Her silence did not hinder her from becoming the subject of vigorous controversy and criticism the instant her back was turned.

‘Auch, my word, just look at the length of her! My word, she is the big girl that Grania O’Malley, the big girl out and out!’ Rosha exclaimed, looking after her as she ran down the steep path, her tall vigorous figure framed for a few minutes by the doorway of the room she had just left. ‘It is the mighty queer girl that she is, though! God look down upon us this day, but she is the queerest girl ever I knew on this earth yet, that same Grania O’Malley. Yes, indeed,{236} yes!’ A long-drawn smack of the palate gave emphasis and expansion to the words.

‘Auch, Rosha Durane, don’t be overlooking the girl! ’Tis a decent father’s child she is any way,’ said the aunt from the other side of the island, apparently from an impulse of amiability, in reality by way of stimulating Rosha to a further exposition of what Grania’s special queerness consisted in.

‘Did I say Con O’Malley was not a decent man? Saints make his bed in heaven this day, when did I say it?’ the other answered, apparently in her turn in hot indignation, but in reality perfectly understanding the motive of her aunt’s remark. ‘What I do say, and what is well known to all Inishmaan, and that it is no invention of mine nor yet thought of by me, is that he was a very wild queer man. And Grania is just the same; she is a very wild queer girl, and a bold one too, and so I suppose I may say even in my{237} own house and before you, Mrs. O’Flanagan, though you are my poor mother’s sister that’s these seven years back gone to glory! I tell you there is no end to her queerness, and to the bold things she does be doing. It is well known to all Inishmaan, yes and to Aranmore, too, that she goes out to the fishing just like a man, so she does, just like a man, catching the plaice and the mullets and the conger eels, and many another fish beside I shouldn’t wonder; and if that is not a very bold thing for a young girl to do, then I do not know what a bold thing is, although I am your own niece, Mrs. O’Flanagan. But that is only the half of it. She has no fear of anything, not of anything at all, I tell you, neither upon the earth nor under it either—God keep us from speaking of harm, amen! She will as soon cross a fairies’ ring as not! just the same and sooner, and it is not two months, or barely three at the most,{238} that I saw her with my own eyes walk past a red jackass on the road, and it braying hard enough to split at the time, and not crossing herself, no, nor a bend of the head, nor spitting even! It is the truth I am telling you, Mrs. O’Flanagan, ma’am, though you may not choose to believe me, the truth and no lie!’

‘Ugh! ugh! ugh! ’Tis a bad end comes to such ways as those, a bad end, a bad end,’ said old Peggy Dowd, who up to this had been busily occupied in eating up the scraps left in the pot, but had now leisure to take her part, and accordingly entered upon the subject with all the recognised weight of her years and authority. ‘Did I ever tell you women both, about Katty O’Callaghan, that lived over near Aillyhaloo when I was a girl? From the time she was the height of that turf kish there she would not be bid by anyone, no, not by the priest{239} himself. The first time ever I saw her she was close upon eighteen years old, for she was not born on the island, but came from Cashla way to help an uncle of hers that had a small farm up near Aillyhaloo. A fine big girl she was, just the moral of that Grania there, with a straight back, and a wide chest, and the two eyes of her staring up big and bold at you—the very same. But, Man Above, the impudence of her! She had no proper respect not for anything, so she had not. She would laugh when you talked of the good people, and she would say that she would as soon go up at night to the Phooka’s hole as not, which everyone knows is all but the same as death. As for the cohullen druith, with my own two ears I heard her say she did not believe that there was such a thing! though my grandfather, God save his soul! saw one once on the head of a merrow hard{240} by the Glassen rock. But, faith! I haven’t the time nor the strength to be telling you the half of her folly and nonsense, nor couldn’t if I took the night to do it! Anyhow, there she was, straight and strong, a fine handsome girl just like that Grania there; and her uncle was to give her two cows when she married, and her father at Cashla, I heard too there was talk of his giving something, I don’t know whether it was pigs or what. In any case there was nothing to hinder her settling, only you may guess if any decent quiet-reared boy would like to go marrying a wife with such ways and such talk in her mouth as that same Katty O’Callaghan! However, she was bid for at last by a harmless easy-going young fellow of the name of Phil Mulcahy, and married him, and went up to live a quarter of a mile or so beyond Aillyhaloo, at the edge of the big west cliff yonder, and a year after she had a child, as fine a boy at{241} the start as you’d see in a day’s walk. Well, you may think she was going to get off clean and clever, after her goings on; but not a bit of it—so just wait till you hear. One day she went down the rocks by Mweeleenareeava for the sea-wrack, and I dare say she was carrying on as usual with her nonsense and folly, anyway, when she got back the first thing she noticed was that the child looked mighty queer, and seemed shrunk half its size, and its face all weazened up like a little old man’s, and the eyes of it as sharp and wicked as you please. Well, women both of you, from that hour that creature grew smaller and smaller, and queerer and queerer, and its eyes wickeder and wickeder, and the bawl never out of its mouth, and it wanting the breast night and day, and never easy when it got it either, but kicking and fighting and playing the devil’s own bad work. Of course the neighbours saw right enough what{242} had happened, and told Katty plainly the child was changed—and why not? Sure who could wonder at it after her goings on, which were just as if she’d laid them out for that very purpose! But she wouldn’t hear a word of it, so she wouldn’t, and said it was the teeth, or the wind in its stomach, and God only knows what nonsense besides. But one day a woman was coming along from Aillinera to Aillyhaloo, a real right-knowing woman she was by the name of Nora Cronohan, and as she was going she stopped to ask for a potato and a sup of milk, for she was stravoging the country at the time. So she looked up and down the cabin, and presently she cast eyes on the creature, which was laid in a basket by the fire, that being the place it stayed easiest in, and—

‘“Arrah! what’s that you’ve got at all in there?” says she, staring at it, and it staring{243} back at her with its two eyes as wicked as wicked.

‘“My child, what else?” says Katty, speaking quite angrily.

‘With that the woman gave a screech of laughter so that you could have heard her across the Foul Sound with the wind blowing west, and “Your child!” says she. “Your child! Sure, God save you, woman, you might as well call a black arth-looghra a salmon any day in the week as that thing there a child!”

‘Well, Katty was going to throw her into the sea, she was so mad! But first she looked at the basket, and with that she began to shake and tremble all over, for the creature was winking up so knowing at her, and opening and shutting its mouth as no Christian child in this world or any other ever would or could.

‘“Why, what ails it now, at all, at all?’ says she, turning to the other, and her face growing as white as the inside of a potato.{244}

‘“Listen to me, woman,” says Nora Cronohan, holding up her hand at her. “That’s not your child at all, you ignorant creature, as anyone can see, and there’s but two ways for you to get your own right child back again. You must either take that up the next time there’s a south wind blowing and set it to roast on the gridiron with the door open, or if you won’t do that you must gather a handful of the boliaun bwee and another handful of the boliaun dhas, and put them down to boil, and boil them both in the pot for an hour, and then throw the whole potful right over it; and if you’ll do either of those things I’ll be your warrant but it will be glad to be quit of you, and you’ll get your own fine child again!”

‘Well, you’d think that would be enough for any reasonable woman! But no. Katty wouldn’t do either the one thing nor the other, but held to it that it was her own child, not{245} changed at all, only sick; such fool’s talk! as if anyone with half an eye, and that one blind, couldn’t have told the difference! She had ne’er another child, you see, nor the sign of one, and that perhaps was what made her so set on it. Anyhow the neighbours tried to get her to see reason, and her husband, too, though he was but a poor shadow of a man, did what he could. At last her mother-in-law, that was a decent well-reared woman, and knew what was right, tried to get at the creature one day when Katty was out on the rocks, so as to serve it the right way, and have her own fine grandchild back. But if she did Katty was in on he............