I have always found that tears rather intensify a trouble than lessen it, and they now gave such keen reality to what I was feeling that I could bear the pressure of my thoughts no longer. I got up quickly to go home, and as I turned I saw a string of three or four boats heading for the little strand at the foot of the cliff, just below where I was standing. They were the cumbrous rowing-boats generally used for carrying turf, and came heavily on through the bright restless water, loaded, as well as I could see, with men and women.
The pounding and creaking of the clumsy oars in the rowlocks grew louder; I was soon able to make out that the long dark object, round which several figures were clustered in the leading boat, was a coffin, and I now remembered Willy’s having told me that this little cove was called “Tra-na-morruf,” the strand of the dead, from the fact that it was the landing-place for such funerals as came by boat to the old burying-place. The people were quite silent as the boats slowly advanced to the shore; but directly the keel of the first touched on the shingle, the women in the others raised a sustained, penetrating wail, which vibrated in the sunny air, and made me shiver in involuntary sympathy.
I thought I had never heard so terrible a cry. I had often been told of the Irish custom of “keening” at funerals, but I was not prepared for anything so barbaric and so despairing. It broke out with increasing volume and intensity while the coffin was being lifted from the boat and was toilfully carried up the steep path in the cliff, the women clapping their hands and beating their breasts, their chant rising and swelling like the howl of the wind on a wild night. The small procession halted at the top of the cliff, and another set of bearers took the coffin, and carried it with staggering steps across the irregular mounds of the graveyard, to where, behind the ruined chapel, I now noticed, for the first time, an open grave. The dark crowd closed in round it, and, after a few stifled sobs and exclamations, I heard nothing but the shovelling of the earth upon the coffin.
It was soon over. The throng of heavily cloaked women and frieze-coated men opened out, and I saw the long mound of brown earth, with a couple of women and a man kneeling beside it. The rest, for the most part, made their way down the cliff to the strand, from which a clatter of conversation soon ascended. About half a dozen of the women, however, remained behind; each sought out some special grave, and, kneeling there, began to tell her beads and pray with seemingly deep devotion.
I moved away from where I had been standing, with the intention of going home, but stopped at the gateway to look again at the effect of the black figures dotted about among the grey stones, with their background of pale blue sky. Near the gate was the ugly squat mausoleum in which lay many generations of Sarsfields, and as I passed through the gate I saw, kneeling at the farther side of it, a mourner dressed like the others in a hooded blue cloak. She was clapping her hands and beating her breast as if keening, but she made no sound. A country woman at this moment passed me, curtseying as she did so, and, feeling a natural curiosity to know who had taken upon herself the office of bewailing my ancestors, I said—
“Can you tell me who that woman at the Sarsfield tomb is?”
“Faith, then, I can, your honour, miss! But sure yourself should know her as well as me. ’Tis Moll Hourihane, that lives below at the lodge of the big house.”
“Oh yes, of course, so it is,” I said, recognizing her as I spoke; “but what has she come here for?”
“Throth, I dunno, miss. But there’s never a buryin’ here that she’s not at it, and that’s the spot where she’ll always post herself. Sure she’s idiotty-like; she thinks she’s keening there, and the divil a screech out of her, good or bad, all the time.”
My informant gave a short laugh. She was a tall, handsome woman, with a strong Spanish type of face and daring black eyes, and she had a grimly humorous manner which interested and amused me.