The morning had been beautifully fine, but as they lowered the
coffin into the grave, thunder rumbled overhead and hailstones
hissed among the bracken.
In Inishmaan one is forced to believe in a sympathy between man and
nature, and at this moment when the thunder sounded a death-peal of
extraordinary grandeur above the voices of the women, I could see
the faces near me stiff and drawn with emotion.
When the coffin was in the grave, and the thunder had rolled away
across the hills of Clare, the keen broke out again more
passionately than before.
This grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one
woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate
rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry
of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself
bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their
isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and
seas. They are usually silent, but in the presence of death all
outward show of indifference or patience is forgotten, and they
shriek with pitiable despair before the horror of the fate to which
they are all doomed.
Before they covered the coffin an old man kneeled down by the grave
and repeated a simple prayer for the dead.
There was an irony in these words of atonement and Catholic belief
spoken by voices that were still hoarse with the cries of pagan
desperation.
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