The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

Author:Máirtín Ó Cadhain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

4.

—… I’ll tell you a story now, my good man:

“Colm Cille was in Aran when St. Paul visited him there. Paul wanted to have the whole island for himself.

“‘I’m going to open a pawnshop,’ Paul says.

“‘You will in your balls,’ says Colm Cille, ‘but I’m telling you straight up in plain Irish to get the fuck out of here.’

“Then he spoke to him in Legalese. Then he spoke to him in Latin. And then in Greek. In childish gibberish. In Esperanto. Colm Cille knew the seven languages of the Holy Ghost. He was the only one to whom the apostles gave the gift of tongues, when they were dying …

“‘OK, so,’ says Colm Cille, ‘seeing as you won’t fuck off, by virtue of the powers that have been invested in me, we’ll fix it like this. You’ll go off to the arse end of Aran and I’ll go to the west of the island as far as Bun Gowla. Both of us will say Mass at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Then we will walk towards one another, and howsomuchever of the island we will have walked when we meet, we will own that much.’

“‘That’s a deal, then,’ Paul said, in Yiddish. Colm Cille said the Mass and off he walked towards the arse end of Aran, and that’s where we get the saying, ‘being caught arse-ways’ …”

—But, hey, Coley, John Kitty in Bally Donough used to say that Colm Cille never said a Mass in his life …

—John Kitty said that! John Kitty is a heretic …

—So what if John Kitty says what he likes? Didn’t God himself—all praise to him—reveal himself there? The sun was up just as Colm Cille was saying his Mass. Then it went down, and God kept it down until Colm Cille had walked to the arse end of Aran. And it was only then that St. Paul saw it rising for the first time! …

“‘You may as well toddle off now, Shnozzle,’ says Colm Cille. ‘I’ll leave you weeping when you return to the Wailing Wall: the exact same horsewhipping you got when Christ drove you out of the Temple. You should be ashamed of yourself! Who would give a damn only that you are so greasy and sneaky as you slither away …’”

“That’s exactly why no Jew boy settled in Aran ever since …”

—This’s the way that I heard that story from oldfellas in my own place, Coley: when the two Patricks—Old Patrick alias Cothraighe, alias Calprainnovich, and Young Patrick—when they were hawking around Ireland trying to change the country …

—Two Patricks! That’s a heresy …

—… There was a day like that, Peter the Publican. Don’t deny it …

—Master, my darling, the bed was very hard. Really very hard underneath my poor arse, Master …

—I was only in it about a month, Poxy Martin, and I found it very hard …

—My back was totally flattened, Master. There wasn’t even a screed of a shred of skin left on my backside …

—Not as

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