as its veil of peat smoke. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
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