The body of a young man
who was drowned a few weeks ago came ashore this morning, and his
friends have been busy all day making a coffin in the yard of the
house where he lived.
After a while the curagh went out of sight into the mist, and I came
down to the cottage shuddering with cold and misery.
The old woman was keening by the fire.
'I have been to the house where the young man is,' she said, 'but I
couldn't go to the door with the air was coming out of it. They say
his head isn't on him at all, and indeed it isn't any wonder and he
three weeks in the sea. Isn't it great danger and sorrow is over
every one on this island?'
I asked her if the curagh would soon be coming back with the priest.
'It will not be coming soon or at all to-night,' she said. 'The wind
has gone up now, and there will come no curagh to this island for
maybe two days or three. And wasn't it a cruel thing to see the
haste was on them, and they in danger all the time to be drowned
themselves?'
Then I asked her how the woman was doing.
'She's nearly lost,' said the old woman; 'she won't be alive at all
tomorrow morning. They have no boards to make her a coffin, and
they'll want to borrow the boards that a man below has had this two
years to bury his mother, and she alive still. I heard them saying
there are two more women with the fever, and a child that's not
three.
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