{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_41250/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_41250","id":"gutenberg_41250","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41250","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Travel Writing","Donegal (Ireland : County) -- Description and travel"],"text":"[ Transcriber's Notes:\n\n Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully\n as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation.\n Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They\n are listed at the end of the text.\n\n Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.\n ]\n\n\n\n\nMEARING STONES\n\n\n\n\nBY THE SAME AUTHOR\n\n\n THE RUSHLIGHT.\n THE GARDEN OF THE BEES.\n THE GILLY OF CHRIST.\n THE MOUNTAINY SINGER.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE WALL OF SLIEVE LEAGUE.]\n\n\n\n\n MEARING STONES\n\n Leaves from my Note-Book on Tramp\n in Donegal, by JOSEPH CAMPBELL\n (Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil), with Sixteen\n Pencil Drawings by the Author.\n\n MAUNSEL & COMPANY, LTD.,\n 96 MIDDLE ABBEY ST., DUBLIN.\n 1911.\n\n\n Printed by Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n Page\n\n In the Mountains 1\n\n The Wander-Lust 2\n\n The Dark Woman 2\n\n By Lochros Beag 3\n\n Coaching by the Stars 3\n\n A Rainbow 3\n\n Change 4\n\n Prophet's Food 4\n\n The Transient 5\n\n Women and Hares 5\n\n The Smell of the Town 5\n\n Glengesh 5\n\n Clog-Seed 6\n\n Herbs and Flowers 6\n\n A Young Girl 7\n\n The General Light and Dark 7\n\n Soul and Body 8\n\n A Man on Shelty-Back 9\n\n The Fairies 9\n\n Stranorlar Station 9\n\n Stones 10\n\n The Strand-Bird 10\n\n Space 10\n\n Rabbits and Cats 11\n\n The Glas Gaibhlinn 11\n\n A House in the Road's Mouth 11\n\n The Quest 12\n\n Muckish 12\n\n The May-Fire 12\n\n Bloody Foreland 13\n\n Twilight and Silence 13\n\n The Poor Herd 14\n\n A Mountain Tramp 14\n\n The Festival of Death 19\n\n In Glen-Columcille 19\n\n The Brink of Water 20\n\n A Dark Morning 21\n\n The Swallow-Mark 21\n\n Women Beetling Clothes 21\n\n The Sea 22\n\n A Ballad-Singer 22\n\n Sunlight 24\n\n Turf-Cutting 24\n\n His Old Mother 25\n\n A Day of Wind and Light, Blown Rain 25\n\n Lying and Walking 26\n\n Glen-Columcille to Carrick 26\n\n Ora et Labora 29\n\n Two Things that won't go Grey 29\n\n Rundal 29\n\n P\u00faca-Piles 30\n\n The Rosses 30\n\n A Country Funeral 30\n\n Youth and Age 31\n\n Summer Dusk 32\n\n A Note 32\n\n The Peasant in Literature 32\n\n An Insleep 33\n\n Water and Sl\u00e1n-Lus 33\n\n By Lochros M\u00f3r 33\n\n Rival Fiddlers 34\n\n Nature 35\n\n Sunday under Slieve League 35\n\n The Night he was Born 36\n\n The Lusm\u00f3r 37\n\n Derry People 37\n\n A Clock 38\n\n Carrick Glen 38\n\n A Shuiler 39\n\n Turkeys in the Trees 39\n\n A Party of Tinkers 39\n\n Teelin, Bunglass, and Slieve League 40\n\n The Shooting Star 45\n\n Sunday on the Road between Carrick and Glengesh 45\n\n A Roany Bush 46\n\n August Evening 46\n\n Near Inver 47\n\n All Subtle, Secret Things 47\n\n A Madman 47\n\n Laguna 48\n\n Near Letterkenny 48\n\n Shan Mac Ananty 48\n\n A Poor Cabin 51\n\n The Flax-Stone 51\n\n After Sunset 52\n\n The Darkness and the Tide 53\n\n Errigal 54\n\n The Sore Foot 54\n\n Asherancally 54\n\n Orange Gallases 55\n\n The Human Voice 55\n\n Loch Aluinn 56\n\n The Open Road 56\n\n\n\n\nDRAWINGS\n\n\n The Wall of Slieve League Frontispiece\n\n Clady River, near Gweedore Facing Page 2\n\n Pass of Glengesh \" 6\n\n Lochros Beag \" 8\n\n Muckish, with a 'Cap' on \" 12\n\n On the Road to Doon Well \" 16\n\n Near Alton Loch \" 20\n\n A Street in Ardara \" 22\n\n Falling Water \" 26\n\n Bog and Sky \" 30\n\n Mountainy Folk \" 34\n\n A Wayfarer \" 38\n\n The Horn \" 42\n\n A Clachan of Houses \" 48\n\n A Gap between the Hills \" 50\n\n Loch Nacung--Moonrise \" 54\n\n\n\n\nMEARING STONES\n\n\n\n\nIN THE MOUNTAINS\n\n\n\"In the mountains,\" says Nietzsche, \"the shortest way is from summit to\nsummit.\" That is the way I covered Donegal. Instead of descending into\nthe valleys (a tedious and destroying process at all times), I crossed,\nlike the king of the fairies, on a bridge of wonder:\n\n With a bridge of white mist\n Columcille he crosses,\n On his stately journeys\n From Slieve League to Rosses.\n\nWhat seems in places in this book a fathomless _madhm_ is in reality\nbridged over with wonder--dark to the senses here and there, I grant\nyou, but steady and treadable in proportion to the amount of vision\none brings to the passage of it. All, I know, will not follow me (the\nfairies withhold knowledge from the many and bestow it on the few),\nbut if blame is to be given let the fairies get it, and not me. And\nI may as well warn the reader here that it is unlucky to curse the\nfairies. Rosses is but a storm's cry, and--the curse always comes home\nto roost!\n\nWith regard to the pictures illustrating the book, several people\nwho have seen them in the original have criticised their darkness,\nas if they were all drawn \"in twilight and eclipse.\" But the darkness\nof Donegal was the first thing that struck me when I crossed the\nfrontier at Lifford, and the forty miles' journey through the hills\nto Ardara bit the impression still more deeply into me. And if I were\nasked now after a year's exile what I remember most vividly of the\ncounty, I should say its gloom. I can see nothing now but a wilderness\nof black hills, with black shadows chasing one another over them,\na gleam of water here and there, and just the tiniest little patch\nof sunlight--extraordinarily brilliant by contrast with the general\ndarkness--on half a field, say, with its mearing-stones, to relieve the\nsense of tragedy that one feels on looking at the landscape.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WANDER-LUST\n\n\nSea-ribbons have I cut, and gathered ling; talked with fairies; heard\nLia Fail moaning in the centre, and seen Tonn Tuaidh white in the\nnorth; slept on hearth-flags odd times, and under bushes other times;\npassed the mill with the scoop-wheels and the house with the golden\ndoor; following the roads--the heart always hot in me, the lights on\nthe hills always beckoning me on!\n\n\n\n\nTHE DARK WOMAN\n\n\nWe were talking together the other morning--the publican and\nmyself--outside the inn door at Barra, when a dark woman passed. \"God\nlook to that poor creature,\" says he; \"she hasn't as much on her as\nwould stuff a crutch.\" \"Stuff a what?\" says I, for I didn't quite\nunderstand him. \"The bolster of a crutch,\" says he. \"And she knows\nnobody. Her eye-strings is broke.\"\n\n[Illustration: CLADY RIVER, NEAR GWEEDORE.]\n\n\n\n\nBY LOCHROS BEAG\n\n\nA waste of blown sand. The Atlantic breakers white upon its\nextremest verge. A patch of sea-bog before, exhaling its own peculiar\nfragrance--part fibre, part earth, part salt. Ricks of black turf\nstacked over it here and there, ready to be creeled inland against\nthe winter firing. The dark green bulk of Slieve a-Tooey rising\nlike a wall behind, a wisp of cloud lying lightly upon its carn. The\nvillage of Maghery, a mere clachan of unmortared stone and rain-beaten\nstraw, huddling at its foot. A shepherd's whistle, a cry in torrential\nGaelic, or the bleat of a sheep coming from it now and again, only to\naccentuate the elemental quiet and wonder of the place. The defile of\nMaum opening beyond, scarped and precipitous, barely wide enough to\nhold the road and bog-stream that tumble through it to the sea. The\nrainbow air of our western seaboard enfolding all, heavy with rain and\nthe fragrance of salt and peat fires.\n\n\n\n\nCOACHING BY THE STARS\n\n\nCoaching by the stars, night-walking--all my best thoughts, I find,\ncome to me that way. Poetry, like devilry, loves darkness.\n\n\n\n\nA RAINBOW\n\n\nI was watching a rainbow this afternoon--a shimmering ring in the\nsky between the fort at the mouth of the Owentocker river and Slieve\na-Tooey beyond. \"That's a beautiful sight, now,\" said a beggar,\nstopping on the road to have a word with me--the sort of person one\nmeets everywhere in Ireland, friendly, garrulous, inquisitive, very\nproud of his knowledge of half-secret or hidden things, and anxious\nat all times to air it before strangers. \"We do have a power of them\nthis speckled weather.\" He looked into the sky with a queer look, then\nstarted humming over the names of the colours to himself in Irish. \"And\nthey say, sir, it's unlucky to pass through a rainbow. Did you ever\nhear that?\"\n\n\n\n\nCHANGE\n\n\nMy heart goes out to the playing and singing folk, the folk who are\nforever on the roads. Life is change; and to be seeing new wonders\nevery day--the thrown sea, the silver rush of the meadow, the lights\nin distant towns--is to be living, and not merely existing. I pity the\nman who is content to stay always in the place where his mother dropped\nhim; that is, unless his thoughts wander. For one might sit on a midden\nand dream stars!\n\n\n\n\nPROPHET'S FOOD\n\n\nA man hailed me on the road, and we were talking.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \"If\none had nothing but fraochans to eat and water to drink, sure one\nwould have to be satisfied. And remember,\" says he, \"that a prophet\nlived on as little.\" \"Who was that?\" says I. \"John the Baptist,\" says\nhe. \"You'll read that in the books.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE TRANSIENT\n\n\nOnly the transient is beautiful, said Schiller; and Nature, in the\nincessant play of her rising, vanishing forms, is not averse to\nbeauty. Beauty, said Turgenev, needs not to live for ever to be\neternal--one instant is enough for her.\n\n\n\n\nWOMEN AND HARES\n\n\nIt's curious in Donegal sometimes, when going along the road, or\ncrossing a footpath through the fields, to see a shawled woman, a\nperch or so off, dropping over the edge of a hill, and then when you\nget up to the edge there is no sign of her at all. And, maybe, a pace\nfurther on you will start a hare out of the hollow where you think the\nwoman should have been, and you begin to wonder is there any truth in\nthe story about women--that have to do with magic and charms and old\nfreets, and the like--changing into hares, after all! I have had many\nexperiences like that in my travels through the county, and in not a\nfew instances have I been puzzled how a figure--silhouetted sharply\nagainst the skyline, and only a few yards off--could disappear so\nquickly out of view.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SMELL OF THE TOWN\n\n\nA woman said to me to-day: \"You'll get the smell o' the town blowed off\nyou in the Donegal hills!\"\n\n\n\n\nGLENGESH\n\n\nDarkness and austerity--those are the notes I carry away from this\nwild glen. Its lines have something of the splendid bareness of early\narchitecture; its colour suggests time-stained walls, with quiet\naisles and mouldering altars where one might kneel and dream away an\nexistence. When you meet a stranger going the road that winds through\nit, like a coil of incense suspended in mid-air, you expect him to look\nat you out of eyes full of wonder, and to speak to you in half-chanted\nand serious words, stopping not, turning neither to left nor to right,\nbut faring on, a symbol of pilgrimage:\n\n _Le solus a chroidhe,_\n _Fann agus tuirseach_\n _Go deireadh a shlighe._\n\n\n\n\nCLOG-SEED\n\n\n\"What are you sowing?\" \"Oh, clog-seed, clog-seed. The childer about\nhere is all running barefoot, and I thought I might help them against\nthe winter day!\"\n\n\n\n\nHERBS AND FLOWERS\n\n\n_Lusm\u00f3r_, _lus-na-m\u00e9arach\u00e1n_, _sian sl\u00e9ibhe_, foxglove, or\nfairy-thimble--whatever you like best to call it--it, I think, is the\ncommonest herb of all. One sees it everywhere with its tall carmine\nspray, growing on ditches in the sun, in dark, shady places by the side\nof rivers, and under arches. Then the king-fern, the splendid _osmunda\nregalis_; the delicate maidenhair and hart's-tongue, rooted in the\ncrannies of walls; bog-mint and bog-myrtle, deliciously fragrant after\nrain, and the white tossing _ceanabh\u00e1n_; brier-roses and woodbine; the\ndrooping convolvulus; blue-bough; Fairies' cabbage, or London Pride;\npignuts and anemones; amber water-lilies, curiously scented; orchises,\npurple and white; wild daffodils and marigolds, gilding the wet meadows\nbetween hills; crotal, a moss rather than a herb, but beautiful to\nlook at and most serviceable to the dyer; eyebright and purple mountain\nsaxifrage; crested ling; tufts of sea-holly, with their green, fleshy,\nspiked leaves; and lake-sedge and sand-grass, blown through by soft\nwinds and murmurous with the hum of bees. Donegal, wild though it be in\nother respects, is surely a paradise of herbs and flowers.\n\n[Illustration: PASS OF GLENGESH.]\n\n\n\n\nA YOUNG GIRL\n\n\nA young girl, in the purr and swell of youth. Her shawl is thrown\nloosely back, showing a neck and breast beautifully modelled. She is\nbarefooted, and jumps from point to point on the wet road. At a stream\nwhich crosses the road near the _gall\u00e1n_ she lifts her dress to her\nknees and leaps over. She does not see me where I am perched sunning\nmyself, so I can watch her to my heart's content.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GENERAL LIGHT AND DARK\n\n\n\"The words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark.\" One\nfeels the truth of this saying of Walt Whitman's in a place like the\nPass of Glengesh, or the White Strand outside Maghery. Chanting a\nfragment of the \"Leaves\" one night in the Pass, when everything was\nquiet and the smells were beginning to rise out of the wet meadows\nbelow, I felt how supremely true it was, and how much it belonged to\nthe time and place--the darkness, the silence, the vibrant stars, the\nearth smells, the bat that came out of the shadow of a fuchsia-bush and\nfluttered across a white streak in the sky beyond. And I have tried\nWordsworth's sonnet beginning, \"The world is too much with us,\" by a\ncriterion no less than that of the Atlantic itself, tumbling in foam\non the foreshore of Maghery when daylight was deepening into twilight,\nand the moon was low over the hills, touching the rock-pools and the\nsand-pools with flakes of carmine light. When I said the sonnet aloud\nto myself it seemed to rise out of the landscape and to incorporate\nitself with it again as my voice rose and fell in the wandering\ncadences of the verse. Nature, after all, is the final touchstone\nof art. Tried by it, the counterfeit fails and the unmixed gold is\njustified.\n\n\n\n\nSOUL AND BODY\n\n\n\"It's a strange world,\" said a tramp to me to-day. I agreed. \"And would\nyou answer me this, gaffer?\" said he. \"Why is it when a man's soul is\nin his body, and he lusty and well, you think nothing of kicking him\nabout as you would an old cast shoe? And the minute the soul goes,\nand the body is stiffening in death, you draw back from him, hardly\ndaring to touch him for the dread that is on you. Would you answer\nme that, gaffer?\" I was silent. \"It's a strange world, sure enough,\"\nsaid the tramp. He rose from the gripe where he lay making rings in\nthe grass with his stick. \"Good-day, gaffer,\" said he. \"God speed your\njourney.\" And he took the road, laughing.\n\n[Illustration: LOCHROS BEAG.]\n\n\n\n\nA MAN ON SHELTY-BACK\n\n\nA man on shelty-back. He has come in from the mountains to the cloth\nfair at Ardara. He is about sixty-five, black on the turn, clean\nshaven, but for side whiskers. He wears the soft wide-awake favoured by\nthe older generation of peasants, open shirt, and stock rolled several\ntimes round his throat and knotted loosely in front. His legs dangle\ndown on either side of his mount, tied at the knees with sugans. His\nbrogues are brown with bog mud, very thick in the sole, and laced only\nhalf-way up. He has a bundle of homespun stuff under his left arm. A\npipe is in his teeth, and as I approach he withdraws it to bid me the\ntime of day. \"_L\u00e1 maith_,\" he says in a strong, hearty voice. I return\nthe greeting, and pass on.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FAIRIES\n\n\nI was in a house one night late up in the Gap of Maum, a very\nlonely place, yarning with two brothers--shepherds--who live there\nby themselves. I had sat a long time over the _griosach_, and was\npreparing to go, when the elder of them said to me: \"Don't stir yet a\nbit. Sit the fire out. A body's loath to leave such a purty wee fire to\nthe fairies.\"\n\n\n\n\nSTRANORLAR STATION\n\n\nIn a quiet corner, seated, I see a woman come in from the mountainy\ncountry beyond Convoy. She is waiting for the up-train. She is\ndark. Her hair and eyes are _very_ dark. Her lips are threads of\nscarlet. Her skin is colourless, except for a slight tanning due\nto exposure to sun and weather. She has a black shawl about her\nshoulders, and a smaller one of lighter colour over her head. She\nmoves seldom. Her hands are folded on her knees. She looks into space\nwith an air of quiet ecstasy, like a Madonna in an old picture. Her\nbeauty is the beauty of one apart from the ruck and commonness of\nthings.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. She spits out now and again. I cannot help\nwatching her.\n\n\n\n\nSTONES\n\n\n\"Donegal is a terrible place for stones.\" \"Heth, is it, sir--boulders\nas big as a house. And skipping-stones? Man dear, I could give you a\nfield full, myself!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE STRAND-BIRD\n\n\nI could sit for hours listening to the \"bubbling\" of the strand-bird;\nbut that's because I am melancholy. If I weren't melancholy I'd hardly\nlike it, I think. The tide's at ebb and the bollans and rock-pools\nare full of water. Beyond is space--the yellow of the sand and the\ngrey of the sky--and the pipe-note \"bubbling\" between. A strange,\nyearning sound, like nothing one hears in towns; bringing one into\ntouch with the Infinite, and deep with the melancholy that is Ireland's\n.\u00a0.\u00a0. and mine.\n\n\n\n\nSPACE\n\n\nIn towns the furthest we see is the other side of the street; but\nhere there is no limit to one's prospect--Perseus is as visible as\nBo\u00f6tes--and one's thought grows as space increases.\n\n\n\n\nRABBITS AND CATS\n\n\nDonegal is over-run with rabbits; and sometimes on your journeys\nyou will see a common house-cat--miles from anywhere--stalking them\nup the side of a mountain, creeping stealthily through the heather\nand pouncing on them with the savagery of a wild thing. The cats,\na stonebreaker told me, come from the neighbouring farm-houses and\ncabins, \"but they are devils for strolling,\" says he, and in addition\nto what food they get from their owners \"they prog a bit on their own!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE GLAS GAIBHLINN\n\n\n\"That's a very green field,\" I said to a man to-day, pointing to a\nfield, about two furrow-lengths away, on which the sun seemed to pour\nall its light at once. \"Is there water near it?\" \"There's a stream,\"\nsays he. \"And the Glas Gaibhlinn sleeps there, anyway.\" \"And what's\nthat?\" \"It's a magic cow the old people'll tell you of,\" says he, \"that\ncould never be milked at one milking, or at seven milkings, for that,\"\nsays he. \"Any field that's greener than another field, or any bit of\nland that's richer than another bit, they say the Glas Gaibhlinn sleeps\nin it,\" says he. \"It's a freet, but it's true!\"\n\n\n\n\nA HOUSE IN THE ROAD'S MOUTH\n\n\nA house in the road's mouth--it is no roundabout to visit, but a short\ncut. Often I go up there of an evening, when my day's wandering is\ndone, to meet the people and to hear the old Fenian stories told--or,\nmaybe, a tune played on the fiddle, if Donal O'Gallagher, the dark\nman from Falcarragh, should happen to be present. It is as good as\nthe sight of day to see the dancers, the boys and the girls out on\nthe floor, the old people looking on from the shadow of the walls, and\nDonal himself, for all his blindness, shaking his head and beating time\nwith his foot, as proud as a quilt of nine hundred threads!\n\n\n\n\nTHE QUEST\n\n\nWhere am I going? Looking for the dew-snail? No, but going till I find\nthe verge of the sky.\n\n\n\n\nMUCKISH\n\n\n\"When you see Muckish with a cap on,\" said a man to me one day, \"you\nmay lay your hand on your heart and say: 'We'll have a wet spell before\nlong.'\" This mountain, like Errigal, has a knack of drawing a hood of\ngrey vapour round its head when the rest of the landscape is perfectly\ncloudless--like the peaks of the Kaatskills in _Rip Van Winkle_.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MAY-FIRE\n\n\nThe May-Fire is still kindled in some parts of Donegal. It is a\nsurvival of a pagan rite of our forefathers.\n\n\"And at it (the great national convention at Uisneach in Meath)\nthey were wont to make a sacrifice to the arch-god, whom they adored,\nwhose name was B\u00e9l. It was likewise their usage to light two fires to\nB\u00e9l in every district in Ireland at this season, and to drive a pair\nof each herd of cattle that the district contained between these two\nfires, as a preservative, to guard them against all the diseases of\nthat year. It is from that fire thus made that the day on which the\nnoble feast of the apostles Peter and James is held has been called\nBealteine (in Scotch Beltane), _i.e._, B\u00e9l's fire.\"\n\n[Illustration: MUCKISH, WITH A 'CAP' ON.]\n\nThe boys and girls of a whole countryside repair to these fires,\nwhich are usually lit upon a high, commanding hill, and they spend\nthe night out telling stories, reciting poems, singing, and dancing to\nthe accompaniment of pipes and fiddles. The May-Fire is not quite so\ngenerally observed as the John's-Fire, which is kindled on the night of\nthe 23rd of June, St. John's Eve.\n\n\n\n\nBLOODY FORELAND\n\n\nBloody Foreland. An old woman comes out of the ditch to talk to\nme.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \"It's a wild place, sir, God help us! none wilder. And\nmyself, sir----sure I've nothing in the world but the bones of one\ncow!\"\n\n\n\n\nTWILIGHT AND SILENCE\n\n\nSome places in Donegal seem to me to brood under a perpetual twilight\nand silence--Glen-Columcille, for instance, and the valley running into\nit. And mixed up with the twilight and silence is a profound melancholy\nthat rises out of the landscape itself, or is read into it by the\ngreyness of one's own experience. Those dark hills with the rack over\nthem and the sun looking through on one little patch of tilled land,\nand the stone mearings about it, figure forth the sorrow that is the\nheritage of every Irishman; the darkness the sorrow, the sunshine\nthe hope, iridescent and beautiful, but a thing of moments only and\nsoon to fade away. I stand on the bridge here where the road forks,\nSlieve League to the left of me, a dim lowering bulk, and the road to\nGlen reaching away into the skyline beyond. The water of a hillstream\nmurmurs continually at my feet. A duck splashes, and flaps dripping\ninto the greyness overhead. Not a soul is in sight--only a blue\nfeather of turf-smoke here and there to show that human hearts _do_\nbeat in this wilderness; that there are feet to follow the plough-tail\nand hands to tend the hearth. The sense of wonder over-masters me--the\nwonder that comes of silence and closeness to the elemental forces of\nnature. Then the mood changes, and I feel rising up in me the sorrow\nthat is the dominating passion of my life. Do many people go mad\nhere? I have heard tell that they do, and no wonder, for one would\nneed to be a saint or a philosopher to resist the awful austerity of\nthe place.\n\n\n\n\nTHE POOR HERD\n\n\nThere is a poor herd at Maghery--a half-witted character--who lives\nall his days in the open, with nothing between him and the sky. He\nwas herding his cows one evening in a quiet place by the caves when I\nhappened on him. \"What time o' day is it?\" says he. \"Just gone four,\"\nsays I, looking at my watch. \"What time is that?\" says he, in a dull\nsort of way. \"Is it near dark?\"\n\n\n\n\nA MOUNTAIN TRAMP\n\n\nBearing south by the Owenwee river from Maghery, we strike up through\nMaum gorge. Outside Maghery we come on two men--one of them a thin,\nwizened old fellow with no teeth; the other a youngish man, very\nraggedly dressed, with dark hair and features like an Italian. The old\nman tells us in Irish (which we don't follow very clearly) to keep up\nby the river-bed, and we can't possibly lose our direction. A quarter\nof a mile further on we meet another man. He bids us the time of day\nin passably good English. I answer in Irish, telling him that we are\non the road for Glen-Columcille, and asking him the easiest way over\nthe hills. He repeats what the old man told us, viz., to keep to the\nriver-bottom, and to cut up then by the fall at the head of Maum to\nLaguna, a cluster of poor houses in the mountain under Crockuna. \"When\nyou get there,\" he says, \"you cannot lose your road.\" He comes a bit\nof the way with us, and then we leave him at a point where the track\nends in the heather, and where a squad of navvies is engaged laying\ndown a foundation of brushwood and stones to carry it further into\nthe hills. It gives us a shock, in a way, to come on this squad of\nwild-looking men in so lonely and desolate a place.\n\nWe are now well into the gorge, and a wild place it is! Half-way up\nwe come on a house--if one could call it such--with a reek of blue\nsmoke threading out of a hole in the thatch. No other sign of life\nis visible. The walls of the gorge close in darkly on every side\nexcept the north. On that side is the sea, white on Maghery strand,\nand stretching away, a dull copper-green colour, into the sailless\nhorizon beyond. Hearing the voices, a young man comes out from between\ntwo boulders serving as a sort of gateway to the house. His face is\ntanned with sun and exposure, and he is in his bare feet. We greet him\nin Irish and he answers--a little surprised, no doubt, at hearing the\nlanguage from strangers. Then another man comes forward--a brother,\nif his looks don't belie him. He is in his bare feet also, and hatless,\nwith a great glibbe of black hair falling over his eyes. \"You have the\nIrish?\" he says. \"It's newance to hear it from townsfolk.\" We talk for\na while, enquiring further as to our direction over the hill, and then\nwe push on. Near the head of the gorge we sit down to have a rest,\nsitting on a rock over the stream, and bathing our hands and faces\nin the brown, flooded water. All the rivers of Donegal are brownish\nin colour, and the Owenwee (_recte Abhainnbhuidhe_, \"yellow river\")\nis no exception. The water stains everything it touches, and I have no\ndoubt but that the dark colour of the people's skin is due, partly,\nto their washing themselves in it. Coming through one's boots, even,\nit will stain the soles of the feet.\n\n[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO DOON WELL.]\n\nWe resume our journey, and after some rough and steep climbing reach\nthe plateau head. Loch Nalughraman, a deep pool of mountain water, lies\nto the east of us, shimmering in the grey morning light. All around is\nbogland, of a dull red colour, and soaking with rain. We make through\nthis, jumping from tuft to tuft, and from hummock to hummock, as best\nwe can, going over the shoe-mouth occasionally in slush. In an hour\nor so we come on a bridle-path of white limestones, set on their flat\nin the spongy turf. We follow this for a while, and in time reach the\npoor village of Laguna. Entering into one of the houses I greet the\nbean-a'-tighe in Irish. She rises quickly from her seat by the hearth\nwhere she has been spinning--a crowd of very young children clinging to\nher skirts. She is a dark woman, with mellow breasts, and fine eyes and\nteeth. She is barefooted, as usual, and wears the coloured head-dress\nof her kind, curtseying to me modestly as I approach. She answers me\nin Irish--the only language she knows--and bids me come in. \"_Beir\nisteach_,\" she says. A young man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts\nis weaving in the room beyond. (I recognised the heavy click-clack,\nclick-clack, click-clack of the loom as I entered.) Hearing my enquiry\nhe rises up from his seat, drops his setting-stick, and offers to guide\nus as far as the southern edge of the hill. \"You will see the Glen road\nbelow you,\" he says, coming out in his bare feet into the open, and\nspeaking volubly, like one used to good speech. \"Look at it beyond,\" he\nsays, \"winding from the Carrick side. Keep south, and you will strike\nit after two miles of a descent.\" The woman brings a bowl of goat's\nmilk to my sister. She drinks it readily, for she is thirsty after her\nclimb. Then, thanking the poor people for their hospitality, we say,\n\"_Sl\u00e1n agaibh_,\" and press forward on our journey to Glen-Columcille.\n\nWe reach the high-road in about half-an-hour, near a school-house,\nshining white in the sun, and busy with the hum of children singing\nover their lessons. Things look more familiar now. We pass many houses,\nwith fleeces of dyed wool--green and blue and madder--drying on bushes\noutside the doors, and men busy stacking turf and thatching. Here\nand there on the road flocks of geese lie sunning themselves,\nhead-under-wing. As we draw near they get up and face us with\nprotruding necks, hissing viciously. Dogs bark at us occasionally,\nbut not often. (I had heard ill accounts of the Donegal dogs from\ntravellers, but on the whole, my experience of them has not been\nquite so bad as I had been led to expect.) Slieve League rises on\nour left, a dark, shadowy bulk of mountain, shutting off the view\nto the south. All around is moorland, with a stream in spate foaming\nthrough a depression in it, and little patches of tilled land here and\nthere, and the inevitable brown-thatched cabin and the peat-reek over\nit. After some miles' travelling we come on a little folk-shop by the\nroad--a shop where one might buy anything from a clay-pipe or a lemon\nto Napoleon's Book of Fate. The window looks tempting, so we go in. The\nshopkeeper is a quiet-mannered little man, not very old, I would think,\nbut with greyish hair, and eyes that look as if they were bound round\nwith red tape--burnt out of his head with snuff and peat-smoke. We ask\nhim has he any buttermilk to sell. He hasn't any, unfortunately--he\nis just run out of it--so we content ourselves with Derry biscuits,\nmade up in penny cartons, and half a dozen hen-eggs to suck on the\nway. Some people may shiver at the idea of it, but raw eggs are as\nsustaining a thing as one could take on a journey! We pay our score,\nand get under way again. At a bridge where the road forks we sit down\nand eat our simple repast. A bridge has always a peculiar fascination\nfor me--especially in an open country like this where one's horizon\nis not limited by trees and hedges--and I could spend hours dawdling\nover it, watching the play of sun and shadow on the water as it foams\naway under the arches. Here there is a delightful sense of space and\nquietness. The heather-ale is in our hearts, the water sings and the\nwind blows, and one ceases to trouble about time and the multitude of\npetty vexations that worry the townsman out of happiness. Did I say one\nceases to trouble about time? Even here it comes, starting one like\na guilty thing. We reach Meenacross Post-office at four-thirty, and\nan hour later see the Atlantic tumbling through rain on the age-worn\nstrand of Glen-Columcille.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FESTIVAL OF DEATH\n\n\nI met an old man on the road, and his face as yellow as dyer's\nrocket. \"Walk easy past that little house beyond,\" says he in\na whisper, turning round and pointing with his staff into the\nvalley. \"There's a young girl in it, and she celebrating the festival\nof death.\"\n\n\n\n\nIN GLEN-COLUMCILLE\n\n\nThrough blown rain and darkness I see the Atlantic tumble in white,\nghost-like masses on the strand. Beevna is a shadow, the crosses\nshadows. Only one friendly light burns in the valley. The patter of\nrain and the dull boom of the surf ring ceaselessly in my ears. The\nhills brood: my thoughts brood with them. I stare into the sunset--a\nfar-drawn, scarlet trail--with mute, wondering eyes. Remoteness\ngrips me, and is become a reality in this ultimate mearing of a grey,\nultimate land.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BRINK OF WATER\n\n\nI have often heard it said that what passes for folk-lore is in reality\nbook-lore, or what began as book-lore got into the oral tradition\nand handed down through the generations by word of mouth. A young\nArdara man, a poet and dreamer in his way, told me that poetry most\nfrequently came to him when he was near water; wandering, say, by the\nedge of Lochros, or looking down from Bracky Bridge at the stream as\nit forced its way through impeding boulders to the sea. I asked him\nhad he ever read \"The Colloquy of the Two Sages(1)\"? He said that\nhe had not. I told him that in that MS. occurred the passage: _ar b\u00e1\nbaile fallsigthe \u00e9icsi dogr\u00e9s lasna filedu for br\u00fa uisci_, _i.e._,\n\"for the poets thought that the place where poetry was revealed always\nwas upon the brink of water.\" Nettled somewhat, he confessed that he\ngot the idea from his father, a _seanchaidhe_, since dead, who knew\nsomething of Irish MSS., and who perhaps had read the \"Colloquy,\" or\nat all events, had heard of it. But apart from the fact of the thing\nhaving been given him by his father, he felt that it was true in his\nown experience--that poetry always came to him more readily when he was\nnear water.\n\n (1) Book of Leinster.\n\n[Illustration: NEAR ALTON LOCH.]\n\n\n\n\nA DARK MORNING\n\n\nA dark, wet morning, with the mist driving in swaths over the hills. I\nmet an old man on the road. \"There's somebody a-hanging this morning,\"\nsays he. \"It's fearful dark!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE SWALLOW-MARK\n\n\nThere is a lot of the wanderer in me, and no wonder, I suppose;\nfor I have the swallow-mark--a wise man once showed it to me on my\nhand--and that means that I must always be going journeys, whether\nin the flesh or in the spirit, or both. \"The swallow-mark is on you,\"\nsays he. \"You will go wandering with the airs of the world. You will\ncheat the Adversary himself, even that he drops his corroding-drop on\nyou!\" And as I am a wanderer, so the heart in me opens to its kind. I\nlove a brown face, a clear eye, and an honest walk more than anything;\nif in a man, good; if in a woman, better. And why people look for the\ncover of a roof, and the sun shining, I never can make out. Sunshine\nand the open, the wind blowing, travelling betimes and resting betimes,\nwith my back to the field and my knees to the sky, a copy of Raftery\nor Borrow in my pocket to dip into when the mood is on me--and I am\nsupremely happy!\n\n\n\n\nWOMEN BEETLING CLOTHES\n\n\nI see three women by a river: they are so close to me that I can hear\nthem talking and laughing. One of them is an oldish creature, the other\ntwo are young and dark. They are on their knees on the bank, beetling\nclothes. One of them gets up--a fine, white-skinned girl--and tucking\nher petticoats about her thighs, goes into the stream and swishes the\nclothes several times to and fro in the brown-clear water. Then she\nthrows them out to her companions on the bank, and the beetling process\nis repeated--each garment being laid on a flat stone and pounded\nvigorously until clean. The women do not see me (I am standing on a\nbridge, with a rowan-bush partly between them and me), so I can watch\nthem to my heart's content.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SEA\n\n\nThe sea is one of those things you cannot argue with. You must accept\nit on its own terms, or leave it alone. And I like a man to be that\nway: calm at times, rough at times, kind at times, treacherous\nat times, but at heart unchanging: _not to be argued with, but\naccepted_. Is not the comparison apter than one thinks? Is not a man\nand his passions as divine and turbulent as anything under the sun?\n\n\n\n\nA BALLAD-SINGER\n\n\nA ballad-singer has come into Ardara. It is late afternoon. He stands\nin the middle of the Diamond--a sunburnt, dusty figure, a typical\nIshmael and stroller of the roads. The women have come to their doors\nto hear him, and a benchful of police, for lack of something better\nto do, are laughing at him from the barrack front. The ballad he is\nsinging is about Bonaparte and the Poor Old Woman. Then he changes his\ntune to \"The Spanish Lady\"--a Dublin street-song:\n\n As I walked down thro' Dublin city\n At the hour of twelve in the night,\n Who should I spy but a Spanish lady,\n Washing her feet by candlelight.\n\n First she washed them, and then she dried them\n Over a fire of amber coal:\n Never in all my life did I see\n A maid so neat about the sole!\n\n[Illustration: A STREET IN ARDARA.]\n\nFinally he gives \"I'm a Good Old Rebel,\" a ballad of the type that\nbecame so popular in the Southern States of America after the Civil\nwar:\n\n I'm a good old rebel--that's what I am,\n And for this fair land of freedom I don't care a damn;\n I'm glad I fought agin it, I only wish we'd won,\n And I don't want no one-horse pardon for anything I done.\n\n I followed old Marse Robert for four years nigh about,\n Got wounded in three places and starved at Point Look-Out:\n I cotched the rheumatism a-campin' in the snow,\n But I killed a chance of Yankees, and I'd like to kill some moe.\n\n Two hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust,\n We got two hundred thousand before they conquered us:\n They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot--\n I wish it was two millions instead of what we got!\n\n And now the war is over and I can't fight them any more,\n But I ain't a-goin' to love them--that's sartin shor';\n And I don't want no one-horse pardon for what I was and am,\n And I won't be reconstructed, and I don't care a damn!\n\nHe howls out the verses in disjointed, unmusical bursts. He acts with\nhead and arms, and at places where he is worked up to a particular\nfrenzy he takes a run and gives a buck-jump in the air, blissfully\nunconscious, I suppose, that he is imitating the manner in which the\n_ballistea_, or ancient dancing-songs, were sung by the Romans. At\nthe end of each verse he breaks into a curious chanted refrain like:\n\"Yum tilly-yum-yum-yum-yum-yum\"--and then there are more sidlings and\nbuck-jumps. Some of the women throw him money, which he acknowledges\nby lifting his hat grandiosely. Others of them pass remarks, quite the\nreverse of complimentary, about his voice and ragged appearance. \"Isn't\nit terrible he is!\" says one woman. \"Look at him with the seat out\nof his trousers, and he lepping like a good one. I could choke him,\nI could!\" Another woman comes out of a shop with a crying child in\nher arms, and shouts at him: \"Will you go away, then? You're wakening\nthe childer.\" \"Well, ma'am,\" says he, stopping in the middle of a\nverse, \"you may thank the Lord for His mercy that you have childer to\nwaken!\" The ducks quack, the dogs howl, the poor ballad-singer roars\nlouder than ever. I listen for a while, amused and interested. Then I\nget tired of it, and pass on towards Bracky Bridge.\n\n\n\n\nSUNLIGHT\n\n\nUnless you have seen the sun you cannot know anything. Sunlight is\nbetter than wisdom, and the red of the fairy-thimble more than painted\nfans.\n\n\n\n\nTURF-CUTTING\n\n\nIn the Lochros district, when the weather begins to take up, about the\nmiddle of May, the farmers repair to the moss on the north side of the\nPoint, and start cutting the banks. The turf is then footed (sometimes\nby girls) along the causeway ditches, and when properly seasoned--say\nabout the middle of July--is piled in stacks on high ground\nconvenient to the moss, and covered on top with a lot of old mouldering\n\"winter-stales,\" to keep the rain off it. \"Winter-stales\" are sods that\nhave been left over from the previous season's cutting--the wet setting\nin and leaving the bog-roads in such a state that no slipe or wheeled\ncar could get into them. Of course, most of the carrying in Donegal is\ndone by creel or ass-cart; but in the Lochros district turf is scarce,\nand the farmers on the Point are obliged to keep horses to draw the\nturf in from the moss on the north side of the Owenea river, some miles\noff, and over roads that are none too good for wheeled traffic. In\nsome cases I have noticed the \"winter-stales\" built up in little\nbeehive-shaped heaps on dry ground, to be carted or creeled away as\nsoon as the weather begins to mend. But it is only the more provident\nfarmers who do this.\n\n\n\n\nHIS OLD MOTHER\n\n\n\"My old mother's ailing this twelvemonth back,\" said a man to me\nto-day. \"I'm afeard she'll go wi' the leaves.\"\n\n\n\n\nA DAY OF WIND AND LIGHT, BLOWN RAIN\n\n\nA day of wind and light, blown rain, with the sun shining through it in\nspells. Aighe river below me, brown and clear, foaming through mossed\nstones to the sea. Trout rising from it now and again to the gnats that\nskim its surface. Glengesh mountain in the middle distance--a black,\nsplendid bulk--dropping to the Nick of the Bealach on the left. Meadows\nin foreground bright with marigolds, with here and there by the\nmearings tufts of king-fern, wild iris and fairy-thimble.\n\n\n\n\nLYING AND WALKING\n\n\nTo lie on one's loin in the sun is all very well, but walking is\nbetter. It is over the hill the wonders are.\n\n[Illustration: FALLING WATER.]\n\n\n\n\nGLEN-COLUMCILLE TO CARRICK\n\n\nSaturday. It is about half-past seven o'clock in the evening. The rain,\nwhich kept at it pitilessly all the afternoon, has cleared off, and we\nhave left the little whitewashed inn at Glen-Columcille refreshed, and\nin high fettle, for the further six miles that has to be done before\nwe reach Carrick, where we mean to spend the night. We had arrived at\nGlen two hours before in a weary enough condition physically after\nour tramp over the hills from Ardara, and we had almost resolved on\nthe advice of the hostess of the inn--a slow, deliberate, slatternly\nsort of woman--to put up with her for the night; but it is wonderful\nwhat a rest and a meal and, incidentally, a slatternly hostess does,\nand so we finally decided to go on to Carrick. We follow the road up\nby the telegraph posts, and after a stiffish climb of half a mile or\nmore, reach the plateau head. We are now about five hundred feet over\nsea level. Turning round to have a last look at the place, we see\nthe chapel--a plain white cruciform building, with a queer detached\nbelfry--the little grey, straggling village street (some of the houses\nwith slate roofs, some with thatch), the crosses standing up like\ngallan-stones on every side of it, the deep valley-bottom green as\nan emerald, Ballard mountain silhouetted against the sunset, and the\nvast Atlantic tumbling through mist on the yellow strand beyond. The\nair smells deliciously of peat. In Donegal one notices the smell of\npeat everywhere; in fact, if I were asked to give an impression of the\ncounty in half a dozen words I should say: \"Black hills, brown rivers,\nand peat.\" The road is fairly level now, and we continue our course\nin a south-easterly direction. A wild waste of moorland stretches on\nevery side of us, brightened here and there by little freshwater lakes,\nout of which we see the trout jumping in hundreds--Loch Unshagh,\nLoch Unna, Loch Divna, and another quite near the road, where we\ngot, at the expense of wet feet and knees, some lovely specimens\nof the _lilium aureum_, or golden lily, which grows, I think, on\nevery little shallow and flat and bywater in South Donegal. After\nan hour of pleasant walking the road begins to drop and the rain to\nfall again. Slieve League is on our right, but we can only see the\nlower slopes of it, for the cairn is completely covered with driving\nmist. The wind has risen, and the rain beats coolingly on our cheeks,\nand exasperatingly, at times, down our necks. We pass a shepherd on\nthe road making for Malin M\u00f3r, a shawled figure with a lantern, and\nseveral groups of boys and asses with creels bringing turf into the\nstackers; and farther on a side-car zig-zagging up hill on its way to\nthe Glen. There are two occupants, a priest--presumably the curate of\nGlen parish going over for Sunday's Mass--and the driver. It is quite\ndark now, and the rain increases in intensity. Tramping in a mountainy\ncountry is a delightful sport--none better! But it is on such a night\nand at the end of such a journey as this that one begins to see that\nit has a bad as well as a good side to it. The rain is coming down\nin sheets, our clothes are soaked through, the darkness is intense,\nthe roads are shockingly muddy, we are tired out walking, and still\nwe have another stiff mile to go before we see the friendly lights of\nthe inn at Carrick. Two of us--R.\u00a0M. and myself--stop at a bridge\nto have a look at the ordnance sheet which has stood us in such good\nstead all through our journey. Torrential rain beating on a map--even a\n\"cloth-mounted, water-proofed\" one like ours--doesn't improve it; but\nwe have qualms about our direction. We think we should have arrived at\nCarrick ere this, and we just want to make sure that our direction is\nright, and that we haven't taken a wrong turning in the darkness. After\nsome trouble we manage to get a match lighted. The first misfires on\nthe damp emery, the second blows out, the third is swallowed up in\nrain pouring like a spout through the branches overhead, the fourth\n.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \"Carrick! Carrick! Carrick!\" The frenzied cries of the\nadvance guard tell us that the town is in view. We put up our map\nresignedly, shaking great blabs of water out of it, and push ahead. In\nfive minutes we have passed the chapel, with its square tower looming\nup darkly in the fog, and in another two we are safe in the inn\nparlour, enjoying a supper of hot coffee, muffins, and poached eggs.\n\n\n\n\nORA ET LABORA\n\n\nNoon of a summer's day. I see a man in the fields--a wild, solitary\nfigure--the only living thing in sight for miles. He is thinning\nturnips. Slowly a bell rings out from the chapel on the hill beyond. It\nis the Angelus. The man stands up, takes off his hat and bows his\nhead in the ancient prayer of his faith.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. The bell ceases\ntolling, and he bends to labour again.\n\n\n\n\nTWO THINGS THAT WON'T GO GREY\n\n\nI met a woman up Glengesh going in the direction of the\ndanger-post. She seemed an old woman by her look, but she more\nthan beat me at the walking. When we got to the top of the hill I\ncomplimented her on her powers. \"'Deed,\" says she, with a deprecating\nlittle laugh, \"and I'm getting old now. I'm fair enough yet at the\nwalking, but I'm going grey--going fast. A year ago my hair was\nas black as that stack there\"--pointing to a turf-stack out in the\nbog--\"but now it's on the turn. And I tell you there's only two things\nin the world that won't go grey some time--and that's salt and iron.\"\n\n\n\n\nRUNDAL\n\n\nI see a green island. It is hardly an island now, for the tide is\nout, and one might walk across to it by the neck of yellow-grey sand\nthat connects it with the mainland. It is held in rundal by a score\nof tenants living in the mountains in-by. Little patches of oats,\npotatoes, turnips, and \"cow's grass\" diversify its otherwise barren\nsurface. There are no mearings, but each man's patch is marked by a\ncairn of loose stones, thrown aside in the process of reclamation. The\nstones, I see, are used also as seaweed beds. They are spitted in the\nsand about, like a _cheval de frise_, and in the course of time the\nseaweed carried in by successive tides gathers on them, and is used by\nthe tenants for manure.\n\n\n\n\nP\u00daCA-PILES\n\n\n\"What are these?\" I asked an old woman in the fields this morning,\npointing to a cluster of what we in the north-east corner call\npaddock-stools, and sometimes fairy-stools. \"Well,\" said she, \"they're\nnot mushrooms, anyway. They're what you call P\u00faca-piles. They say the\nP\u00faca lays them!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE ROSSES\n\n\nBog and sky: a boulder-strewn waste, with salt lochs and freshwater\nlochs innumerable, and a trail running up to a huddle of white clouds.\n\n[Illustration: BOG AND SKY.]\n\n\n\n\nA COUNTRY FUNERAL\n\n\nDeath, as they say, has taken somebody away under his oxter! I was\ncoming into Ardara this morning from the Lochros side, and as I came\nup to the chapel on the hill I heard the bell tolling. That, I knew,\nwas for a burying: it was only about ten o'clock, and the Angelus does\nnot ring until midday. Farther on I met the funeral procession. It was\njust coming out of the village. The coffin, a plain deal one covered\nwith rugs, was carried over the well of a side-car, and the relatives\nand country people walked behind. The road was thick with them--old men\nin their Sunday homespuns and wide-awakes, their brogues very dusty,\nas if they had come a long way; younger men with bronzed faces, and\nash-plants in their hands; old women in the white frilled caps and\ncoloured shawls peculiar to western Ireland; young married women, girls\nand children. Most of them walked, but several rode in ass-carts, and\nthree men, I noticed, were on horseback. The tramping of so many feet,\nthe rattle of the wheels and the talk made a great stir on the road,\nand the movement and colour suggested anything but a funeral. Still\none could see that underneath all was a deep and beautiful feeling of\nsorrow, so different to the black-coated, slow-footed, solemn-faced\nthing of the towns. As the coffin approached I stood into the side\nof the road, saluted, and turned back with it the _tri c\u00e9imeanna na\ntrocaire_ (three steps of mercy) as far as the chapel yard.\n\n\n\n\nYOUTH AND AGE\n\n\nAn old man came dawdling out of a gap by the road, and he stopped\nto have a word with me. We were talking for some time when he said:\n\"You're a young man, by the looks of you?\" I laughed and nodded. \"Och,\"\nsays he, \"but it's a poor thing to be old, and all your colt-tricks\nover,\" says he, \"and you with nothing to do but to be watching the\ncourses of the wind!\"\n\n\n\n\nSUMMER DUSK\n\n\nSummer dusk. A fiddle is playing in a house by the sea. \"Maggie\nPickens\" is the tune. The fun and devilment of it sets my heart\ndancing. Then the mood changes. It is \"The Fanaid Grove\" now, full of\nmelancholy and yearning, full of the spirit of the landscape--the soft\nlapping tide, the dove-grey sands, the blue rhythmic line of hill and\nsky beyond. The player repeats it.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I feel as if I could\nlisten to that tune forever.\n\n\n\n\nA NOTE\n\n\nDarkness, freshness, fragrance. Donegal fascinates one like a beautiful\ngirl.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PEASANT IN LITERATURE\n\n\nIt has been said before that there is \"too much peasant\" in\ncontemporary Irish literature, especially in the plays. The phenomenon\nis easily explained. Ireland is an agricultural country, a country of\nsmall farms, and therefore a nation of peasants; so that a literature\nwhich pretends to reflect the life of Ireland must deal in the main\nwith peasants and the thoughts that peasants think. And peasants'\nthoughts are not such dead and commonplace things that I, who have\nlearnt practically all I know from them, can afford to ignore them\nnow. The king himself is served by the field. Where there is contact\nwith the unseen in this book, with the mysteries which we feel rather\nthan understand, it is because of some strange thought dropped in\nstrange words from a peasant's mouth and caught by me here, as in a\nsnare of leaves, for everyone to ponder. Impressions, with something of\nthe roughness of peasant speech in them and something of the beauty,\nphases of a moment breathless and fluttering, the mystery of the sea,\nthe thresh of rain, the sun on a bird's wing, a wayfarer passing--those\nare the things I sought to capture in this book.\n\n\n\n\nAN INSLEEP\n\n\nWe were talking together the other evening--an old woman and myself--on\na path which leads through the fields from Glengesh mountain to Ardara\nwood. We had got as far as the stream which crosses the path near the\nwood when she stopped suddenly. She looked west, and scratched her\neyebrow. \"I've an insleep,\" says she. \"I hadn't one this long time!\"\n\n\n\n\nWATER AND SL\u00c1N-LUS\n\n\nWhat is more beautiful than water falling, or a spray of _sl\u00e1n-lus_\nwith its flowers?\n\n\n\n\nBY LOCHROS M\u00d3R\n\n\nThe heat increases. The osmunda droops on the wall. The tide is at full\nebb. A waste of sea-wrack and sand stretches out to Dawros, a day's\njourney beyond. I see two figures, a boy and a girl, searching for\nbait--the boy digging and the girl gathering into a creel. The deep,\npurring note of a sandpiper comes to me over the bar. It is like the\nsound that air makes bubbling through water. I listen to it in infinite\nspace and quietness.\n\n\n\n\nRIVAL FIDDLERS\n\n\nI was talking with a fiddler the other evening in a house where there\nwas a dance, up by Portnoo. I happened to mention the name of another\nfiddler I had heard playing a night or two before in Ardara. \"Him,\nis it?\" put in my friend. \"Why, he's no fiddler at all. He's only an\nold stroller. He doesn't know the differs between 'Kyrie Eleison' and\n'The Devil's Dreams'!\" He became very indignant. I interrupted once or\ntwice, trying to turn the conversation, but all to no purpose; he still\nwent on. Finally, to quiet him, I asked him could he play \"The Sally\nGardens.\" He stopped to think for a while, fondling the strings of his\ninstrument lovingly with his rough hands; then he said that he didn't\nknow the tune by that name, but that if I'd lilt or whistle the first\nfew bars of it, it might come to him. I whistled them. \"Oh,\" says he,\n\"that's 'The Maids of Mourne Shore.' That's the name we give it in\nthese parts.\" He played the tune for me quite beautifully. Then there\nwas a call from the man of the house for \"The Fairy Reel,\" and the\ndancers took the floor again. The fiddlers in Donegal are \"all sorts,\"\nas they say--farmers, blacksmiths, fisher boys, who play for the love\nof the thing, and strollers (usually blind men) who wander about from\nhouse to house and from fair to fair playing for money. When they are\nplaying I notice they catch the bow in a curious way with their thumbs\nbetween the horsehair and the stick. At a dance it is no uncommon thing\nto see a \"bench\" of seven or eight of them. They join in the applause\nat the end of each item, rasping their bows together on the strings and\nstamping vigorously with their feet.\n\n[Illustration: MOUNTAINY FOLK.]\n\n\n\n\nNATURE\n\n\nA poor woman praying by a cross; a mountain shadowed in still water; a\ntern crying; the road ribboning away into the darkness that looks like\nhills beyond. Can we live every day with these aspiring things, and not\nlove beauty? Can we look out on our broad view--as someone has said of\nthe friars of the monastery of San Pietro in Perugia--and not note the\nplay of sun and shadow? Nature is the \"Time-vesture of God.\" If we but\ntouch it, we are made holier.\n\n\n\n\nSUNDAY UNDER SLIEVE LEAGUE\n\n\nIt is Sunday. The dawn has broken clear after a night's rain. The\nsunlight glitters in the soft morning air. The fragrance of\npeat, marjoram, and wild-mint hangs like a benediction over the\ncountryside. A lark is singing; the swallows are out in hundreds. The\nroad turns and twists--past a cabin, over a bridge--between fringes\nof wet grass. It dips suddenly, then rises sheer against a wisp\nof cloud into the dark bulk of Slieve League behind. I see the\nmountainy people wending in from all parts to Mass. I am standing\non high ground, and can see the hiving roads--the men with their\nblack coats and wide-awakes, and the women with their bright-coloured\nkerchiefs and shawls. Some of them have trudged in for miles on bare\nfeet. They carry their brogues, neatly greased and cleaned, over their\nshoulders. As they come near the chapel they stop by the roadside or\ngo into a field and put them on. The young girls--grey-eyed, limber\nslips from the hills--are fixing themselves before they go in of the\nchapel door. They stand in their ribboned heads and shawls pluming\nthemselves, and telling each other how they look. The boys are watching\nthem. I hear the fresh, nonchalant laugh and the kindly greeting in\nIrish--\"_Maidin bhreagh, a Phaid_,\" and the \"_Goid\u00e9 mar t\u00e1 t\u00fa,\na Chait?_\" The men--early-comers--sit in groups on the chapel wall,\ndiscussing affairs--the weather, the crops, the new potato spray,\nthe prospects of a war with Germany, the marrying and the giving in\nmarriage, the letters from friends in America, the death and month's\nmind of friends. The bell has ceased ringing. The men drop from their\nperch on the wall, and the last of them has gone in. The road is quiet\nagain, and only the sonorous chant of the priest comes through the open\nwindows--\"_Introibo ad altare Dei_,\" and the shriller response of the\nclerk, \"_Ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam_.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE NIGHT HE WAS BORN\n\n\nWe were talking together, an old man and myself, on the hill between\nLaguna and Glen. The conversation turned on ages--a favourite topic\nwith old men(2)--and on the degeneracy that one noticed all over\nIreland, especially among the young. \"And what age would you take _me_\nfor?\" said he, throwing his staff from him and straightening himself\nup. \"Well, I'm a bad hand at guessing,\" said I, \"but you're eighty if\nyou're a day.\" \"I'm that,\" said he, \"and more. And would you believe\nit,\" said he, \"the night I was born my mother was making a cake!\"\n\n (2) He had the Old Age Pension.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LUSM\u00d3R\n\n\nThe _lusm\u00f3r_, or \"great herb\"--foxglove,\n\n That stars the green skirt of the meadow,\n\nis known to the peasantry by a variety of other names, as for example,\n_sian sl\u00e9ibhe_, \"sian of the hills\" (it grows plentifully on the high,\nrough places); _m\u00e9arach\u00e1n_, \"fairy-thimble\"; _r\u00f3s gr\u00e9ine_, \"little\nrose of the sun\"; and _lus na mban-sidhe_, \"herb of the elf-women, or\nwitch-doctors,\" etc., etc. It is bell-shaped, and has a purplish-red\ncolour. As Dr. Joyce observes, it is a most potent herb, for it is a\ngreat fairy plant; and those who seek the aid of the _Daoine Maithe_,\nor Good People, in the cure of diseases or in incantations of any kind,\noften make use of\n\n Drowsy store,\n Gathered from the bright _lusm\u00f3r_,\n\nto add to the power of their spells. It is a favourite flower in\nHighland, otherwise Gaelic Scotland; and the clan Farquhar, \"hither\nGaels,\" have assumed it for their badge.\n\n\n\n\nDERRY PEOPLE\n\n\nDonegal is what I call \"county-proud.\" Speaking of Derry--the marching\ncounty--an old woman said to me the other day: \"Och, there's no\ngentility about the Derry people. They go at a thing like a day's\nwork!\"\n\n\n\n\nA CLOCK\n\n\nI was going along the road this evening when I came on a clock\n(some would call it a black beetle), travelling in the direction of\nNarin. The poor thing seemed to have its mind set on getting there\nbefore dark--a matter of three miles, and half an hour to do it in! The\nsense of tears in me was touched for the clock, and I stooped down\nto watch it crawling laboriously along in the dust, over a very rough\nroad, tired and travel-stained, as if it had already come a long way;\nclimbing stones (miniature Errigals) twenty times as high as itself;\ncircumventing others, falling into ruts headlong, and rising again none\nthe worse for its awful experience; keeping on, on, on, \"with a mind\nfixed and a heart unconquered.\" I couldn't help laughing at first,\nbut after five minutes I felt a sort of strange kinship with the\nclock--it was a wayfarer like myself, \"a poor earth-born companion\nand fellow-mortal\"--and I stood watching it, hat in hand, until it\ndisappeared out of view. The last I saw of it was on the top of a stone\non rising ground, silhouetted against the sunset. Then it dropped over\n.\u00a0.\u00a0. and I resumed my journey, thinking.\n\n\n\n\nCARRICK GLEN\n\n\nHere there is quiet; quiet to think, quiet to read, quiet to listen,\nquiet to do nothing but lie still in the grass and vegetate. The water\nfalls (to me there is no music more beautiful); a wayfarer passes now\nand again along the road on his way into Carrick; the sea-savour is\nin my nostrils; the clouds sail northward, white and luminous, far up\nin the sky; their shadows checker the hills. If the Blue Bird is to be\nfound this side of heaven, surely it must be here!\n\n[Illustration: A WAYFARER.]\n\n\n\n\nA SHUILER\n\n\nI was talking to a stonebreaker on the road between Carrick and Glen\nwhen a shuiler passed, walking very fast. \"A supple lad, that,\" says\nthe stonebreaker. \"The top o' the road's no ditch-shough to him. Look\nat him--he's lucky far down the hill already.\" He dropped his hammer,\nand burst into a fit of laughing. \"He's as many feet as a cat!\" says\nhe.\n\n\n\n\nTURKEYS IN THE TREES\n\n\nOne of the gruesomest sights I ever saw in my life--turkeys roosting\namong the branches of the trees at a house above Lochros. You would\nthink they were birds with evil spirits in them, they kept so quiet in\nthe half-darkness, and looked so solemn.\n\n\n\n\nA PARTY OF TINKERS\n\n\nA party of tinkers on the high road--man, wife, children, ass and\ncart. A poor, back-gone lot they are surely. The man trails behind\ncarrying one of the children in a bag over his back. The woman pushes\non in front, smiling broadly out of her fat, drunken face. \"Oh,\nGod love ye for a gentleman,\" she whines in an up-country _barr\u00f3g_\nwhich proclaims her a stranger to the place. \"Give us the lucky hand,\ngentleman, and may the Golden Doors never be shut against ye. Spare a\ndecent poor body a copper, and I'll say seven 'Hail Mary's' and seven\n'Glory be to the Father's' for ye every night for a week. Give us the\nlucky hand, gentleman.\" I throw her a penny, not so much out of charity\nas to get rid of her, and the cavalcade moves on. Over the hill I hear\nher voice raised in splendid imprecation on the husband. Such coloured\nspeech one only hears from peasants and strolling folk, who are in\ntouch with the elemental things--the wonders and beauties and cruelties\nof life.\n\n\n\n\nTEELIN, BUNGLASS, AND SLIEVE LEAGUE\n\n\nIt is a lovely summer's day, warm and fragrant and sunny. We have just\ncome from Mass at Carrick chapel, and are following the road that leads\nsouth by the harbour up to Teelin village. Numbers of people are on\nthe road with us--mostly women and girls, for the men have remained\nbehind to smoke and to talk over the week's happenings in the different\nends of the parish. The groups go in ages--the old women with the old\nwomen, the marriageable girls with the marriageable girls, the younger\ngirls with the girls of their own age. There is a crowd of little boys,\ntoo--active as goats, dressed in corduroys or homespuns, and discussing\nin Irish what they will do with themselves in the afternoon. Some\nwill go bathing in the harbour, others will go up to the warren by\nLoch O'Mulligan to hunt rabbits, others will remain in the village\nto watch the men and bigger boys play at skittles in a cleared space\nby the high road. I pick up with a quiet-eyed lad--the makings of a\npriest or a scholar, by his look--and in a short time I am friends with\nthe crowd. If one could see me behind I must look like the Pied Piper\nof Hamelin, so many children have I following alongside me and at my\nheels. They come to know by my talk that I am interested in Irish--an\nenthusiast, in fact--and they all want to tell me at once about the\nFeis at Teelin, and about the great prizes that were offered, and how\none out of their own school, a little fellow of eight years, won first\nprize for the best telling of a wonder-tale in the vernacular. The\nquiet-eyed lad asks me would I like to see Bunglass and the great view\nto be had of Slieve League from the cliff-head. I tell him that I am\ngoing there, and in an instant the crowd is running out in front of us,\nshouting and throwing their caps in the air--delighted, I suppose,\nat the prospect of a scramble for coppers on the grass when we get\nto the end of our journey. For boys are boys the world over, let the\npropagandists carp as they will! and when I was young myself I would\nwrestle a ghost under a bed for a halfpenny--so my grandmother used to\ntell me, and she was a very wise and observant woman. We have come to\nTeelin village--a clean, whitewashed little place on a hill, built \"all\nto one side like Clogher\"--and from there we strike up to the right by\na sort of rocky, grass-covered loaning which leads to the cliffs. We\npass numbers of houses on the way, each with a group of gaily-dressed\npeasants sunning themselves at the door. The ascent is gradual at\nfirst, but as we go on it gets steeper, and after a while's climbing\nwe begin to feel the sense of elevation and detachment. The air is\ndelightfully warm, and the fragrance of sea and bracken and ling is in\nour hearts. In time we reach Carrigan Head, with its martello tower,\nseven hundred feet odd over the Atlantic. Southwards the blue waters of\nDonegal Bay spread themselves, with just the slightest ripple on their\nsurface, glinting in the warm sunlight. In the distance the heights of\nNephin Beag and Croagh Patrick in Mayo are faintly discernible, and\nwestwards the illimitable ocean stretches to the void. From Carrigan\nHead we follow a rough mountain trail, and in a short time reach\nLoch O'Mulligan, a lonely freshwater tarn, lying under the shadow of\nSlieve League. Back of the loch a grassy hill rises. We climb this,\nthe younger boys leading about fifty yards in front, jumping along the\nshort grass and over the stones like goats. Arrived at a point called\nin Irish _Amharc M\u00f3r_, or \"Great View,\" a scene of extraordinary\nbeauty bursts on us. We are standing on Scregeighter, the highest of\nthe cliffs of Bunglass. A thousand and twenty-four feet below us, in a\nsheer drop, the blue waters of Bunglass advance and recede--blue as a\nsapphire, shading into emerald and white where they break on the spit\nof grass-covered rock rising like a _sceilg-draoidheachta_, or \"horn of\nwizardy,\" out of the narrow bay. Right opposite us is Slieve League,\nits carn a thousand feet higher than the point on which we stand. In\nthe precipitous rock-face, half-way up, is a scarped streak called\n_Nead an Iolair_, or the Eagle's Nest. The colouring is wonderfully\nrich and varied--black, grey, violet, brown, red, green--due, one\nwould think, to the complex stratification and to the stains oozing\nfrom the soft ores, clays, and mosses impinging between the layers. We\nstep back from the cliff-edge, and sit down on a flat slab of stone,\nthe better to enjoy the view, and the boys spread themselves out in\nvarious attitudes over the short grass before and behind us. They\nare conversing among themselves in Irish, speaking very rapidly, and\nwith an intonation that is as un-English as it can possibly be. The\nthickened l's and thrilled r's are especially noticeable. To hear these\nchildren speak Irish the way they do makes one feel that the language\nof Niall Naoi Giallach is not dead yet, and has, indeed, no signs of\ndying.\n\n[Illustration: THE HORN.]\n\nOne could spend a day in this place sunning oneself on the cliff-head,\nor loafing about on the grass, enjoying the panorama of mountain and\nsea and sky spread in such magnificence on all sides. But we have\npromised to be back in Carrick for lunch, and already the best part\nof the forenoon is gone. \"_Cad a-chlog \u00e9 anois?_\" I ask one of the\nboys. He looks into the sky, calculates for a while, and answers: \"_T\u00e1\ns\u00e9 suas le h-aon anois. F\u00e9ach an ghr\u00edan_.\" (It is upwards of one\no'clock now. Look at the sun.) In a remote, open country like this the\nchildren are wonderfully astute, and well up in the science of natural\nthings. Coming up the hill I had noticed a number of strange birds, and\nwhen I asked the crowd the names of them in Irish they told me without\nonce having to stop to think. We are ready to go now, but before\nsetting out we decide on having a scramble. My friend, R.\u00a0M., takes\na sixpence from his pocket, puts it edge down on the turf, and digs it\nin with his heel, covering it up so that no sign of it is visible. He\nthen brings the boys back over the grass about a hundred yards,\nhandicapping them according to age and size. One boy, the youngest, has\nboots on, and he is put in front. At a given signal--the dropping of\na handkerchief--the race is started, and in the winking of an eye the\ncrowd is mixed up on the grass, one boy's head here, another's heels\nthere, over the spot where the sixpence is hidden. Five minutes and\nmore does the scramble last, the boys pushing and shoving for all they\nare worth, and screaming at the top of their voices. Then the lad who\nreached the spot first crawls out from underneath the struggling mass,\npuffing and blowing, his hair dishevelled, the coat off him, and the\nsixpence in his hand!\n\nWe have got back to Carrick, an hour late for lunch, and with the\nappetites of giants. We met many people on the road as we returned,\nall remarkably well-dressed--young men in the blue serge favoured by\nsailors, and girls in white; a clerical student, home on holidays from\nMaynooth, discussing the clauses of Mr. Birrell's latest Land Bill\nwith a group of elderly folk; big hulking fellows with bronzed faces,\nin a uniform that I hadn't seen before, but which a local man told me\nwas that of the Congested Districts Board; and pinafored children. One\nyoung man we noticed sitting on a rock over the water with his boots\noff, washing his feet, and several boys sailing miniature boats made\nout of the leaves of flaggers.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SHOOTING STAR\n\n\nI was out the other evening on the shore to the northward of Lochros,\nwatching the men taking in the turf from the banks where it had been\nfooted and dried. The wind was quiet, and there was a great stir of\ntraffic on the road--men with creels, horses and carts, asses and\nchildren driving them. An old woman (a respectable beggar by her look)\ncame by, and we started to talk. We were talking of various things--the\nbeauty of the evening, the plentifulness of the turf harvest, the\nsorrows of the poor, and such like--when she stopped suddenly, and\nlooked up into the sky. She gripped my arm. \"Look, look,\" she said, \"a\nshooting star!\" She blessed herself. There was a trail of silver light\nin the air--a luminous moment--then darkness. \"That's a soul going up\nout of purgatory,\" she said.\n\n\n\n\nSUNDAY ON THE ROAD BETWEEN CARRICK AND GLENGESH\n\n\nSunday on the road between Carrick and Glengesh. It is drawing\nnear sunset. We pass a group of country boys playing skittles in\nthe middle of the road--quite a crowd of them, big, dark fellows,\nof all ages between twenty and thirty-five. Some are lolling on the\nditch behind, and one has a flute. Farther on we come on a string\nof boys and girls paired off in twos with their arms about each\nother's waists, like a procession on Bride's Sunday. The front pair\nare somewhat ill-matched. The man is old and awkward in his walk,\nyet cavalierly withal; the girl is young and pretty, with a charming\nwhite laundered dress and flowers in her hair. As our car passes they\nwave their hands to us as a sign that they are enjoying the fun quite\nas much as we are. We are rising gradually towards the Pass. Below us\nthe road ribbons away through miles of bog to Slieve League. There is\na delightful warmth and quietness in the air. The smoke of the cabin\nchimneys, as far as one can see, rises up in straight grey lines,\n\"pillaring the skies of God.\" The whole landscape is suffused with\ncolour--browns and ambers and blues--melting into infinity.\n\n\n\n\nA ROANY BUSH\n\n\n\"Do you see that bush over there?\" said an old man to me one day on the\nroad near Leckconnell--a poor village half-way between Ardara and Gull\nIsland. \"It's what they call a roany bush. Well, it's green now, but in\na month's time it'll be as red as a fox's diddy, and you wouldn't know\nit for berries growing all over it.\"\n\n\n\n\nAUGUST EVENING\n\n\nAugust evening, moonrise. A drift of ponies on the road. I heard the\nneighing of them half an hour ago as I came down the glen, and now I\ncan see them, a red, ragged cavalcade, and a cloud of dust about their\nheels. There are some fourteen ponies in the drift, and three young\nfellows with long whips are driving them. They give me the time of\nday as I pass. One of them turns back and shouts after me: \"Would you\nhappen to have a match on you, gaffer?\" He is a stout-built lad, with\na red face, and a mat of black hair falling over his eyes. I feel in my\npocket for a box, and give him share of what I have. He thanks me, and\nI pass on. The air is damp and fragrant, and wisps of fog lie along the\nditches and in the hollow places under the hills. The newly-risen moon\ntouches them with wonder and colour.\n\n\n\n\nNEAR INVER\n\n\nA yellow day in harvest. A young girl with a piece of drawn-thread work\nin her lap, sunning herself in the under wisp of her father's thatch. I\ncome on her suddenly round a bend in the road. She is taken by surprise\n(almost as completely as _I_ am) .\u00a0.\u00a0. draws her legs in, settles\nher clothing, half smiles, then hangs her head, blushing with all the\n_pudor_ of abashed femininity. I pass on.\n\n\n\n\nALL SUBTLE, SECRET THINGS\n\n\nAll subtle, secret things--the smell of bees, twilight on water, a\nwoman's presence, the humming of a lime-tree in full leaf, a bracken\nstalk cut through to show the \"eagle\" in it--all speak to me as to an\nintimate. I know and feel them all.\n\n\n\n\nA MADMAN\n\n\nI passed an old fellow to-day between Ardara and Narin, doubled up in\nthe ditch with his chin on his knees, and staring at me out of two red\neyes that burned in his head like candles.\n\n\"Who's that old fellow?\" I asked of a stonebreaker, a perch further\ndown the road.\n\n\"Oh, never heed him,\" says he--\"he's mad. This is the sixth. There's a\nfull moon the-night, and he ever goes off at the full o' the moon. Was\nhe coughing at you? God, you'd think he was giving his last 'keeks,'\nto hear him sometimes!\"\n\n\n\n\nLAGUNA\n\n\nUnder Crockuna; a thousand feet up. Interminable red bog. A\ncluster of hovels on the tableland; one set this way, another that,\nhuddling together for company sake, it seems, in this abomination of\ndesolation. A drift of young children play about on a green cleared\nspace between the holdings. (In Donegal one sees young children\neverywhere.) They run off like wild-cats at our approach, screaming\nloudly and chattering in Irish as they run. A rick of turf, thatched\nwith winter-stales; a goat tethered; a flock of geese; tufts of dyed\nwool--red and green and indigo--spread on stones to dry; the clack of a\nloom from the house nearest us; a dog working sheep beyond.\n\n\n\n\nNEAR LETTERKENNY\n\n\nA sheepdog with a flock of geese (a most unusual charge, I'm sure)\nhalted by a bridge on their way to market. The owner squats smoking\nunder the parapet--a darkavis'd man, with the slouch hat, slow eye, and\nwide, mobile mouth of Donegal. I greet him, and pass on.\n\n[Illustration: A CLACHAN OF HOUSES.]\n\n\n\n\nSHAN MAC ANANTY\n\n\nUp Glengesh. The hills of the Pass close in darkly on either side of\nme. The brown road rises between them in devious loops and twists to\nthe sky beyond. There is the smell of bog-myrtle and ling in the air,\nand the sound of running water. The silence is awful. I am going along\nquiet and easy-like, with hardly a thought in my head, when near a\nsodded shelter, almost hidden from view in a cluster of fuchsia bushes,\nI come on a little lad of about three years of age. He can't be older,\nI fancy, he is so small. He runs out in front of me, scared somewhat at\nmy approach, as quaint a figure as ever I looked at. I shout at him and\nhe stops, pulling the hat which he wears--and it is big enough to be\nhis father's--over his face, and laughing shyly at me out of one corner\nof it. His hands are wet, I notice, a blae-red colour, and sticking\nwith grass--as if he had been \"feeling\" for minnows in the stream which\nruns alongside the road. He has a pair of homespun jumpers on, very\nthick, and dyed a crude indigo colour, a shirt and vest, and his legs\nare bare and wet up to the knees. I ask him in English \"where he comes\nfrom,\" \"who is his father,\" \"who is his mother,\" \"where he lives?\" He\ndoesn't answer, only pulls the hat deeper over his head, and laughs\ninto it. I put the question to him then in Irish.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. The\nwords were hardly out of my mouth when he gave a leap in the air. I\nfelt as if something had struck me in the face--something soft and\nsmothering, like a bag of feathers--and I was momentarily blinded. When\nI looked again who should I see but Shan Mac Ananty, my _leaprach\u00e1n_\nfriend from Scrabo in Down, running out in front of me, in a whirl of\ndust, it seemed--a white, blinding cloud--giving buck-jumps in the air,\nand dancing and capering about in the most outlandish fashion possible.\n\n\"So it's you, Shan?\" I said, when I had recovered my breath. I wasn't a\nbit afraid, only winded.\n\n\"Ay,\" says he. \"I didn't know you at first. The English is strange to\nme.\" Then with a quaint grimace: \"What are _you_ doing up here?\"\n\n\"And what are you doing up here yourself, Shan?\" says I. \"I thought\nScrabo was your playground.\"\n\n\"You're right, son,\" says he. \"The old fort _is_ my playground, but the\nsmoke--the smoke from the mill chimneys--chases me away at times, and\nI come up here for an airing. And, anyway, you mustn't forget that I'm\nking of the fairies of Leath-Chuinn,\" says he.\n\n\"And so you are,\" says I. \"I clean forgot that. And do you be in\nDonegal often?\" I asked.\n\n\"Once in a spell,\" says he. \"I travel the townlands in turn from\nUisneach to Malin,\" says he, \"and it takes me a year and a day to do\nthe round. I saw you at Scrabo in June last,\" says he, \"but you didn't\nsee me.\"\n\n\"When was that, Shan?\" says I, thinking.\n\n\"On the night of the twenty-third,\" says he. \"There wasn't a fire\nlighting as far as I could see; and I could see from Divis to the Horns\nof Boirche, and from that over to Vannin.\"\n\n[Illustration: A GAP BETWEEN THE HILLS.]\n\nA shadow darkened his queer little face. \"Ah,\" says he, \"they're\nchanged times. I was an old man when Setanta got his hero-name,(3)\nand look at me now,\" says he, \"clean past my time. No one knows me,\nbarring yourself there. No one can talk to me; and at Scrabo it's\nworse than here. They're all planters there,\" says he, \"all strange,\ndour folk, long in the jaw and seldom-spoken, and with no heart in the\nold customs. Never a John's-Fire lighted, never a dance danced, never a\nblessing said, never a\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\"\n\n (3) Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, a contemporary of Conchubhair\n MacNeassa, who was--so tradition has it--born on the same night as\n Christ.\n\nHe stopped, and I turned to answer .\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. but Shan was\ngone! Nothing in sight for miles--nothing living--only a magpie walking\nthe road, and a _toit_ of blue smoke from a cabin away down in the\nglen.\n\n\n\n\nA POOR CABIN\n\n\nA poor cabin, built of loose whin rubble; no mortar or limewash; thatch\nbrown and rotting. Dung oozing out of door in pig-crew to north, and\nlying in wet heaps about causey stones. A brier, heavy with June roses,\ngrowing over south gable-end; rare pink bloom, filling the air with\nfragrance.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FLAX-STONE\n\n\nOutside nearly every house in Donegal--at least in the north-western\nparts of it--is the _Cloch L\u00edn_, or \"Flax-Stone.\" This is a huge\nwheel of granite, half a ton or more in weight, revolving on the end\nof a wooden shaft which itself turns horizontally on an iron spike\nsecured firmly in the ground. The purpose it serves is to \"break\"\nthe flax after it has been retted and dried. On the long arm of the\nshaft tackling is fixed for the horse supplying the motive power--much\nin the same way as it is in a pug-mill or puddling machine used in\nthe old days by brick-makers. The flax is strewn in swaths under the\nwheel, which passes over it repeatedly, disintegrating the fibre. The\nscutch-mill, of course, is a more expeditious way of doing the work,\nbut Donegal folk are conservative and stick to the old method--which\nmust be as old, indeed, as the culture of flax itself is in the\ncountry.\n\n\n\n\nAFTER SUNSET\n\n\nI was coming through Ardara wood the other evening just after\nsunset. There was a delightful smell of wet larch and bracken in the\nair. The road was dark--indeed, no more than a shadow in the darkness;\nbut a streak of silver light glimmered through from the west side\nover the mountains and lay on the edge of the wood, and thousands\nof stars trembled in the branches, touching them with strangeness\nand beauty. As I approached the village I met an old woman--I knew\nshe was old by her voice--who said to me: \"Isn't it a fine evening,\nthat?\" \"It is,\" said I. \"And look,\" said she, \"at all the stars hung\nup in the trees!\" Farther on I came on a number of women and girls,\nall laughing and talking through other in the half-darkness. I was out\nof the wood now and almost into the village, and there was light enough\nto see that they were carrying water--some with one pail, others with\ntwo--from the spring well I passed on my way up. This, I believe, is\na custom in Ardara.(4) The grown girls of the village go out every\nevening after dark-fall, if the weather happens to be good. They meet\nat the well, spend half an hour or so chatting and talking together,\nand then saunter home again in groups through the darkness, carrying\ntheir pails, just as I saw them on this particular evening. When I\ngot to the village the windows were nearly all lit up. The white and\nwhite-grey houses looked strange and unearthly in the darkness. The\ndoors were open, and one could see a dark figure here and there out\ntaking the air. Over the roofs the stars shone and the constellations\nswung in their courses--the Dog's Tail, the Dragon, the Plough, the\nRule, and the Tailor's Three Leaps; and although there was no moon one\ncould see the smoke from the chimneys wavering up into the sky in thin\ngreen lines. The fragrance of peat hung heavily on the senses. There\nwasn't a sound--only a confused murmur of voices, like the wind among\naspen-trees, and the faint singing of a fiddle from a house away at\nthe far end of the street. Even the dogs were quiet. I passed through\nthe Diamond, down the long main street next the shore, and like Red\nHanrahan of the stories, into \"that Celtic twilight, in which heaven\nand earth so mingle that each seems to have taken upon itself some\nshadow of the other's beauty.\"\n\n (4) In fact, a \"go of water\" is a byword there--\"Many a girl met\n her man in a go of water!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE DARKNESS AND THE TIDE\n\n\n\"What time o' day is it?\" My interrogator was an old man I met the\nother evening in a loaney running down from the back of Lochros to\nthe sands of Lochros Beag Bay, near where the old fish-pass used to\nbe. I looked at my watch, and told him it was five-and-twenty past\nseven. \"Oh,\" said he, \"is it so much as that? The darkness and the\ntide'll soon be coming in, then.\"\n\n\n\n\nERRIGAL\n\n\nThe hill of Errigal climbs like a wave to the sky. A pennon of\nwhite cloud tosses on its carn. Its sides are dark. They slope\nprecipitously. They are streaked and mottled here and there\nwith patches of loose stone, bleached to a soft violet colour\nwith rain. Not a leaf of grass, not a frond of fern roots on these\npatches. They are altogether bare. Loch Nacung, a cold spread of water,\ngleams at the bottom, white as a shield and green at the margin with\nsedge. Dunlewy chapel, with its round tower--a black silhouette in the\n'tweenlight--and the walls of the Poisoned Glen beyond.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SORE FOOT\n\n\n\"It's a provident thing,\" a tramp said to me the other day, \"to lay\nsomething by for the sore foot.\"\n\n\n\n\nASHERANCALLY\n\n\nA roar, as of breaking seas. We are approaching the open Atlantic,\nbut though its salt is bitter on our lips, our view is obscured\nby sand-dunes. Then, as we round a bend in the road, the Fall of\nAsherancally breaks suddenly on us, tumbling through a gut in the\nmountainside--almost on to the road it seems. We stand under it. We\nwatch the brown bulk of water dropping from the gut-head and dancing\nin foam on the rocks a hundred feet below. The roar is deafening. One\nmight shout at the top of one's voice, and yet not be heard. The air is\niridescent with spindrift, which shines in the sun and sprays coolingly\non our cheeks. We lean on the bridge parapet, watching and listening.\n\n[Illustration: LOCH NACUNG--MOONRISE.]\n\n\n\n\nORANGE GALLASES\n\n\nI came across an old man to-day out in Lochros--a shock-headed old\nfellow in shirt and trousers, carrying water from a spring well near\nthe Cross, and a troop of dogs snapping at his heels. \"You don't seem\nto be popular with the dogs?\" says I, laughing. \"Oh, let them snap,\"\nsays he. \"It's not me they're snapping at, but my orange gallases!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE HUMAN VOICE\n\n\nThe human voice--what a wonder and mystery it is! \"All power,\" said\nWhitman, \"is folded in a great vocalism.\" I spoke to a man to-day\non the roadside, near Maghery. He was a poor, raggedy fellow, with a\ngaunt, unshaven chin and wild eyes, and a couple of barefooted children\nplayed about the mud at his feet. He answered me in a voice that\n_thrilled_ me--deep, chestfull, resonant; a voice, that had he been\nan educated man, might have won fame for him, as a politician, say, or\na preacher, or an actor. And voices like his are by no means uncommon\nalong the western seaboard of Ireland. Men address you on the road in\nthat frank, human, comrade-like way of Irishmen, out of deep lungs and\nringing larynxes that bring one back to the time when men were giants,\nand physique was the rule rather than the exception. In such voices\none can imagine the Fenians to have talked one with the other, Fionn\ncalling to Sgeolan, and Oisin chanting the divine fragments of song he\ndreamed in the intervals of war and venery. Will Ireland ever recapture\nthe heroic qualities--build personality, voice, gesture--or, as Whitman\nputs it: \"Litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes\"--that were hers down\nto a comparatively late period, and in places have not quite died out\neven yet? I believe she will.\n\n\n\n\nLOCH ALUINN\n\n\nA grey loch, lashed into foam by wind from nor' westward,\nlapping unquietly among reeds that fringe its margin. Boulders\neverywhere--erratics from the Ice Age--bleached white with rain. Crotal\ngrowing in their interstices, wild-mint, purple orchises and the kingly\nosmunda fern. A strip of tilled land beyond--green corn, for the most\npart, and potatoes. Slieve a-Tooey in the distance, a blue shadowy\nbulk, crossed and recrossed by mist-wreaths chasing one another over it\nin rapid succession. A rainbow framing all.\n\n\n\n\nTHE OPEN ROAD\n\n\nThe open road, the sky over it, and the hills beyond. The hills beyond,\nthose blue, ultimate hills; the clouds that look like hills; the\nmystery plucked out of them, and lo, the sea, stretching away into the\nvast--white-crested, grey, inscrutable--with a mirage dancing on its\nfurthest verge!\n\n\n\n\n [ Transcriber's Note:\n\n The following changes have been made to the original text. The first\n line presents the text as printed in the original, the second the\n amended text.\n\n \"The words of the maker o poems are the general light and dark.\" One\n \"The words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark.\" One\n\n survival of a pagan right of our forefathers.\n survival of a pagan rite of our forefathers.\n\n better. It is ove the hill the wonders are.\n better. It is over the hill the wonders are.\n\n 'Glory be to the Father's, for ye every night for a week. Give us the\n 'Glory be to the Father's' for ye every night for a week. Give us the\n\n ]","title":"Mearing Stones: Leaves from My Note-Book on Tramp in Donegal","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":15420}