Yet It Is Only In
The Intonation Of A Few Sentences Or Some Old Fragment Of Melody
That I Catch The Real Spirit Of The Island, For In General The Men
Sit Together And Talk With Endless Iteration Of The Tides And Fish,
And Of The Price Of Kelp In Connemara.
After Mass this morning an old woman was buried.
She lived in the
cottage next mine, and more than once before noon I heard a faint
echo of-the keen. I did not go to the wake for fear my presence
might jar upon the mourners, but all last evening I could hear the
strokes of a hammer in the yard, where, in the middle of a little
crowd of idlers, the next of kin laboured slowly at the coffin.
To-day, before the hour for the funeral, poteen was served to a
number of men who stood about upon the road, and a portion was
brought to me in my room. Then the coffin was carried out sewn
loosely in sailcloth, and held near the ground by three cross-poles
lashed upon the top. As we moved down to the low eastern portion of
the island, nearly all the men, and all the oldest women, wearing
petticoats over their heads, came out and joined in the procession.
While the grave was being opened the women sat down among the flat
tombstones, bordered with a pale fringe of early bracken, and began
the wild keen, or crying for the dead.
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