When we had all come out of the graveyard, and two men had rebuilt
the hole in the wall through which the coffin had been carried in,
we walked back to the village, talking of anything, and joking of
anything, as if merely coming from the boat-slip, or the pier.
One man told me of the poteen drinking that takes place at some
funerals.
'A while since,' he said, 'there were two men fell down in the
graveyard while the drink was on them. The sea was rough that day,
the way no one could go to bring the doctor, and one of the men
never woke again, and found death that night.'
The other day the men of this house made a new field. There was a
slight bank of earth under the wall of the yard, and another in the
corner of the cabbage garden. The old man and his eldest son dug out
the clay, with the care of men working in a gold-mine, and Michael
packed it in panniers - there are no wheeled vehicles on this
island - for transport to a flat rock in a sheltered corner of their
holding, where it was mixed with sand and seaweed and spread out in
a layer upon the stone.
Most of the potato-growing of the island is carried on in fields of
this sort - for which the people pay a considerable rent - and if the
season is at all dry, their hope of a fair crop is nearly always
disappointed.
It is now nine days since rain has fallen, and the people are filled
with anxiety, although the sun has not yet been hot enough to do
harm.
The drought is also causing a scarcity of water. There are a few
springs on this side of the island, but they come only from a little
distance, and in hot weather are not to be relied on. The supply for
this house is carried up in a water-barrel by one of the women. If
it is drawn off at once it is not very nauseous, but if it has lain,
as it often does, for some hours in the barrel, the smell, colour,
and taste are unendurable. The water for washing is also coming
short, and as I walk round the edges of the sea, I often come on a
girl with her petticoats tucked up round her, standing in a pool
left by the tide and washing her flannels among the sea-anemones and
crabs. Their red bodices and white tapering legs make them as
beautiful as tropical sea-birds, as they stand in a frame of
seaweeds against the brink of the Atlantic.
