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                                GRANIA

                                VOL. I.




                         _By the same Author_


                           HURRISH: a Study
                 IRELAND (Story of the Nations Series)
                        MAJOR LAWRENCE, F.L.S.
                      PLAIN FRANCES MOWBRAY, &c.
                         WITH ESSEX IN IRELAND

                    [Illustration: ISLANDS OF ARAN

                             GALWAY BAY.]




                                GRANIA

                        THE STORY OF AN ISLAND

                                BY THE
                          HON. EMILY LAWLESS

                     AUTHOR OF ‘HURRISH, A STUDY’
                                 ETC.

                            IN TWO VOLUMES

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON
                SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
                                 1892

                        [_All rights reserved_]




                              DEDICATION

                               To M. C.


This story was always intended to be dedicated to you. It could hardly,
in fact, have been dedicated to anyone else, seeing that it was with you
it was originally planned; you who helped out its meagre scraps of
Gaelic; you with whom was first discussed the possibility of an Irish
story without any Irish brogue in it--that brogue which is a tiresome
necessity always, and might surely be dispensed with, as we both agreed,
in a case where no single actor on the tiny stage is supposed to utter a
word of English. For the rest, they are but melancholy places, these
Aran Isles of ours, as you and I know well, and the following pages have
caught their full share--something, perhaps, more than their full
share--of that gloom. That this is an artistic fault no one can doubt,
yet there are times--are there not?--when it does not seem so very easy
to exaggerate the amount of gloom which life is any day and every day
quite willing to bestow.

Several causes have delayed the little book’s appearance until now, but
here it is, ready at last, and dedicated still to you.

E. L.

LYONS, HAZLEHATCH:
_January, 1892_.




PART I

SEPTEMBER




PART I

_SEPTEMBER_




CHAPTER I


A mild September afternoon, thirty years ago, in the middle of Galway
Bay.

Clouds over the whole expanse of sky, nowhere showing any immediate
disposition to fall as rain, yet nowhere allowing the sky to appear
decidedly, nowhere even becoming themselves decided, keeping everywhere
a broad indefinable wash of greyness, a grey so dim, uniform, and
all-pervasive, that it defied observation, floating and melting away
into a dimly blotted horizon, an horizon which, whether at any given
point to call sea or sky, land or water, it was all but impossible to
decide.

Here and there in that wide cloud-covered sweep of sky a sort of break
or window occurred, and through this break or window long shafts of
sunlight fell in a cold and chastened drizzle, now upon the bluish
levels of crestless waves, now upon the bleak untrodden corner of some
portion of the coast of Clare, tilted perpendicularly upwards; now
perhaps again upon that low line of islands which breaks the outermost
curve of the bay of Galway, and beyond which is nothing, nothing, that
is to say, but the Atlantic, a region which, despite the ploughing of
innumerable keels, is still given up by the dwellers of those islands to
a mystic condition of things unknown to geographers, but too deeply
rooted in their consciousness to yield to any mere reports from
without.

One of these momentary shafts of light had just caught in its passage
upon the sails of a fishing smack or hooker, Con O’Malley’s hooker, from
the middle isle of Aran. It was an old, battered, much-enduring sail of
indeterminate hue, inclining to coffee colour, and patched towards the
top with a large patch of a different shade and much newer material. The
hooker itself was old, too, and patched, but still seaworthy, and, as
the only hooker at that time belonging to the islands, a source, as all
Inishmaan knew, of unspeakable pride and satisfaction to its owner.

At present its only occupants were Con himself and his little
eleven-year-old daughter, Grania. There was, however, a smaller boat
belonging to it a few yards away, which had been detached a short while
before for the convenience of fishing. The occupants of this smaller
boat were two also, a lad of about fourteen, well grown, light haired,
fairly well to do, despite the raggedness of his clothes, which in
Ireland is no especial test of poverty. The other was a man of about
twenty-eight or thirty, the raggedness of whose clothes was of the
absolute rather than comparative order. The face, too, above the rags
was rather wilder, more unsettled, more restless than even West
Connaught recognises as customary or becoming. Nay, if you chose to
consider it critically, you might have called it a dangerous face, not
ugly, handsome rather, as far as the features went, and lit by a pair of
eyes so dark as to be almost black, but with a restlessly moving lower
jaw, a quantity of hair raked into a tangled mass over an excessively
low brow, and the eyes themselves were sombre, furtive, menacing--the
eyes of a wolf or other beast of prey--eyes which by moments seemed to
flash upon you like something sinister seen suddenly at dead of night.
Shan Daly, or Shan-à-vehonee--‘Shan the vagabond’--he was commonly
called by his neighbours, and he certainly looked the character.

Even this man’s fashion of fishing had something in it of the same
furtive and predatory character. Fishing, no doubt, is a predatory
pursuit; still, if any predatory pursuit can be said to be legalised or
sanctified, it surely is. Shan Daly’s manner of fishing, however,
carried no biblical suggestions with it. Every time his line neared the
surface with a fish attached, he clutched at it with a sudden clawing
gesture, expressive of fierce, hungry desire, his lips moving, his eyes
glittering, his whole face working. Even when the fish had been cleared
from the line and lay in a scaly heap at the bottom of the boat, his
looks still followed them with the same peculiarly hungry expression.
Watching him at such a moment you would hardly have been surprised had
you seen him suddenly begin to devour them, then and there, scales and
all, as an otter might have done.

For more than an hour the light western breeze which had carried the
hooker so rapidly to Ballyvaughan that morning, with its load of kelp,
had been gradually dying away, until now it was all but gone. Far and
wide, too, not a sign of its revival appeared. Schools of gulls rose and
dipped in circles here and there upon the surface of the water, their
screams, now harsh and ear-piercing, now faint and rendered almost
inaudible by distance. A few other fishing boats lay becalmed at widely
separated points in the broad circumference, and, where the two lines of
coast, converging rapidly towards one another, met at Galway, a big
merchantman was seen slowly moving into harbour in the wake of a small
tug, the trail of whose smoke lay behind it, a long coal-black thread
upon the satiny surface.

Leaning against the taffrail of his vessel, Con O’Malley puffed lazily
at his pipe, and watched the smoke disappearing in thin concentric
circles, his brawny shoulders, already bent, less from age than from an
inveterate habit of slouching and leaning showing massively against that
watery background. Opposite, at the further end of the boat, the little
red-petticoated figure of his daughter sat perched upon the top of a
heap of loose stones, which served for the moment as ballast. The day,
as has been said, was calm, but the Atlantic is never an absolutely
passive object. Every now and then a slow sleepy swell would come and
lift the boat upon its shoulders, up one long green watery <DW72> and
down another, setting the heap of stones rolling and grinding one
against the other. Whenever this happened the little figure upon the
ballast would get temporarily dislodged from its perch, and sent
rolling, now to one side, now to the other, according as the boat moved,
or the loose freight shifted its position. The next moment, however,
with a quick scrambling action, like that of some small marmoset or
squirrel, it would have clambered up again to its former place; its feet
would have wedged themselves securely into a new position against the
stones, the small mouth opening to display a row of white teeth with a
laugh of triumphant glee at its own achievement.

A wild little face, and a wild little figure! Bare-headed, with unkempt
hair tossing in a brown mane over face and neck; a short red flannel
petticoat barely reaching to the knees; another, a whitish one, tied by
the strings cloak-fashion about the shoulders, and tumbling backwards
with every movement. One thing would probably have struck a stranger as
incongruous, and that was the small feet and legs were not, as might
have been expected, bare, but clad in comfortable thick knitted
stockings, with shoes, or rather sandals, of the kind known as
_pampooties_, made of cow’s skin, the hair being left on, the upper
portion sewn together and tied with a wisp of wool in more or less
classical fashion across the two small insteps.

Seen against that indeterminate welter of sea and sky, the little brown
face with its rapidly moving glances, strongly marked brows, vividly
tinted colouring, might have brought southern suggestions to your mind.
Small Italian faces have something of that same outline, that flash,
that vividness of colouring: gipsies too. Could the child by any chance,
you might have asked yourself, be a gipsy? But no: a moment’s
reflection would have told you it was impossible, for there are no
gipsies, never have been any, in Ireland.

Of course, the real explanation would soon have presented itself to your
mind. It lay in that long-unrenewed, but still-to-be-distinguished
streak of Spanish blood, which comes out, generation after generation,
in so many a West Irish face, a legacy from the days when, to all
intents and purposes, yonder little town was a beleaguered fortress,
dependent for daily necessities upon its boats and the shifting caprice
of the seas; the landways between it and the rest of the island being as
impracticable for all ordinary purposes and ordinary travellers as any
similar extent of mid-Africa to-day.

Hours pass unobserved in occupations which are thoroughly congenial to
our temperaments, and it would have been difficult to hit upon one more
congenial to such a temperament as Con O’Malley’s than that in which he
was at that moment engaged. Had wind, sky, and other conditions
continued unchanged, he would in all probability have maintained the
same attitude, smoked his pipe with the same passive enjoyment, watched
the horizon with the same vaguely scrutinising air, till darkness drove
him home to supper and Inishmaan. An interruption, however, came, as
interruptions are apt to come when they are least wanted. The fishing
that afternoon had been unusually good, and for a long time past the two
occupants of the smaller boat had been too busily occupied pulling in
their lines to have time for anything else. It was plain, however, that
strict harmony was not reigning there. Now and then a smothered
ejaculation might have been heard from the elder of the two fishermen
directed against some proceeding on the part of the younger one.
Presently this would die away, and silence again set in, broken only by
the movements of the fishers, the whisper of the water, the far-off
cries of the gulls, and the dull sleepy croak with which the old hooker
responded to the swell, which, lifting it upon its shoulders up one
smooth grey incline, let it drop down again with a stealthy rocking
motion the next moment upon the other.

Suddenly a loud burst of noise broke from the curragh. It was less like
the anger of a human being than like the violent jabbering, the harsh,
inarticulate cries of some infuriated ape. Harsher and harsher, louder
and louder still it grew, till the discord seemed to fill the whole
hitherto peace-enveloped scene; the very gulls wheeling overhead
sweeping away in wider circles as the clamour reached their ears.

Con O’Malley roused himself, lifted his gaze from the horizon, took the
pipe out of his mouth, and, standing erect, flung an angry glance at
the curragh, which was only separated from his own boat by some twenty
or thirty yards of water.

Evidently a furious quarrel was raging there. The two fishermen, a
minute ago, defined, as everything else, large or small, was defined
against that grey, luminous background of water, were now tumbled
together into an indistinguishable heap, rolling, kicking, struggling at
the bottom of the boat. Now a foot or hand, now a head, rose above the
confusion, as one or other of the combatants came uppermost; then the
struggle grew hot and desperate, and the fragile craft rocked from side
to side, but nothing was to be seen of either of them.

Suddenly Shan Daly’s face appeared. It was convulsed with rage; fury and
a sort of wild triumph shone in his black eyes; one skinny arm, from
which the ragged sleeve had fallen back, rose, brown, naked, and
sinewy, over the edge of the boat. He had pinned the boy, Murdough
Blake, down with his left hand, and with the other was now feeling
round, evidently for something to strike him with. Before he could do
so, however, Con O’Malley interfered.

‘_Cred thurt_, Shan Daly? _Cred thurt?_’[1] he exclaimed in loud,
peremptory tones.

There was an instant silence. Shan Daly drew back, showing a very ugly
face--a face spotted green and yellow with passion, teeth gleaming
whitely, rage and the desire of vengeance struggling in every line of
it. He stared at his interlocutor wildly for a minute, as if hardly
realising who he was or what he was being asked, his mouth moving as if
he was about to speak, but not a word escaping from his lips. In the
meantime, the boy had shaken himself free, had got upon his feet, and
now proceeded to explain the cause of the quarrel. His face was red with
the prolonged struggle, his clothes torn, there was a bad bleeding
bruise upon the back of one of his hands, but though he breathed hard,
and was evidently excited, it was with a volubility quite remarkable
under the circumstances that he proceeded to explain the matter in hand.
Shan Daly, he said, had quarrelled with him about the fish. The fish
would roll together whenever the boat moved, so that the two heaps, his
and Shan’s, got mixed. Could he, Murdough Blake, help their rolling? No:
God knew that he could not help it. Yet Shan Daly had sworn to have his
blood if he didn’t keep them apart. How was he to keep them apart? It
was all the fault of the fish themselves! Yes, it was! So it was! He had
done his best to keep them apart, but the fish were slimy and they ran
together. Did he make them slimy? No, he did not! It was God Himself
who had made them slimy. But Shan Daly....

How much longer he would have gone on it is difficult to say, but at
this point his explanations were cut summarily short.

‘_Bedhe hushth, agus tharann sho_,’[2] Con O’Malley said curtly.

The smaller boat was then pushed up to the other and the boy obeyed. No
sooner was he upon the deck of the larger vessel than Con O’Malley
silently descended into the curragh. The two boats were again pushed a
few yards apart, and Murdough Blake found himself left behind upon the
hooker.




CHAPTER II


Hardly had the smaller boat pushed away from the larger one and regained
its former place, before the little girl upon the ballast scrambled
hastily down from her perch, mounted the deck, and went up to the boy as
he stood there astonished, furious, red to the roots of his hair with
anger and indignant surprise.

She had been watching the struggle between him and Shan Daly with
breathless interest. She hated Shan with all the hate of her fierce
little heart. She loved Murdough. He was their nearest neighbour, her
playfellow, her big brother--not that they were of any kin to one
another--her hero, after a fashion. She adored him as a small schoolboy
adores a bigger one, and, like that small schoolboy, laid herself open
to be daily and hourly snubbed by the object of her adoration.

‘Is it hurt you are, Murdough? Murdough dheelish, is it hurt you are?
Speak, Murdougheen, speak to me! Did the beast stick you? Speak, I say!’
she asked in quick, eager Irish, pouring out a profusion of those tender
diminutives for which our duller English affords such a meagre and a
poverty-stricken equivalent.

But the boy was too angry, too profoundly insulted by the whole
foregoing scene, especially the end of it, to make any response. He
pushed her from him instead with a quick, angry gesture, and continued
to stare at the sea and the other boat with an air of immeasurable
offence.

The little girl did not seem to mind. She kept pressing herself closely
against him for a minute or two longer