At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [85]
“No, you gaum. I mean that’s where it comes from. It was their test for to join. Are you straight, they asked. I am, says you. How straight so? Straight as a rush. Go on then, says they. In truth, in trust, in unity and liberty, says you. That was the United Irishmen. Don’t mind that priest what he said about Tone. That priest would have them all voteens did nothing but count their beads. Wolfe Tone was a free-thinking man.”
“Is it true he did destroy himself?”
“They had the gallows built outside of his cell. What hope would he have? He cheated the English of their show. He brung the French, so he did. But the French was too late coming. Too late for the boys of Wexford.”
The boys of Wexford, the croppy boys. Dimly Jim saw them from out their cabins creep. It’s the dark before the moon’s rise and their eyes are wide and faces narrow. In the smoky light of spits and fangles, new-forged pikes give a steely glow. It’s the cleanest sight they might ever have seen, these creeping crop-haired boys. The black-frocked priest leaps up on the rock. Arm, arm! he cries, I’ve come to lead you! By heart and hand they will fight for Ireland and by morning they have the militia beat. Wexford falls, Enniscorthy falls, only New Ross bars the way. But the drink is their downfall. The crazy fiddle and the lawless dancing, wretched whiskey and looted wine. Through Protestant blood they wade for a last stand at Vinegar Hill. Death comes merciful with a yeoman’s blade or blazes with pitch upon their heads, made candles of by the English. The ruction, the ignorant had called it, meaning insurrection. Another word, like bother and boycott, given the English language.
“Do you know what it is?” said Doyler. “When we come to Bodenstown we’ll lie down on his grave.”
“Why’ll we do that?”
“Don’t you know the song?
“I lay on the sod that lies over Wolfe Tone
And thought how he perished in prison alone.
“It’s traditional, lying on his grave. That’s what you do sure.”
Jim shrugged. He didn’t suppose he very much minded lying on a grave. “I thought it was something your own,” he said. “Are you straight, I mean.”
“Well, ’tis ours now. For you and me,” and his arm came over Jim’s shoulder, “aren’t we straight as a rush together?”
The Sunday, then, they piled into a charabanc that took them to Bodenstown, over the hills in County Kildare. It was a bleary day with a drizzle falling. They waited their time in a pasture field, under the watch of cows, while the grass soaked into their boots. The different bands tuned their instruments—peeping, brattling, droning, thudding—all flat in the sodden air. Everything sagged, banners and flags, their flapping kilts, the boughs of the trees. In a rainy way the fields foretold the bogs, and Jim thought of the vast Bog of Allen over the horizon and he felt it for a sinking thing in the heart of the land.
Their time came and they marched past a wall, without ever a sight of a grave, letting out “A Nation Once Again,” till they halted at the tail of the assembly. A man was set to give a speech from a steps. A tall man with a pale face. He was dressed in the smart green of an Irish Volunteer. “We have come,” he said, “to the holiest place in the land.” And if it is holy, thought Jim, it’s the damp miserable holiness of Ireland.
Yet the man had a pleasing way of talking, with none of the preachment of Father O’Táighléir. He spoke the way he had known Wolfe Tone for a friend. His brother in blood, he called him. He said they were none of them strangers here, if they loved Wolfe Tone. And in spite of himself Jim found he strained to catch more.
The soldier-speaker spoke of Tone, of his vision and his spirit, of his love for the common people. He was saying things out of history books, but still he made it sound like it was his friend he was talking of. His friend had been a great man; he had died for his love of Ireland: they stood now at his grave. That must be hard, Jim thought, to be talking at the graveside of your friend. Death, it was a dark and empty falling when Jim thought