Digging

So one day a farmer—his name was Seamus Sullivan, and this was in County Mayo, not far from Knock, where, when Seamus was fifteen, the Virgin had appeared—says to the wife, "I'm off up the field, then," and he goes off in his boots in the early afternoon with the dog at his heel and a shovel in his hand.

His only idea is to be out there, as far from the house as he can go without leaving his own bit of land, digging; what he wants is the heft and smell and slide of his own earth at his command. He doesn't wonder whether a man can own something like land; he owns this field and the dirt within it, and the field goes straight down to the center of the earth. So he goes after the roots of a furze bush. It's the first edge of spring, ...