LOUGHNAGLEE
Mrs Molly Whelehan told the story to her grand-daughter, Helena Mahony, much as she herself had heard it from her own grandmother, who, having lived at the very time and place of its end, “had a right,” as Mrs Whelehan said, “to know the whole of it.” They were seated on a fine swarded bank by the northern shore of Loughnaglee, and resting, that is to say Helena was resting, for her grandmother seemed just as fresh and brisk as when they had set out two or three hours before, which was absurd. For Helena had been quite lately sent to stay with her, because a family conclave had decided that “the crathur was gettin’ a great age entirely, and too ould and feeble to be left any longer livin’ her lone.” Whereas now, the day but one after Helena’s arrival, her grandmother had nearly “tramped the two feet off of her,” gathering rushes to patch the roof of the calf’s shed from breakfast-time till noon.
Loughnaglee is set in level green land, with low shores, except at its northern end, where a little hill range sends down a spur to the water’s edge, overlooking it with a bold, furzy crag, lifted on a pedestal of steep grass slopes. Beneath this run very tall blackthorn hedges, which here enclose the dwindled lake-corner, turning to either hand in symmetrically right lines and angles, so that it is like a small court, with three high, thick walls. Its water-floor generally lies in shadow, looking sombrely solid and opaque, as if paved with black flags, even when the rest is all shimmering blue or silver. Perhaps this gloomy aspect may have conspired with an echo born of the cliff to suggest and foster the belief whence Loughnaglee has come by its name—the Lake of the Cries: but no one has so far found or invented any legend to explain its origin.
Wide shadow fell heavily on the water as the old woman and the girl sat by it, close to the last sloe bush on the eastern shore; for although it was midsummer and midday everything scowled back sympathetically and unseasonably at the lowering cloud-canopy overhead. “If it’s trampin’ round Loughnaglee as often as meself you were,” Mrs Whelehan said as they sat down and her grand-daughter complained of being “kilt,” “it’s little enough you’d think of steppin’ as far as the Fivestones for a bundle of rushes. But sure we can be restin’ here aisy for a bit, till it’s time to go in and put on the pitaties. And bedad if any people was livin’ all their lives beside it as long as I am, they wouldn’t have so much talk out of them about the quare things there do be on the lough. Ne’er a sign of them I seen anyway.”
“I wouldn’t suppose it was any quarer than e’er another little ould lough,” said Helena, who being momentarily out of humour threw some disparagement into her tone.
“For the matter of that,” replied the grandmother, promptly changing front, “them that never set fut next nor nigh it till last Monday isn’t very apt to have any great opinion about the quareness that might or mightn’t be in it. Sure it’s much if they know the raison it got the name Loughnaglee on it at all.”
“It had to be called some name, I should suppose,” said Helena, who was still inclined to suppose perversely, “and one’s as good as another.”
“Well now, indeed and bedad, the people were fine fools if they’d no better sort of raison than that when they called it the Lough of the Cries in the Gaelic,” said Mrs Whelehan. “But there’s some could be tellin’ you a different story, and a one that’s no lie either, to me certain knowledge.”
“Could they so?” said Helena, who had been cooling her hands and face with the clear water and felt her curiosity revive.
“But before ever that happint,” said Mrs Whelehan, “I was hearin’ tell about the cries. For they do say that if a man’s anywheres convanient to the lough, sittin’ here beside it, maybe, or up a bit on the hill, and if he hears anythin’ cryin’ and callin’ him by his name, he may depind there’s some harm after befallin’ the woman he sets the most store by in this world, whoever she may be—his mother, or his wife, or his child, or his sweetheart, just accordin’, though it’s far enough away she was all the while.”
“To be sure, then, that’s rael quare,” said Helena. “I wonder is it the truth?”
“You’ll be wonderin’ a long time before you make a bowl of stirabout wid it,” Mrs Whelehan said oracularly, “but very belike your mammy was tellin’ you agin now what happint me grandmother’s brother in the same identical place we’re sittin’ in this minyit, I might say.”
“She was not,” said Helena. “No great talk of Loughnaglee she has these times. Only a slip of a girsheach she says she was and she gettin’ married and quittin’ out of it.”
“Herself hasn’t much nathur in her to be disremimberin’ it, if she was twinty girsheachs. But I niver had any such great wish, so to spake, for Biddy,” Mrs Whelehan said frankly. “She always took after her poor father’s ould sister, Nellie Whelehan, that was as contrairy as a wild hin. However, what happint me grandmother’s brother, Jim M‘Farlane, was before my time, when they were all livin’ in the empty house fornint me own, and the Cavanaghs were in the next one, that’s gone to ruin. And the ould people were very wishful to be makin’ up a match wid Jim M‘Farlane and Norah Cavanagh, the only daughter. Me grandmother said she knew Norah had a likin’ ever for Jim, and Jim had nothin’ agin it, till Mrs Cavanagh’s niece, Rose Moore, come to stop wid them, and then he seemed takin’ a notion he might be better satisfied if he got her. Just for the sake of variety, for me grandmother said she wasn’t any nicer than Norah, unless that might be the raison. But too young he was to be firm in his mind. However, he was betwixt and between, and they had nothin’ settled this way or that way, when the two girls took it in their heads one day to go pull sloes along the hedge here, that were just turned black. It was the grand hedge for sloes, and bedad it’s full of them this minyit, if they were ripe. The white blossom on it does be a sight to behould at the turn of the winter, and the sloes do be the size of young plums, wid a bloom on them you could write your name in. Grand wine they make. So off they set in the mornin’, and when they came here they found Jim M‘Farlane up on the hill there wid his tarrier after rabbits, and they only passed him the time of day, and that was all. And Rose went wid her basket along this lough side of the hedge, and Norah over yonder”—Mrs Whelehan pointed across the smooth dark water—“where there’s somethin’ of a steep bank.
“Well now, after a while Jim was mindin’ the dog that had him nearly bothered altogether wid the barkin’ and yelpin’ it kep’ up at a rabbit hole; but all the same it seemed to him he heard somethin’ callin’ his name wid a woeful screech. And says he to himself: ‘That’s Rose Moore about drowndin’ herself as sure as the sun’s in the sky.’ And off wid him to the place he’d seen her goin’. But there she was, pullin’ away on the field side of the hedge, and sorra a pin’s points amiss wid her, and ne’er a bit of her was after callin’ him, or hearin’ anythin’ only the little dog barkin’ and yellin’. Howane’er he stood out that some person was screechin’ in it, and they looked through the hedge here to try was there any signs of Norah over there. And at first they seen nothin’, but prisintly they noticed a white strake on a bush opposite, like as if a bough was wrenched off it; and the next minyit they seen a white strake agin’ in the black wather, and what was that but poor Norah’s apern, and she floatin’ across to them on the set of the current? So Jim got her on shore by some manner of manes, but the breath was out of her body entirely. And the crathur had the thorn bough clutched in her hand, the way they knew she was houldin’ on to it till it broke, and callin’ to Jim, and he runnin’ off from her after Rose Moore, that naught ailed in the world.”
“Then she needn’t lose her life only for him bein’ mistook that way?” said Helena.
“She need not, goodness may pity her. And only for him havin’ the story in his head about the callin’ it’s well enough he’d know Norah’s voice, that he was used to all the days of his life. So if there’s no raison for what people do be sayin’ about the lough, get me a one. There was raison enough to drownd the poor girl anyhow. But what I hope in me heart is that the crathur wasn’t seein’ Jim, and he startin’ off and lavin’ her that thought so much of him, for the sake of goin’ to Rosey Moore. She might aisy catch sight of him through the hedge leppin’ down the hill, and ’twould be fit to break her heart.”
“Sure if she was to be drownded the next minyit, that ’ud be the less matter,” said Helena. “’Twould make no differ to her then.”
“It’s little the likes of you or anybody else knows what mightn’t make a differ,” said her grandmother. “Some folks do be sayin’ she didn’t die contint—God be good to her—and wasn’t restin’ aisy. I mind meself hearin’ ould Christy Nolan and Judy Dunne sayin’ that long ago they seen—’Twas about the time of Jim and Rose’s weddin’, for they got married after all; but me grandmother said Rose wouldn’t look at him for a great while she was that mad wid him for lettin’ Norah be drownded.”
“What did they see?” said Helena.
“Ah, me dear, accordin’ to my opinion there wasn’t an atom of truth in it. The Cavanaghs were very dacint, respectable people. I niver heard tell of e’er another one of them walkin’. And forby that, more betoken, look at all the years I’m livin’ alongside the lough, and sight nor light I seen of e’er such a thing, in the daytime at anyrate, and nobody has any call to be rovin’ about in the night. If they see anythin’ quare then, they’ve thimselves to thank for it. I don’t believe—”
“Och, what was that?” Helena gripped her grandmother’s arm and shrank behind her, as a croaking chuckle approached them, breaking into a laughter-like skirl, while a snowy gleam appeared, crossing over the murky water.
“Sure only the big gull,” said Mrs Whelehan, pointing up to the wide white wings as they sailed by. “But it’s no good sign for the weather when that sort come streelin’ in so far from the say, and bedad I think there’s a shower blowin’ up on the win’ this instant. So we’d do better to be stirrin’ ourselves, till we get home dry.”
Indeed the first large drops were stamping circles on the capable water, and ripples were rising and reeds bending to rub them out, as Mrs Whelehan went with Helena home. The old woman was considering that she must fetch in a creel of turf before the day turned out too entirely soft on her. But her grand-daughter’s thoughts were occupied somewhat fearfully with the story she had just been told. It seemed to her that life at lonely Loughnaglee would henceforth have one more shadow, thrown by the fate of Norah Cavanagh, who “didn’t die contint.”