{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_10459/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_10459","id":"gutenberg_10459","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10459","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Folklore -- Ireland -- Sligo (County)","Mythology, Celtic -- Ireland -- Sligo (County)","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Poets, Irish -- 19th century -- Biography","Poets, Irish -- Homes and haunts -- Ireland -- Sligo (County)","Sligo (Ireland : County) -- Social life and customs","Tales -- Ireland -- Sligo (County)","Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939 -- Childhood and youth","Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939 -- Homes and haunts -- Ireland -- Sligo (County)"],"text":"THE CELTIC TWILIGHT\n\nby\n\nW. B. YEATS\n\n\n\n\n\n    Time drops in decay\n    Like a candle burnt out.\n    And the mountains and woods\n    Have their day, have their day;\n    But, kindly old rout\n    Of the fire-born moods,\n    You pass not away.\n\n\n\n\n    THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE\n\n\n    The host is riding from Knocknarea,\n    And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;\n    Caolte tossing his burning hair,\n    And Niamh calling, \u201cAway, come away;\n    Empty your heart of its mortal dream.\n    The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,\n    Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,\n    Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,\n    Our arms are waving, our lips are apart,\n    And if any gaze on our rushing band,\n    We come between him and the deed of his hand,\n    We come between him and the hope of his heart.\u201d\n    The host is rushing \u2019twixt night and day;\n    And where is there hope or deed as fair?\n    Caolte tossing his burning hair,\n    And Niamh calling, \u201cAway, come away.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHIS BOOK\n\n\nI\n\nI have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the\nbeautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy\nworld, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any\nof my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore\nwritten down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen,\nand, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.\nI have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those\nof the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and\nfaeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine.\nThe things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull\nthem carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can\nweave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too\nhave woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it,\nand shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.\n\nHope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has\nbuilt her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out\ntheir garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved\ndaughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.\n\n\n1893.\n\n\n\nII\n\nI have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old ones, and\nwould have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something\nof the lightness of one\u2019s dreams; one begins to take life up in both\nhands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no\ngreat loss per haps. In these new chapters, as in the old ones, I have\ninvented nothing but my comments and one or two deceitful sentences\nthat may keep some poor story-teller\u2019s commerce with the devil and his\nangels, or the like, from being known among his neighbours. I shall\npublish in a little while a big book about the commonwealth of faery,\nand shall try to make it systematical and learned enough to buy pardon\nfor this handful of dreams.\n\n\n1902.\n\nW. B. YEATS.\n\n\n\n\nA TELLER OF TALES\n\n\nMany of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a\nlittle bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin\nin the village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, \u201cthe most\ngentle\u201d--whereby he meant faery--\u201cplace in the whole of County Sligo.\u201d\nOthers hold it, however, but second to Drumcliff and Drumahair. The\nfirst time I saw him he was cooking mushrooms for himself; the next\ntime he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep. He was indeed\nalways cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes (swift as the\neyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled holes) a\nmelancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy; the visionary\nmelancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.\n\nAnd yet there was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple\nsolitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went about much\npestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever\nrecommended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of\ntelling how Collumcille cheered up his mother. \u201cHow are you to-day,\nmother?\u201d said the saint. \u201cWorse,\u201d replied the mother. \u201cMay you be worse\nto-morrow,\u201d said the saint. The next day Collumcille came again, and\nexactly the same conversation took place, but the third day the mother\nsaid, \u201cBetter, thank God.\u201d And the saint replied, \u201cMay you be better\nto-morrow.\u201d He was fond too of telling how the Judge smiles at the last\nday alike when he rewards the good and condemns the lost to unceasing\nflames. He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him\nsad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, \u201cAm I\nnot annoyed with them?\u201d I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. \u201cI\nhave seen it,\u201d he said, \u201cdown there by the water, batting the river\nwith its hands.\u201d\n\nI have copied this account of Paddy Flynn, with a few verbal\nalterations, from a note-book which I almost filled with his tales and\nsayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-book\nregretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled up.\nPaddy Flynn is dead; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle of\nwhiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so much\nliquor filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon it for\nsome days and then died. His body, worn out with old age and hard\ntimes, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a great\nteller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to empty\nheaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland and earth, to people his\nstories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample\ncircumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by\nhis like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of\nimagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the\nvehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need\nheaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less\nthan this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find\nno expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell,\npurgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts\nto the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of\nrocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey\nthe heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is\ntrue, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.\n\n\n\n\nBELIEF AND UNBELIEF\n\n\nThere are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told\nme last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts.\nHell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep\npeople good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go\n\u201ctrapsin about the earth\u201d at their own free will; \u201cbut there are\nfaeries,\u201d she added, \u201cand little leprechauns, and water-horses, and\nfallen angels.\u201d I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed\nupon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter\nwhat one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the\nmohawk Indian on his arm said to me, \u201cthey stand to reason.\u201d Even the\nofficial mind does not escape this faith.\n\nA little girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close under\nthe seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one night about\nthree years ago. There was at once great excitement in the\nneighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken her.\nA villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but\nat last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a\nbroomstick. The local constable was applied to, and he at once\ninstituted a house-to-house search, and at the same time advised the\npeople to burn all the bucalauns (ragweed) on the field she vanished\nfrom, because bucalauns are sacred to the faeries. They spent the whole\nnight burning them, the constable repeating spells the while. In the\nmorning the little girl was found, the story goes, wandering in the\nfield. She said the faeries had taken her away a great distance, riding\non a faery horse. At last she saw a big river, and the man who had\ntried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it--such are\nthe topsy-turvydoms of faery glamour--in a cockleshell. On the way her\ncompanions had mentioned the names of several people who were about to\ndie shortly in the village.\n\nPerhaps the constable was right. It is better doubtless to believe\nmuch unreason and a little truth than to deny for denial\u2019s sake truth\nand unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush candle\nto guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth to dance before us on the\nmarsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where\ndwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great\nevil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and\nwelcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself,\nwhether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the\ndhouls themselves, \u201cBe ye gone\u201d? When all is said and done, how do we\nnot know but that our own unreason may be better than another\u2019s truth?\nfor it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready\nfor the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.\nCome into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!\n\n\n\n\nMORTAL HELP\n\n\nOne hears in the old poems of men taken away to help the gods in a\nbattle, and Cuchullan won the goddess Fand for a while, by helping her\nmarried sister and her sister\u2019s husband to overthrow another nation of\nthe Land of Promise. I have been told, too, that the people of faery\ncannot even play at hurley unless they have on either side some mortal,\nwhose body, or whatever has been put in its place, as the story-teller\nwould say, is asleep at home. Without mortal help they are shadowy and\ncannot even strike the balls. One day I was walking over some marshy\nland in Galway with a friend when we found an old, hard-featured man\ndigging a ditch. My friend had heard that this man had seen a wonderful\nsight of some kind, and at last we got the story out of him. When he\nwas a boy he was working one day with about thirty men and women and\nboys. They were beyond Tuam and not far from Knock-na-gur. Presently\nthey saw, all thirty of them, and at a distance of about half-a-mile,\nsome hundred and fifty of the people of faery. There were two of them,\nhe said, in dark clothes like people of our own time, who stood about a\nhundred yards from one another, but the others wore clothes of all\ncolours, \u201cbracket\u201d or chequered, and some with red waistcoats.\n\nHe could not see what they were doing, but all might have been playing\nhurley, for \u201cthey looked as if it was that.\u201d Sometimes they would\nvanish, and then he would almost swear they came back out of the bodies\nof the two men in dark clothes. These two men were of the size of\nliving men, but the others were small. He saw them for about half-an-\nhour, and then the old man he and those about him were working for took\nup a whip and said, \u201cGet on, get on, or we will have no work done!\u201d I\nasked if he saw the faeries too, \u201cOh, yes, but he did not want work he\nwas paying wages for to be neglected.\u201d He made every body work so hard\nthat nobody saw what happened to the faeries.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nA VISIONARY\n\n\nA young man came to see me at my lodgings the other night, and began\nto talk of the making of the earth and the heavens and much else. I\nquestioned him about his life and his doings. He had written many poems\nand painted many mystical designs since we met last, but latterly had\nneither written nor painted, for his whole heart was set upon making\nhis mind strong, vigorous, and calm, and the emotional life of the\nartist was bad for him, he feared. He recited his poems readily,\nhowever. He had them all in his memory. Some indeed had never been\nwritten down. They, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the\nreeds,[FN#1] seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and\nof Celtic longing for infinite things the world has never seen.\nSuddenly it seemed to me that he was peering about him a little\neagerly. \u201cDo you see anything, X-----?\u201d I said. \u201cA shining, winged\nwoman, covered by her long hair, is standing near the doorway,\u201d he\nanswered, or some such words. \u201cIs it the influence of some living\nperson who thinks of us, and whose thoughts appear to us in that\nsymbolic form?\u201d I said; for I am well instructed in the ways of the\nvisionaries and in the fashion of their speech. \u201cNo,\u201d he replied; \u201cfor\nif it were the thoughts of a person who is alive I should feel the\nliving influence in my living body, and my heart would beat and my\nbreath would fail. It is a spirit. It is some one who is dead or who\nhas never lived.\u201d\n\n\n[FN#1]  I wrote this sentence long ago. This sadness now seems to me a\npart of all peoples who preserve the moods of the ancient peoples of\nthe world. I am not so pre-occupied with the mystery of Race as I used\nto be, but leave this sentence and other sentences like it unchanged.\nWe once believed them, and have, it may be, not grown wiser.\n\n\nI asked what he was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His\npleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to half-\nmad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and conscience-\nstricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles into his\ncare. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging, more than\none turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and sun them\nas it were in the subtle light of his mind. Sometimes visions come to\nhim as he talks with them, and he is rumoured to have told divers\npeople true matters of their past days and distant friends, and left\nthem hushed with dread of their strange teacher, who seems scarce more\nthan a boy, and is so much more subtle than the oldest among them.\n\nThe poetry he recited me was full of his nature and his visions.\nSometimes it told of other lives he believes himself to have lived in\nother centuries, sometimes of people he had talked to, revealing them\nto their own minds. I told him I would write an article upon him and\nit, and was told in turn that I might do so if I did not mention his\nname, for he wished to be always \u201cunknown, obscure, impersonal.\u201d Next\nday a bundle of his poems arrived, and with them a note in these words:\n\u201cHere are copies of verses you said you liked. I do not think I could\never write or paint any more. I prepare myself for a cycle of other\nactivities in some other life. I will make rigid my roots and branches.\nIt is not now my turn to burst into leaves and flowers.\u201d\n\nThe poems were all endeavours to capture some high, impalpable mood in\na net of obscure images. There were fine passages in all, but these\nwere often embedded in thoughts which have evidently a special value to\nhis mind, but are to other men the counters of an unknown coinage. To\nthem they seem merely so much brass or copper or tarnished silver at\nthe best. At other times the beauty of the thought was obscured by\ncareless writing as though he had suddenly doubted if writing was not a\nfoolish labour. He had frequently illustrated his verses with drawings,\nin which an unperfect anatomy did not altogether hide extreme beauty of\nfeeling. The faeries in whom he believes have given him many subjects,\nnotably Thomas of Ercildoune sitting motionless in the twilight while a\nyoung and beautiful creature leans softly out of the shadow and\nwhispers in his ear. He had delighted above all in strong effects of\ncolour: spirits who have upon their heads instead of hair the feathers\nof peacocks; a phantom reaching from a swirl of flame towards a star; a\nspirit passing with a globe of iridescent crystal-symbol of the soul-\nhalf shut within his hand. But always under this largess of colour lay\nsome tender homily addressed to man\u2019s fragile hopes. This spiritual\neagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for\nillumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone. One of these\nespecially comes to mind. A winter or two ago he spent much of the\nnight walking up and down upon the mountain talking to an old peasant\nwho, dumb to most men, poured out his cares for him. Both were unhappy:\nX----- because he had then first decided that art and poetry were not\nfor him, and the old peasant because his life was ebbing out with no\nachievement remaining and no hope left him. Both how Celtic! how full\nof striving after a something never to be completely expressed in word\nor deed. The peasant was wandering in his mind with prolonged sorrow.\nOnce he burst out with \u201cGod possesses the heavens--God possesses the\nheavens--but He covets the world\u201d; and once he lamented that his old\nneighbours were gone, and that all had forgotten him: they used to draw\na chair to the fire for him in every cabin, and now they said, \u201cWho is\nthat old fellow there?\u201d \u201cThe fret [Irish for doom] is over me,\u201d he\nrepeated, and then went on to talk once more of God and heaven. More\nthan once also he said, waving his arm towards the mountain, \u201cOnly\nmyself knows what happened under the thorn-tree forty years ago\u201d; and\nas he said it the tears upon his face glistened in the moonlight.\n\nThis old man always rises before me when I think of X-----. Both seek\n--one in wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle\nallegoric poetry-to express a something that lies beyond the range of\nexpression; and both, if X----- will forgive me, have within them the\nvast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic\nheart. The peasant visionaries that are, the landlord duelists that\nwere, and the whole hurly-burly of legends--Cuchulain fighting the sea\nfor two days until the waves pass over him and he dies, Caolte storming\nthe palace of the gods, Oisin seeking in vain for three hundred years\nto appease his insatiable heart with all the pleasures of faeryland,\nthese two mystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the\ncentral dreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and\nthis mind that finds them so interesting--all are a portion of that\ngreat Celtic phantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered, nor\nany angel revealed.\n\n\n\n\nVILLAGE GHOSTS\n\n\nIn the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our\nminority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities;\npeople are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce.\nEvery man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge.\nWhen you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your\nfavourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it.\nWe listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all\nthe affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on\nunchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all\nour talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb\nmultitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering\nthrough the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers\nwrote across unexplored regions, \u201cHere are lions.\u201d Across the villages\nof fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us,\nwe can write but one line that is certain, \u201cHere are ghosts.\u201d\n\nMy ghosts inhabit the village of H-----, in Leinster. History has in\nno manner been burdened by this ancient village, with its crooked\nlanes, its old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green\nbackground of small fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry\nfishing-luggers. In the annals of entomology it is well known. For a\nsmall bay lies westward a little, where he who watches night after\nnight may see a certain rare moth fluttering along the edge of the\ntide, just at the end of evening or the beginning of dawn. A hundred\nyears ago it was carried here from Italy by smugglers in a cargo of\nsilks and laces. If the moth-hunter would throw down his net, and go\nhunting for ghost tales or tales of the faeries and such-like children\nof Lillith, he would have need for far less patience.\n\nTo approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy.\nA man was once heard complaining, \u201cBy the cross of Jesus! how shall I\ngo? If I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on\nme. If I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the\nheadless one and another on the quays, and a new one under the old\nchurchyard wall. If I go right round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is\nappearing at Hillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital\nLane.\u201d\n\nI never heard which spirit he braved, but feel sure it was not the one\nin the Hospital Lane. In cholera times a shed had been there set up to\nreceive patients. When the need had gone by, it was pulled down, but\never since the ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and\ndemons and faeries. There is a farmer at H-----, Paddy B----- by name-a\nman of great strength, and a teetotaller. His wife and sister-in-law,\nmusing on his great strength, often wonder what he would do if he\ndrank. One night when passing through the Hospital Lane, he saw what he\nsupposed at first to be a tame rabbit; after a little he found that it\nwas a white cat. When he came near, the creature slowly began to swell\nlarger and larger, and as it grew he felt his own strength ebbing away,\nas though it were sucked out of him. He turned and ran.\n\nBy the Hospital Lane goes the \u201cFaeries Path.\u201d Every evening they\ntravel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea\nend of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived\nthere, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband\nwas asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he\nhad been sitting there for a while, the woman said, \u201cIn the name of\nGod, who are you?\u201d He got up and went out, saying, \u201cNever leave the\ndoor open at this hour, or evil may come to you.\u201d She woke her husband\nand told him. \u201cOne of the good people has been with us,\u201d said he.\n\nProbably the man braved Mrs. Stewart at Hillside Gate. When she lived\nshe was the wife of the Protestant clergyman. \u201cHer ghost was never\nknown to harm any one,\u201d say the village people; \u201cit is only doing a\npenance upon the earth.\u201d Not far from Hillside Gate, where she haunted,\nappeared for a short time a much more remarkable spirit. Its haunt was\nthe bogeen, a green lane leading from the western end of the village. I\nquote its history at length: a typical village tragedy. In a cottage at\nthe village end of the bogeen lived a house-painter, Jim Montgomery,\nand his wife. They had several children. He was a little dandy, and\ncame of a higher class than his neighbours. His wife was a very big\nwoman. Her husband, who had been expelled from the village choir for\ndrink, gave her a beating one day. Her sister heard of it, and came and\ntook down one of the window shutters--Montgomery was neat about\neverything, and had shutters on the outside of every window--and beat\nhim with it, being big and strong like her sister. He threatened to\nprosecute her; she answered that she would break every bone in his body\nif he did. She never spoke to her sister again, because she had allowed\nherself to be beaten by so small a man. Jim Montgomery grew worse and\nworse: his wife soon began to have not enough to eat. She told no one,\nfor she was very proud. Often, too, she would have no fire on a cold\nnight. If any neighbours came in she would say she had let the fire out\nbecause she was just going to bed. The people about often heard her\nhusband beating her, but she never told any one. She got very thin. At\nlast one Saturday there was no food in the house for herself and the\nchildren. She could bear it no longer, and went to the priest and asked\nhim for some money. He gave her thirty shillings. Her husband met her,\nand took the money, and beat her. On the following Monday she got very\nW, and sent for a Mrs. Kelly. Mrs. Kelly, as soon as she saw her, said,\n\u201cMy woman, you are dying,\u201d and sent for the priest and the doctor. She\ndied in an hour. After her death, as Montgomery neglected the children,\nthe landlord had them taken to the workhouse. A few nights after they\nhad gone, Mrs. Kelly was going home through the bogeen when the ghost\nof Mrs. Montgomery appeared and followed her. It did not leave her\nuntil she reached her own house. She told the priest, Father R, a noted\nantiquarian, and could not get him to believe her. A few nights\nafterwards Mrs. Kelly again met the spirit in the same place. She was\nin too great terror to go the whole way, but stopped at a neighbour\u2019s\ncottage midway, and asked them to let her in. They answered they were\ngoing to bed. She cried out, \u201cIn the name of God let me in, or I will\nbreak open the door.\u201d They opened, and so she escaped from the ghost.\nNext day she told the priest again. This time he believed, and said it\nwould follow her until she spoke to it.\n\nShe met the spirit a third time in the bogeen. She asked what kept it\nfrom its rest. The spirit said that its children must be taken from the\nworkhouse, for none of its relations were ever there before, and that\nthree masses were to be said for the repose of its soul. \u201cIf my husband\ndoes not believe you,\u201d she said, \u201cshow him that,\u201d and touched Mrs.\nKelly\u2019s wrist with three fingers. The places where they touched swelled\nup and blackened. She then vanished. For a time Montgomery would not\nbelieve that his wife had appeared: \u201cshe would not show herself to Mrs.\nKelly,\u201d he said--\u201cshe with respectable people to appear to.\u201d He was\nconvinced by the three marks, and the children were taken from the\nworkhouse. The priest said the masses, and the shade must have been at\nrest, for it has not since appeared. Some time afterwards Jim\nMontgomery died in the workhouse, having come to great poverty through\ndrink.\n\nI know some who believe they have seen the headless ghost upon the\nquay, and one who, when he passes the old cemetery wall at night, sees\na woman with white borders to her cap[FN#2] creep out and follow him.\nThe apparition only leaves him at his own door. The villagers imagine\nthat she follows him to avenge some wrong. \u201cI will haunt you when I\ndie\u201d is a favourite threat. His wife was once half-scared to death by\nwhat she considers a demon in the shape of a dog.\n\n\n[FN#2]  I wonder why she had white borders to her cap. The old Mayo\nwoman, who has told me so many tales, has told me that her brother-in-\nlaw saw \u201ca woman with white borders to her cap going around the stacks\nin a field, and soon after he got a hurt, and he died in six months.\u201d\n\n\nThese are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their\ntribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.\n\nOne night a Mrs. Nolan was watching by her dying child in Fluddy\u2019s\nLane. Suddenly there was a sound of knocking heard at the door. She did\nnot open, fearing it was some unhuman thing that knocked. The knocking\nceased. After a little the front-door and then the back-door were burst\nopen, and closed again. Her husband went to see what was wrong. He\nfound both doors bolted. The child died. The doors were again opened\nand closed as before. Then Mrs. Nolan remembered that she had forgotten\nto leave window or door open, as the custom is, for the departure of\nthe soul. These strange openings and closings and knockings were\nwarnings and reminders from the spirits who attend the dying.\n\nThe house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is\nput up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live\nwith it. I remember two children who slept with their mother and\nsisters and brothers in one small room. In the room was also a ghost.\nThey sold herrings in the Dublin streets, and did not mind the ghost\nmuch, because they knew they would always sell their fish easily while\nthey slept in the \u201cha\u2019nted\u201d room.\n\nI have some acquaintance among the ghost-seers of western villages.\nThe Connaught tales are very different from those of Leinster. These\nH----- spirits have a gloomy, matter-of-fact way with them. They come to\nannounce a death, to fulfil some obligation, to revenge a wrong, to pay\ntheir bills even--as did a fisherman\u2019s daughter the other day--and then\nhasten to their rest. All things they do decently and in order. It is\ndemons, and not ghosts, that transform themselves into white cats or\nblack dogs. The people who tell the tales are poor, serious-minded\nfishing people, who find in the doings of the ghosts the fascination of\nfear. In the western tales is a whimsical grace, a curious extravagance.\nThe people who recount them live in the most wild and beautiful scenery,\nunder a sky ever loaded and fantastic with flying clouds. They are\nfarmers and labourers, who do a little fishing now and then. They do not\nfear the spirits too much to feel an artistic and humorous pleasure in\ntheir doings. The ghosts themselves share in their quaint hilarity. In\none western town, on whose deserted wharf the grass grows, these spirits\nhave so much vigour that, when a misbeliever ventured to sleep in a\nhaunted house, I have been told they flung him through the window, and\nhis bed after him. In the surrounding villages the creatures use the\nmost strange disguises. A dead old gentleman robs the cabbages of his\nown garden in the shape of a large rabbit. A wicked sea-captain stayed\nfor years inside the plaster of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe,\nmaking the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was\nbroken down; then out of the solid plaster the snipe rushed away whistling.\n\n\n\n\n\u201cDUST HATH CLOSED HELEN\u2019S EYE\u201d\n\n\nI\n\nI have been lately to a little group of houses, not many enough to be\ncalled a village, in the barony of Kiltartan in County Galway, whose\nname, Ballylee, is known through all the west of Ireland. There is the\nold square castle, Ballylee, inhabited by a farmer and his wife, and a\ncottage where their daughter and their son-in-law live, and a little\nmill with an old miller, and old ash-trees throwing green shadows upon\na little river and great stepping-stones. I went there two or three\ntimes last year to talk to the miller about Biddy Early, a wise woman\nthat lived in Clare some years ago, and about her saying, \u201cThere is a\ncure for all evil between the two mill-wheels of Ballylee,\u201d and to find\nout from him or another whether she meant the moss between the running\nwaters or some other herb. I have been there this summer, and I shall\nbe there again before it is autumn, because Mary Hynes, a beautiful\nwoman whose name is still a wonder by turf fires, died there sixty\nyears ago; for our feet would linger where beauty has lived its life of\nsorrow to make us understand that it is not of the world. An old man\nbrought me a little way from the mill and the castle, and down a long,\nnarrow boreen that was nearly lost in brambles and sloe bushes, and he\nsaid, \u201cThat is the little old foundation of the house, but the most of\nit is taken for building walls, and the goats have ate those bushes\nthat are growing over it till they\u2019ve got cranky, and they won\u2019t grow\nany more. They say she was the handsomest girl in Ireland, her skin was\nlike dribbled snow\u201d--he meant driven snow, perhaps,--\u201cand she had\nblushes in her cheeks. She had five handsome brothers, but all are gone\nnow!\u201d I talked to him about a poem in Irish, Raftery, a famous poet,\nmade about her, and how it said, \u201cthere is a strong cellar in\nBallylee.\u201d He said the strong cellar was the great hole where the river\nsank underground, and he brought me to a deep pool, where an otter\nhurried away under a grey boulder, and told me that many fish came up\nout of the dark water at early morning \u201cto taste the fresh water coming\ndown from the hills.\u201d\n\nI first heard of the poem from an old woman who fives about two miles\nfurther up the river, and who remembers Raftery and Mary Hynes. She\nsays, \u201cI never saw anybody so handsome as she was, and I never will\ntill I die,\u201d and that he was nearly blind, and had \u201cno way of living\nbut to go round and to mark some house to go to, and then all the\nneighbours would gather to hear. If you treated him well he\u2019d praise\nyou, but if you did not, he\u2019d fault you in Irish. He was the greatest\npoet in Ireland, and he\u2019d make a song about that bush if he chanced to\nstand under it. There was a bush he stood under from the rain, and he\nmade verses praising it, and then when the water came through he made\nverses dispraising it.\u201d She sang the poem to a friend and to myself in\nIrish, and every word was audible and expressive, as the words in a\nsong were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the\ngarment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing of\ntheir energies. The poem is not as natural as the best Irish poetry of\nthe last century, for the thoughts are arranged in a too obviously\ntraditional form, so the old poor half-blind man who made it has to\nspeak as if he were a rich farmer offering the best of everything to\nthe woman he loves, but it has naive and tender phrases. The friend\nthat was with me has made some of the translation, but some of it has\nbeen made by the country people themselves. I think it has more of the\nsimplicity of the Irish verses than one finds in most translations.\n\n\n    Going to Mass by the will of God,\n    The day came wet and the wind rose;\n    I met Mary Hynes at the cross of Kiltartan,\n    And I fell in love with her then and there.\n\n    I spoke to her kind and mannerly,\n    As by report was her own way;\n    And she said, \u201cRaftery, my mind is easy,\n    You may come to-day to Ballylee.\u201d\n\n    When I heard her offer I did not linger,\n    When her talk went to my heart my heart rose.\n    We had only to go across the three fields,\n    We had daylight with us to Ballylee.\n\n    The table was laid with glasses and a quart measure,\n    She had fair hair, and she sitting beside me;\n    And she said, \u201cDrink, Raftery, and a hundred welcomes,\n    There is a strong cellar in Ballylee.\u201d\n\n    O star of light and O sun in harvest,\n    O amber hair, O my share of the world,\n    Will you come with me upon Sunday\n    Till we agree together before all the people?\n\n    I would not grudge you a song every Sunday evening,\n    Punch on the table, or wine if you would drink it,\n    But, O King of Glory, dry the roads before me,\n    Till I find the way to Ballylee.\n\n    There is sweet air on the side of the hill\n    When you are looking down upon Ballylee;\n    When you are walking in the valley picking nuts and blackberries,\n    There is music of the birds in it and music of the Sidhe.\n\n    What is the worth of greatness till you have the light\n    Of the flower of the branch that is by your side?\n    There is no god to deny it or to try and hide it,\n    She is the sun in the heavens who wounded my heart.\n\n    There was no part of Ireland I did not travel,\n    From the rivers to the tops of the mountains,\n    To the edge of Lough Greine whose mouth is hidden,\n    And I saw no beauty but was behind hers.\n\n    Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too;\n    Her face was like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet.\n    She is the pride, and I give her the branch,\n    She is the shining flower of Ballylee.\n\n    It is Mary Hynes, this calm and easy woman,\n    Has beauty in her mind and in her face.\n    If a hundred clerks were gathered together,\n    They could not write down a half of her ways.\n\n\nAn old weaver, whose son is supposed to go away among the Sidhe (the\nfaeries) at night, says, \u201cMary Hynes was the most beautiful thing ever\nmade. My mother used to tell me about her, for she\u2019d be at every\nhurling, and wherever she was she was dressed in white. As many as\neleven men asked her in marriage in one day, but she wouldn\u2019t have any\nof them. There was a lot of men up beyond Kilbecanty one night, sitting\ntogether drinking, and talking of her, and one of them got up and set\nout to go to Ballylee and see her; but Cloon Bog was open then, and\nwhen he came to it he fell into the water, and they found him dead\nthere in the morning. She died of the fever that was before the\nfamine.\u201d Another old man says he was only a child when he saw her, but\nhe remembered that \u201cthe strongest man that was among us, one John\nMadden, got his death of the head of her, cold he got crossing rivers\nin the night-time to get to Ballylee.\u201d This is perhaps the man the\nother remembered, for tradition gives the one thing many shapes. There\nis an old woman who remembers her, at Derrybrien among the Echtge\nhills, a vast desolate place, which has changed little since the old\npoem said, \u201cthe stag upon the cold summit of Echtge hears the cry of\nthe wolves,\u201d but still mindful of many poems and of the dignity of\nancient speech. She says, \u201cThe sun and the moon never shone on anybody\nso handsome, and her skin was so white that it looked blue, and she had\ntwo little blushes on her cheeks.\u201d And an old wrinkled woman who lives\nclose by Ballylee, and has told me many tales of the Sidhe, says, \u201cI\noften saw Mary Hynes, she was handsome indeed. She had two bunches of\ncurls beside her cheeks, and they were the colour of silver. I saw Mary\nMolloy that was drowned in the river beyond, and Mary Guthrie that was\nin Ardrahan, but she took the sway of them both, a very comely\ncreature. I was at her wake too--she had seen too much of the world.\nShe was a kind creature. One day I was coming home through that field\nbeyond, and I was tired, and who should come out but the Poisin Glegeal\n(the shining flower), and she gave me a glass of new milk.\u201d This old\nwoman meant no more than some beautiful bright colour by the colour of\nsilver, for though I knew an old man--he is dead now--who thought she\nmight know \u201cthe cure for all the evils in the world,\u201d that the Sidhe\nknew, she has seen too little gold to know its colour. But a man by the\nshore at Kinvara, who is too young to remember Mary Hynes, says,\n\u201cEverybody says there is no one at all to be seen now so handsome; it\nis said she had beautiful hair, the colour of gold. She was poor, but\nher clothes every day were the same as Sunday, she had such neatness.\nAnd if she went to any kind of a meeting, they would all be killing one\nanother for a sight of her, and there was a great many in love with\nher, but she died young. It is said that no one that has a song made\nabout them will ever live long.\u201d\n\nThose who are much admired are, it is held, taken by the Sidhe, who\ncan use ungoverned feeling for their own ends, so that a father, as an\nold herb doctor told me once, may give his child into their hands, or a\nhusband his wife. The admired and desired are only safe if one says\n\u201cGod bless them\u201d when one\u2019s eyes are upon them. The old woman that sang\nthe song thinks, too, that Mary Hynes was \u201ctaken,\u201d as the phrase is,\n\u201cfor they have taken many that are not handsome, and why would they not\ntake her? And people came from all parts to look at her, and maybe\nthere were some that did not say \u2018God bless her.\u2019\u201d An old man who lives\nby the sea at Duras has as little doubt that she was taken, \u201cfor there\nare some living yet can remember her coming to the pattern[FN#3] there\nbeyond, and she was said to be the handsomest girl in Ireland.\u201d She\ndied young because the gods loved her, for the Sidhe are the gods, and\nit may be that the old saying, which we forget to understand literally,\nmeant her manner of death in old times. These poor countrymen and\ncountrywomen in their beliefs, and in their emotions, are many years\nnearer to that old Greek world, that set beauty beside the fountain of\nthings, than are our men of learning. She \u201chad seen too much of the\nworld\u201d; but these old men and women, when they tell of her, blame\nanother and not her, and though they can be hard, they grow gentle as\nthe old men of Troy grew gentle when Helen passed by on the walls.\n\n\n[FN#3]  A \u201cpattern,\u201d or \u201cpatron,\u201d is a festival in honour of a saint.\n\n\nThe poet who helped her to so much fame has himself a great fame\nthroughout the west of Ireland. Some think that Raftery was half blind,\nand say, \u201cI saw Raftery, a dark man, but he had sight enough to see\nher,\u201d or the like, but some think he was wholly blind, as he may have\nbeen at the end of his life. Fable makes all things perfect in their\nkind, and her blind people must never look on the world and the sun. I\nasked a man I met one day, when I was looking for a pool na mna Sidhe\nwhere women of faery have been seen, bow Raftery could have admired\nMary Hynes so much f he had been altogether blind? He said, \u201cI think\nRaftery was altogether blind, but those that are blind have a way of\nseeing things, and have the power to know more, and to feel more, and\nto do more, and to guess more than those that have their sight, and a\ncertain wit and a certain wisdom is given to them.\u201d Everybody, indeed,\nwill tell you that he was very wise, for was he not only blind but a\npoet? The weaver whose words about Mary Hynes I have already given,\nsays, \u201cHis poetry was the gift of the Almighty, for there are three\nthings that are the gift of the Almighty--poetry and dancing and\nprinciples. That is why in the old times an ignorant man coming down\nfrom the hillside would be better behaved and have better learning than\na man with education you\u2019d meet now, for they got it from God\u201d; and a\nman at Coole says, \u201cWhen he put his finger to one part of his head,\neverything would come to him as if it was written in a book\u201d; and an\nold pensioner at Kiltartan says, \u201cHe was standing under a bush one\ntime, and he talked to it, and it answered him back in Irish. Some say\nit was the bush that spoke, but it must have been an enchanted voice in\nit, and it gave him the knowledge of all the things of the world. The\nbush withered up afterwards, and it is to be seen on the roadside now\nbetween this and Rahasine.\u201d There is a poem of his about a bush, which\nI have never seen, and it may have come out of the cauldron of fable in\nthis shape.\n\nA friend of mine met a man once who had been with him when he died,\nbut the people say that he died alone, and one Maurteen Gillane told\nDr. Hyde that all night long a light was seen streaming up to heaven\nfrom the roof of the house where he lay, and \u201cthat was the angels who\nwere with him\u201d; and all night long there was a great light in the\nhovel, \u201cand that was the angels who were waking him. They gave that\nhonour to him because he was so good a poet, and sang such religious\nsongs.\u201d It may be that in a few years Fable, who changes mortalities to\nimmortalities in her cauldron, will have changed Mary Hynes and Raftery\nto perfect symbols of the sorrow of beauty and of the magnificence and\npenury of dreams.\n\n\n1900.\n\n\n\nII\n\nWhen I was in a northern town awhile ago, I had a long talk with a man\nwho had lived in a neighbouring country district when he was a boy. He\ntold me that when a very beautiful girl was born in a family that had\nnot been noted for good looks, her beauty was thought to have come from\nthe Sidhe, and to bring misfortune with it. He went over the names of\nseveral beautiful girls that he had known, and said that beauty had\nnever brought happiness to anybody. It was a thing, he said, to be\nproud of and afraid of. I wish I had written out his words at the time,\nfor they were more picturesque than my memory of them.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nA KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP\n\n\nAway to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope\u2019s mountain lives \u201ca strong\nfarmer,\u201d a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic\ndays. Proud of his descent from one of the most fighting clans of the\nMiddle Ages, he is a man of force alike in his words and in his deeds.\nThere is but one man that swears like him, and this man lives far away\nupon the mountain. \u201cFather in Heaven, what have I done to deserve\nthis?\u201d he says when he has lost his pipe; and no man but he who lives\non the mountain can rival his language on a fair day over a bargain. He\nis passionate and abrupt in his movements, and when angry tosses his\nwhite beard about with his left hand.\n\nOne day I was dining with him when the servant-maid announced a\ncertain Mr. O\u2019Donnell. A sudden silence fell upon the old man and upon\nhis two daughters. At last the eldest daughter said somewhat severely\nto her father, \u201cGo and ask him to come in and dine.\u201d The old man went\nout, and then came in looking greatly relieved, and said, \u201cHe says he\nwill not dine with us.\u201d \u201cGo out,\u201d said the daughter, \u201cand ask him into\nthe back parlour, and give him some whiskey.\u201d Her father, who had just\nfinished his dinner, obeyed sullenly, and I heard the door of the back\nparlour--a little room where the daughters sat and sewed during the\nevening--shut to behind the men. The daughter then turned to me and\nsaid, \u201cMr. O\u2019Donnell is the tax-gatherer, and last year he raised our\ntaxes, and my father was very angry, and when he came, brought him into\nthe dairy, and sent the dairy-woman away on a message, and then swore\nat him a great deal. \u2018I will teach you, sir,\u2019 O\u2019Donnell replied, \u2018that\nthe law can protect its officers\u2019; but my father reminded him that he\nhad no witness. At last my father got tired, and sorry too, and said he\nwould show him a short way home. When they were half-way to the main\nroad they came on a man of my father\u2019s who was ploughing, and this\nsomehow brought back remembrance of the wrong. He sent the man away on\na message, and began to swear at the tax-gatherer again. When I heard\nof it I was disgusted that he should have made such a fuss over a\nmiserable creature like O\u2019Donnell; and when I heard a few weeks ago\nthat O\u2019Donnell\u2019s only son had died and left him heart-broken, I\nresolved to make my father be kind to him next time he came.\u201d\n\nShe then went out to see a neighbour, and I sauntered towards the back\nparlour. When I came to the door I heard angry voices inside. The two\nmen were evidently getting on to the tax again, for I could hear them\nbandying figures to and fro. I opened the door; at sight of my face the\nfarmer was reminded of his peaceful intentions, and asked me if I knew\nwhere the whiskey was. I had seen him put it into the cupboard, and was\nable therefore to find it and get it out, looking at the thin, grief-\nstruck face of the tax-gatherer. He was rather older than my friend,\nand very much more feeble and worn, and of a very different type. He\nwas not like him, a robust, successful man, but rather one of those\nwhose feet find no resting-place upon the earth. I recognized one of\nthe children of reverie, and said, \u201cYou are doubtless of the stock of\nthe old O\u2019Donnells. I know well the hole in the river where their\ntreasure lies buried under the guard of a serpent with many heads.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sur,\u201d he replied, \u201cI am the last of a line of princes.\u201d\n\nWe then fell to talking of many commonplace things, and my friend did\nnot once toss up his beard, but was very friendly. At last the gaunt\nold tax-gatherer got up to go, and my friend said, \u201cI hope we will have\na glass together next year.\u201d \u201cNo, no,\u201d was the answer, \u201cI shall be dead\nnext year.\u201d \u201cI too have lost sons,\u201d said the other in quite a gentle\nvoice. \u201cBut your sons were not like my son.\u201d And then the two men\nparted, with an angry flush and bitter hearts, and had I not cast\nbetween them some common words or other, might not have parted, but\nhave fallen rather into an angry discussion of the value of their dead\nsons. If I had not pity for all the children of reverie I should have\nlet them fight it out, and would now have many a wonderful oath to\nrecord.\n\nThe knight of the sheep would have had the victory, for no soul that\nwears this garment of blood and clay can surpass him. He was but once\nbeaten; and this is his tale of how it was. He and some farm hands were\nplaying at cards in a small cabin that stood against the end of a big\nbarn. A wicked woman had once lived in this cabin. Suddenly one of the\nplayers threw down an ace and began to swear without any cause. His\nswearing was so dreadful that the others stood up, and my friend said,\n\u201cAll is not right here; there is a spirit in him.\u201d They ran to the door\nthat led into the barn to get away as quickly as possible. The wooden\nbolt would not move, so the knight of the sheep took a saw which stood\nagainst the wall near at hand, and sawed through the bolt, and at once\nthe door flew open with a bang, as though some one had been holding it,\nand they fled through.\n\n\n\n\nAN ENDURING HEART\n\n\nOne day a friend of mine was making a sketch of my Knight of the\nSheep. The old man\u2019s daughter was sitting by, and, when the\nconversation drifted to love and lovemaking, she said, \u201cOh, father,\ntell him about your love affair.\u201d The old man took his pipe out of his\nmouth, and said, \u201cNobody ever marries the woman he loves,\u201d and then,\nwith a chuckle, \u201cThere were fifteen of them I liked better than the\nwoman I married,\u201d and he repeated many women\u2019s names. He went on to\ntell how when he was a lad he had worked for his grandfather, his\nmother\u2019s father, and was called (my friend has forgotten why) by his\ngrandfather\u2019s name, which we will say was Doran. He had a great friend,\nwhom I shall call John Byrne; and one day he and his friend went to\nQueenstown to await an emigrant ship, that was to take John Byrne to\nAmerica. When they were walking along the quay, they saw a girl sitting\non a seat, crying miserably, and two men standing up in front of her\nquarrelling with one another. Doran said, \u201cI think I know what is\nwrong. That man will be her brother, and that man will be her lover,\nand the brother is sending her to America to get her away from the\nlover. How she is crying! but I think I could console her myself.\u201d\nPresently the lover and brother went away, and Doran began to walk up\nand down before her, saying, \u201cMild weather, Miss,\u201d or the like. She\nanswered him in a little while, and the three began to talk together.\nThe emigrant ship did not arrive for some days; and the three drove\nabout on outside cars very innocently and happily, seeing everything\nthat was to be seen. When at last the ship came, and Doran had to break\nit to her that he was not going to America, she cried more after him\nthan after the first lover. Doran whispered to Byrne as he went aboard\nship, \u201cNow, Byrne, I don\u2019t grudge her to you, but don\u2019t marry young.\u201d\n\nWhen the story got to this, the farmer\u2019s daughter joined In mockingly\nwith, \u201cI suppose you said that for Byrne\u2019s good, father.\u201d But the old\nman insisted that he had said it for Byrne\u2019s good; and went on to tell\nhow, when he got a letter telling of Byrne\u2019s engagement to the girl, he\nwrote him the same advice. Years passed by, and he heard nothing; and\nthough he was now married, he could not keep from wondering what she\nwas doing. At last he went to America to find out, and though he asked\nmany people for tidings, he could get none. More years went by, and his\nwife was dead, and he well on in years, and a rich farmer with not a\nfew great matters on his hands. He found an excuse in some vague\nbusiness to go out to America again, and to begin his search again. One\nday he fell into talk with an Irishman in a railway carriage, and asked\nhim, as his way was, about emigrants from this place and that, and at\nlast, \u201cDid you ever hear of the miller\u2019s daughter from Innis Rath?\u201d and\nhe named the woman he was looking for. \u201cOh yes,\u201d said the other, \u201cshe\nis married to a friend of mine, John MacEwing. She lives at such-and-\nsuch a street in Chicago.\u201d Doran went to Chicago and knocked at her\ndoor. She opened the door herself, and was \u201cnot a bit changed.\u201d He gave\nher his real name, which he had taken again after his grandfather\u2019s\ndeath, and the name of the man he had met in the train. She did not\nrecognize him, but asked him to stay to dinner, saying that her husband\nwould be glad to meet anybody who knew that old friend of his. They\ntalked of many things, but for all their talk, I do not know why, and\nperhaps he did not know why, he never told her who he was. At dinner he\nasked her about Byrne, and she put her head down on the table and began\nto cry, and she cried so he was afraid her husband might be angry. He\nwas afraid to ask what had happened to Byrne, and left soon after,\nnever to see her again.\n\nWhen the old man had finished the story, he said, \u201cTell that to Mr.\nYeats, he will make a poem about it, perhaps.\u201d But the daughter said,\n\u201cOh no, father. Nobody could make a poem about a woman like that.\u201d\nAlas! I have never made the poem, perhaps because my own heart, which\nhas loved Helen and all the lovely and fickle women of the world, would\nbe too sore. There are things it is well not to ponder over too much,\nthings that bare words are the best suited for.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SORCERERS\n\n\nIn Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers,[FN#4] and come\nacross any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of\nthe people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy\nand caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were\nthey to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are\nof opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his\nrapacities are there too, no less than the bright beings who store\ntheir honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit\nhither and thither, and that they encompass him with a passionate and\nmelancholy multitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or\nthrough accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their\nhidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full\nof a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth,\nmoving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about\nus, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we\ndo not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic\nhave been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few\npersons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few\nI have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those\namong whom they live. They are mainly small clerks and the like, and\nmeet for the purpose of their art in a room hung with black hangings.\nThey would not admit me into this room, but finding me not altogether\nignorant of the arcane science, showed gladly elsewhere what they would\ndo. \u201cCome to us,\u201d said their leader, a clerk in a large flour-mill,\n\u201cand we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in\nshapes as solid and heavy as our own.\u201d\n\n\n[FN#4]  I know better now. We have the dark powers much more than I\nthought, but not as much as the Scottish, and yet I think the\nimagination of the people does dwell chiefly upon the fantastic and\ncapricious.\n\n\nI had been talking of the power of communicating in states of trance\nwith the angelical and faery beings,--the children of the day and of\nthe twilight--and he had been contending that we should only believe\nin what we can see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of\nmind. \u201cYes,\u201d I said, \u201cI will come to you,\u201d or some such words; \u201cbut I\nwill not permit myself to become entranced, and will therefore know\nwhether these shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched and\nfelt by the ordinary senses than are those I talk of.\u201d I was not\ndenying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of\nmortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as he spoke\nof, seemed unlikely to do more than cast the mind into trance, and\nthereby bring it into the presence of the powers of day, twilight, and\ndarkness.\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d he said, \u201cwe have seen them move the furniture hither and\nthither, and they go at our bidding, and help or harm people who know\nnothing of them.\u201d I am not giving the exact words, but as accurately as\nI can the substance of our talk.\n\nOn the night arranged I turned up about eight, and found the leader\nsitting alone in almost total darkness in a small back room. He was\ndressed in a black gown, like an inquisitor\u2019s dress in an old drawing,\nthat left nothing of him visible: except his eyes, which peered out\nthrough two small round holes. Upon the table in front of him was a\nbrass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with painted\nsymbols, two crossed daggers, and certain implements shaped like quern\nstones, which were used to control the elemental powers in some fashion\nI did not discover. I also put on a black gown, and remember that it\ndid not fit perfectly, and that it interfered with my movements\nconsiderably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a basket, and\ncut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood fall into the\nlarge bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation, which was\ncertainly not English, and had a deep guttural sound. Before he had\nfinished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five, came\nin, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my left\nband. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began to find\nhis eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his hood,\naffecting me in a curious way. I struggled hard against their\ninfluence, and my head began to ache. The invocation continued, and\nnothing happened for the first few minutes. Then the invoker got up and\nextinguished the light in the hall, so that no glimmer might come\nthrough the slit under the door. There was now no light except from the\nherbs on the brass dish, and no sound except from the deep guttural\nmurmur of the invocation.\n\nPresently the man at my left swayed himself about, and cried out, \u201cO\ngod! O god!\u201d I asked him what ailed him, but he did not know he had\nspoken. A moment after he said he could see a great serpent moving\nabout the room, and became considerably excited. I saw nothing with any\ndefinite shape, but thought that black clouds were forming about me. I\nfelt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and\nthat the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony\nwith itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the\nblack clouds, and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again.\nThe two sorcerers now began to see black and white columns moving about\nthe room, and finally a man in a monk\u2019s habit, and they became greatly\npuzzled because I did not see these things also, for to them they were\nas solid as the table before them. The invoker appeared to be gradually\nincreasing in power, and I began to feel as if a tide of darkness was\npouring from him and concentrating itself about me; and now too I\nnoticed that the man on my left hand had passed into a death-like\ntrance. With a last great effort I drove off the black clouds; but\nfeeling them to be the only shapes I should see without passing into a\ntrance, and having no great love for them, I asked for lights, and\nafter the needful exorcism returned to the ordinary world.\n\nI said to the more powerful of the two sorcerers--\u201cWhat would happen\nif one of your spirits had overpowered me?\u201d \u201cYou would go out of this\nroom,\u201d he answered, \u201cwith his character added to your own.\u201d I asked\nabout the origin of his sorcery, but got little of importance, except\nthat he had learned it from his father. He would not tell me more, for\nhe had, it appeared, taken a vow of secrecy.\n\nFor some days I could not get over the feeling of having a number of\ndeformed and grotesque figures lingering about me. The Bright Powers\nare always beautiful and desirable, and the Dim Powers are now\nbeautiful, now quaintly grotesque, but the Dark Powers express their\nunbalanced natures in shapes of ugliness and horror.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DEVIL\n\n\nMy old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come\ndown the road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would\nnot say what it was, I knew quite well. Another day she told me of two\nfriends of hers who had been made love to by one whom they believed to\nbe the devil. One of them was standing by the road-side when he came by\non horseback, and asked her to mount up behind him, and go riding. When\nshe would not he vanished. The other was out on the road late at night\nwaiting for her young man, when something came flapping and rolling\nalong the road up to her feet. It had the likeness of a newspaper, and\npresently it flapped up into her face, and she knew by the size of it\nthat it was the Irish Times. All of a sudden it changed into a young\nman, who asked her to go walking with him. She would not, and he\nvanished.\n\nI know of an old man too, on the slopes of Ben Bulben, who found the\ndevil ringing a bell under his bed, and he went off and stole the\nchapel bell and rang him out. It may be that this, like the others, was\nnot the devil at all, but some poor wood spirit whose cloven feet had\ngot him into trouble.\n\n\n\n\nHAPPY AND UNHAPPY THEOLOGIANS\n\n\nI\n\nA mayo woman once said to me, \u201cI knew a servant girl who hung herself\nfor the love of God. She was lonely for the priest and her\nsociety,[FN#5] and hung herself to the banisters with a scarf. She was\nno sooner dead than she became white as a lily, and if it had been\nmurder or suicide she would have become black as black. They gave her\nChristian burial, and the priest said she was no sooner dead than she\nwas with the Lord. So nothing matters that you do for the love of God.\u201d\nI do not wonder at the pleasure she has in telling this story, for she\nherself loves all holy things with an ardour that brings them quickly\nto her lips. She told me once that she never hears anything described\nin a sermon that she does not afterwards see with her eyes. She has\ndescribed to me the gates of Purgatory as they showed themselves to her\neyes, but I remember nothing of the description except that she could\nnot see the souls in trouble but only the gates. Her mind continually\ndwells on what is pleasant and beautiful. One day she asked me what\nmonth and what flower were the most beautiful. When I answered that I\ndid not know, she said, \u201cthe month of May, because of the Virgin, and\nthe lily of the valley, because it never sinned, but came pure out of\nthe rocks,\u201d and then she asked, \u201cwhat is the cause of the three cold\nmonths of winter?\u201d I did not know even that, and so she said, \u201cthe sin\nof man and the vengeance of God.\u201d Christ Himself was not only blessed,\nbut perfect in all manly proportions in her eyes, so much do beauty and\nholiness go together in her thoughts. He alone of all men was exactly\nsix feet high, all others are a little more or a little less.\n\n\n[FN#5]  The religious society she had belonged to.\n\n\nHer thoughts and her sights of the people of faery are pleasant and\nbeautiful too, and I have never heard her call them the Fallen Angels.\nThey are people like ourselves, only better-looking, and many and many\na time she has gone to the window to watch them drive their waggons\nthrough the sky, waggon behind waggon in long line, or to the door to\nhear them singing and dancing in the Forth. They sing chiefly, it\nseems, a song called \u201cThe Distant Waterfall,\u201d and though they once\nknocked her down she never thinks badly of them. She saw them most\neasily when she was in service in King\u2019s County, and one morning a\nlittle while ago she said to me, \u201cLast night I was waiting up for the\nmaster and it was a quarter-past eleven. I heard a bang right down on\nthe table. \u2018King\u2019s County all over,\u2019 says I, and I laughed till I was\nnear dead. It was a warning I was staying too long. They wanted the\nplace to themselves.\u201d I told her once of somebody who saw a faery and\nfainted, and she said, \u201cIt could not have been a faery, but some bad\nthing, nobody could faint at a faery. It was a demon. I was not afraid\nwhen they near put me, and the bed under me, out through the roof. I\nwasn\u2019t afraid either when you were at some work and I heard a thing\ncoming flop-flop up the stairs like an eel, and squealing. It went to\nall the doors. It could not get in where I was. I would have sent it\nthrough the universe like a flash of fire. There was a man in my place,\na tearing fellow, and he put one of them down. He went out to meet it\non the road, but he must have been told the words. But the faeries are\nthe best neighbours. If you do good to them they will do good to you,\nbut they don\u2019t like you to be on their path.\u201d Another time she said to\nme, \u201cThey are always good to the poor.\u201d\n\n\nII\n\nThere is, however, a man in a Galway village who can see nothing but\nwickedness. Some think him very holy, and others think him a little\ncrazed, but some of his talk reminds one of those old Irish visions of\nthe Three Worlds, which are supposed to have given Dante the plan of\nthe Divine Comedy. But I could not imagine this man seeing Paradise. He\nis especially angry with the people of faery, and describes the faun-\nlike feet that are so common among them, who are indeed children of\nPan, to prove them children of Satan. He will not grant that \u201cthey\ncarry away women, though there are many that say so,\u201d but he is certain\nthat they are \u201cas thick as the sands of the sea about us, and they\ntempt poor mortals.\u201d\n\nHe says, \u201cThere is a priest I know of was looking along the ground\nlike as if he was hunting for something, and a voice said to him, \u2018If\nyou want to see them you\u2019ll see enough of them,\u2019 and his eyes were\nopened and he saw the ground thick with them. Singing they do be\nsometimes, and dancing, but all the time they have cloven feet.\u201d Yet he\nwas so scornful of unchristian things for all their dancing and singing\nthat he thinks that \u201cyou have only to bid them begone and they will go.\nIt was one night,\u201d he says, \u201cafter walking back from Kinvara and down\nby the wood beyond I felt one coming beside me, and I could feel the\nhorse he was riding on and the way he lifted his legs, but they do not\nmake a sound like the hoofs of a horse. So I stopped and turned around\nand said, very loud, \u2018Be off!\u2019 and he went and never troubled me after.\nAnd I knew a man who was dying, and one came on his bed, and he cried\nout to it, \u2018Get out of that, you unnatural animal!\u2019 and it left him.\nFallen angels they are, and after the fall God said, \u2018Let there be\nHell,\u2019 and there it was in a moment.\u201d An old woman who was sitting by\nthe fire joined in as he said this with \u201cGod save us, it\u2019s a pity He\nsaid the word, and there might have been no Hell the day,\u201d but the seer\ndid not notice her words. He went on, \u201cAnd then he asked the devil what\nwould he take for the souls of all the people. And the devil said\nnothing would satisfy him but the blood of a virgin\u2019s son, so he got\nthat, and then the gates of Hell were opened.\u201d He understood the story,\nit seems, as if it were some riddling old folk tale.\n\n\u201cI have seen Hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It\nhad a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway, and a\nstraight walk into it, just like what \u2019ud be leading into a gentleman\u2019s\norchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box, but with red-hot\nmetal. And inside the wall there were cross-walks, and I\u2019m not sure\nwhat there was to the right, but to the left there were five great\nfurnaces, and they full of souls kept there with great chains. So I\nturned short and went away, and in turning I looked again at the wall,\nand I could see no end to it.\n\n\u201cAnd another time I saw Purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place,\nand no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls\nstanding in it. And they suffer near as much as in Hell, only there are\nno devils with them there, and they have the hope of Heaven.\n\n\u201cAnd I heard a call to me from there, \u2018Help me to come out o\u2019 this!\u2019\nAnd when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman,\nand from this county, and I believe him to be a descendant of King\nO\u2019Connor of Athenry.\n\n\u201cSo I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, \u2018I\u2019d be\nburned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.\u2019 So\nthen he said, \u2018Well, help me with your prayers,\u2019 and so I do.\n\n\u201cAnd Father Connellan says the same thing, to help the dead with your\nprayers, and he\u2019s a very clever man to make a sermon, and has a great\ndeal of cures made with the Holy Water he brought back from Lourdes.\u201d\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LAST GLEEMAN\n\n\nMichael Moran was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of\nDublin, in Faddle Alley. A fortnight after birth he went stone blind\nfrom illness, and became thereby a blessing to his parents, who were\nsoon able to send him to rhyme and beg at street corners and at the\nbridges over the Liffey. They may well have wished that their quiver\nwere full of such as he, for, free from the interruption of sight, his\nmind became a perfect echoing chamber, where every movement of the day\nand every change of public passion whispered itself into rhyme or\nquaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the admitted\nrector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver,\nKearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M\u2019Bride\nfrom heaven knows where, and that M\u2019Grane, who in after days, when the\ntrue Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather in\nborrowed rags, and gave out that there had never been any Moran but\nhimself, and many another, did homage before him, and held him chief of\nall their tribe. Nor despite his blindness did he find any difficulty\nin getting a wife, but rather was able to pick and choose, for he was\njust that mixture of ragamuffin and of genius which is dear to the\nheart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly conventional\nherself, loves the unexpected, the crooked, the bewildering. Nor did he\nlack, despite his rags, many excellent things, for it is remembered\nthat he ever loved caper sauce, going so far indeed in his honest\nindignation at its absence upon one occasion as to fling a leg of\nmutton at his wife. He was not, however, much to look at, with his\ncoarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy\ntrousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist\nby a thong of leather: and he would have been a woeful shock to the\ngleeman MacConglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in\nprophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the\nshort cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman,\nbeing alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In the morning\nwhen he had finished his breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would\nread the newspaper to him, and read on and on until he interrupted\nwith, \u201cThat\u2019ll do--I have me meditations\u201d; and from these meditations\nwould come the day\u2019s store of jest and rhyme. He had the whole Middle\nAges under his frieze coat.\n\nHe had not, however, MacConglinne\u2019s hatred of the Church and clergy,\nfor when the fruit of his meditations did not ripen well, or when the\ncrowd called for something more solid, he would recite or sing a\nmetrical tale or ballad of saint or martyr or of Biblical adventure. He\nwould stand at a street comer, and when a crowd had gathered would\nbegin in some such fashion as follows (I copy the record of one who\nknew him)--\u201cGather round me, boys, gather round me. Boys, am I standin\u2019\nin puddle? am I standin\u2019 in wet?\u201d Thereon several boys would cry, \u201cAli,\nno! yez not! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with St. Mary; go on with\nMoses\u201d--each calling for his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a\nsuspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst\nout with \u201cAll me buzzim friends are turned backbiters\u201d; and after a\nfinal \u201cIf yez don\u2019t drop your coddin\u2019 and diversion I\u2019ll lave some of\nyez a case,\u201d by way of warning to the boys, begin his recitation, or\nperhaps still delay, to ask, \u201cIs there a crowd round me now? Any\nblackguard heretic around me?\u201d The best-known of his religious tales\nwas St. Mary of Egypt, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, condensed\nfrom the much longer work of a certain Bishop Coyle. It told how a fast\nwoman of Egypt, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem for no\ngood purpose, and then, turning penitent on finding herself withheld\nfrom entering the Temple by supernatural interference, fled to the\ndesert and spent the remainder of her life in solitary penance. When at\nlast she was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear her\nconfession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a lion,\nwhom He sent also, dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable cadence\nof the eighteenth century, but was so popular and so often called for\nthat Moran was soon nicknamed Zozimus, and by that name is he\nremembered. He had also a poem of his own called Moses, which went a\nlittle nearer poetry without going very near. But he could ill brook\nsolemnity, and before long parodied his own verses in the following\nragamuffin fashion:\n\n\n    In Egypt\u2019s land, contagious to the Nile,\n    King Pharaoh\u2019s daughter went to bathe in style.\n    She tuk her dip, then walked unto the land,\n    To dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand.\n    A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw\n    A smiling babby in a wad o\u2019 straw.\n    She tuk it up, and said with accents mild,\n    \u201c\u2019Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?\u201d\n\n\nHis humorous rhymes were, however, more often quips and cranks at the\nexpense of his contemporaries. It was his delight, for instance, to\nremind a certain shoemaker, noted alike for display of wealth and for\npersonal uncleanness, of his inconsiderable origin in a song of which\nbut the first stanza has come down to us:\n\n\n    At the dirty end of Dirty Lane,\n    Liv\u2019d a dirty cobbler, Dick Maclane;\n    His wife was in the old king\u2019s reign\n        A stout brave orange-woman.\n    On Essex Bridge she strained her throat,\n    And six-a-penny was her note.\n    But Dickey wore a bran-new coat,\n        He got among the yeomen.\n    He was a bigot, like his clan,\n    And in the streets he wildly sang,\n    O Roly, toly, toly raid, with his old jade.\n\n\nHe had troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to face and\nput down. Once an officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was\ntriumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded\nhis worship of the precedent set by Homer, who was also, he declared, a\npoet, and a blind man, and a beggarman. He had to face a more serious\ndifficulty as his fame grew. Various imitators started up upon all\nsides. A certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did\nshillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs and his getup upon the\nstage. One night this actor was at supper with some friends, when\ndispute arose as to whether his mimicry was overdone or not. It was\nagreed to settle it by an appeal to the mob. A forty-shilling supper at\na famous coffeehouse was to be the wager. The actor took up his station\nat Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran\u2019s, and soon gathered a small\ncrowd. He had scarce got through \u201cIn Egypt\u2019s land, contagious to the\nNile,\u201d when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The\ncrowds met in great excitement and laughter. \u201cGood Christians,\u201d cried\nthe pretender, \u201cis it possible that any man would mock the poor dark\nman like that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s that? It\u2019s some imposhterer,\u201d replied Moran.\n\n\u201cBegone, you wretch! it\u2019s you\u2019ze the imposhterer. Don\u2019t you fear the\nlight of heaven being struck from your eyes for mocking the poor dark\nman?\u201d\n\n\u201cSaints and angels, is there no protection against this? You\u2019re a most\ninhuman-blaguard to try to deprive me of my honest bread this way,\u201d\nreplied poor Moran.\n\n\u201cAnd you, you wretch, won\u2019t let me go on with the beautiful poem.\nChristian people, in your charity won\u2019t you beat this man away? he\u2019s\ntaking advantage of my darkness.\u201d\n\nThe pretender, seeing that he was having the best of it, thanked the\npeople for their sympathy and protection, and went on with the poem,\nMoran listening for a time in bewildered silence. After a while Moran\nprotested again with:\n\n\u201cIs it possible that none of yez can know me? Don\u2019t yez see it\u2019s\nmyself; and that\u2019s some one else?\u201d\n\n\u201cBefore I can proceed any further in this lovely story,\u201d interrupted\nthe pretender, \u201cI call on yez to contribute your charitable donations\nto help me to go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven?\u201d cried Moran, Put\ncompletely beside himself by this last injury--\u201cWould you rob the poor\nas well as desave the world? O, was ever such wickedness known?\u201d\n\n\u201cI leave it to yourselves, my friends,\u201d said the pretender, \u201cto give\nto the real dark man, that you all know so well, and save me from that\nschemer,\u201d and with that he collected some pennies and half-pence. While\nhe was doing so, Moran started his Mary of Egypt, but the indignant\ncrowd seizing his stick were about to belabour him, when they fell back\nbewildered anew by his close resemblance to himself. The pretender now\ncalled to them to \u201cjust give him a grip of that villain, and he\u2019d soon\nlet him know who the imposhterer was!\u201d They led him over to Moran, but\ninstead of closing with him he thrust a few shillings into his hand,\nand turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an actor,\nand that he had just gained a wager, and so departed amid much\nenthusiasm, to eat the supper he had won.\n\nIn April 1846 word was sent to the priest that Michael Moran was\ndying. He found him at 15 (now 14 1/2) Patrick Street, on a straw bed,\nin\na room full of ragged ballad-singers come to cheer his last moments.\nAfter his death the ballad-singers, with many fiddles and the like,\ncame again and gave him a fine wake, each adding to the merriment\nwhatever he knew in the way of rann, tale, old saw, or quaint rhyme. He\nhad had his day, had said his prayers and made his confession, and why\nshould they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place the\nnext day. A good party of his admirers and friends got into the hearse\nwith the coffin, for the day was wet and nasty. They had not gone far\nwhen one of them burst out with \u201cIt\u2019s cruel cowld, isn\u2019t it?\u201d \u201cGarra\u2019,\u201d\nreplied another, \u201cwe\u2019ll all be as stiff as the corpse when we get to\nthe berrin-ground.\u201d \u201cBad cess to him,\u201d said a third; \u201cI wish he\u2019d held\nout another month until the weather got dacent.\u201d A man called Carroll\nthereupon produced a half-pint of whiskey, and they all drank to the\nsoul of the departed. Unhappily, however, the hearse was over-weighted,\nand they had not reached the cemetery before the spring broke, and the\nbottle with it.\n\nMoran must have felt strange and out of place in that other kingdom he\nwas entering, perhaps while his friends were drinking in his honour.\nLet us hope that some kindly middle region was found for him, where he\ncan call dishevelled angels about him with some new and more rhythmical\nform of his old\n\n\n    Gather round me, boys, will yez\n    Gather round me?\n    And hear what I have to say\n    Before ould Salley brings me\n    My bread and jug of tay;\n\n\nand fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim.\nPerhaps he may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the\nLily of High Truth, the Rose of Far-sought Beauty, for whose lack so\nmany of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been\nfutile as the blown froth upon the shore.\n\n\n\n\nREGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI\n\n\nOne night a middle-aged man, who had lived all his life far from the\nnoise of cab-wheels, a young girl, a relation of his, who was reported\nto be enough of a seer to catch a glimpse of unaccountable lights\nmoving over the fields among the cattle, and myself, were walking along\na far western sandy shore. We talked of the Forgetful People as the\nfaery people are sometimes called, and came in the midst of our talk to\na notable haunt of theirs, a shallow cave amidst black rocks, with its\nreflection under it in the wet sea sand. I asked the young girl if she\ncould see anything, for I had quite a number of things to ask the\nForgetful People. She stood still for a few minutes, and I saw that she\nwas passing into a kind of waking trance, in which the cold sea breeze\nno longer troubled her, nor the dull boom of the sea distracted her\nattention. I then called aloud the names of the great faeries, and in a\nmoment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the rocks,\nand then a sound of confused talking, and of people stamping their feet\nas if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other friend had\nbeen walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed close to us,\nand as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be interrupted,\nfor he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond the rocks. We\nwere, however, quite alone. The spirits of the place had begun to cast\ntheir influence over him also. In a moment he was corroborated by the\ngirl, who said that bursts of laughter had begun to mingle with the\nmusic, the confused talking, and the noise of feet. She next saw a\nbright light streaming out of the cave, which seemed to have grown much\ndeeper, and a quantity of little people,[FN#6] in various coloured\ndresses, red predominating, dancing to a tune which she did not\nrecognize.\n\n\n[FN#6]  The people and faeries in Ireland are sometimes as big as we\nare, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three\nfeet high. The Old Mayo woman I so often quote, thinks that it is\nsomething in our eyes that makes them seem big or little.\n\n\nI then bade her call out to the queen of the little people to come and\ntalk with us. There was, however, no answer to her command. I therefore\nrepeated the words aloud myself, and in a moment a very beautiful tall\nwoman came out of the cave. I too had by this time fallen into a kind\nof trance, in which what we call the unreal had begun to take upon\nitself a masterful reality, and was able to see the faint gleam of\ngolden ornaments, the shadowy blossom of dim hair. I then bade the girl\ntell this tall queen to marshal her followers according to their\nnatural divisions, that we might see them. I found as before that I had\nto repeat the command myself. The creatures then came out of the cave,\nand drew themselves up, if I remember rightly, in four bands. One of\nthese bands carried quicken boughs in their hands, and another had\nnecklaces made apparently of serpents\u2019 scales, but their dress I cannot\nremember, for I was quite absorbed in that gleaming woman. I asked her\nto tell the seer whether these caves were the greatest faery haunts in\nthe neighbourhood. Her lips moved, but the answer was inaudible. I bade\nthe seer lay her hand upon the breast of the queen, and after that she\nheard every word quite distinctly. No, this was not the greatest faery\nhaunt, for there was a greater one a little further ahead. I then asked\nher whether it was true that she and her people carried away mortals,\nand if so, whether they put another soul in the place of the one they\nhad taken? \u201cWe change the bodies,\u201d was her answer. \u201cAre any of you ever\nborn into mortal life?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cDo I know any who were among your\npeople before birth?\u201d \u201cYou do.\u201d \u201cWho are they?\u201d \u201cIt would not be lawful\nfor you to know.\u201d I then asked whether she and her people were not\n\u201cdramatizations of our moods\u201d? \u201cShe does not understand,\u201d said my\nfriend, \u201cbut says that her people are much like human beings, and do\nmost of the things human beings do.\u201d I asked her other questions, as to\nher nature, and her purpose in the universe, but only seemed to puzzle\nher. At last she appeared to lose patience, for she wrote this message\nfor me upon the sands--the sands of vision, not the grating sands under\nour feet--\u201cBe careful, and do not seek to know too much about us.\u201d\nSeeing that I had offended her, I thanked her for what she had shown\nand told, and let her depart again into her cave. In a little while the\nyoung girl awoke out of her trance, and felt again the cold wind of the\nworld, and began to shiver.\n\nI tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to\nblur the history. Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of\nmine have perished long ago. I love better than any theory the sound of\nthe Gate of Ivory, turning upon its hinges, and hold that he alone who\nhas passed the rose-strewn threshold can catch the far glimmer of the\nGate of Horn. It were perhaps well for us all if we would but raise the\ncry Lilly the astrologer raised in Windsor Forest, \u201cRegina, Regina\nPigmeorum, Veni,\u201d and remember with him, that God visiteth His children\nin dreams. Tall, glimmering queen, come near, and let me see again the\nshadowy blossom of thy dim hair.\n\n\n\n\n\u201cAND FAIR, FIERCE WOMEN\u201d\n\n\nOne day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic beauty, that\nhighest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a\nbeauty which has been fading out of the arts, since that decadence we\ncall progress, set voluptuous beauty in its place. She was standing at\nthe window, looking over to Knocknarea where Queen Maive is thought to\nbe buried, when she saw, as she has told me, \u201cthe finest woman you ever\nsaw travelling right across from the mountain and straight to her.\u201d The\nwoman had a sword by her side and a dagger lifted up in her hand, and\nwas dressed in white, with bare arms and feet. She looked \u201cvery strong,\nbut not wicked,\u201d that is, not cruel. The old woman had seen the Irish\ngiant, and \u201cthough he was a fine man,\u201d he was nothing to this woman,\n\u201cfor he was round, and could not have stepped out so soldierly\u201d; \u201cshe\nwas like Mrs.-----\u201d a stately lady of the neighbourhood, \u201cbut she had\nno stomach on her, and was slight and broad in the shoulders, and was\nhandsomer than any one you ever saw; she looked about thirty.\u201d The old\nwoman covered her eyes with her hands, and when she uncovered them the\napparition had vanished. The neighbours were \u201cwild with her,\u201d she told\nme, because she did not wait to find out if there was a message, for\nthey were sure it was Queen Maive, who often shows herself to the\npilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen Maive,\nand she said, \u201cSome of them have their hair down, but they look quite\ndifferent, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the papers. Those\nwith their hair up are like this one. The others have long white\ndresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you\ncan see their legs right up to the calf.\u201d After some careful\nquestioning I found that they wore what might very well be a kind of\nbuskin; she went on, \u201cThey are fine and dashing looking, like the men\none sees riding their horses in twos and threes on the slopes of the\nmountains with their swords swinging.\u201d She repeated over and over,\n\u201cThere is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned,\u201d or the\nlike, and then said, \u201cThe present Queen[FN#7] is a nice, pleasant-\nlooking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me think so little\nof the ladies is that I see none as they be,\u201d meaning as the spirits.\n\u201cWhen I think of her and of the ladies now, they are like little\nchildren running about without knowing how to put their clothes on\nright. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women at all.\u201d The\nother day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway\nworkhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that \u201cQueen Maive was\nhandsome, and overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel\nis blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk the\nworld with it,\u201d but she grew \u201cvery disagreeable in the end--oh very\ndisagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between\nthe book and the hearer.\u201d My friend thought the old woman had got some\nscandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head.\n\n\n[FN#7]  Queen Victoria.\n\n\nAnd I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who\nremembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he\nwas young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said\nshe was a queen \u201camong them,\u201d and asked him if he would have money or\npleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for\na time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful.\nThe young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he\nmade, but could only remember that it was \u201cvery mournful,\u201d and that he\ncalled her \u201cbeauty of all beauties.\u201d\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nENCHANTED WOODS\n\n\nI\n\nLast summer, whenever I had finished my day\u2019s work, I used to go\nwandering in certain roomy woods, and there I would often meet an old\ncountryman, and talk to him about his work and about the woods, and\nonce or twice a friend came with me to whom he would open his heart\nmore readily than to me, He had spent all his life lopping away the\nwitch elm and the hazel and the privet and the hornbeam from the paths,\nand had thought much about the natural and supernatural creatures of\nthe wood. He has heard the hedgehog--\u201cgrainne oge,\u201d he calls him--\n\u201cgrunting like a Christian,\u201d and is certain that he steals apples by\nrolling about under an apple tree until there is an apple sticking to\nevery quill. He is certain too that the cats, of whom there are many in\nthe woods, have a language of their own--some kind of old Irish. He\nsays, \u201cCats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time of\nsome great change in the world. That is why they are hard to kill, and\nwhy it is dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it might\nclaw or bite you in a way that would put poison in you, and that would\nbe the serpent\u2019s tooth.\u201d Sometimes he thinks they change into wild\ncats, and then a nail grows on the end of their tails; but these wild\ncats are not the same as the marten cats, who have been always in the\nwoods. The foxes were once tame, as the cats are now, but they ran away\nand became wild. He talks of all wild creatures except squirrels--whom\nhe hates--with what seems an affectionate interest, though at times his\neyes will twinkle with pleasure as he remembers how he made hedgehogs\nunroll themselves when he was a boy, by putting a wisp of burning straw\nunder them.\n\nI am not certain that he distinguishes between the natural and\nsupernatural very clearly. He told me the other day that foxes and cats\nlike, above all, to be in the \u201cforths\u201d and lisses after nightfall; and\nhe will certainly pass from some story about a fox to a story about a\nspirit with less change of voice than when he is going to speak about a\nmarten cat--a rare beast now-a-days. Many years ago he used to work in\nthe garden, and once they put him to sleep in a garden-house where\nthere was a loft full of apples, and all night he could hear people\nrattling plates and knives and forks over his head in the loft. Once,\nat any rate, be has seen an unearthly sight in the woods. He says, \u201cOne\ntime I was out cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight o\u2019clock\none morning when I got there I saw a girl picking nuts, with her hair\nhanging down over her shoulders, brown hair, and she had a good, clean\nface, and she was tall and nothing on her head, and her dress no way\ngaudy but simple, and when she felt me coming she gathered herself up\nand was gone as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I followed her\nand looked for her, but I never could see her again from that day to\nthis, never again.\u201d He used the word clean as we would use words like\nfresh or comely.\n\nOthers too have seen spirits in the Enchanted Woods. A labourer told\nus of what a friend of his had seen in a part of the woods that is\ncalled Shanwalla, from some old village that was before the weed. He\nsaid, \u201cOne evening I parted from Lawrence Mangan in the yard, and he\nwent away through the path in Shanwalla, an\u2019 bid me goodnight. And two\nhours after, there he was back again in the yard, an\u2019 bid me light a\ncandle that was in the stable. An\u2019 he told me that when he got into\nShanwalla, a little fellow about as high as his knee, but having a head\nas big as a man\u2019s body, came beside him and led him out of the path an\u2019\nround about, and at last it brought him to the lime-kiln, and then it\nvanished and left him.\u201d\n\nA woman told me of a sight that she and others had seen by a certain\ndeep pool in the river. She said, \u201cI came over the stile from the\nchapel, and others along with me; and a great blast of wind came and\ntwo trees were bent and broken and fell into the river, and the splash\nof water out of it went up to the skies. And those that were with me\nsaw many figures, but myself I only saw one, sitting there by the bank\nwhere the trees fell. Dark clothes he had on, and he was headless.\u201d\n\nA man told me that one day, when he was a boy, he and another boy went\nto catch a horse in a certain field, full of boulders and bushes of\nhazel and creeping juniper and rock-roses, that is where the lake side\nis for a little clear of the woods. He said to the boy that was with\nhim, \u201cI bet a button that if I fling a pebble on to that bush it will\nstay on it,\u201d meaning that the bush was so matted the pebble would not\nbe able to go through it. So he took up \u201ca pebble of cow-dung, and as\nsoon as it hit the bush there came out of it the most beautiful music\nthat ever was heard.\u201d They ran away, and when they had gone about two\nhundred yards they looked back and saw a woman dressed in white,\nwalking round and round the bush. \u201cFirst it had the form of a woman,\nand then of a man, and it was going round the bush.\u201d\n\n\nII\n\nI often entangle myself in argument more complicated than even those\npaths of Inchy as to what is the true nature of apparitions, but at\nother times I say as Socrates said when they told him a learned opinion\nabout a nymph of the Illissus, \u201cThe common opinion is enough for me.\u201d I\nbelieve when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we\ncannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some\nwicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever\nseen, and that these are not far away when we are walking in pleasant\nand quiet places. Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood\nwithout feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or\nsomething I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And\nnow I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with\nalmost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me.\nYou too meet with a like imagination, doubtless, somewhere, wherever\nyour ruling stars will have it, Saturn driving you to the woods, or the\nMoon, it may be, to the edges of the sea. I will not of a certainty\nbelieve that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers\nimagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some\nvague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway\nout of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be\nbeauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and\nfatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport\nthan to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among\ngreen leaves. I say to myself, when I am well out of that thicket of\nargument, that they are surely there, the divine people, for only we\nwho have neither simplicity nor wisdom have denied them, and the simple\nof all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even\nspoken to them. They live out their passionate lives not far off, as I\nthink, and we shall be among them when we die if we but keep our\nnatures simple and passionate. May it not even be that death shall\nunite us to all romance, and that some day we shall fight dragons among\nblue hills, or come to that whereof all romance is but\n\n\n    Foreshadowings mingled with the images\n    Of man\u2019s misdeeds in greater days than these,\n\n\nas the old men thought in The Earthly Paradise when they were in good\nspirits.\n\n\n1902\n\n\n\n\nMIRACULOUS CREATURES\n\n\nThere are marten cats and badgers and foxes in the Enchanted Woods,\nbut there are of a certainty mightier creatures, and the lake hides\nwhat neither net nor fine can take. These creatures are of the race of\nthe white stag that flits in and out of the tales of Arthur, and of the\nevil pig that slew Diarmuid where Ben Bulben mixes with the sea wind.\nThey are the wizard creatures of hope and fear, they are of them that\nfly and of them that follow among the thickets that are about the Gates\nof Death. A man I know remembers that his father was one night in the\nwood Of Inchy, \u201cwhere the lads of Gort used to be stealing rods. He was\nsitting by the wall, and the dog beside him, and he heard something\ncome running from Owbawn Weir, and he could see nothing, but the sound\nof its feet on the ground was like the sound of the feet of a deer. And\nwhen it passed him, the dog got between him and the wall and scratched\nat it there as if it was afraid, but still he could see nothing but\nonly hear the sound of hoofs. So when it was passed he turned and came\naway home. Another time,\u201d the man says, \u201cmy father told me he was in a\nboat out on the lake with two or three men from Gort, and one of them\nhad an eel-spear, and he thrust it into the water, and it hit\nsomething, and the man fainted and they had to carry him out of the\nboat to land, and when he came to himself he said that what he struck\nwas like a calf, but whatever it was, it was not fish!\u201d A friend of\nmine is convinced that these terrible creatures, so common in lakes,\nwere set there in old times by subtle enchanters to watch over the\ngates of wisdom. He thinks that if we sent our spirits down into the\nwater we would make them of one substance with strange moods Of ecstasy\nand power, and go out it may be to the conquest of the world. We would,\nhowever, he believes, have first to outface and perhaps overthrow\nstrange images full of a more powerful life than if they were really\nalive. It may be that we shall look at them without fear when we have\nendured the last adventure, that is death.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nARISTOTLE OF THE BOOKS\n\n\nThe friend who can get the wood-cutter to talk more readily than he\nwill to anybody else went lately to see his old wife. She lives in a\ncottage not far from the edge of the woods, and is as full of old talk\nas her husband. This time she began to talk of Goban, the legendary\nmason, and his wisdom, but said presently, \u201cAristotle of the Books,\ntoo, was very wise, and he had a great deal of experience, but did not\nthe bees get the better of him in the end? He wanted to know how they\npacked the comb, and he wasted the better part of a fortnight watching\nthem, and he could not see them doing it. Then he made a hive with a\nglass cover on it and put it over them, and he thought to see. But when\nhe went and put his eyes to the glass, they had it all covered with wax\nso that it was as black as the pot; and he was as blind as before. He\nsaid he was never rightly kilt till then. They had him that time\nsurely!\u201d\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SWINE OF THE GODS\n\n\nA few years ago a friend of mine told me of something that happened to\nhim when he was a. young man and out drilling with some Connaught\nFenians. They were but a car-full, and drove along a hillside until\nthey came to a quiet place. They left the car and went further up the\nhill with their rifles, and drilled for a while. As they were coming\ndown again they saw a very thin, long-legged pig of the old Irish sort,\nand the pig began to follow them. One of them cried out as a joke that\nit was a fairy pig, and they all began to run to keep up the joke. The\npig ran too, and presently, how nobody knew, this mock terror became\nreal terror, and they ran as for their lives. When they got to the car\nthey made the horse gallop as fast as possible, but the pig still\nfollowed. Then one of them put up his rifle to fire, but when he looked\nalong the barrel he could see nothing. Presently they turned a corner\nand came to a village. They told the people of the village what had\nhappened, and the people of the village took pitchforks and spades and\nthe like, and went along the road with them to drive the pig away. When\nthey turned the comer they could not find anything.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nA VOICE\n\n\nOne day I was walking over a bit of marshy ground close to Inchy Wood\nwhen I felt, all of a sudden, and only for a second, an emotion which I\nsaid to myself was the root of Christian mysticism. There had swept\nover me a sense of weakness, of dependence on a great personal Being\nsomewhere far off yet near at hand. No thought of mine had prepared me\nfor this emotion, for I had been pre-occupied with Aengus and Edain, and\nwith Mannanan, son of the sea. That night I awoke lying upon my back\nand hearing a voice speaking above me and saying, \u201cNo human soul is\nlike any other human soul, and therefore the love of God for any human\nsoul is infinite, for no other soul can satisfy the same need in God.\u201d\nA few nights after this I awoke to see the loveliest people I have ever\nseen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green raiment, cut\nlike old Greek raiment, were standing at my bedside. I looked at the\ngirl and noticed that her dress was gathered about her neck into a kind\nof chain, or perhaps into some kind of stiff embroidery which\nrepresented ivy-leaves. But what filled me with wonder was the\nmiraculous mildness of her face. There are no such faces now. It was\nbeautiful, as few faces are beautiful, but it had neither, one would\nthink, the light that is in desire or in hope or in fear or in\nspeculation. It was peaceful like the faces of animals, or like\nmountain pools at evening, so peaceful that it was a little sad. I\nthought for a moment that she might be the beloved of Aengus, but how\ncould that hunted, alluring, happy, immortal wretch have a face like\nthis? Doubtless she was from among the children of the Moon, but who\namong them I shall never know.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nKIDNAPPERS\n\n\nA little north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben\nBulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white square\nin the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand; no sheep\nor goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more inaccessible\nplace upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to the deep\nconsidering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of night it\nswings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out. All night the gay\nrabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless\nperhaps where, in some more than commonly \u201cgentle\u201d place--Drumcliff or\nDrum-a-hair--the nightcapped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from\ntheir doors to see what mischief the \u201cgentry\u201d are doing. To their\ntrained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and\nthe air is full of shrill voices--a sound like whistling, as an ancient\nScottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the\nangels, who \u201cspeak much in the throat, like the Irish,\u201d as Lilly, the\nastrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed\nbride in the neighbourhood, the nightcapped \u201cdoctors\u201d will peer with\nmore than common care, for the unearthly troop do not always return\nempty-handed. Sometimes a new-wed bride or a new-born baby goes with\nthem into their mountains; the door swings to behind, and the new-born\nor the new-wed moves henceforth in the bloodless land of Faery; happy\nenough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright vapour,\nfor the soul cannot live without sorrow. Through this door of white\nstone, and the other doors of that land where geabheadh tu an sonas aer\npighin (\u201cyou can buy joy for a penny\u201d), have gone kings, queens, and\nprinces, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there are\nnone but peasants in these sad chronicles of mine.\n\nSomewhere about the beginning of last century appeared at the western\ncorner of Market Street, Sligo, where the butcher\u2019s shop now is, not a\npalace, as in Keats\u2019s Lamia, but an apothecary\u2019s shop, ruled over by a\ncertain unaccountable Dr. Opendon. Where he came from, none ever knew.\nThere also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name, whose\nhusband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make nothing of\nhim. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he grew. Away\nwent the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop parlour. A\nblack cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had just time to\nsee that the side-board was covered with fruit, and to say to herself,\n\u201cFruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much,\u201d before Dr.\nOpendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as the cat, and\nhis wife walked behind him dressed in black likewise. She gave him a\nguinea, and got a little bottle in return. Her husband recovered that\ntime. Meanwhile the black doctor cured many people; but one day a rich\npatient died, and cat, wife, and doctor all vanished the night after.\nIn a year the man Ormsby fell sick once more. Now he was a goodlooking\nman, and his wife felt sure the \u201cgentry\u201d were coveting him. She went\nand called on the \u201cfaery-doctor\u201d at Cairnsfoot. As soon as he had heard\nher tale, he went behind the back door and began muttering, muttering,\nmuttering-making spells. Her husband got well this time also. But after\na while he sickened again, the fatal third time, and away went she once\nmore to Cairnsfoot, and out went the faery-doctor behind his back door\nand began muttering, but soon he came in and told her it was no use--\nher husband would die; and sure enough the man died, and ever after\nwhen she spoke of him Mrs. Ormsby shook her head saying she knew well\nwhere he was, and it wasn\u2019t in heaven or hell or purgatory either. She\nprobably believed that a log of wood was left behind in his place, but\nso bewitched that it seemed the dead body of her husband.\n\nShe is dead now herself, but many still living remember her. She was,\nI believe, for a time a servant or else a kind of pensioner of some\nrelations of my own.\n\nSometimes those who are carried off are allowed after many years--\nseven usually--a final glimpse of their friends. Many years ago a woman\nvanished suddenly from a Sligo garden where she was walking with her\nhusband. When her son, who was then a baby, had grown up he received\nword in some way, not handed down, that his mother was glamoured by\nfaeries, and imprisoned for the time in a house in Glasgow and longing\nto see him. Glasgow in those days of sailing-ships seemed to the\npeasant mind almost over the edge of the known world, yet he, being a\ndutiful son, started away. For a long time he walked the streets of\nGlasgow; at last down in a cellar he saw his mother working. She was\nhappy, she said, and had the best of good eating, and would he not eat?\nand therewith laid all kinds of food on the table; but he, knowing well\nthat she was trying to cast on him the glamour by giving him faery\nfood, that she might keep him with her, refused and came home to his\npeople in Sligo.\n\nSome five miles southward of Sligo is a gloomy and tree-bordered pond,\na great gathering-place of water-fowl, called, because of its form, the\nHeart Lake. It is haunted by stranger things than heron, snipe, or wild\nduck. Out of this lake, as from the white square stone in Ben Bulben,\nissues an unearthly troop. Once men began to drain it; suddenly one of\nthem raised a cry that he saw his house in flames. They turned round,\nand every man there saw his own cottage burning. They hurried home to\nfind it was but faery glamour. To this hour on the border of the lake\nis shown a half-dug trench--the signet of their impiety. A little way\nfrom this lake I heard a beautiful and mournful history of faery\nkidnapping. I heard it from a little old woman in a white cap, who\nsings to herself in Gaelic, and moves from one foot to the other as\nthough she remembered the dancing of her youth.\n\nA young man going at nightfall to the house of his just married bride,\nmet in the way a jolly company, and with them his bride. They were\nfaeries, and had stolen her as a wife for the chief of their band. To\nhim they seemed only a company of merry mortals. His bride, when she\nsaw her old love, bade him welcome, but was most fearful lest be should\neat the faery food, and so be glamoured out of the earth into that\nbloodless dim nation, wherefore she set him down to play cards with\nthree of the cavalcade; and he played on, realizing nothing until he\nsaw the chief of the band carrying his bride away in his arms.\nImmediately he started up, and knew that they were faeries; for slowly\nall that jolly company melted into shadow and night. He hurried to the\nhouse of his beloved. As he drew near came to him the cry of the\nkeeners. She had died some time before he came. Some noteless Gaelic\npoet had made this into a forgotten ballad, some odd verses of which my\nwhite-capped friend remembered and sang for me.\n\nSometimes one hears of stolen people acting as good genii to the\nliving, as in this tale, heard also close by the haunted pond, of John\nKirwan of Castle Hacket. The Kirwans[FN#8] are a family much rumoured\nof in peasant stories, and believed to be the descendants of a man and\na spirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that\nthe mother of the present Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe.\n\n\n[FN#8]  I have since heard that it was not the Kirwans, but their\npredecessors at Castle Hacket, the Hackets themselves, I think, who\nwere descended from a man and a spirit, and were notable for beauty. I\nimagine that the mother of Lord Cloncurry was descended from the\nHackets. It may well be that all through these stories the name of\nKirwan has taken the place of the older name. Legend mixes everything\ntogether in her cauldron.\n\n\nJohn Kirwan was a great horse-racing man, and once landed in Liverpool\nwith a fine horse, going racing somewhere in middle England. That\nevening, as he walked by the docks, a slip of a boy came up and asked\nwhere he was stabling his horse. In such and such a place, he answered.\n\u201cDon\u2019t put him there,\u201d said the slip of a boy; \u201cthat stable will be\nburnt to-night.\u201d He took his horse elsewhere, and sure enough the\nstable was burnt down. Next day the boy came and asked as reward to\nride as his jockey in the coming race, and then was gone. The race-time\ncame round. At the last moment the boy ran forward and mounted, saying,\n\u201cIf I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in\nmy right hand bet all you are worth.\u201d For, said Paddy Flynn, who told\nme the tale, \u201cthe left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making\nthe sign of the cross with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a\nBanshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom.\u201d\nWell, the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John\nKirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, \u201cWhat can I do\nfor you now?\u201d said he. \u201cNothing but this,\u201d said the boy: \u201cmy mother has\na cottage on your land-they stole me from the cradle. Be good to her,\nJohn Kirwan, and wherever your horses go I will watch that no ill\nfollows them; but you will never see me more.\u201d With that he made\nhimself air, and vanished.\n\nSometimes animals are carried off--apparently drowned animals more\nthan others. In Claremorris, Galway, Paddy Flynn told me, lived a poor\nwidow with one cow and its calf. The cow fell into the river, and was\nwashed away. There was a man thereabouts who went to a red-haired woman\n--for such are supposed to be wise in these things--and she told him to\ntake the calf down to the edge of the river, and hide himself and\nwatch. He did as she had told him, and as evening came on the calf\nbegan to low, and after a while the cow came along the edge of the\nriver and commenced suckling it. Then, as he had been told, he caught\nthe cow\u2019s tail. Away they went at a great pace across hedges and\nditches, till they came to a royalty (a name for the little circular\nditches, commonly called raths or forts, that Ireland is covered with\nsince Pagan times). Therein he saw walking or sitting all the people\nwho had died out of his village in his time. A woman was sitting on the\nedge with a child on her knees, and she called out to him to mind what\nthe red-haired woman had told him, and he remembered she had said,\nBleed the cow. So he stuck his knife into the cow and drew blood. That\nbroke the spell, and he was able to turn her homeward. \u201cDo not forget\nthe spancel,\u201d said the woman with the child on her knees; \u201ctake the\ninside one.\u201d There were three spancels on a bush; he took one, and the\ncow was driven safely home to the widow.\n\nThere is hardly a valley or mountainside where folk cannot tell you of\nsome one pillaged from amongst them. Two or three miles from the Heart\nLake lives an old woman who was stolen away in her youth. After seven\nyears she was brought home again for some reason or other, but she had\nno toes left. She had danced them off. Many near the white stone door\nin Ben Bulben have been stolen away.\n\nIt is far easier to be sensible in cities than in many country places\nI could tell you of. When one walks on those grey roads at evening by\nthe scented elder-bushes of the white cottages, watching the faint\nmountains gathering the clouds upon their heads, one all too readily\ndiscovers, beyond the thin cobweb veil of the senses, those creatures,\nthe goblins, hurrying from the white square stone door to the north, or\nfrom the Heart Lake in the south.\n\n\n\n\nTHE UNTIRING ONES\n\n\nIt is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any\nunmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like,\nand something in our sweetheart that we dislike. It is this\nentanglement of moods which makes us old, and puckers our brows and\ndeepens the furrows about our eyes. If we could love and hate with as\ngood heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them.\nBut until that day their untiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-\nhalf of their fascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can\nthe circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet. The Donegal\npeasants remember this when they bend over the spade, or sit full of\nthe heaviness of the fields beside the griddle at nightfall, and they\ntell stories about it that it may not be forgotten. A short while ago,\nthey say, two faeries, little creatures, one like a young man, one like\na young woman, came to a farmer\u2019s house, and spent the night sweeping\nthe hearth and setting all tidy. The next night they came again, and\nwhile the farmer was away, brought all the furniture up-stairs into one\nroom, and having arranged it round the walls, for the greater grandeur\nit seems, they began to dance. They danced on and on, and days and days\nwent by, and all the country-side came to look at them, but still their\nfeet never tired. The farmer did not dare to live at home the while;\nand after three months he made up his mind to stand it no more, and\nwent and told them that the priest was coming. The little creatures\nwhen they heard this went back to their own country, and there their\njoy shall last as long as the points of the rushes are brown, the\npeople say, and that is until God shall burn up the world with a kiss.\n\nBut it is not merely faeries who know untiring days, for there have\nbeen men and women who, falling under their enchantment, have attained,\nperhaps by the right of their God-given spirits, an even more than\nfaery abundance of life and feeling. It seems that when mortals have\ngone amid those poor happy leaves of the Imperishable Rose of Beauty,\nblown hither and thither by the winds that awakened the stars, the dim\nkingdom has acknowledged their birthright, perhaps a little sadly, and\ngiven them of its best. Such a mortal was born long ago at a village in\nthe south of Ireland. She lay asleep in a cradle, and her mother sat by\nrocking her, when a woman of the Sidhe (the faeries) came in, and said\nthat the child was chosen to be the bride of the prince of the dim\nkingdom, but that as it would never do for his wife to grow old and die\nwhile he was still in the first ardour of his love, she would be gifted\nwith a faery life. The mother was to take the glowing log out of the\nfire and bury it in the garden, and her child would live as long as it\nremained unconsumed. The mother buried the log, and the child grew up,\nbecame a beauty, and married the prince of the faeries, who came to her\nat nightfall. After seven hundred years the prince died, and another\nprince ruled in his stead and married the beautiful peasant girl in his\nturn; and after another seven hundred years he died also, and another\nprince and another husband came in his stead, and so on until she had\nhad seven husbands. At last one day the priest of the parish called\nupon her, and told her that she was a scandal to the whole\nneighbourhood with her seven husbands and her long life. She was very\nsorry, she said, but she was not to blame, and then she told him about\nthe log, and he went straight out and dug until he found it, and then\nthey burned it, and she died, and was buried like a Christian, and\neverybody was pleased. Such a mortal too was Clooth-na-bare,[FN#9] who\nwent all over the world seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery\nlife, of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to lake and lake\nto hill, and setting up a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted,\nuntil at last she found the deepest water in the world in little Lough\nIa, on the top of the Birds\u2019 Mountain at Sligo.\n\n\n[FN#9]  Doubtless Clooth-na-bare should be Cailleac Bare, which would\nmean the old Woman Bare. Bare or Bere or Verah or Dera or Dhera was a\nvery famous person, perhaps the mother of the Gods herself. A friend of\nmine found her, as he thinks frequenting Lough Leath, or the Grey Lake\non a mountain of the Fews. Perhaps Lough Ia is my mishearing, or the\nstoryteller\u2019s mispronunciation of Lough Leath, for there are many Lough\nLeaths.\n\n\nThe two little creatures may well dance on, and the woman of the log\nand Clooth-na-bare sleep in peace, for they have known untrammelled\nhate and unmixed love, and have never wearied themselves with \u201cyes\u201d and\n\u201cno,\u201d or entangled their feet with the sorry net of \u201cmaybe\u201d and\n\u201cperhaps.\u201d The great winds came and took them up into themselves.\n\n\n\n\nEARTH, FIRE AND WATER\n\n\nSome French writer that I read when I was a boy, said that the desert\nwent into the heart of the Jews in their wanderings and made them what\nthey are. I cannot remember by what argument he proved them to be even\nyet the indestructible children of earth, but it may well be that the\nelements have their children. If we knew the Fire Worshippers better we\nmight find that their centuries of pious observance have been rewarded,\nand that the fire has given them a little of its nature; and I am\ncertain that the water, the water of the seas and of lakes and of mist\nand rain, has all but made the Irish after its image. Images form\nthemselves in our minds perpetually as if they were reflected in some\npool. We gave ourselves up in old times to mythology, and saw the Gods\neverywhere. We talked to them face to face, and the stories of that\ncommunion are so many that I think they outnumber all the like stories\nof all the rest of Europe. Even to-day our country people speak with\nthe dead and with some who perhaps have never died as we understand\ndeath; and even our educated people pass without great difficulty into\nthe condition of quiet that is the condition of vision. We can make our\nminds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may\nsee, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a\nclearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. Did not\nthe wise Porphyry think that all souls come to be born because of\nwater, and that \u201ceven the generation of images in the mind is from\nwater\u201d?\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE OLD TOWN\n\n\nI fell, one night some fifteen years ago, into what seemed the power\nof faery.\n\nI had gone with a young man and his sister--friends and relations of\nmy own--to pick stories out of an old countryman; and we were coming\nhome talking over what he had told us. It was dark, and our\nimaginations were excited by his stories of apparitions, and this may\nhave brought us, unknown to us, to the threshold, between sleeping and\nwaking, where Sphinxes and Chimaeras sit open-eyed and where there are\nalways murmurings and whisperings. I cannot think that what we saw was\nan imagination of the waking mind. We had come under some trees that\nmade the road very dark, when the girl saw a bright light moving slowly\nacross the road. Her brother and myself saw nothing, and did not see\nanything until we had walked for about half-an-hour along the edge of\nthe river and down a narrow lane to some fields where there was a\nruined church covered with ivy, and the foundations of what was called\n\u201cthe Old Town,\u201d which had been burned down, it was said, in Cromwell\u2019s\nday. We had stood for some few minutes, so far as I can recollect,\nlooking over the fields full of stones and brambles and elder-bushes,\nwhen I saw a small bright light on the horizon, as it seemed, mounting\nup slowly towards the sky; then we saw other faint lights for a minute\nor two, and at last a bright flame like the flame of a torch moving\nrapidly over the river. We saw it all in such a dream, and it seems all\nso unreal, that I have never written of it until now, and hardly ever\nspoken of it, and even when thinking, because of some unreasoning\nimpulse, I have avoided giving it weight in the argument. Perhaps I\nhave felt that my recollections of things seen when the sense of\nreality was weakened must be untrustworthy. A few months ago, however,\nI talked it over with my two friends, and compared their somewhat\nmeagre recollections with my own. That sense of unreality was all the\nmore wonderful because the next day I heard sounds as unaccountable as\nwere those lights, and without any emotion of unreality, and I remember\nthem with perfect distinctness and confidence. The girl was sitting\nreading under a large old-fashioned mirror, and I was reading and\nwriting a couple of yards away, when I heard a sound as if a shower of\npeas had been thrown against the mirror, and while I was looking at it\nI heard the sound again, and presently, while I was alone in the room,\nI heard a sound as if something much bigger than a pea had struck the\nwainscoting beside my head. And after that for some days came other\nsights and sounds, not to me but to the girl, her brother, and the\nservants. Now it was a bright light, now it was letters of fire that\nvanished before they could be read, now it was a heavy foot moving\nabout in the seemingly empty house. One wonders whether creatures who\nlive, the country people believe, wherever men and women have lived in\nearlier times, followed us from the ruins of the old town? or did they\ncome from the banks of the river by the trees where the first light\nhad shone for a moment?\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MAN AND HIS BOOTS\n\n\nThere was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of ghosts or\nsheogues, and there was a house in Donegal that had been haunted as\nlong as man could remember, and this is the story of how the house got\nthe better of the man. The man came into the house and lighted a fire\nin the room under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them\nOn the hearth, and stretched out his feet and warmed him self. For a\ntime he prospered in his unbelief; but a little while after the night\nhad fallen, and everything had got very dark, one of his boots began to\nmove. It got up off the floor and gave a kind of slow jump towards the\ndoor, and then the other boot did the same, and after that the first\nboot jumped again. And thereupon it struck the man that an invisible\nbeing had got into his boots, and was now going away in them. When the\nboots reached the door they went up-stairs slowly, and then the man\nheard them go tramp, tramp round the haunted room over his head. A few\nminutes passed, and he could hear them again upon the stairs, and after\nthat in the passage outside, and then one of them came in at the door,\nand the other gave a jump past it and came in too. They jumped along\ntowards him, and then one got up and hit him, and afterwards the other\nhit him, and then again the first hit him, and so on, until they drove\nhim out of the room, and finally out of the house. In this way he was\nkicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter.\nIt is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of\nthe Sidhe, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work\nof the Sidhe who live in the heart of fantasy.\n\n\n\n\nA COWARD\n\n\nOne day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who lives\nbeyond Ben Bulben and Cope\u2019s mountain, and met there a young lad who\nseemed to be disliked by the two daughters. I asked why they disliked\nhim, and was; told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom\nrobust children of nature take to be cowards are but men and women with\na nervous system too finely made for their life and work. I looked at\nthe lad; but no, that pink-and-white face and strong body had nothing\nof undue sensibility. After a little he told me his story. He had lived\na wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he was\ncoming home late at night, and suddenly fell himself sinking in, as it\nwere, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a dead\nbrother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not stop\ntill he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung himself\nagainst the door with so much of violence that he broke the thick\nwooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his wild\nlife, but was a hopeless coward. Nothing could ever bring him to look,\neither by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face, and\nhe often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, \u201cthe\nprettiest girl in the country\u201d persuade him to see her home after a\nparty if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had looked at the\nface no man can see unchanged-the imponderable face of a spirit.\n\n\n\n\nTHE THREE O\u2019BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES\n\n\nIn the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things.\nThere is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing\nthere than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon\nthe earth. In the beginning the earth was perhaps made to fulfil the\ndesire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What\nwonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom!\n\nA friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was\nstraying about a rath called \u201cCashel Nore.\u201d A man with a haggard face\nand unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and\nbegan digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was working near and\nasked who the man was. \u201cThat is the third O\u2019Byrne,\u201d was the answer. A\nfew days after he learned this story: A great quantity of treasure had\nbeen buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries\nset to guard it; but some day it was to be found and belong to the\nfamily of the O\u2019Byrnes. Before that day three O\u2019Byrnes must find it and\ndie. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last\nhe had got a glimpse of the stone coffin that contained it, but\nimmediately a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and\ntore him to pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished\ndeep into the earth. The second O\u2019Byrne came and dug and dug until he\nfound the coffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within.\nHe saw some horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and\nsoon died. The treasure again sank out of sight. The third O\u2019Byrne is\nnow digging. He believes that he will die in some terrible way the\nmoment he finds the treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and\nthe O\u2019Byrne family made rich for ever, as they were of old.\n\nA peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the\nshin-bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up; there was a hole\nin it; he looked through the hole, and saw the gold heaped up under the\nground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath\nagain he could not find the spot where he had seen it.\n\n\n\n\nDRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES\n\n\nDrumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven!\nplaces of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time\nafter time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore.\nDrumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the\nmountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall\nto loose the faery riders on the world. The great St. Columba himself,\nthe builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed the\nmountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his prayers.\nRosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,\nlike a green tablecloth, and lying in the foam midway between the round\ncairn-headed Knocknarea and \u201cBen Bulben, famous for hawks\u201d:\n\n\n    But for Benbulben and Knocknarea\n    Many a poor sailor\u2019d be cast away,\n\n\nas the rhyme goes.\n\nAt the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and\nrocks and grass: a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall\nasleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake \u201csilly,\u201d\nthe \u201cgood people\u201d having carried off his soul. There is no more ready\nshortcut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered\nand smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes\nthither \u201cfull of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and\ndrawing-rooms.\u201d Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and\nwas heard yelping helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland.\nThese forts or raths, made before modern history had begun, cover all\nRosses and all Columkille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most\nothers, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I was\npoking about there, an unusually intelligent and \u201creading\u201d peasant who\nhad come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and\nwhispered in a timid voice, \u201cAre you all right, sir?\u201d I had been some\nlittle while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the\ndog.\n\nNo wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by ill-\nboding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose northern\nslope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer\u2019s young son came\nfrom one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards it, but\nthe \u201cglamour\u201d fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence, cross-legged,\nand commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined the fence was a\nhorse, and that all night long he went on the most wonderful ride\nthrough the country. In the morning he was still beating his fence, and\nthey carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for three years\nbefore he came to himself again. A little later a farmer tried to level\nthe fort. His cows and horses died, and an manner of trouble overtook\nhim, and finally he himself was led home, and left useless with \u201chis\nhead on his knees by the fire to the day of his death.\u201d\n\nA few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is\nanother angle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with\nsand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or\nfour fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the\ndarkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave\u2019s mouth\ntwo red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A\ngreat crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers,\nbut the creatures had gone.\n\nTo the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of\nnever-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door in\nthe evening, and, in her own words, \u201clooks at the mountains and thinks\nof the goodness of God,\u201d God is all the nearer, because the pagan\npowers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for hawks,\nthe white square door swings open at sundown, and those wild\nunchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the\nWhite Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself, wanders under the broad\ncloud nightcap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these things, even\nthough the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no long\nwhile since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of\nher dress touched him. \u201cHe fell down, and was dead three days.\u201d But\nthis is merely the small gossip of faerydom--the little stitches that\njoin this world and the other.\n\nOne night as I sat eating Mrs. H-----\u2019s soda-bread, her husband told\nme a longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor\nman from Fin M\u2019Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell\nof, for those creatures, the \u201cgood people,\u201d love to repeat themselves.\nAt any rate the story-tellers do. \u201cIn the times when we used to travel\nby the canal,\u201d he said, \u201cI was coming down from Dublin. When we came to\nMullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued\nI was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then\nwe walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls\nmilking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked\nthem for a drink of milk. \u2018We have nothing to put it in here,\u2019 they\nsaid, \u2018but come to the house with us.\u2019 We went home with them, and sat\nround the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me,\nloath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to\neat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it\non a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head.\nWhen I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It\ngrew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave\nthe good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them\na corpse. When I saw them, coming I hid behind the door. Says one to\nthe other, putting the corpse on the spit, \u2018Who\u2019ll turn the spit? Says\nthe other, \u2018Michael H-----, come out of that and turn the meat.\u2019 I came\nout all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. \u2018Michael H------,\u2019\nsays the one who spoke first, \u2018if you let it burn we\u2019ll have to put you\non the spit instead\u2019; and on that they went out. I sat there trembling\nand turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and\nthe one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But\nhaving fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that\ntime; and, sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: \u2018Michael H-----,\ncan you tell me a story?\u2019 \u2018Divil a one,\u2019 said I. On which he caught me\nby the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing\nnight. Never in all my born days did I see such a night-the darkest\nnight that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for\nthe life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on\nthe shoulder, with a \u2018Michael H----, can you tell a story now?\u2019 \u2018I\ncan,\u2019 says I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says:\n\u2018Begin.\u2019 \u2018I have no story but the one,\u2019 says I, \u2018that I was sitting\nhere, and you two men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and\nset me turning it.\u2019 \u2018That will do,\u2019 says he; \u2018ye may go in there and\nlie down on the bed.\u2019 And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning\nwhere was I but in the middle of a green field!\u201d\n\n\u201cDrumcliff\u201d is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing\nseason a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a\nplace called Columkille\u2019s Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient\nboat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a\nmoonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread\nportents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon,\nrenowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or\ncare, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest\nboscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchullin and his heroes. A\nvision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.\n\nDrumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath,\nhillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men in\narmour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on.\nA whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there is a\nvery ancient graveyard. The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse\nabout a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: \u201cA pious soldier of\nthe race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff.\u201d Not very long\nago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray,\nsaw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was\ngoing. It was the \u201cpious soldier of the race of Con,\u201d says local\nwisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the\ngraveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling\nthe doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young\nchild, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from\nthe too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut\nyour hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.\n\nThere is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the snipe-\nghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well:\nfor excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on\nthe slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea. There\nis a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived there\nwho found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred\npounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea captain. This my man\nknew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain,\nnot daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean. Shortly\nafterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange\nsounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered\nsince the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive\nout in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade\nof the dead man appeared there at times. The bush remains to this day:\nonce portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put\nspade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices,\nthey did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a\nsnipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say\nthe neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.\n\nMy forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these\nmany years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find\nnothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such\nas was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of\nthe few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:\n\u201cThey always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine\u201d: for it is\ndangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or\nknowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My\nfriend, \u201cthe sweet Harp-String\u201d (I give no more than his Irish name for\nfear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart,\nbut then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields.\nBesides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the\n\u201cdhoul\u201d in Great Eliza\u2019s century, and he has a kind of prescriptive\nright to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are\nalmost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of\nmagicians be true.\n\n\n\n\nTHE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE\n\n\nI\n\nOnce a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the\ncemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made them\nfeel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil\nhimself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows\nwith a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break, and\nthey were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet, and\nworthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the\nIcelanders, or \u201cDanes\u201d as we call them and all other dwellers in the\nScandinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places,\nand in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same\nway the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the\ncustom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people\nof Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland\nwhich once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses\nitself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as\nRoughley, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red\nbeards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a\nboat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike\neach other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint of\nhitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing, only\nto give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a man\nfrom Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row, and\nmade the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so thin\nyou cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of\npassionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and\ncried, \u201cthat little fellow\u2019s skull if ye were to hit it would go like\nan egg-shell,\u201d he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,\n\u201cbut a man might wallop away at your lordship\u2019s for a fortnight.\u201d\n\n\nII\n\nI wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories.\nI was in Roughley the other day, and found it much like other desolate\nplaces. I may have been thinking of Moughorow, a much wilder place, for\nthe memories of one\u2019s childhood are brittle things to lean upon.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE RELIGION OF A SAILOR\n\n\nA sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his\ndeck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the\nvalley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all\nthings except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow\nunder the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must\nneeds think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper\nwith a Captain Moran on board the S.S. Margaret, that had put into a\nwestern river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions\nall flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He\ntalked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all\nhis words broke the hard energy of his calling.\n\n\u201cSur,\u201d said he, \u201cdid you ever hear tell of the sea captain\u2019s prayer?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said I; \u201cwhat is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is,\u201d he replied, \u201c\u2018O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what does that mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt means,\u201d he said, \u201cthat when they come to me some night and wake me\nup, and say, \u2018Captain, we\u2019re going down,\u2019 that I won\u2019t make a fool o\u2019\nmeself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I standin\u2019 on the bridge,\nwhen the third mate comes up to me looking mortial bad. Says he,\n\u2018Captain, all\u2019s up with us.\u2019 Says I, \u2018Didn\u2019t you know when you joined\nthat a certain percentage go down every year?\u2019 \u2018Yes, sur,\u2019 says he; and\nsays I, \u2018Arn\u2019t you paid to go down?\u2019 \u2018Yes, sur,\u2019 says he; and says I,\n\u2018Then go down like a man, and be damned to you!\u201d\u2019\n\n\n\n\nCONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY\n\n\nIn Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far\napart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many\nyears in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, \u201cThere is\na bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there are\ntwo souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way the\none has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has the\nshelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for\nshelter. I don\u2019t believe it, but there is many a one would not pass by\nit at night.\u201d Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near\ntogether that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than the\nshadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child\nrunning about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the\ncreature why she did not have it cut short. \u201cIt was my grandmother\u2019s,\u201d\nsaid the child; \u201cwould you have her going about yonder with her\npetticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days?\u201d I have read a\nstory of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had made\nher grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her\nknees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like\ntheir earthly homes, only there the thatch will never grow leaky, nor\nthe white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time\nempty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent\nor a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the\nrighteous from the unrighteous.\n\n\n1892 and 1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES\n\n\nSometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have\nfor a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint\nand shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world\nunder my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the\npower of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will, and\nsweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands. One day\nI saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went a circular\nparapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating precious\nstones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered green and\ncrimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable hunger. I knew\nthat I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell of the artist,\nand that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful things with too\navid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I\nhave seen into other people\u2019s hells also, and saw in one an infernal\nPeter, who had a black face and white lips, and who weighed on a\ncurious double scales not only the evil deeds committed, but the good\ndeeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could see the scales\ngo up and down, but I could not see the shades who were, I knew,\ncrowding about him. I saw on another occasion a quantity of demons of\nall kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and dog-like\n--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and looking at\na moon--like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from the depths\nof the pit.\n\n\n\n\nOUR LADY OF THE HILLS\n\n\nWhen we were children we did not say at such a distance from the post-\noffice, or so far from the butcher\u2019s or the grocer\u2019s, but measured\nthings by the covered well in the wood, or by the burrow of the fox in\nthe hill. We belonged then to God and to His works, and to things come\ndown from the ancient days. We would not have been greatly surprised\nhad we met the shining feet of an angel among the white mushrooms upon\nthe mountains, for we knew in those days immense despair, unfathomed\nlove--every eternal mood,--but now the draw-net is about our feet. A\nfew miles eastward of Lough Gill, a young Protestant girl, who was both\npretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white, wandered up\namong those mountain mushrooms, and I have a letter of hers telling how\nshe met a troop of children, and became a portion of their dream. When\nthey first saw her they threw themselves face down in a bed of rushes,\nas if in a great fear; but after a little other children came about\nthem, and they got up and followed her almost bravely. She noticed\ntheir fear, and presently stood still and held out her arms. A little\ngirl threw herself into them with the cry, \u201cAh, you are the Virgin out\no\u2019 the picture!\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said another, coming near also, \u201cshe is a sky\nfaery, for she has the colour of the sky.\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said a third, \u201cshe is\nthe faery out of the foxglove grown big.\u201d The other children, however,\nwould have it that she was indeed the Virgin, for she wore the Virgin\u2019s\ncolours. Her good Protestant heart was greatly troubled, and she got\nthe children to sit down about her, and tried to explain who she was,\nbut they would have none of her explanation. Finding explanation of no\navail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ? \u201cYes,\u201d said one; \u201cbut\nwe do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the\nVirgin.\u201d \u201cTell Him to be good to me,\u201d whispered another into her ear.\n\u201cWe would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil,\u201d burst out a\nthird.\n\nShe talked to them a long time about Christ and the apostles, but was\nfinally interrupted by an elderly woman with a stick, who, taking her\nto be some adventurous hunter for converts, drove the children away,\ndespite their explanation that here was the great Queen of Heaven come\nto walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had\ngone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the\nchild who was called \u201ca divil\u201d jumped down from the high ditch by the\nlane, and said she would believe her \u201can ordinary lady\u201d if she had \u201ctwo\nskirts,\u201d for \u201cladies always had two skirts.\u201d The \u201ctwo skirts\u201d were\nshown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later\njumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, \u201cDad\u2019s a divil,\nmum\u2019s a divil, and I\u2019m a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady,\u201d and\nhaving flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When my\npretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had\ndropped the tassels of her parasol. A year later she was by chance upon\nthe mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child\nwho had first called her the Virgin out o\u2019 the picture, and saw the\ntassels hanging about the child\u2019s neck, and said, \u201cI am the lady you\nmet last year, who told you about Christ.\u201d \u201cNo, you are not! no, you\nare not! no, you are not!\u201d was the passionate reply. And after all, it\nwas not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking\nin sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who\ncast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that\nman pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and\nthe mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and\nevil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GOLDEN AGE\n\n\nA while ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time\nI had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a\nmessage from those beings or bodiless moods, or whatever they be, who\ninhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw\nwith blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel, half dog,\nmoving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal\nvanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his\npink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light;\nand I remembered a pleasant belief about two faery dogs who go about\nrepresenting day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the\nexcellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and\nchance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage\nand began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box,\nand though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest\nemotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden\nAge. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a\nbeautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and\nflung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and\nkindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried\nlike a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the\nmore innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our\nfallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song\nof the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the\nfiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the\nclever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred\nby a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and\nthat the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only\nthey who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the\nsad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must\nweep until the Eternal gates swing open.\n\nWe were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the\nfiddler put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a\ncopper, and then opened the door and was gone.\n\n\n\n\nA REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF\nTHEIR GHOSTS AND FAERIES\n\n\nNot only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the\nother day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in\nfront of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it,\nand dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It\nwould have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An\nIrish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature.\nFor in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and\nspirits. They only ill-treat each other in reason. Each admits the\nother side to have feelings. There are points beyond which neither will\ngo. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man\nCampbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his\nhorse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a\nneedle into her. They came to a river, and she grew very restless,\nfearing to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her.\nShe cried out, \u201cPierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-\nlike slave (the needle) out of me.\u201d They came to an inn. He turned the\nlight of a lantern on her; immediately she dropped down like a falling\nstar, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they\ntreat the faeries as one is treated in an old Highland poem. A faery\nloved a little child who used to cut turf at the side of a faery hill.\nEvery day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted\nknife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take\nlong, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done\nso quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped\nher. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little\nchild take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her\nmake three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out\nof the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off\nwith a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm\ninto the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand\nthrough the treachery of the child.\n\nIn Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even\nthe Devil religious. \u201cWhere do you live, good-wyf, and how is the\nminister?\u201d he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it\ncame out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we\nhave left them alone. To be sure, the \u201cloyal minority\u201d knocked out the\neye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town\nof Carrickfergus. But then the \u201cloyal minority\u201d is half Scottish. You\nhave discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like to\nhave them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have\ngone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn\nhave taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear\ntheir tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes\nran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland\nyou have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been\npermitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls.\nUnhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they\nwill dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but more in\nsadness than in anger they have said it. The Catholic religion likes to\nkeep on good terms with its neighbours.\n\nThese two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each\ncountry the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and\ngraceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror to\nScotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of make-\nbelieve. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is made to\nturn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not feel\nanxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the dew on\nhis old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have soured\nthe naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The piper\nM\u2019Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched into a\nsea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a long time\nthe people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a mile, when\nthey heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased suddenly.\nSome time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern completely\nflayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of the\ncavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake where\ntreasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close to the\ncoffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came. He rose\nto the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen the\ntreasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while his\nheart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw the\nrest of his body.\n\nThese water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish folk-\nlore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our tales\nturn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly\nhumorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one of\nthese monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does not\nprevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding it with\nconscious fantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day for\ncongers in the monster hole. Returning home, a great eel on my\nshoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail sweeping the ground\nbehind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an\nimmense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had\nbroken my line and escaped. \u201cThat was him,\u201d said the fisherman. \u201cDid\nyou ever hear how he made my brother emigrate? My brother was a diver,\nyou know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast\ncomes up to him, and says, \u2018What are you after?\u2019 \u2018Stones, sur,\u2019 says\nhe. \u2018Don\u2019t you think you had better be going?\u2019 \u2018Yes, sur,\u2019 says he. And\nthat\u2019s why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got\npoor, but that\u2019s not true.\u201d\n\nYou--you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and air\nand water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We--we exchange\ncivilities with the world beyond.\n\n\n\n\nWAR\n\n\nWhen there was a rumour of war with France a while ago, I met a poor\nSligo woman, a soldier\u2019s widow, that I know, and I read her a sentence\nout of a letter I had just had from London: \u201cThe people here are mad\nfor war, but France seems inclined to take things peacefully,\u201d or some\nlike sentence. Her mind ran a good deal on war, which she imagined\npartly from what she had heard from soldiers, and partly from tradition\nof the rebellion of \u201998, but the word London doubled her interest, for\nshe knew there were a great many people in London, and she herself had\nonce lived in \u201ca congested district.\u201d \u201cThere are too many over one\nanother in London. They are getting tired of the world. It is killed\nthey want to be. It will be no matter; but sure the French want nothing\nbut peace and quietness. The people here don\u2019t mind the war coming.\nThey could not be worse than they are. They may as well die soldierly\nbefore God. Sure they will get quarters in heaven.\u201d Then she began to\nsay that it would be a hard thing to see children tossed about on\nbayonets, and I knew her mind was running on traditions of the great\nrebellion. She said presently, \u201cI never knew a man that was in a battle\nthat liked to speak of it after. They\u2019d sooner be throwing hay down\nfrom a hayrick.\u201d She told me how she and her neighbours used to be\nsitting over the fire when she was a girl, talking of the war that was\ncoming, and now she was afraid it was coming again, for she had dreamed\nthat all the bay was \u201cstranded and covered with seaweed.\u201d I asked her\nif it was in the Fenian times that she had been so much afraid of war\ncoming. But she cried out, \u201cNever had I such fun and pleasure as in the\nFenian times. I was in a house where some of the officers used to be\nstaying, and in the daytime I would be walking after the soldiers\u2019\nband, and at night I\u2019d be going down to the end of the garden watching\na soldier, with his red coat on him, drilling the Fenians in the field\nbehind the house. One night the boys tied the liver of an old horse,\nthat had been dead three weeks, to the knocker, and I found it when I\nopened the door in the morning.\u201d And presently our talk of war shifted,\nas it had a way of doing, to the battle of the Black Pig, which seems\nto her a battle between Ireland and England, but to me an Armageddon\nwhich shall quench all things in the Ancestral Darkness again, and from\nthis to sayings about war and vengeance. \u201cDo you know,\u201d she said, \u201cwhat\nthe curse of the Four Fathers is? They put the man-child on the spear,\nand somebody said to them, \u2018You will be cursed in the fourth generation\nafter you,\u2019 and that is why disease or anything always comes in the\nfourth generation.\u201d\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE QUEEN AND THE FOOL\n\n\nI have heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of Clare\nand Galway, say that in \u201cevery household\u201d of faery \u201cthere is a queen\nand a fool,\u201d and that if you are \u201ctouched\u201d by either you never recover,\nthough you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said of the\nfool that he was \u201cmaybe the wisest of all,\u201d and spoke of him as dressed\nlike one of the \u201cmummers that used to be going about the country.\u201d\nSince then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him, and I have\nheard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember seeing a\nlong, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of an old\nmiller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was\na fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he\nis believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes an\nAmadan-na-Breena, a fool of the forth, and is attached to a household\nthere, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know well, and who has\nbeen in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said, \u201cThere are fools\namongst them, and the fools we see, like that Amadan of Ballylee, go\naway with them at night, and so do the woman fools that we call\nOinseachs (apes).\u201d A woman who is related to the witch-doctor on the\nborder of Clare, and who can Cure people and cattle by spells, said,\n\u201cThere are some cures I can\u2019t do. I can\u2019t help any one that has got a\nstroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a woman that\nsaw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian. I never\nheard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking near\nGort, and she called out, \u2018There\u2019s the fool of the forth coming after\nme.\u2019 So her friends that were with her called out, though they could\nsee nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no harm.\nHe was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that is all\nshe said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a cousin of\nHearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years.\u201d The wife of the old\nmiller said, \u201cIt is said they are mostly good neighbours, but the\nstroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets that\nis gone. The Amadan-na-Breena we call him!\u201d And an old woman who lives\nin the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, \u201cIt is true enough,\nthere is no cure for the stroke of the Amadan-na-Breena. There was an\nold man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell what diseases\nyou had with measuring you; and he knew many things. And he said to me\none time, \u2018What month of the year is the worst?\u2019 and I said, \u2018The month\nof May, of course.\u2019 \u2018It is not,\u2019 he said; \u2018but the month of June, for\nthat\u2019s the month that the Amadan gives his stroke!\u2019 They say he looks\nlike any other man, but he\u2019s leathan (wide), and not smart. I knew a\nboy one time got a great fright, for a lamb looked over the wall at him\nwith a beard on it, and he knew it was the Amadan, for it was the month\nof June. And they brought him to that man I was telling about, that had\nthe tape, and when he saw him he said, \u2018Send for the priest, and get a\nMass said over him.\u2019 And so they did, and what would you say but he\u2019s\nliving yet and has a family! A certain Regan said, \u2018They, the other\nsort of people, might be passing you close here and they might touch\nyou. But any that gets the touch of the Amadan-na-Breena is done for.\u2019\nIt\u2019s true enough that it\u2019s in the month of June he\u2019s most likely to\ngive the touch. I knew one that got it, and he told me about it\nhimself. He was a boy I knew well, and he told me that one night a\ngentleman came to him, that had been his land-lord, and that was dead.\nAnd he told him to come along with him, for he wanted him to fight\nanother man. And when he went he found two great troops of them, and\nthe other troop had a living man with them too, and he was put to fight\nhim. And they had a great fight, and he got the better of the other\nman, and then the troop on his side gave a great shout, and he was left\nhome again. But about three years after that he was cutting bushes in a\nwood and he saw the Amadan coming at him. He had a big vessel in his\narms, and it was shining, so that the boy could see nothing else; but\nhe put it behind his back then and came running, and the boy said he\nlooked wild and wide, like the side of the hill. And the boy ran, and\nhe threw the vessel after him, and it broke with a great noise, and\nwhatever came out of it, his head was gone there and then. He lived for\na while after, and used to tell us many things, but his wits were gone.\nHe thought they mightn\u2019t have liked him to beat the other man, and he\nused to be afraid something would come on him.\u201d And an old woman in a\nGalway workhouse, who had some little knowledge of Queen Maive, said\nthe other day, \u201cThe Amadan-na-Breena changes his shape every two days.\nSometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he\u2019ll come like the worst\nof beasts, trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of\nlate he was shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him.\u201d\n\nI knew a man who was trying to bring before his mind\u2019s eye an image of\nAengus, the old Irish god of love and poetry and ecstasy, who changed\nfour of his kisses into birds, and suddenly the image of a man with a\ncap and bells rushed before his mind\u2019s eye, and grew vivid and spoke\nand called itself \u201cAengus\u2019 messenger.\u201d And I knew another man, a truly\ngreat seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there was\na tree with peacocks\u2019 feathers instead of leaves, and flowers that\nopened to show little human faces when the white fool had touched them\nwith his coxcomb, and he saw at another time a white fool sitting by a\npool and smiling and watching the images of many fair women floating up\nfrom the pool.\n\nWhat else can death be but the beginning of wisdom and power and\nbeauty? and foolishness may be a kind of death. I cannot think it\nwonderful that many should see a fool with a shining vessel of some\nenchantment or wisdom or dream too powerful for mortal brains in \u201cevery\nhousehold of them.\u201d It is natural, too, that there should be a queen to\nevery household of them, and that one should hear little of their\nkings, for women come more easily than men to that wisdom which ancient\npeoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom. The\nself, which is the foundation of our knowledge, is broken in pieces by\nfoolishness, and is forgotten in the sudden emotions of women, and\ntherefore fools may get, and women do get of a certainty, glimpses of\nmuch that sanctity finds at the end of its painful journey. The man who\nsaw the white fool said of a certain woman, not a peasant woman, \u201cIf I\nhad her power of vision I would know all the wisdom of the gods, and\nher visions do not interest her.\u201d And I know of another woman, also not\na peasant woman, who would pass in sleep into countries of an unearthly\nbeauty, and who never cared for anything but to be busy about her house\nand her children; and presently an herb doctor cured her, as he called\nit. Wisdom and beauty and power may sometimes, as I think, come to\nthose who die every day they live, though their dying may not be like\nthe dying Shakespeare spoke of. There is a war between the living and\nthe dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it. They will have it\nthat when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of the\nearth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their wisdom\nwhen the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make the trees\nwither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery in\nNovember, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes. Because the\nsoul always believes in these, or in like things, the cell and the\nwilderness shall never be long empty, or lovers come into the world who\nwill not understand the verse--\n\n\n    Heardst thou not sweet words among\n    That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?\n    Heardst thou not that those who die\n    Awake in a world of ecstasy?\n    How love, when limbs are interwoven,\n    And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,\n    And thought to the world\u2019s dim boundaries clinging,\n    And music when one\u2019s beloved is singing,\n    Is death?\n\n\n1901.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE OF FAERY\n\n\nThose that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of\ntheir wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to\nhave a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has\npassed the threshold of trance, to those sweet waters where Maeldun saw\nthe dishevelled eagles bathe and become young again.\n\nThere was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of\nGort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the\nend of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told\nme a few months before his death that \u201cthey\u201d would not let him sleep at\nnight with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their pipes.\nHe had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend had told\nhim to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or to play\non their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and he did,\nand they always went out into the field when he began to play. He\nshowed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he did\nnot know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his\nchimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the\npipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for\nshe heard that \u201cthree of them\u201d had told him he was to die. He said they\nhad gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they\nhad \u201ctaken,\u201d I suppose) who used to come with them, and play about the\nhouse with them, had \u201cgone to some other place,\u201d because \u201cthey found\nthe house too cold for them, maybe\u201d; and he died a week after he had\nsaid these things.\n\nHis neighbours were not certain that he really saw anything in his old\nage, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young\nman. His brother said, \u201cOld he is, and it\u2019s all in his brain the things\nhe sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him.\u201d But he was\nimprovident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, \u201cThe\npoor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a\nfine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two\nlots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they\ntook away Fallon\u2019s little girl.\u201d And she told how Fallon\u2019s little girl\nhad met a woman \u201cwith red hair that was as bright as silver,\u201d who took\nher away. Another neighbour, who was herself \u201cclouted over the ear\u201d by\none of them for going into a fort where they were, said, \u201cI believe\nit\u2019s mostly in his head they are; and when he stood in the door last\nnight I said, \u2018The wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it\nnever stops,\u2019 to make him think it was the same with him; but he says,\n\u2018I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them is\nafter bringing out a little flute, and it\u2019s on it he\u2019s playing to\nthem.\u2019 And this I know, that when he pulled down the chimney where he\nsaid the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones, and\nhe an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and\nstrong.\u201d\n\nA friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms of\ntrue friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down\naccurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman\u2019s story some\ntime before I heard of it, got her to tell it over again, and wrote it\nout at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not like\nbeing in the house alone because of the ghosts and fairies; and the old\nwoman said, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to be frightened about in faeries, miss.\nMany\u2019s the time I talked to a woman myself that was a faery, or\nsomething of the sort, and no less and more than mortal anyhow. She\nused to come about your grandfather\u2019s house--your mother\u2019s grandfather,\nthat is--in my young days. But you\u2019ll have heard all about her.\u201d My\nfriend said that she had heard about her, but a long time before, and\nshe wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went on, \u201cWell\ndear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming about was\nwhen your uncle--that is, your mother\u2019s uncle--Joseph married, and\nbuilding a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his\nfather\u2019s, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living\nnigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men\nat their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all\nthere into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked\nout, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come\nyet; and one day I was standing with my mother foment the house, when\nwe sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I\nwas a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but\nI mind her as well as if I saw her there now!\u201d My friend asked how the\nwoman was dressed, and the old woman said, \u201cIt was a gray cloak she had\non, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied round\nher head, like the country women did use to wear in them times.\u201d My\nfriend asked, \u201cHow wee was she?\u201d And the old woman said, \u201cWell now, she\nwasn\u2019t wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the Wee\nWoman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you would\nsay. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round in the\nface. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother\u2019s sister, and Betty was\nlike none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of them. She\nwas round and fresh in the face, and she never was married, and she\nnever would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee Woman--her\nbeing like Betty--was, maybe, one of their own people that had been\ntook off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was\nalways following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks\nstraight over to where my mother was standing. \u2018Go over to the Lough\nthis minute!\u2019--ordering her like that--\u2018Go over to the Lough, and tell\nJoseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I\u2019ll\nshow you fornent the thornbush. That is where it is to be built, if he\nis to have luck and prosperity, so do what I\u2019m telling ye this minute.\u2019\nThe house was being built on \u2018the path\u2019 I suppose--the path used by the\npeople of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down and\nshows him, and he changes the foundations, the way he was bid, but\ndidn\u2019t bring it exactly to where was pointed, and the end of that was,\nwhen he come to the house, his own wife lost her life with an accident\nthat come to a horse that hadn\u2019t room to turn right with a harrow\nbetween the bush and the wall. The Wee Woman was queer and angry when\nnext she come, and says to us, \u2018He didn\u2019t do as I bid him, but he\u2019ll\nsee what he\u2019ll see.\u201d\u2019 My friend asked where the woman came from this\ntime, and if she was dressed as before, and the woman said, \u201cAlways the\nsame way, up the field beyant the burn. It was a thin sort of shawl she\nhad about her in summer, and a cloak about her in winter; and many and\nmany a time she came, and always it was good advice she was giving to\nmy mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck.\nThere was none of the other children of us ever seen her unless me; but\nI used to be glad when I seen her coming up the bum, and would run out\nand catch her by the hand and the cloak, and call to my mother, \u2018Here\u2019s\nthe Wee Woman!\u2019 No man body ever seen her. My father used to be wanting\nto, and was angry with my mother and me, thinking we were telling lies\nand talking foolish like. And so one day when she had come, and was\nsitting by the fireside talking to my mother, I slips out to the field\nwhere he was digging. \u2018Come up,\u2019 says I, \u2018if ye want to see her. She\u2019s\nsitting at the fireside now, talking to mother.\u2019 So in he comes with me\nand looks round angry like and sees nothing, and he up with a broom\nthat was near hand and hits me a crig with it. \u2018Take that now!\u2019 says\nhe, \u2018for making a fool of me!\u2019 and away with him as fast as he could,\nand queer and angry with me. The Wee Woman says to me then, \u2018Ye got\nthat now for bringing people to see me. No man body ever seen me, and\nnone ever will.\u2019\n\n\u201cThere was one day, though, she gave him a queer fright anyway,\nwhether he had seen her or not. He was in among the cattle when it\nhappened, and he comes up to the house all trembling like. \u2018Don\u2019t let\nme hear you say another word of your Wee Woman. I have got enough of\nher this time.\u2019 Another time, all the same, he was up Gortin to sell\nhorses, and before he went off, in steps the Wee Woman and says she to\nmy mother, holding out a sort of a weed, \u2018Your man is gone up by\nGortin, and there\u2019s a bad fright waiting him coming home, but take this\nand sew it in his coat, and he\u2019ll get no harm by it.\u2019 My mother takes\nthe herb, but thinks to herself, \u2018Sure there\u2019s nothing in it,\u2019 and\nthrows it on the floor, and lo and behold, and sure enough! coming home\nfrom Gortin, my father got as bad a fright as ever he got in his life.\nWhat it was I don\u2019t right mind, but anyway he was badly damaged by it.\nMy mother was in a queer way, frightened of the Wee Woman, after what\nshe done, and sure enough the next time she was angry. \u2018Ye didn\u2019t\nbelieve me,\u2019 she said, \u2018and ye threw the herb I gave ye in the fire,\nand I went far enough for it.\u2019 There was another time she came and told\nhow William Hearne was dead in America. \u2018Go over,\u2019 she says, \u2018to the\nLough, and say that William is dead, and he died happy, and this was\nthe last Bible chapter ever he read,\u2019 and with that she gave the verse\nand chapter. \u2018Go,\u2019 she says, \u2018and tell them to read them at the next\nclass meeting, and that I held his head while he died.\u2019 And sure enough\nword came after that how William had died on the day she named. And,\ndoing as she did about the chapter and hymn, they never had such a\nprayer-meeting as that. One day she and me and my mother was standing\ntalking, and she was warning her about something, when she says of a\nsudden, \u2018Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery, and it\u2019s time for me\nto be off.\u2019 And with that she gave a swirl round on her feet, and\nraises up in the air, and round and round she goes, and up and up, as\nif it was a winding stairs she went up, only far swifter. She went up\nand up, till she was no bigger than a bird up against the clouds,\nsinging and singing the whole time the loveliest music I ever heard in\nmy life from that day to this. It wasn\u2019t a hymn she was singing, but\npoetry, lovely poetry, and me and my mother stands gaping up, and all\nof a tremble. \u2018What is she at all, mother?\u2019 says I. \u2018Is it an angel she\nis, or a faery woman, or what?\u2019 With that up come Miss Letty, that was\nyour grandmother, dear, but Miss Letty she was then, and no word of her\nbeing anything else, and she wondered to see us gaping up that way,\ntill me and my mother told her of it. She went on gay-dressed then, and\nwas lovely looking. She was up the lane where none of us could see her\ncoming forward when the Wee Woman rose up in that queer way, saying,\n\u2018Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery.\u2019 Who knows to what far\ncountry she went, or to see whom dying?\n\n\u201cIt was never after dark she came, but daylight always, as far as I\nmind, but wanst, and that was on a Hallow Eve night. My mother was by\nthe fire, making ready the supper; she had a duck down and some apples.\nIn slips the Wee Woman, \u2018I\u2019m come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,\u2019 says\nshe. \u2018That\u2019s right,\u2019 says my mother, and thinks to herself, \u2018I can give\nher her supper nicely.\u2019 Down she sits by the fire a while. \u2018Now I\u2019ll\ntell you where you\u2019ll bring my supper,\u2019 says she. \u2018In the room beyond\nthere beside the loom--set a chair in and a plate.\u2019 \u2018When ye\u2019re\nspending the night, mayn\u2019t ye as well sit by the table and eat with the\nrest of us?\u2019 \u2018Do what you\u2019re bid, and set whatever you give me in the\nroom beyant. I\u2019ll eat there and nowhere else.\u2019 So my mother sets her a\nplate of duck and some apples, whatever was going, in where she bid,\nand we got to our supper and she to hers; and when we rose I went in,\nand there, lo and behold ye, was her supper-plate a bit ate of each\nportion, and she clean gone!\u201d\n\n\n1897.\n\n\n\n\nDREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL\n\n\nThe friend who heard about Maive and the hazel-stick went to the\nworkhouse another day. She found the old people cold and wretched,\n\u201clike flies in winter,\u201d she said; but they forgot the cold when they\nbegan to talk. A man had just left them who had played cards in a rath\nwith the people of faery, who had played \u201cvery fair\u201d; and one old man\nhad seen an enchanted black pig one night, and there were two old\npeople my friend had heard quarrelling as to whether Raftery or\nCallanan was the better poet. One had said of Raftery, \u201cHe was a big\nman, and his songs have gone through the whole world. I remember him\nwell. He had a voice like the wind\u201d; but the other was certain \u201cthat\nyou would stand in the snow to listen to Callanan.\u201d Presently an old\nman began to tell my friend a story, and all listened delightedly,\nbursting into laughter now and then. The story, which I am going to\ntell just as it was told, was one of those old rambling moralless\ntales, which are the delight of the poor and the hard driven, wherever\nlife is left in its natural simplicity. They tell of a time when\nnothing had consequences, when even if you were killed, if only you had\na good heart, somebody would bring you to life again with a touch of a\nrod, and when if you were a prince and happened to look exactly like\nyour brother, you might go to bed with his queen, and have only a\nlittle quarrel afterwards. We too, if we were so weak and poor that\neverything threatened us with misfortune, would remember, if foolish\npeople left us alone, every old dream that has been strong enough to\nfling the weight of the world from its shoulders.\n\nThere was a king one time who was very much put out because he had no\nson, and he went at last to consult his chief adviser. And the chief\nadviser said, \u201cIt\u2019s easy enough managed if you do as I tell you. Let\nyou send some one,\u201d says he, \u201cto such a place to catch a fish. And when\nthe fish is brought in, give it to the queen, your wife, to eat.\u201d\n\nSo the king sent as he was told, and the fish was caught and brought\nin, and he gave it to the cook, and bade her put it before the fire,\nbut to be careful with it, and not to let any blob or blister rise on\nit. But it is impossible to cook a fish before the fire without the\nskin of it rising in some place or other, and so there came a blob on\nthe skin, and the cook put her finger on it to smooth it down, and then\nshe put her finger into her mouth to cool it, and so she got a taste of\nthe fish. And then it was sent up to the queen, and she ate it, and\nwhat was left of it was thrown out into the yard, and there was a mare\nin the yard and a greyhound, and they ate the bits that were thrown out.\n\nAnd before a year was out, the queen had a young son, and the cook had\na young son, and the mare had two foals, and the greyhound had two pups.\n\nAnd the two young sons were sent out for a while to some place to be\ncared, and when they came back they were so much like one another no\nperson could know which was the queen\u2019s son and which was the cook\u2019s.\nAnd the queen was vexed at that, and she went to the chief adviser and\nsaid, \u201cTell me some way that I can know which is my own son, for I\ndon\u2019t like to be giving the same eating and drinking to the cook\u2019s son\nas to my own.\u201d \u201cIt is easy to know that,\u201d said the chief adviser, \u201cif\nyou will do as I tell you. Go you outside, and stand at the door they\nwill be coming in by, and when they see you, your own son will bow his\nhead, but the cook\u2019s son will only laugh.\u201d\n\nSo she did that, and when her own son bowed his head, her servants put\na mark on him that she would know him again. And when they were all\nsitting at their dinner after that, she said to Jack, that was the\ncook\u2019s son, \u201cIt is time for you to go away out of this, for you are not\nmy son.\u201d And her own son, that we will call Bill, said, \u201cDo not send\nhim away, are we not brothers?\u201d But Jack said, \u201cI would have been long\nago out of this house if I knew it was not my own father and mother\nowned it.\u201d And for all Bill could say to him, he would not stop. But\nbefore he went, they were by the well that was in the garden, and he\nsaid to Bill, \u201cIf harm ever happens to me, that water on the top of the\nwell will be blood, and the water below will be honey.\u201d\n\nThen he took one of the pups, and one of the two horses, that was\nfoaled after the mare eating the fish, and the wind that was after him\ncould not catch him, and he caught the wind that was before him. And he\nwent on till he came to a weaver\u2019s house, and he asked him for a\nlodging, and he gave it to him. And then he went on till he came to a\nking\u2019s house, and he sent in at the door to ask, \u201cDid he want a\nservant?\u201d \u201cAll I want,\u201d said the king, \u201cis a boy that will drive out\nthe cows to the field every morning, and bring them in at night to be\nmilked.\u201d \u201cI will do that for you,\u201d said Jack; so the king engaged him.\n\nIn the morning Jack was sent out with the four-and-twenty cows, and\nthe place he was told to drive them to had not a blade of grass in it\nfor them, but was full of stones. So Jack looked about for some place\nwhere there would be better grass, and after a while he saw a field\nwith good green grass in it, and it belonging to a giant. So he knocked\ndown a bit of the wall and drove them in, and he went up himself into\nan apple-tree and began to eat the apples. Then the giant came into the\nfield. \u201cFee-faw-fum,\u201d says he, \u201cI smell the blood of an Irishman. I see\nyou where you are, up in the tree,\u201d he said; \u201cyou are too big for one\nmouthful, and too small for two mouthfuls, and I don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll\ndo with you if I don\u2019t grind you up and make snuff for my nose.\u201d \u201cAs\nyou are strong, be merciful,\u201d says Jack up in the tree. \u201cCome down out\nof that, you little dwarf,\u201d said the giant, \u201cor I\u2019ll tear you and the\ntree asunder.\u201d So Jack came down. \u201cWould you sooner be driving red-hot\nknives into one another\u2019s hearts,\u201d said the giant, \u201cor would you sooner\nbe fighting one another on red-hot flags?\u201d \u201cFighting on red-hot flags\nis what I\u2019m used to at home,\u201d said Jack, \u201cand your dirty feet will be\nsinking in them and my feet will be rising.\u201d So then they began the\nfight. The ground that was hard they made soft, and the ground that was\nsoft they made hard, and they made spring wells come up through the\ngreen flags. They were like that all through the day, no one getting\nthe upper hand of the other, and at last a little bird came and sat on\nthe bush and said to Jack, \u201cIf you don\u2019t make an end of him by sunset,\nhe\u2019ll make an end of you.\u201d Then Jack put out his strength, and he\nbrought the giant down on his knees. \u201cGive me my life,\u201d says the giant,\n\u201cand I\u2019ll give you the three best gifts.\u201d \u201cWhat are those?\u201d said Jack.\n\u201cA sword that nothing can stand against, and a suit that when you put\nit on, you will see everybody, and nobody will see you, and a pair of\nshoes that will make you ran faster than the wind blows.\u201d \u201cWhere are\nthey to be found?\u201d said Jack. \u201cIn that red door you see there in the\nhill.\u201d So Jack went and got them out. \u201cWhere will I try the sword?\u201d\nsays he. \u201cTry it on that ugly black stump of a tree,\u201d says the giant.\n\u201cI see nothing blacker or uglier than your own head,\u201d says Jack. And\nwith that he made one stroke, and cut off the giant\u2019s head that it went\ninto the air, and he caught it on the sword as it was coming down, and\nmade two halves of it. \u201cIt is well for you I did not join the body\nagain,\u201d said the head, \u201cor you would have never been able to strike it\noff again.\u201d \u201cI did not give you the chance of that,\u201d said Jack. And he\nbrought away the great suit with him.\n\nSo he brought the cows home at evening, and every one wondered at all\nthe milk they gave that night. And when the king was sitting at dinner\nwith the princess, his daughter, and the rest, he said, \u201cI think I only\nhear two roars from beyond to-night in place of three.\u201d\n\nThe next morning Jack went out again with the cows, and he saw another\nfield full of grass, and he knocked down the wall and let the cows in.\nAll happened the same as the day before, but the giant that came this\ntime had two heads, and they fought together, and the little bird came\nand spoke to Jack as before. And when Jack had brought the giant down,\nhe said, \u201cGive me my life, and I\u2019ll give you the best thing I have.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d says Jack. \u201cIt\u2019s a suit that you can put on, and you\nwill see every one but no one can see you.\u201d \u201cWhere is it?\u201d said Jack.\n\u201cIt\u2019s inside that little red door at the side of the hill.\u201d So Jack\nwent and brought out the suit. And then he cut off the giant\u2019s two\nheads, and caught them coming down and made four halves of them. And\nthey said it was well for him he had not given them time to join the\nbody.\n\nThat night when the cows came home they gave so much milk that all the\nvessels that could be found were filled up.\n\nThe next morning Jack went out again, and all happened as before, and\nthe giant this time had four heads, and Jack made eight halves of them.\nAnd the giant had told him to go to a little blue door in the side of\nthe hill, and there he got a pair of shoes that when you put them on\nwould go faster than the wind.\n\nThat night the cows gave so much milk that there were not vessels\nenough to hold it, and it was given to tenants and to poor people\npassing the road, and the rest was thrown out at the windows. I was\npassing that way myself, and I got a drink of it.\n\nThat night the king said to Jack, \u201cWhy is it the cows are giving so\nmuch milk these days? Are you bringing them to any other grass?\u201d \u201cI am\nnot,\u201d said Jack, \u201cbut I have a good stick, and whenever they would stop\nstill or lie down, I give them blows of it, that they jump and leap\nover walls and stones and ditches; that\u2019s the way to make cows give\nplenty of milk.\u201d\n\nAnd that night at the dinner, the king said, \u201cI hear no roars at all.\u201d\n\nThe next morning, the king and the princess were watching at the\nwindow to see what would Jack do when he got to the field. And Jack\nknew they were there, and he got a stick, and began to batter the cows,\nthat they went leaping and jumping over stones, and walls, and ditches.\n\u201cThere is no lie in what Jack said,\u201d said the king then.\n\nNow there was a great serpent at that time used to come every seven\nyears, and he had to get a kines daughter to eat, unless she would have\nsome good man to fight for her. And it was the princess at the place\nJack was had to be given to it that time, and the king had been feeding\na bully underground for seven years, and you may believe he got the\nbest of everything, to be ready to fight it.\n\nAnd when the time came, the princess went out, and the bully with her\ndown to the shore, and when they got there what did he do, but to tie\nthe princess to a tree, the way the serpent would be able to swallow\nher easy with no delay, and he himself went and hid up in an ivy-tree.\nAnd Jack knew what was going on, for the princess had told him about\nit, and had asked would he help her, but he said he would not. But he\ncame out now, and he put on the suit he had taken from the first giant,\nand he came by the place the princess was, but she didn\u2019t know him. \u201cIs\nthat right for a princess to be tied to a tree?\u201d said Jack. \u201cIt is not,\nindeed,\u201d said she, and she told him what had happened, and how the\nserpent was coming to take her. \u201cIf you will let me sleep for awhile\nwith my head in your lap,\u201d said Jack, \u201cyou could wake me when it is\ncoming.\u201d So he did that, and she awakened him when she saw the serpent\ncoming, and Jack got up and fought with it, and drove it back into the\nsea. And then he cut the rope that fastened her, and he went away. The\nbully came down then out of the tree, and he brought the princess to\nwhere the king was, and he said, \u201cI got a friend of mine to come and\nfight the serpent to-day, where I was a little timorous after being so\nlong shut up underground, but I\u2019ll do the fighting myself to-morrow.\u201d\n\nThe next day they went out again, and the same thing happened, the\nbully tied up the princess where the serpent could come at her fair and\neasy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree. Then Jack put on the\nsuit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and the\nprincess did not know him, but she told him all that had happened\nyesterday, and how some young gentleman she did not know had come and\nsaved her. So Jack asked might he lie down and take a sleep with his\nhead in her lap, the way she could awake him. And an happened the same\nway as the day before. And the bully gave her up to the king, and said\nhe had brought another of his friends to fight for her that day.\n\nThe next day she was brought down to the shore as before, and a great\nmany people gathered to see the serpent that was coming to bring the\nking\u2019s daughter away. And Jack brought out the suit of clothes he had\nbrought away from the third giant, and she did not know him, and they\ntalked as before. But when he was asleep this time, she thought she\nwould make sure of being able to find him again, and she took out her\nscissors and cut off a piece of his hair, and made a little packet of\nit and put it away. And she did another thing, she took off one of the\nshoes that was on his feet.\n\nAnd when she saw the serpent coming she woke him, and he said, \u201cThis\ntime I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king\u2019s\ndaughters.\u201d So he took out the sword he had got from the giant, and he\nput it in at the back of the serpent\u2019s neck, the way blood and water\ncame spouting out that went for fifty miles inland, and made an end of\nhim. And then he made off, and no one saw what way he went, and the\nbully brought the princess to the king, and claimed to have saved her,\nand it is he who was made much of, and was the right-hand man after\nthat.\n\nBut when the feast was made ready for the wedding, the princess took\nout the bit of hair she had, and she said she would marry no one but\nthe man whose hair would match that, and she showed the shoe and said\nthat she would marry no one whose foot would not fit that shoe as well.\nAnd the bully tried to put on the shoe, but so much as his toe would\nnot go into it, and as to his hair, it didn\u2019t match at all to the bit\nof hair she had cut from the man that saved her.\n\nSo then the king gave a great ball, to bring all the chief men of the\ncountry together to try would the shoe fit any of them. And they were\nall going to carpenters and joiners getting bits of their feet cut off\nto try could they wear the shoe, but it was no use, not one of them\ncould get it on.\n\nThen the king went to his chief adviser and asked what could he do.\nAnd the chief adviser bade him to give another ball, and this time he\nsaid, \u201cGive it to poor as well as rich.\u201d\n\nSo the ball was given, and many came flocking to it, but the shoe\nwould not fit any one of them. And the chief adviser said, \u201cIs every\none here that belongs to the house?\u201d \u201cThey are all here,\u201d said the\nking, \u201cexcept the boy that minds the cows, and I would not like him to\nbe coming up here.\u201d\n\nJack was below in the yard at the time, and he heard what the king\nsaid, and he was very angry, and he went and got his sword and came\nrunning up the stairs to strike off the king\u2019s head, but the man that\nkept the gate met him on the stairs before he could get to the king,\nand quieted him down, and when he got to the top of the stairs and the\nprincess saw him, she gave a cry and ran into his arms. And they tried\nthe shoe and it fitted him, and his hair matched to the piece that had\nbeen cut off. So then they were married, and a great feast was given\nfor three days and three nights.\n\nAnd at the end of that time, one morning there came a deer outside the\nwindow, with bells on it, and they ringing. And it called out, \u201cHere is\nthe hunt, where is the huntsman and the hound?\u201d So when Jack heard that\nhe got up and took his horse and his hound and went hunting the deer.\nWhen it was in the hollow he was on the hill, and when it was on the\nhill he was in the hollow, and that went on all through the day, and\nwhen night fell it went into a wood. And Jack went into the wood after\nit, and all he could see was a mud-wall cabin, and he went in, and\nthere he saw an old woman, about two hundred years old, and she sitting\nover the fire. \u201cDid you see a deer pass this way?\u201d says Jack. \u201cI did\nnot,\u201d says she, \u201cbut it\u2019s too late now for you to be following a deer,\nlet you stop the night here.\u201d \u201cWhat will I do with my horse and my\nhound?\u201d said Jack. \u201cHere are two ribs of hair,\u201d says she, \u201cand let you\ntie them up with them.\u201d So Jack went out and tied up the horse and the\nhound, and when he came in again the old woman said, \u201cYou killed my\nthree sons, and I\u2019m going to kill you now,\u201d and she put on a pair of\nboxing-gloves, each one of them nine stone weight, and the nails in\nthem fifteen inches long. Then they began to fight, and Jack was\ngetting the worst of it. \u201cHelp, hound!\u201d he cried out, then \u201cSqueeze\nhair,\u201d cried out the old woman, and the rib of hair that was about the\nhound\u2019s neck squeezed him to death. \u201cHelp, horse!\u201d Jack called out,\nthen, \u201cSqueeze hair,\u201d called out the old woman, and the rib of hair\nthat was about the horse\u2019s neck began to tighten and squeeze him to\ndeath. Then the old woman made an end of Jack and threw him outside the\ndoor.\n\nTo go back now to Bill. He was out in the garden one day, and he took\na look at the well, and what did he see but the water at the top was\nblood, and what was underneath was honey. So he went into the house\nagain, and he said to his mother, \u201cI will never eat a second meal at\nthe same table, or sleep a second night in the same bed, till I know\nwhat is happening to Jack.\u201d\n\nSo he took the other horse and hound then, and set off, over the hills\nwhere cock never crows and horn never sounds, and the devil never blows\nhis bugle. And at last he came to the weaver\u2019s house, and when he went\nin, the weaver says, \u201cYou are welcome, and I can give you better\ntreatment than I did the last time you came in to me,\u201d for she thought\nit was Jack who was there, they were so much like one another. \u201cThat is\ngood,\u201d said Bill to himself, \u201cmy brother has been here.\u201d And he gave\nthe weaver the full of a basin of gold in the morning before he left.\n\nThen he went on till he came to the king\u2019s house, and when he was at\nthe door the princess came running down the stairs, and said, \u201cWelcome\nto you back again.\u201d And all the people said, \u201cIt is a wonder you have\ngone hunting three days after your marriage, and to stop so long away.\u201d\nSo he stopped that night with the princess, and she thought it was her\nown husband all the time.\n\nAnd in the morning the deer came, and bells ringing on her, under the\nwindows, and called out, \u201cThe hunt is here, where are the huntsmen and\nthe hounds?\u201d Then Bill got up and got his horse and his hound, and\nfollowed her over hills and hollows till they came to the wood, and\nthere he saw nothing but the mud-wall cabin and the old woman sitting\nby the fire, and she bade him stop the night there, and gave him two\nribs of hair to tie his horse and his hound with. But Bill was wittier\nthan Jack was, and before he went out, he threw the ribs of hair into\nthe fire secretly. When he came in the old woman said, \u201cYour brother\nkilled my three sons, and I killed him, and I\u2019ll kill you along with\nhim.\u201d And she put her gloves on, and they began the fight, and then\nBill called out, \u201cHelp, horse.\u201d \u201cSqueeze hair,\u201d called the old woman;\n\u201cI can\u2019t squeeze, I\u2019m in the fire,\u201d said the hair. And the horse came\nin and gave her a blow of his hoof. \u201cHelp, hound,\u201d said Bill then.\n\u201cSqueeze, hair,\u201d said the old woman; \u201cI can\u2019t, I\u2019m in the fire,\u201d said\nthe second hair. Then the bound put his teeth in her, and Bill brought\nher down, and she cried for mercy. \u201cGive me my life,\u201d she said, \u201cand\nI\u2019ll tell you where you\u2019ll get your brother again, and his hound and\nhorse.\u201d \u201cWhere\u2019s that?\u201d said Bill. \u201cDo you see that rod over the fire?\u201d\nsaid she; \u201ctake it down and go outside the door where you\u2019ll see three\ngreen stones, and strike them with the rod, for they are your brother,\nand his horse and hound, and they\u2019ll come to life again.\u201d \u201cI will, but\nI\u2019ll make a green stone of you first,\u201d said Bill, and he cut off her\nhead with his sword.\n\nThen he went out and struck the stones, and sure enough there were\nJack, and his horse and hound, alive and well. And they began striking\nother stones around, and men came from them, that had been turned to\nstones, hundreds and thousands of them.\n\nThen they set out for home, but on the way they had some dispute or\nsome argument together, for Jack was not well pleased to hear he had\nspent the night with his wife, and Bill got angry, and he struck Jack\nwith the rod, and turned him to a green stone. And he went home, but\nthe princess saw he had something on his mind, and he said then, \u201cI\nhave killed my brother.\u201d And he went back then and brought him to life,\nand they lived happy ever after, and they had children by the\nbasketful, and threw them out by the shovelful. I was passing one time\nmyself, and they called me in and gave me a cup of tea.\n\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nBY THE ROADSIDE\n\n\nLast night I went to a wide place on the Kiltartan road to listen to\nsome Irish songs. While I waited for the singers an old man sang about\nthat country beauty who died so many years ago, and spoke of a singer\nhe had known who sang so beautifully that no horse would pass him, but\nmust turn its head and cock its ears to listen. Presently a score of\nmen and boys and girls, with shawls over their beads, gathered under\nthe trees to listen. Somebody sang Sa Muirnin Diles, and then somebody\nelse Jimmy Mo Milestor, mournful songs of separation, of death, and of\nexile. Then some of the men stood up and began to dance, while another\nlilted the measure they danced to, and then somebody sang Eiblin a\nRuin, that glad song of meeting which has always moved me more than\nother songs, because the lover who made it sang it to his sweetheart\nunder the shadow of a mountain I looked at every day through my\nchildhood. The voices melted into the twilight and were mixed into the\ntrees, and when I thought of the words they too melted away, and were\nmixed with the generations of men. Now it was a phrase, now it was an\nattitude of mind, an emotional form, that had carried my memory to\nolder verses, or even to forgotten mythologies. I was carried so far\nthat it was as though I came to one of the four rivers, and followed it\nunder the wall of Paradise to the roots of the trees of knowledge and\nof life. There is no song or story handed down among the cottages that\nhas not words and thoughts to carry one as far, for though one can know\nbut a little of their ascent, one knows that they ascend like medieval\ngenealogies through unbroken dignities to the beginning of the world.\nFolk art is, indeed, the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and\nbecause it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and\npretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has\ngathered into itself the simplest and most unforgetable thoughts of the\ngenerations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted. Wherever it\nis spoken by the fireside, or sung by the roadside, or carved upon the\nlintel, appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and\ndesign to, spreads quickly when its hour is come.\n\nIn a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few\npeople--three or four thousand out of millions--favoured by their own\ncharacters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour,\nhave understanding of imaginative things, and yet \u201cthe imagination is\nthe man himself.\u201d The churches in the Middle Age won all the arts into\ntheir service because men understood that when imagination is\nimpoverished, a principal voice--some would say the only voice--for the\nawakening of wise hope and durable faith, and understanding charity,\ncan speak but in broken words, if it does not fall silent. And so it\nhas always seemed to me that we, who would re-awaken imaginative\ntradition by making old songs live again, or by gathering old stories\ninto books, take part in the quarrel of Galilee. Those who are Irish\nand would spread foreign ways, which, for all but a few, are ways of\nspiritual poverty, take part also. Their part is with those who were of\nJewry, and yet cried out, \u201cIf thou let this man go thou art not\nCaesar\u2019s friend.\u201d\n\n\n1901.\n\n\n\n\nINTO THE TWILIGHT\n\n\n    Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,\n    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;\n    Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight;\n    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.\n    Thy mother Eire is always young,\n    Dew ever shining and twilight gray,\n    Though hope fall from thee or love decay\n    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.\n    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill,\n    For there the mystical brotherhood\n    Of hollow wood and the hilly wood\n    And the changing moon work out their will.\n    And God stands winding his lonely horn;\n    And Time and World are ever in flight,\n    And love is less kind than the gray twilight,\n    And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.","title":"The Celtic Twilight","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":39570}