Children of the Dead End: The Autobiography of an Irish Navvy. Patrick MacGill

light-hearted over the job. Why shouldn't they feel merry? She was only an old witch, anyhow. But I did not feel happy. The grave looked a cold cheerless place and the long crawling worms were ugly.

      So our poor Dan would go down into the dark earth like Old Nan, the witch! The thought frightened me, and I began to cry with my father and mother, and we were all three weeping still, but more quietly, when the first dim light of the lonely dawn came stealing through the window panes.

Two old sisters, Martha and Bride, lived next door. My mother asked me to go out and tell them about Dan's death. I ran out quickly, and I found both women up and at work washing dishes beside the dresser. Martha had a tin basin in her hand, and she let it drop to the floor when I delivered my message. Bride held a jug, and it seemed for a moment that she was going to follow her sister's example, but all at once she called to mind that the jug was made of delft, so she placed it on the dresser, and both followed me back to my home. Once there they asked many questions about Dan, his sickness and how he came to die. When they had heard all, they told of several herbs and charms which would have cured the illness at once. Dandelion dipped in rock water, or bogbine[2] boiled for two hours in the water of the marsh from which it was plucked, would have worked wonders. Also seven drops of blood from a cock that never crowed, or the boiled liver of a rabbit that never crossed a white road, were the very best things to give to a sick person. So they said, and when Bride tried to recollect some more certain cures Martha kept repeating the old ones until I was almost tired of listening to her voice.

      "Why did ye not take in the docthor?" asked Martha.

      "We had no money in the house," said my mother.

      "An' did ye not sell half a dozen sheep at the fair the day afore yesterday?" asked Bride. "I'm sure that ye got a good penny for them same sheep."

      "We did that," said my mother; "but the money is for the landlord's rent and the priest's tax."

      At that time the new parish priest, the little man with the pot-belly and the shiny false teeth, was building a grand new house. Farley McKeown had given five hundred pounds towards the cost of building, which up to now amounted to one thousand five hundred pounds. So the people said, but they were not quite sure. The cost of building was not their business, that was the priest's; all the people had to do was to pay their tax, which amounted to five pounds on every family in the parish. They were allowed five years in which to pay it. On two occasions my father was a month late in paying the money and the priest put a curse on him each time. So my father said. I have only a very faint recollection of these things which took place when I was quite a little boy.

      "God be good to us! but five pounds is a heavy tax for even a priest to put on poor people," said Bride.

      "It's not for us to say anything against a priest, no matter what he does," said my father, crossing himself.

      "I don't care what ye say, Michael Flynn," said the old woman; "five pounds is a big tax to pay. The priest is spending three hundred gold sovereigns in making a lava-thury (lavatory). Three hundred sovereigns! that's a waste of money."

      "Lava-thury?" said my mother. "And what would that be at all?"

      "It's myself that does not know," answered Bride. "But old Oiney Dinchy thinks that it is a place for keeping holy water."

      "Poor wee Dan," said Martha, looking at the white face in the bed. "It's the hard way that death has with it always. He was a lively boy only three days ago. Wasn't it then that he came over to our house and tied the dog's tail to the bundle of yarn that just came from Farley McKeown's. I was angry with the dear little rascal, too; God forgive me!"

      Then Martha and Bride began to cry together, one keeping time with the other, but when my mother got ready some tea they sat down and drank a great deal of it.

      A great number of neighbours came in during the day. They all said prayers by Dan's bedside, then they drank whisky and tea and smoked my father's tobacco. For two nights my dead brother was waked. Every day fresh visitors came, and for these my father had to buy extra food, snuff, and tobacco, so that the little money in his possession was sliding through his fingers like water in a sieve.

      On the day of the funeral Dan went to the grave in a little deal box which my father himself fashioned. They would not let me go and see the burial.

      In the evening when my parents came back their eyes were red as fire and they were still crying. We sat round the peat blaze and Dan's stool was left vacant. We expected that he would return at any moment. We children could not understand the strange silent thing called Death. The oil lamp was not lighted. There was no money in the house to pay for oil.

      "There's very little left now," said my mother late that night, as I was turning in to bed. She was speaking to my father. "Wasn't there big offerings?" she asked.

      Everybody who comes to a Catholic funeral in Donegal pays a shilling to the priest who conducts the burial service, and the nearest blood relation always pays five shillings, and is asked to give more if he can afford it. Money lifted thus is known as offerings, and all goes to the priest, who takes in hand to shorten the sufferings of the souls in Purgatory.

      "Eight pounds nine shillings," said my father. "It's a big penny. The priest was talking to me, and says that he wants another pound for his new house at once. I'm over three weeks behind, and if he puts a curse on me this time what am I to do at all, at all?"

      "What you said is the only thing to be done," my mother said. I did not understand what these words meant, and I was afraid to ask a question.

      "It's the only thing to be done," she remarked again, and after that there was a long silence.

"Dermod, asthor[3]!" she said all at once. "Come next May, ye must go beyont the mountains to push yer fortune, pay the priest, and make up the rent for the Hallow E'en next coming."

      FOOTNOTES:

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      [2] Marsh trefoil.

      [3] Darling.

CHAPTER V THE SLAVE MARKET

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      "My mother's love for me is warm,

      Her house is cold and bare,

      A man who wants to see the world

      Has little comfort there;

      And there 'tis hard to pay the rent,

      For all you dig and delve,

      But there's hope beyond the Mountains

      For a little Man of Twelve."

       —From The Man of Twelve.

      When the following May came round, I had been working at the turnip-thinning with a neighbouring man, and one evening I came back to my own home in the greyness of the soft dusk. It had been a long day's work, from seven in the morning to nine of the clock at night. A boy can never have too much time to himself and too little to do, but I was kept hard at work always, and never had a moment to run about the lanes or play by the burns with other children. Indeed, I did not care very much for the company of boys of my own age. Because I was strong for my years I despised them, and in turn I was despised by the youths who were older than myself. "Too-long-for-your-trousers" they called me, and I believe that I merited the nickname, for I wished ever so much to grow up quickly and be able to carry a creel of peat like Jim Scanlon, or drive