Cré na Cille
Máirtín Ó Cadhain
Novel,
Paperback edition
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes” – yet in Cré na Cille, the graveyard is anything but silent. Beneath the clay, old rivalries and restless voices flare back into life, fierce, comic, and impossible to lay to rest. For there is no eternal rest – no rest of any kind – in store for the dead in this unnamed graveyard where the story unfolds; instead, every quarrel, every disagreement, every bone of contention that plagued them in life is dragged down after them, still hotly simmering, again and again. And no one embodies this better than Caitríona Pháidín, the novel’s formidable central figure, a woman who carries her long-running feud with her sister Nelly into the grave, and who lies in restless anticipation of word about the will of another sister, Baba, in America. Not to mention the Connemara green marble cross her son has promised to erect – a final mark of distinction over her grave. The dead are talking again, but is there anyone left to listen? Who can say? . .
Original text of Cré na Cille
A new edition of the original text of Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s classic novel Cré na Cille featuring new illustrations by the Inis Mór artist Seán Ó Flaithearta.
The story unfolds almost entirely in dialogue as the newly dead arrive in the graveyard, bringing news of recent local happenings to those already confined in their coffins. Avalanches of gossip, back-biting, flirting, feuds, and scandal-mongering ensue, while the absurdity of human nature becomes ever clearer.
