The Joyces too had waited, as was the custom, for the Angelus bell, and now Black Michael’s funeral was moving slowly towards Carrala along the other side of the bog. Before long either party could hear the keening of the other, for you know the roads grow nearer as they converge on Carrala. Before long either party began to fear that the other would be there first.
There is no knowing how it happened, but the funerals began to go quicker, keeping abreast; then still quicker, till the women had to break into a trot to keep up; then still quicker, till the donkeys were galloping, and till every one raced at full speed, and the rival parties broke into a wild shout of “Aughavanna abu!” “Meehul Dhu for ever!”
For the dead men were racing—feet foremost—to the grave; they were rivals even in death. Never did the world see such a race, never was there such whooping and shouting. Where the roads meet in Callanan’s Field the hearses were abreast; neck to neck they dashed across the trampled fighting-place, while the coffins jogged and jolted as if the two dead men were struggling to get out and lead the rush; neck to neck they reached the churchyard, and the hearses jammed in the gate. Behind them the carts crashed into one another, and the mourners shouted as if they were mad.
But the quick wit of the Aughavanna men triumphed, for they seized their long coffin and dragged it in, and Long Mat Murnane won his last race. The shout they gave then deafened the echo up in the mountains, so that it has never been the same since. The victors wrung one another’s hands; they hugged one another.
“Himself would be proud,” they cried, “if he hadn’t been dead!”
Frank Mathew (1865).
IN BLARNEY.
He—Be the fire, alanna, sittin’,
Purty ’tis you look and sweet,
Wid yer dainty fingers knittin’