“Norah Ryan, what’s coming over ye?” she cried and knelt down by the girl. The child’s face was deathly pale, the sleet cut her viciously, and her hands, lying palm upwards on the mire, were blue and cold. The beansho tried to raise her but the effort was too much; the child which the woman carried impeded her movements. Maire a Crick now hurried up and the rest of the women approached, though in a more leisurely fashion.
“Mother of God! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” asked the old woman anxiously. “What has come over the child atall, atall? She’s starving,” the old body went on, kneeling on the roadway and pressing her warty hands on the breast of the young girl. “She’s starving, that’s it. In her own home she hardly eats one bite at all so that her people may have the more. So I have heard tell.... Norah Ryan, for God’s sake wake up!”
The girl gave no heed, made no sign. The sleet sang through the air and the women gathered closer, shielding the little one with their bodies.
“What’s to be done?” asked the beansho. Biddy Wor told how people were cured of fargortha (hunger) at the time of the famine, but little heed was paid to her talk. The beansho unloosened her shawl, wrapped her offspring tightly in it and handed the bundle to one of the women, who crossed herself as she caught it.
“Now up on my back with the girsha,” said the beansho authoritatively, stooping on her knees in the roadway and bending her shoulders. “Martin Eveleen has a house across the rise of the brae and I’ll carry her there.”
Three of the party lifted Norah and placed her across the beansho’s shoulders.
“How weighty the girsha is!” one exclaimed; then recollecting said: “It’s the water in her clothes that’s doing it. Poor girsha! and it’ll be the hunger that’s causing her the weakness.”
The beansho with her burden on her shoulders hurried forward, her feet pressing deeply into the mire and the water squirting out between her toes. The rest of the party following discussed the matter and, being most of them old cronies, related stories of the hunger that was in it at the time of the great famine. Again it faired, the sun came out, but the air was still bitterly cold.
A cabin stood on the crest of the hill and towards this the beansho hurried. Strong and lank though she was, the burden began to bear heavily and she panted at every step. At the door of the house she paused for a moment to collect her strength, then lifted the latch and pushed the door inwards. A man, shaggy and barefooted, hurried to meet the woman and stared at her suspiciously.
“What do you want?” he asked in Gaelic.