"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes”—yet in Graveyard Clay (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 in store for the dead in this unnamed graveyard where the story unfolds. Instead, every quarrel, every disagreement, and every bone of contention that plagued them in life is dragged down after them, still hotly simmering again and again. 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, all while lying in restless anticipation of word about the will of another sister in America—and the Connemara green marble cross her son promised to erect over her grave.

The story unfolds almost entirely in masterfully crafted dialogue as the newly dead arrive in the graveyard, bringing news of recent local happenings to those already confined to their coffins. Avalanches of gossip, back-biting, flirting, feuds, and scandal-mongering ensue, revealing the absurdity of human nature with unparalleled wit. This edition presents the original Irish text of Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s classic masterpiece, beautifully accompanied by new illustrations from the Inis Mór artist Seán Ó Flaithearta.