{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_49612/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_49612","id":"gutenberg_49612","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49612","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","English literature -- Irish authors","Nobel Prizes in Literature"],"text":"THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS\n\n[Illustration: _Emery Walker Ph. sc._\n\n_From a drawing by A. Mancini_]\n\n\n\n\n THE CELTIC TWILIGHT AND\n STORIES OF RED HANRAHAN\n BEING THE FIFTH VOLUME OF\n THE COLLECTED WORKS IN\n VERSE & PROSE OF WILLIAM\n BUTLER YEATS :: IMPRINTED\n AT THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD\n PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON\n MCMVIII\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nTHE CELTIC TWILIGHT\n\n PAGE\n THIS BOOK 1\n\n A TELLER OF TALES 3\n\n BELIEF AND UNBELIEF 6\n\n MORTAL HELP 9\n\n A VISIONARY 11\n\n VILLAGE GHOSTS 17\n\n \u2018DUST HATH CLOSED HELEN\u2019S EYE\u2019 27\n\n A KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP 39\n\n AN ENDURING HEART 44\n\n THE SORCERERS 48\n\n THE DEVIL 54\n\n HAPPY AND UNHAPPY THEOLOGIANS 56\n\n THE LAST GLEEMAN 63\n\n REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM VENI 73\n\n \u2018AND FAIR, FIERCE WOMEN\u2019 78\n\n ENCHANTED WOODS 82\n\n MIRACULOUS CREATURES 89\n\n ARISTOTLE OF THE BOOKS 91\n\n THE SWINE OF THE GODS 92\n\n A VOICE 94\n\n KIDNAPPERS 96\n\n THE UNTIRING ONES 106\n\n EARTH, FIRE AND WATER 110\n\n THE OLD TOWN 112\n\n THE MAN AND HIS BOOTS 115\n\n A COWARD 117\n\n THE THREE O\u2019BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES 119\n\n DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES 121\n\n THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE 131\n\n THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR 134\n\n CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN,\n EARTH, AND PURGATORY 136\n\n THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES 138\n\n OUR LADY OF THE HILLS 140\n\n THE GOLDEN AGE 144\n\n A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED\n THE DISPOSITION OF THEIR GHOSTS AND\n FAERIES 146\n\n WAR 152\n\n THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL 155\n\n THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE OF FAERY 162\n\n DREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL 172\n\n BY THE ROADSIDE 190\n\n \u2018INTO THE TWILIGHT\u2019 193\n\n\nSTORIES OF RED HANRAHAN:\n\n RED HANRAHAN 197\n\n THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE 213\n\n HANRAHAN AND CATHLEEN THE DAUGHTER OF HOOLIHAN 225\n\n RED HANRAHAN\u2019S CURSE 231\n\n HANRAHAN\u2019S VISION 242\n\n THE DEATH OF HANRAHAN 250\n\n\n\n\nTHE CELTIC TWILIGHT\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, \u2018Away, 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.\u2019\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, \u2018Away, come away.\u2019_\n\n\n\n\nTHE CELTIC TWILIGHT\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\nit, and 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 1893.\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 perhaps. 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 1902\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, \u2018the most\ngentle\u2019\u2014whereby he meant faery\u2014\u2018place in the whole of County Sligo.\u2019\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\nthe eyes 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. \u2018How are you to-day,\nmother?\u2019 said the saint. \u2018Worse,\u2019 replied the mother. \u2018May you be worse\nto-morrow,\u2019 said the saint. The next day Collumcille came again, and\nexactly the same conversation took place, but the third day the mother\nsaid, \u2018Better, thank God.\u2019 And the saint replied, \u2018May you be better\nto-morrow.\u2019 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, \u2018Am\nI not annoyed with them?\u2019 I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee.\n\u2018I have seen it,\u2019 he said, \u2018down there by the water, batting the river\nwith its hands.\u2019\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\nand sayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-book\nregretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled\nup. Paddy Flynn is dead; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle\nof whiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so\nmuch liquor filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon\nit for some days and then died. His body, worn out with old age and\nhard times, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a\ngreat teller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to\nempty heaven, 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\nby his 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\nfind no 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\nghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest\nto keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to\ngo \u2018trapsin about the earth\u2019 at their own free will; \u2018but there are\nfaeries,\u2019 she added, \u2018and little leprechauns, and water-horses and\nfallen angels.\u2019 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, \u2018they stand to reason.\u2019 Even the\nofficial mind does not escape this faith.\n\nA little girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close\nunder the seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one\nnight about three years ago. There was at once great excitement in\nthe neighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken\nher. A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from\nthem, but at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands\nbut a broomstick. 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\nwhole night burning them, the constable repeating spells the while. In\nthe morning 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\u2014such are\nthe topsy-turvydoms of faery glamour\u2014in a cockle-shell. 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 much\nunreason and a little truth than to deny for denial\u2019s sake truth and\nunreason 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 misshapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great evil\nif we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and welcome\nwith open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself, whether it\nbe man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the dhouls\nthemselves, \u2018Be ye gone\u2019? When all is said and done, how do we not know\nbut that our own unreason may be better than another\u2019s truth? for it\nhas been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the\nwild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. Come into\nthe 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 Cuchulain 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\na hundred yards from one another, but the others wore clothes of all\ncolours, \u2018bracket\u2019 or chequered, and some with red waistcoats.\n\nHe could not see what they were doing, but all might have been\nplaying hurley, for \u2018they looked as if it was that.\u2019 Sometimes they\nwould vanish, and then he would almost swear they came back out of\nthe bodies of the two men in dark clothes. These two men were of the\nsize of living men, but the others were small. He saw them for about\nhalf-an-hour, and then the old man he and those about him were working\nfor took up a whip and said, \u2018Get on, get on, or we will have no work\ndone!\u2019 I asked if he saw the faeries too. \u2018Oh, yes, but he did not want\nwork he was paying wages for to be neglected.\u2019 He made everybody work\nso hard that nobody saw what happened to the faeries.\n\n 1902.\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\nhad neither written nor painted, for his whole heart was set upon\nmaking his mind strong, vigorous, and calm, and the emotional life of\nthe artist 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,[A] seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and of\nCeltic longing for infinite things the world has never seen. Suddenly\nit seemed to me that he was peering about him a little eagerly. \u2018Do you\nsee anything, X\u2014\u2014?\u2019 I said. \u2018A shining, winged woman, covered by her\nlong hair, is standing near the doorway,\u2019 he answered, or some such\nwords. \u2018Is it the influence of some living person who thinks of us,\nand whose thoughts appear to us in that symbolic form?\u2019 I said; for I\nam well instructed in the ways of the visionaries and in the fashion\nof their speech. \u2018No,\u2019 he replied; \u2018for if it were the thoughts of a\nperson who is alive I should feel the living influence in my living\nbody, and my heart would beat and my breath would fail. It is a spirit.\nIt is some one who is dead or who has never lived.\u2019\n\nI asked what he was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop.\nHis pleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking\nto half-mad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and\nconscience-stricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles\ninto his care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging,\nmore than one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and\nsun them as it were in the subtle light of his mind. Sometimes visions\ncome to him as he talks with them, and he is rumoured to have told\ndivers people true matters of their past days and distant friends, and\nleft them hushed with dread of their strange teacher, who seems scarce\nmore than 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 \u2018unknown, obscure, impersonal.\u2019 Next\nday a bundle of his poems arrived, and with them a note in these words:\n\u2018Here 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.\u2019\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\nto his mind, but are to other men the counters of an unknown coinage.\nTo them they seem merely so much brass or copper or tarnished silver\nat the 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 imperfect 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\na young 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;\na spirit passing with a globe of iridescent crystal\u2014symbol of the\nsoul\u2014half shut within his hand. But always under this largess of\ncolour lay some tender homily addressed to man\u2019s fragile hopes. This\nspiritual eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek\nfor illumination 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\u2014\u2014 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 \u2018God possesses the heavens\u2014God possesses the\nheavens\u2014but He covets the world\u2019; 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, \u2018Who is\nthat old fellow there?\u2019 \u2018The fret\u2019 [Irish for doom] \u2018is over me,\u2019 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, \u2018Only\nmyself knows what happened under the thorn-tree forty years ago\u2019; 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\u2014\u2014. Both seek\u2014one\nin wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle\nallegoric poetry\u2014to express a something that lies beyond the range of\nexpression; and both, if X\u2014\u2014 will forgive me, have within them the vast\nand vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart. The\npeasant visionaries that are, the landlord duellists that were, and the\nwhole hurly-burly of legends\u2014Cuchulain fighting the sea for two days\nuntil the waves pass over him and he dies, Caolte storming the palace\nof the gods, Oisin seeking in vain for three hundred years to appease\nhis insatiable heart with all the pleasures of faeryland, these two\nmystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the central\ndreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and this mind\nthat finds them so interesting\u2014all are a portion of that great Celtic\nphantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered, nor any angel\nrevealed.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[A] I wrote this sentence long ago. This sadness now seems to me a part\nof all peoples who preserve the moods of the ancient peoples of the\nworld. I am not so pre-occupied with the mystery of Race as I used to\nbe, but leave this sentence and other sentences like it unchanged. We\nonce believed them, and have, it may be, not grown wiser.\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\nit. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle\nall the 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, \u2018Here are lions.\u2019 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, \u2018Here are ghosts.\u2019\n\nMy ghosts inhabit the village of H\u2014\u2014, in Leinster. History has in no\nmanner been burdened by this ancient village, with its crooked lanes,\nits old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green background of\nsmall fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry fishing-luggers.\nIn the annals of entomology it is well known. For a small bay lies\nwestward a little, where he who watches night after night may see a\ncertain rare moth fluttering along the edge of the tide, just at the\nend of evening or the beginning of dawn. A hundred years ago it was\ncarried here from Italy by smugglers in a cargo of silks and laces.\nIf the moth-hunter would throw down his net, and go hunting for ghost\ntales or tales of the faeries and such-like children of Lilith, he\nwould have need for far less patience.\n\nTo approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy. A\nman was once heard complaining, \u2018By the cross of Jesus! how shall I go?\nIf I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on me.\nIf I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the headless\none and another on the quays, and a new one under the old churchyard\nwall. If I go right round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is appearing at\nHillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital Lane.\u2019\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\nto receive patients. When the need had gone by, it was pulled down,\nbut ever since the ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and\ndemons and faeries. There is a farmer at H\u2014\u2014, Paddy B\u2014\u2014 by name\u2014a man\nof 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 \u2018Faeries\u2019 Path.\u2019 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\nhe had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, \u2018In the name of\nGod, who are you?\u2019 He got up and went out, saying, \u2018Never leave the\ndoor open at this hour, or evil may come to you.\u2019 She woke her husband\nand told him. \u2018One of the good people has been with us,\u2019 said he.\n\nProbably the man braved Mrs. Stewart at Hillside Gate. When she lived\nshe was the wife of the Protestant clergyman. \u2018Her ghost was never\nknown to harm any one,\u2019 say the village people; \u2018it is only doing a\npenance upon the earth.\u2019 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.\nI quote its history at length: a typical village tragedy. In a cottage\nat the 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\nand took down one of the window shutters\u2014Montgomery was neat about\neverything, and had shutters on the outside of every window\u2014and 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.\nAt last one Saturday there was no food in the house for herself and\nthe children. She could bear it no longer, and went to the priest and\nasked him for some money. He gave her thirty shillings. Her husband\nmet her, and took the money, and beat her. On the following Monday\nshe got very ill, and sent for a Mrs. Kelly. Mrs. Kelly, as soon as\nshe saw her, said, \u2018My woman, you are dying,\u2019 and sent for the priest\nand the doctor. She died in an hour. After her death, as Montgomery\nneglected the children, the landlord had them taken to the workhouse.\nA few nights after they had gone, Mrs. Kelly was going home through\nthe bogeen when the ghost of Mrs. Montgomery appeared and followed\nher. It did not leave her until she reached her own house. She told\nthe priest, Father S\u2014\u2014, a noted antiquarian, and could not get him to\nbelieve her. A few nights afterwards Mrs. Kelly again met the spirit in\nthe same place. She was in too great terror to go the whole way, but\nstopped at a neighbour\u2019s cottage midway, and asked them to let her in.\nThey answered they were going to bed. She cried out, \u2018In the name of\nGod let me in, or I will break open the door.\u2019 They opened, and so she\nescaped from the ghost. Next day she told the priest again. This time\nhe believed, and said it would 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\nthe workhouse, for none of its relations were ever there before, and\nthat three masses were to be said for the repose of its soul. \u2018If my\nhusband does not believe you,\u2019 she said, \u2018show him that,\u2019 and touched\nMrs. Kelly\u2019s wrist with three fingers. The places where they touched\nswelled up and blackened. She then vanished. For a time Montgomery\nwould not believe that his wife had appeared: \u2018she would not show\nherself to Mrs. Kelly,\u2019 he said\u2014\u2018she with respectable people to appear\nto.\u2019 He was convinced by the three marks, and the children were taken\nfrom the workhouse. The priest said the masses, and the shade must have\nbeen at rest, 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[B] creep out and follow him. The\napparition only leaves him at his own door. The villagers imagine that\nshe follows him to avenge some wrong. \u2018I will haunt you when I die\u2019 is\na favourite threat. His wife was once half-scared to death by what she\nconsiders a demon in the shape of a dog.\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\ndid not open, fearing it was some unhuman thing that knocked. The\nknocking ceased. After a little the front-door and then the back-door\nwere burst open, and closed again. Her husband went to see what was\nwrong. He found both doors bolted. The child died. The doors were\nagain opened and closed as before. Then Mrs. Nolan remembered that\nshe had forgotten to leave window or door open, as the custom is, for\nthe departure of the soul. These strange openings and closings and\nknockings were warnings and reminders from the spirits who attend the\ndying.\n\nThe house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It\nis put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who\nlive with 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 \u2018ha\u2019nted\u2019 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\u2014\u2014 spirits have a gloomy, matter-of-fact way with them. They come\nto announce a death, to fulfil some obligation, to revenge a wrong,\nto pay their bills even\u2014as did a fisherman\u2019s daughter the other\nday\u2014and then hasten to their rest. All things they do decently and in\norder. It is demons, and not ghosts, that transform themselves into\nwhite cats or black dogs. The people who tell the tales are poor,\nserious-minded fishing people, who find in the doings of the ghosts\nthe fascination of fear. In the western tales is a whimsical grace,\na curious extravagance. The people who recount them live in the most\nwild and beautiful scenery, under a sky ever loaded and fantastic with\nflying clouds. They are farmers and labourers, who do a little fishing\nnow and then. They do not fear the spirits too much to feel an artistic\nand humorous pleasure in their doings. The ghosts themselves share in\ntheir quaint hilarity. In one western town, on whose deserted wharf the\ngrass grows, these spirits have so much vigour that, when a misbeliever\nventured to sleep in a haunted house, I have been told they flung him\nthrough the window, and his bed after him. In the surrounding villages\nthe creatures use the most strange disguises. A dead old gentleman\nrobs the cabbages of his own garden in the shape of a large rabbit.\nA wicked sea-captain stayed for years inside the plaster of a cottage\nwall, in the shape of a snipe, making the most horrible noises. He was\nonly dislodged when the wall was broken down; then out of the solid\nplaster the snipe rushed away whistling.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[B] I wonder why she had white borders to her cap. The old Mayo woman,\nwho has told me so many tales, has told me that her brother-in-law saw\n\u2018a woman with white borders to her cap going round the stacks in a\nfield, and soon after he got a hurt, and he died in six months.\u2019\n\n\n\n\n\u2018DUST HATH CLOSED HELEN\u2019S EYE.\u2019\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, \u2018There is a\ncure for all evil between the two mill-wheels of Ballylee,\u2019 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, \u2018That 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\u2019\u2014he meant driven snow, perhaps,\u2014\u2018and she had blushes\nin her cheeks. She had five handsome brothers, but all are gone now!\u2019 I\ntalked to him about a poem in Irish, Raftery, a famous poet, made about\nher, and how it said, \u2018there is a strong cellar in Ballylee.\u2019 He said\nthe strong cellar was the great hole where the river sank underground,\nand he brought me to a deep pool, where an otter hurried away under a\ngrey boulder, and told me that many fish came up out of the dark water\nat early morning \u2018to taste the fresh water coming down from the hills.\u2019\n\nI first heard of the poem from an old woman who lives about two miles\nfurther up the river, and who remembers Raftery and Mary Hynes. She\nsays, \u2018I never saw anybody so handsome as she was, and I never will\ntill I die,\u2019 and that he was nearly blind, and had \u2018no 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.\u2019 She sang the poem to a friend and to myself\nin Irish, and every word was audible and expressive, as the words in\na song were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the\ngarment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing\nof their energies. The poem is not as natural as the best Irish poetry\nof the 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 na\u00efve 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 \u2018Going 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, the 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.\u2019\n\nAn old weaver, whose son is supposed to go away among the Sidhe (the\nfaeries) at night, says, \u2018Mary Hynes was the most beautiful thing\never made. 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\nany of them. There was a lot of men up beyond Kilbecanty one night\nsitting together drinking, and talking of her, and one of them got\nup and set out to go to Ballylee and see her; but Cloon Bog was open\nthen, and when he came to it he fell into the water, and they found\nhim dead there in the morning. She died of the fever that was before\nthe famine.\u2019 Another old man says he was only a child when he saw\nher, but he remembered that \u2018the strongest man that was among us, one\nJohn Madden, got his death of the head of her, cold he got crossing\nrivers in the night-time to get to Ballylee.\u2019 This is perhaps the man\nthe other remembered, for tradition gives the one thing many shapes.\nThere is 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, \u2018the stag upon the cold summit of Echtge hears the cry of\nthe wolves,\u2019 but still mindful of many poems and of the dignity of\nancient speech. She says, \u2018The sun and the moon never shone on anybody\nso handsome, and her skin was so white that it looked blue, and she\nhad two little blushes on her cheeks.\u2019 And an old wrinkled woman who\nlives close by Ballylee, and has told me many tales of the Sidhe, says,\n\u2018I often saw Mary Hynes, she was handsome indeed. She had two bunches\nof curls beside her cheeks, and they were the colour of silver. I saw\nMary Molloy that was drowned in the river beyond, and Mary Guthrie that\nwas in Ardrahan, but she took the sway of them both, a very comely\ncreature. I was at her wake too\u2014she 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.\u2019 This old\nwoman meant no more than some beautiful bright colour by the colour of\nsilver, for though I knew an old man\u2014he is dead now\u2014who thought she\nmight know \u2018the cure for all the evils in the world,\u2019 that the Sidhe\nknew, she has seen too little gold to know its colour. But a man by\nthe shore at Kinvara, who is too young to remember Mary Hynes, says,\n\u2018Everybody 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.\u2019\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\na husband his wife. The admired and desired are only safe if one says\n\u2018God bless them\u2019 when one\u2019s eyes are upon them. The old woman that sang\nthe song thinks, too, that Mary Hynes was \u2018taken,\u2019 as the phrase is,\n\u2018for they have taken many that are not handsome, and why would they\nnot take her? And people came from all parts to look at her, and, maybe\nthere were some that did not say \u201cGod bless her.\u201d\u2019 An old man who lives\nby the sea at Duras has as little doubt that she was taken, \u2018for there\nare some living yet can remember her coming to the pattern[C] there\nbeyond, and she was said to be the handsomest girl in Ireland.\u2019 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\nof things, than are our men of learning. She \u2018had seen too much of\nthe world\u2019; 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\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, \u2018I saw Raftery, a dark man, but he had sight enough to see\nher,\u2019 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, how Raftery could have admired\nMary Hynes so much if he had been altogether blind? He said, \u2018I 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,\nand to do more, and to guess more than those that have their sight,\nand a certain wit and a certain wisdom is given to them.\u2019 Everybody,\nindeed, will tell you that he was very wise, for was he not only blind\nbut a poet? The weaver whose words about Mary Hynes I have already\ngiven, says, \u2018His poetry was the gift of the Almighty, for there are\nthree things that are the gift of the Almighty\u2014poetry 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\u2019; and a\nman at Coole says, \u2018When he put his finger to one part of his head,\neverything would come to him as if it was written in a book\u2019; and an\nold pensioner at Kiltartan says, \u2018He 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.\u2019 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 \u2018that was the angels who\nwere with him\u2019; and all night long there was a great light in the\nhovel, \u2018and 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.\u2019 It may be that in a few years Fable, who changes mortalities\nto immortalities in her cauldron, will have changed Mary Hynes\nand Raftery to perfect symbols of the sorrow of beauty and of the\nmagnificence and penury of dreams.\n\n 1900.\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 1902.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[C] A \u2018pattern,\u2019 or \u2018patron,\u2019 is a festival in honour of a saint.\n\n\n\n\nA KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP\n\n\nAWAY to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope\u2019s mountain lives \u2018a strong\nfarmer,\u2019 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. \u2018Father in heaven, what have I done to deserve\nthis?\u2019 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 certain\nMr. O\u2019Donnell. A sudden silence fell upon the old man and upon his two\ndaughters. At last the eldest daughter said somewhat severely to her\nfather, \u2018Go and ask him to come in and dine.\u2019 The old man went out,\nand then came in looking greatly relieved, and said, \u2018He says he will\nnot dine with us.\u2019 \u2018Go out,\u2019 said the daughter, \u2018and ask him into the\nback parlour, and give him some whiskey.\u2019 Her father, who had just\nfinished his dinner, obeyed sullenly, and I heard the door of the back\nparlour\u2014a little room where the daughters sat and sewed during the\nevening\u2014shut to behind the men. The daughter then turned to me and\nsaid, \u2018Mr. 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\ninto the dairy, and sent the dairy-woman away on a message, and then\nswore at him a great deal. \u201cI will teach you, sir,\u201d O\u2019Donnell replied,\n\u201cthat the law can protect its officers\u201d; but my father reminded him\nthat he had no witness. At last my father got tired, and sorry too,\nand said he would show him a short way home. When they were half-way\nto the main road they came on a man of my father\u2019s who was ploughing,\nand this somehow brought back remembrance of the wrong. He sent the man\naway on a message, and began to swear at the tax-gatherer again. When\nI heard of it I was disgusted that he should have made such a fuss\nover a miserable creature like O\u2019Donnell; and when I heard a few weeks\nago that 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.\u2019\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\nthe farmer was reminded of his peaceful intentions, and asked me if I\nknew where the whiskey was. I had seen him put it into the cupboard,\nand was able therefore to find it and get it out, looking at the thin,\ngrief-struck face of the tax-gatherer. He was rather older than my\nfriend, and very much more feeble and worn, and of a very different\ntype. He was not like him, a robust, successful man, but rather one of\nthose whose feet find no resting-place upon the earth. I recognized one\nof the children of reverie, and said, \u2018You are doubtless of the stock\nof the 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.\u2019\n\u2018Yes, sur,\u2019 he replied, \u2018I am the last of a line princes.\u2019\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, \u2018I hope we will\nhave a glass together next year.\u2019 \u2018No, no,\u2019 was the answer, \u2018I shall\nbe dead next year,\u2019 \u2018I too have lost sons,\u2019 said the other, in quite a\ngentle voice. \u2018But your sons were not like my son.\u2019 And then the two\nmen parted, 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\u2018All is not right here; there is a spirit in him.\u2019 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 Sheep.\nThe old man\u2019s daughter was sitting by, and, when the conversation\ndrifted to love and love-making, she said, \u2018Oh, father, tell him\nabout your love affair.\u2019 The old man took his pipe out of his mouth,\nand said, \u2018Nobody ever marries the woman he loves,\u2019 and then, with\na chuckle, \u2018there were fifteen of them I liked better than the\nwoman I married,\u2019 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\nto America. When they were walking along the quay, they saw a girl\nsitting on a seat, crying miserably, and two men standing up in front\nof her quarrelling with one another. Doran said, \u2018I think I know what\nis wrong. _That_ man will be her brother, and _that_ man will be her\nlover, and the brother is sending her to America to get her away from\nthe lover. How she is crying! but I think I could console her myself.\u2019\nPresently the lover and brother went away, and Doran began to walk up\nand down before her, saying, \u2018Mild weather, Miss,\u2019 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, \u2018Now, Byrne, I don\u2019t grudge her to you, but don\u2019t marry young.\u2019\n\nWhen the story got to this, the farmer\u2019s daughter joined in mockingly\nwith, \u2018I suppose you said that for Byrne\u2019s good, father.\u2019 But the\nold man insisted that he _had_ said it for Byrne\u2019s good; and went\non to tell how, when he got a letter telling of Byrne\u2019s engagement\nto the girl, he wrote him the same advice. Years passed by, and he\nheard nothing; and though he was now married, he could not keep from\nwondering what she was doing. At last he went to America to find out,\nand though he asked many people for tidings, he could get none. More\nyears went by, and his wife was dead, and he well on in years, and a\nrich farmer with not a few great matters on his hands. He found an\nexcuse in some vague business to go out to America again, and to begin\nhis search again. One day he fell into talk with an Irishman in a\nrailway carriage, and asked him, as his way was, about emigrants from\nthis place and that, and at last, \u2018Did you ever hear of the miller\u2019s\ndaughter from Innis Rath?\u2019 and he named the woman he was looking for.\n\u2018Oh yes,\u2019 said the other, \u2018she is married to a friend of mine, John\nMacEwing. She lives at such-and-such a street in Chicago.\u2019 Doran went\nto Chicago and knocked at her door. She opened the door herself, and\nwas \u2018not a bit changed.\u2019 He gave her his real name, which he had taken\nagain after his grandfather\u2019s death, and the name of the man he had\nmet in the train. She did not recognize him, but asked him to stay to\ndinner, saying that her husband would be glad to meet anybody who knew\nthat old friend of his. They talked of many things, but for all their\ntalk, I do not know why, and perhaps he did not know why, he never told\nher who he was. At dinner he asked her about Byrne, and she put her\nhead down on the table and began to cry, and she cried so he was afraid\nher husband might be angry. He was afraid to ask what had happened to\nByrne, and left soon after, never to see her again.\n\nWhen the old man had finished the story, he said, \u2018Tell that to Mr.\nYeats, he will make a poem about it, perhaps.\u2019 But the daughter said,\n\u2018Oh no, father. Nobody could make a poem about a woman like that.\u2019\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 1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SORCERERS\n\n\nIN Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers,[D] and come across\nany who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the\npeople 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\nfull of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the\nearth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling\nabout us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and\nthat we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of\nmagic have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very\nfew persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the\nfew I 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. \u2018Come to us,\u2019 said their leader, a clerk in a large flour-mill,\n\u2018and we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in\nshapes as solid and heavy as our own.\u2019\n\nI had been talking of the power of communicating in states of trance\nwith the angelical and faery beings,\u2014the children of the day and of the\ntwilight,\u2014and he had been contending that we should only believe in\nwhat we can see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of mind.\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 I said, \u2018I will come to you,\u2019 or some such words; \u2018but I will\nnot permit myself to become entranced, and will therefore know whether\nthese shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched and felt by the\nordinary senses than are those I talk of.\u2019 I was not denying the power\nof other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of mortal substance,\nbut only that simple invocations, such as he spoke of, seemed unlikely\nto do more than cast the mind into trance, and thereby bring it into\nthe presence of the powers of day, twilight, and darkness.\n\n\u2018But,\u2019 he said, \u2018we 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.\u2019 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\na brass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with\npainted symbols, two crossed daggers, and certain implements shaped\nlike quern stones, which were used to control the elemental powers\nin some fashion I did not discover. I also put on a black gown, and\nremember that it did not fit perfectly, and that it interfered with my\nmovements considerably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a\nbasket, and cut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood\nfall into the large bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation,\nwhich was certainly not English, and had a deep guttural sound. Before\nhe had finished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five,\ncame in, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my\nleft hand. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began\nto find his eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his\nhood, affecting 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\nand extinguished 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, \u2018O\ngod! O god!\u2019 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\nwas pouring from him and concentrating itself about me; and now too\nI noticed 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\na trance, 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\u2014\u2018What would happen\nif one of your spirits had overpowered me?\u2019 \u2018You would go out of this\nroom,\u2019 he answered, \u2018with his character added to your own.\u2019 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\nof deformed and grotesque figures lingering about me. The Bright\nPowers are 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\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[D] 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\n\n\nTHE DEVIL\n\n\nMY old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come down\nthe road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would not say\nwhat it was, I knew quite well. Another day she told me of two friends\nof hers who had been made love to by one whom they believed to be the\ndevil. One of them was standing by the road-side when he came by on\nhorseback, 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\nit that it was the _Irish Times_. All of a sudden it changed into a\nyoung man, 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, \u2018I knew a servant girl who hung herself\nfor the love of God. She was lonely for the priest and her society,[E]\nand hung herself to the banisters with a scarf. She was no sooner dead\nthan she became white as a lily, and if it had been murder or suicide\nshe would have become black as black. They gave her Christian burial,\nand the priest said she was no sooner dead than she was with the Lord.\nSo nothing matters that you do for the love of God.\u2019 I do not wonder\nat the pleasure she has in telling this story, for she herself loves\nall holy things with an ardour that brings them quickly to her lips.\nShe told me once that she never hears anything described in a sermon\nthat she does not afterwards see with her eyes. She has described to\nme the gates of Purgatory as they showed themselves to her eyes, but\nI remember nothing of the description except that she could not see\nthe souls in trouble but only the gates. Her mind continually dwells\non what is pleasant and beautiful. One day she asked me what month\nand what flower were the most beautiful. When I answered that I did\nnot know, she said, \u2018The month of May, because of the Virgin, and the\nlily of the valley, because it never sinned, but came pure out of the\nrocks,\u2019 and then she asked, \u2018What is the cause of the three cold months\nof winter?\u2019 I did not know even that, and so she said, \u2018The sin of man\nand the vengeance of God.\u2019 Christ Himself was not only blessed, but\nperfect 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\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 \u2018The Distant Waterfall,\u2019 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, \u2018Last night I was waiting up for the\nmaster and it was a quarter-past eleven. I heard a bang right down on\nthe table. \u201cKing\u2019s County all over,\u201d 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.\u2019 I told her once of somebody who saw a faery and\nfainted, and she said, \u2018It 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.\u2019 Another time she said to\nme, \u2018They are always good to the poor.\u2019\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 give Dante the plan of\nthe _Divine Comedy_. But I could not imagine this man seeing Paradise.\nHe is especially angry with the people of faery, and describes the\nfaun-like feet that are so common among them, who are indeed children\nof Pan, to prove them children of Satan. He will not grant that \u2018they\ncarry away women, though there are many that say so,\u2019 but he is certain\nthat they are \u2018as thick as the sands of the sea about us, and they\ntempt poor mortals.\u2019\n\nHe says, \u2018There is a priest I know of was looking along the ground like\nas if he was hunting for something, and a voice said to him, \u201cIf you\nwant to see them you\u2019ll see enough of them,\u201d and his eyes were opened\nand he saw the ground thick with them. Singing they do be sometimes,\nand dancing, but all the time they have cloven feet.\u2019 Yet he was so\nscornful of unchristian things for all their dancing and singing that\nhe thinks that \u2018you have only to bid them begone and they will go. It\nwas one night,\u2019 he says, \u2018after walking back from Kinvara and down by\nthe wood beyond I felt one coming beside me, and I could feel the horse\nhe was riding on and the way he lifted his legs, but they do not make\na sound like the hoofs of a horse. So I stopped and turned around and\nsaid, very loud, \u201cBe off!\u201d and he went and never troubled me after. And\nI knew a man who was dying, and one came on his bed, and he cried out\nto it, \u201cGet out of that, you unnatural animal!\u201d and it left him. Fallen\nangels they are, and after the fall God said, \u201cLet there be Hell,\u201d and\nthere it was in a moment.\u2019 An old woman who was sitting by the fire\njoined in as he said this with \u2018God save us, it\u2019s a pity He said the\nword, and there might have been no Hell the day,\u2019 but the seer did not\nnotice her words. He went on, \u2018And then he asked the devil what would\nhe take for the souls of all the people. And the devil said nothing\nwould satisfy him but the blood of a virgin\u2019s son, so he got that, and\nthen the gates of Hell were opened.\u2019 He understood the story, it seems,\nas if it were some riddling old folk tale.\n\n\u2018I 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 \u2018ud 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\u2018And 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\u2018And I heard a call to me from there, \u201cHelp me to come out o\u2019 this!\u201d\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\u2018So I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, \u201cI\u2019d be\nburned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.\u201d So\nthen he said, \u201cWell, help me with your prayers,\u201d and so I do.\n\n\u2018And 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.\u2019\n\n 1902.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[E] The religious society she had belonged to.\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\nday and 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\nthe true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather\nin borrowed rags, and gave out that there had never been any Moran\nbut himself, and many another, did homage before him, and held him\nchief of all their tribe. Nor despite his blindness did he find any\ndifficulty in getting a wife, but rather was able to pick and choose,\nfor he was just that mixture of ragamuffin and of genius which is dear\nto the heart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly conventional\nherself, loves the unexpected, the crooked, the bewildering. Nor did\nhe lack, 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, \u2018That\u2019ll do\u2014I have me meditations\u2019; 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\nthe crowd called for something more solid, he would recite or sing a\nmetrical tale or ballad of saint or martyr or of Biblical adventure.\nHe would stand at a street corner, and when a crowd had gathered would\nbegin in some such fashion as follows (I copy the record of one who\nknew him)\u2014\u2018Gather round me, boys, gather round me. Boys, am I standin\u2019\nin puddle? am I standin\u2019 in wet?\u2019 Thereon several boys would cry, \u2018Ah,\nno! yez not! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with _St. Mary_; go on\nwith _Moses_\u2019\u2014each calling for his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a\nsuspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst\nout with \u2018All me buzzum friends are turned backbiters\u2019; and after a\nfinal \u2018If yez don\u2019t drop your coddin\u2019 and diversion I\u2019ll lave some\nof yez a case,\u2019 by way of warning to the boys, begin his recitation,\nor perhaps still delay, to ask, \u2018Is there a crowd round me now? Any\nblackguard heretic around me?\u2019 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\nfast woman of Egypt, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem for\nno good 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\nat last she was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear\nher confession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a\nlion, whom He sent also, dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable\ncadence of the eighteenth century, but was so popular and so often\ncalled for that Moran was soon nicknamed Zozimus, and by that name is\nhe remembered. He had also a poem of his own called _Moses_, which went\na little 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 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 \u2018\u2019Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?\u2019\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 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\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,\na poet, 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 get-up upon\nthe stage. 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\nat a famous coffee-house was to be the wager. The actor took up his\nstation at Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran\u2019s, and soon gathered a\nsmall crowd. He had scarce got through \u2018In Egypt\u2019s land, contagious to\nthe Nile,\u2019 when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The\ncrowds met in great excitement and laughter. \u2018Good Christians,\u2019 cried\nthe pretender, \u2018is it possible that any man would mock the poor dark\nman like that?\u2019\n\n\u2018Who\u2019s that? It\u2019s some imposhterer,\u2019 replied Moran.\n\n\u2018Begone, 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?\u2019\n\n\u2018Saints 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,\u2019\nreplied poor Moran.\n\n\u2018And 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.\u2019\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\u2018Is it possible that none of yez can know me? Don\u2019t yez see it\u2019s\nmyself; and that\u2019s some one else?\u2019\n\n\u2018Before I can proceed any further in this lovely story,\u2019 interrupted\nthe pretender, \u2018I call on yez to contribute your charitable donations\nto help me to go on.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven?\u2019 cried Moran, put\ncompletely beside himself by this last injury. \u2018Would you rob the poor\nas well as desave the world? O, was ever such wickedness known?\u2019\n\n\u2018I leave it to yourselves, my friends,\u2019 said the pretender, \u2018to give to\nthe real dark man, that you all know so well, and save me from that\nschemer,\u2019 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 \u2018just give him a grip of that villain, and he\u2019d soon\nlet him know who the imposhterer was!\u2019 They led him over to Moran,\nbut instead of closing with him he thrust a few shillings into his\nhand, and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an\nactor, and 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\u00bd) Patrick Street, on a straw bed, in\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.\nHe had had his day, had said his prayers and made his confession, and\nwhy should they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place\nthe next day. A good party of his admirers and friends got into the\nhearse with the coffin, for the day was wet and nasty. They had not\ngone far when one of them burst out with \u2018It\u2019s cruel cowld, isn\u2019t it?\u2019\n\u2018Garra\u2019,\u2019 replied another, \u2018we\u2019ll all be as stiff as the corpse when\nwe get to the berrin-ground.\u2019 \u2018Bad cess to him,\u2019 said a third; \u2018I wish\nhe\u2019d held out for another month until the weather got dacent.\u2019 A man\nnamed Carroll thereupon produced a half-pint of whiskey, and they all\ndrank to the soul of the departed. Unhappily, however, the hearse was\noverweighted, and they had not reached the cemetery before the spring\nbroke, and the bottle 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 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\nand fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim. Perhaps\nhe may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the Lily of\nHigh Truth, the Rose of Far-sought Beauty, for whose lack so many of\nthe writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been futile\nas 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\nto a notable haunt of theirs, a shallow cave amidst black rocks, with\nits reflection under it in the wet sea sand. I asked the young girl if\nshe could 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\nin a moment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the\nrocks, and then a sound of confused talking, and of people stamping\ntheir feet as if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other\nfriend had been walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed\nclose to us, and as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be\ninterrupted, for he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond\nthe rocks. We were, however, quite alone. The spirits of the place\nhad begun to cast their influence over him also. In a moment he was\ncorroborated by the girl, who said that bursts of laughter had begun\nto mingle with the music, the confused talking, and the noise of feet.\nShe next saw a bright light streaming out of the cave, which seemed to\nhave grown much deeper, and a quantity of little people,[F] in various\ncoloured dresses, red predominating, dancing to a tune which she did\nnot recognize.\n\nI then bade her call out to the queen of the little people to come\nand talk with us. There was, however, no answer to her command. I\ntherefore repeated the words aloud myself, and in a moment a very\nbeautiful tall woman came out of the cave. I too had by this time\nfallen into a kind of trance, in which what we call the unreal had\nbegun to take upon itself a masterful reality, and was able to see\nthe faint gleam of golden ornaments, the shadowy blossom of dim hair.\nI then bade the girl tell this tall queen to marshal her followers\naccording to their natural divisions, that we might see them. I found\nas before that I had to repeat the command myself. The creatures then\ncame out of the cave, and drew themselves up, if I remember rightly,\nin four bands. One of these bands carried quicken boughs in their\nhands, and another had necklaces made apparently of serpents\u2019 scales,\nbut their dress I cannot remember, for I was quite absorbed in that\ngleaming woman. I asked her to tell the seer whether these caves were\nthe greatest faery haunts in the neighbourhood. Her lips moved, but the\nanswer was inaudible. I bade the seer lay her hand upon the breast of\nthe queen, and after that she heard every word quite distinctly. No,\nthis was not the greatest faery haunt, for there was a greater one a\nlittle further ahead. I then asked her whether it was true that she and\nher people carried away mortals, and if so, whether they put another\nsoul in the place of the one they had taken. \u2018We change the bodies,\u2019\nwas her answer. \u2018Are any of you ever born into mortal life?\u2019 \u2018Yes.\u2019 \u2018Do\nI know any who were among your people before birth?\u2019 \u2018You do.\u2019 \u2018Who are\nthey?\u2019 \u2018It would not be lawful for you to know.\u2019 I then asked whether\nshe and her people were not \u2018dramatizations of our moods\u2019? \u2018She does\nnot understand,\u2019 said my friend, \u2018but says that her people are much\nlike human beings, and do most of the things human beings do.\u2019 I asked\nher other questions, as to her nature, and her purpose in the universe,\nbut only seemed to puzzle her. At last she appeared to lose patience,\nfor she wrote this message for me upon the sands\u2014the sands of vision,\nnot the grating sands under our feet\u2014\u2018Be careful, and do not seek to\nknow too much about us.\u2019 Seeing that I had offended her, I thanked her\nfor what she had shown and told, and let her depart again into her\ncave. In a little while the young girl awoke out of her trance, and\nfelt again the cold wind of the world, 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\nof the Gate of Ivory, turning upon its hinges, and hold that he alone\nwho has passed the rose-strewn threshold can catch the far glimmer of\nthe Gate of Horn. It were perhaps well for us all if we would but raise\nthe cry Lilly the astrologer raised in Windsor Forest, \u2018Regina, Regina\nPigmeorum, Veni,\u2019 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\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[F] The people and faeries in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are,\nsometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet\nhigh. The old Mayo woman I so often quote, thinks that it is something\nin our eyes that makes them seem big or little.\n\n\n\n\n\u2018AND FAIR, FIERCE WOMEN\u2019\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 told me, \u2018the finest woman you ever saw\ntravelling right across from the mountain and straight to her.\u2019 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 \u2018very strong,\nbut not wicked,\u2019 that is, not cruel. The old woman had seen the Irish\ngiant, and \u2018though he was a fine man,\u2019 he was nothing to this woman,\n\u2018for he was round, and could not have stepped out so soldierly\u2019; \u2018she\nwas like Mrs. \u2014\u2014\u2019 a stately lady of the neighbourhood, \u2018but 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.\u2019 The old\nwoman covered her eyes with her hands, and when she uncovered them\nthe apparition had vanished. The neighbours were \u2018wild with her,\u2019 she\ntold me, because she did not wait to find out if there was a message,\nfor they were sure it was Queen Maive, who often shows herself to\nthe pilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen\nMaive, and she said, \u2018Some of them have their hair down, but they\nlook quite different, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the\npapers. Those with their hair up are like this one. The others have\nlong white dresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses,\nso that you can see their legs right up to the calf.\u2019 After some\ncareful questioning I found that they wore what might very well be\na kind of buskin; she went on, \u2018They are fine and dashing looking,\nlike the men one sees riding their horses in twos and threes on the\nslopes of the mountains with their swords swinging.\u2019 She repeated\nover and over, \u2018There is no such race living now, none so finely\nproportioned,\u2019 or the like, and then said, \u2018The present Queen[G] is a\nnice, pleasant-looking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me\nthink so little of the ladies is that I see none as they be,\u2019 meaning\nas the spirits. \u2018When I think of her and of the ladies now, they are\nlike little children running about without knowing how to put their\nclothes on right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women\nat all.\u2019 The other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a\nGalway workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that \u2018Queen Maive was\nhandsome, and overcame all her enemies with a hazel stick, for the\nhazel is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk\nthe world with it,\u2019 but she grew \u2018very disagreeable in the end\u2014oh, very\ndisagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between\nthe book and the hearer.\u2019 My friend thought the old woman had got some\nscandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head.\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 \u2018among them,\u2019 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 \u2018very mournful,\u2019 and that he\ncalled her \u2018beauty of all beauties.\u2019\n\n 1902.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[G] Queen Victoria.\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\nof the wood. He has heard the hedgehog\u2014\u2018grainne oge,\u2019 he calls\nhim\u2014\u2018grunting like a Christian,\u2019 and is certain that he steals apples\nby rolling about under an apple tree until there is an apple sticking\nto every quill. He is certain too that the cats, of whom there are many\nin the woods, have a language of their own\u2014some kind of old Irish. He\nsays, \u2018Cats 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.\u2019 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\u2014whom\nhe hates\u2014with 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 \u2018forths\u2019 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\na marten cat\u2014a rare beast now-a-days. Many years ago he used to work\nin the 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, he has seen an unearthly sight in the woods. He says, \u2018One\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.\u2019 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 wood. He\nsaid, \u2018One evening I parted from Lawrence Mangan in the yard, and he\nwent away through the path in Shanwalla, an\u2019 bid me good-night. And\ntwo hours after, there he was back again in the yard, an\u2019 bid me light\na candle 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.\u2019\n\nA woman told me of a sight that she and others had seen by a certain\ndeep pool in the river. She said, \u2018I 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.\u2019\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, \u2018I bet a button that if I fling a pebble on to that bush it will\nstay on it,\u2019 meaning that the bush was so matted the pebble would not\nbe able to go through it. So he took up \u2018a 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.\u2019 They ran away, and when they had gone about\ntwo hundred yards they looked back and saw a woman dressed in white,\nwalking round and round the bush. \u2018First it had the form of a woman,\nand then of a man, and it was going round the bush.\u2019\n\n\nII\n\nI often entangle myself in arguments 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 Ilissus, \u2018The common opinion is enough for me.\u2019 I\nbelieve when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom\nwe cannot 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\nsome vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a\ngateway out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long\nbe beauty, 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\nI think, 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 \u2018Foreshadowings mingled with the images\n Of man\u2019s misdeeds in greater days than these,\u2019\n\nas the old men thought in _The Earthly Paradise_ when they were in good\nspirits.\n\n 1902.\n\n\n\n\nMIRACULOUS CREATURES\n\n\nTHERE are marten cats and badgers and foxes in the Enchanted Woods, but\nthere are of a certainty mightier creatures, and the lake hides what\nneither net nor line can take. These creatures are of the race of the\nwhite 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, \u2018where 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.\u2019 \u2018Another time,\u2019 the man says, \u2018my father told me he was\nin a boat out on the lake with two or three men from Gort, and one of\nthem had 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!\u2019 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 1902.\n\n\n\n\nARISTOTLE OF THE BOOKS\n\n\nTHE friend who can get the woodcutter to talk more readily than he will\nto anybody else went lately to see his old wife. She lives in a cottage\nnot far from the edge of the woods, and is as full of old talk as her\nhusband. This time she began to talk of Goban, the legendary mason, and\nhis wisdom, but said presently, \u2018Aristotle of the Books, too, was very\nwise, and he had a great deal of experience, but did not the bees get\nthe better of him in the end? He wanted to know how they packed the\ncomb, and he wasted the better part of a fortnight watching them, and\nhe could not see them doing it. Then he made a hive with a glass cover\non it and put it over them, and he thought to see. But when he went and\nput his eyes to the glass they had it all covered with wax so that it\nwas as black as the pot; and he was as blind as before. He said he was\nnever rightly kilt till then. They had him that time surely!\u2019\n\n 1902.\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\nto him when he was a young man and out drilling with some Connaught\nFenians. They were but a car-full, and drove along a hill-side 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\ncar they 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 corner they could not find anything.\n\n 1902.\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\nI said 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\nme for this emotion, for I had been pre-occupied with \u00c6ngus and Edain\nand with Mannanan, son of the sea. That night I awoke lying upon my\nback and hearing a voice speaking above me and saying, \u2018No human soul\nis like any other human soul, and therefore the love of God for any\nhuman soul is infinite, for no other soul can satisfy the same need\nin God.\u2019 A few nights after this I awoke to see the loveliest people\nI have ever seen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green\nraiment, cut like old Greek raiment, were standing at my bedside.\nI looked at the girl and noticed that her dress was gathered about\nher neck into a kind of chain, or perhaps into some kind of stiff\nembroidery which represented ivy-leaves. But what filled me with wonder\nwas the miraculous mildness of her face. There are no such faces now.\nIt was beautiful, as few faces are beautiful, but it had neither, one\nwould think, the light that is in desire or in hope or in fear or\nin speculation. 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 \u00c6ngus, 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 1902.\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\nsquare in the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand;\nno sheep or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more\ninaccessible place upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to\nthe deep considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of\nnight it swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out. All night the\ngay rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless\nperhaps where, in some more than commonly \u2018gentle\u2019 place\u2014Drumcliff\nor Drum-a-hair\u2014the night-capped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust\nfrom their doors to see what mischief the \u2018gentry\u2019 are doing. To their\ntrained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and\nthe air is full of shrill voices\u2014a sound like whistling, as an ancient\nScottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the\nangels, who \u2018speak much in the throat, like the Irish,\u2019 as Lilly, the\nastrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed\nbride in the neighbourhood, the night-capped \u2018doctors\u2019 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 _geabbeadh tu an sonas\naer pighin_ (\u2018you can buy joy for a penny\u2019), have gone kings, queens,\nand princes, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there\nare none 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\na palace, as in Keats\u2019s _Lamia_, but an apothecary\u2019s shop, ruled over\nby a certain unaccountable Dr. Opendon. Where he came from, none ever\nknew. There also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name,\nwhose husband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make\nnothing of him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he\ngrew. Away went the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop\nparlour. A black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had\njust time to see that the side-board was covered with fruit, and to\nsay to herself, \u2018Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much,\u2019\nbefore Dr. Opendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as\nthe cat, and his wife walked behind him dressed in black likewise.\nShe gave him a guinea, and got a little bottle in return. Her husband\nrecovered that time. Meanwhile the black doctor cured many people; but\none day a rich patient died, and cat, wife, and doctor all vanished\nthe night after. In a year the man Ormsby fell sick once more. Now\nhe was a good-looking man, and his wife felt sure the \u2018gentry\u2019 were\ncoveting him. She went and called on the \u2018faery-doctor\u2019 at Cairnsfoot.\nAs soon as he had heard her tale, he went behind the back door and\nbegan muttering, muttering, muttering\u2014making spells. Her husband got\nwell this time also. But after a while he sickened again, the fatal\nthird time, and away went she once more to Cairnsfoot, and out went the\nfaery-doctor behind his back door and began muttering, but soon he came\nin and told her it was no use\u2014her husband would die; and sure enough\nthe man died, and ever after when she spoke of him Mrs. Ormsby shook\nher head saying she knew well where he was, and it wasn\u2019t in heaven or\nhell or purgatory either. She probably believed that a log of wood was\nleft behind in his place, but so bewitched that it seemed the dead body\nof 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\u2014seven\nusually\u2014a 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\na dutiful 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\nto find it was but faery glamour. To this hour on the border of the\nlake is shown a half-dug trench\u2014the signet of their impiety. A little\nway from 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.\nTo him they seemed only a company of merry mortals. His bride, when\nshe saw her old love, bade him welcome, but was most fearful lest he\nshould eat the faery food, and so be glamoured out of the earth into\nthat bloodless dim nation, wherefore she set him down to play cards\nwith three of the cavalcade; and he played on, realizing nothing until\nhe saw 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\nthe house 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[H] are a family much rumoured of\nin peasant stories, and believed to be the descendants of a man and a\nspirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that the\nmother of the present Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe.\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\u2018Don\u2019t put him there,\u2019 said the slip of a boy; \u2018that stable will be\nburnt to-night.\u2019 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\u2018If I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in\nmy right hand bet all you are worth.\u2019 \u2018For,\u2019 said Paddy Flynn, who told\nme the tale, \u2018the 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.\u2019\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, \u2018What can I do\nfor you now?\u2019 said he. \u2018Nothing but this,\u2019 said the boy: \u2018my mother\nhas a cottage on your land\u2014they stole me from the cradle. Be good to\nher, John Kirwan, and wherever your horses go I will watch that no\nill follows them; but you will never see me more.\u2019 With that he made\nhimself air, and vanished.\n\nSometimes animals are carried off\u2014apparently drowned animals more than\nothers. In Claremorris, Galway, Paddy Flynn told me, lived a poor widow\nwith one cow and its calf. The cow fell into the river, and was washed\naway. There was a man thereabouts who went to a red-haired woman\u2014for\nsuch are supposed to be wise in these things\u2014and she told him to take\nthe calf down to the edge of the river, and hide himself and watch.\nHe did as she had told him, and as evening came on the calf began\nto low, and after a while the cow came along the edge of the river\nand commenced suckling it. Then, as he had been told, he caught the\ncow\u2019s tail. Away they went at a great pace, across hedges and ditches,\ntill they came to a royalty (a name for the little circular ditches,\ncommonly called raths or forts, that Ireland is covered with since\nPagan times). Therein he saw walking or sitting all the people who had\ndied out of his village in his time. A woman was sitting on the edge\nwith a child on her knees, and she called out to him to mind what the\nred-haired woman had told him, and he remembered she had said, \u2018Bleed\nthe cow.\u2019 So he stuck his knife into the cow and drew blood. That broke\nthe spell, and he was able to turn her homeward. \u2018Do not forget the\nspancel,\u2019 said the woman with the child on her knees; \u2018take the inside\none.\u2019 There were three spancels on a bush; he took one, and the cow was\ndriven safely home to the widow.\n\nThere is hardly a valley or mountain-side 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\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[H] 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.\nI imagine 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\n\n\nTHE UNTIRING ONES\n\n\nIT is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed\nemotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and\nsomething in our sweetheart that we dislike. It is this entanglement\nof moods which makes us old, and puckers our brows and deepens the\nfurrows about our eyes. If we could love and hate with as good heart\nas the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them. But until\nthat day their untiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-half of their\nfascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can the circles of\nthe stars tire out their dancing feet. The Donegal peasants remember\nthis when they bend over the spade, or sit full of the heaviness of the\nfields beside the griddle at nightfall, and they tell stories about it\nthat it may not be forgotten. A short while ago, they say, two faeries,\nlittle creatures, one like a young man, one like a young woman, came\nto a farmer\u2019s house, and spent the night sweeping the hearth and\nsetting all tidy. The next night they came again, and while the farmer\nwas away, brought all the furniture up-stairs into one room, and having\narranged it round the walls, for the greater grandeur it seems, they\nbegan to dance. They danced on and on, and days and days went by, and\nall the country-side came to look at them, but still their feet never\ntired. The farmer did not dare to live at home the while; and after\nthree months he made up his mind to stand it no more, and went and told\nthem that the priest was coming. The little creatures when they heard\nthis went back to their own country, and there their joy shall last as\nlong as the points of the rushes are brown, the people say, and that is\nuntil 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\nby rocking her, when a woman of the Sidhe (the faeries) came in, and\nsaid that the child was chosen to be the bride of the prince of the\ndim kingdom, but that as it would never do for his wife to grow old\nand die while he was still in the first ardour of his love, she would\nbe gifted with a faery life. The mother was to take the glowing log\nout of the fire and bury it in the garden, and her child would live\nas long as it remained unconsumed. The mother buried the log, and the\nchild grew up, became a beauty, and married the prince of the faeries,\nwho came to her at nightfall. After seven hundred years the prince\ndied, and another prince ruled in his stead and married the beautiful\npeasant girl in his turn; and after another seven hundred years he died\nalso, and another prince and another husband came in his stead, and\nso on until she had had seven husbands. At last one day the priest of\nthe parish called upon her, and told her that she was a scandal to the\nwhole neighbourhood with her seven husbands and her long life. She was\nvery sorry, she said, but she was not to blame, and then she told him\nabout the log, and he went straight out and dug until he found it, and\nthen they burned it, and she died, and was buried like a Christian, and\neverybody was pleased. Such a mortal too was Clooth-na-bare,[I] 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\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 \u2018yes\u2019\nand \u2018no,\u2019 or entangled their feet with the sorry net of \u2018maybe\u2019 and\n\u2018perhaps.\u2019 The great winds came and took them up into themselves.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[I] 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\nof mind found her, as he thinks, frequenting Lough Leath, or the Grey\nLake on a mountain of the Fews. Perhaps Lough Ia is my mishearing, or\nthe story-teller\u2019s mispronunciation of Lough Leath, for there are many\nLough Leaths.\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\nwhat they are. I cannot remember by what argument he proved them to\nbe even yet the indestructible children of earth, but it may well be\nthat the elements have their children. If we knew the Fire Worshippers\nbetter we might find that their centuries of pious observance have been\nrewarded, and that the fire has given them a little of its nature; and\nI am certain that the water, the water of the seas and of lakes and of\nmist and 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\nour minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they\nmay see, 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\nnot the wise Porphyry think that all souls come to be born because of\nwater, and that \u2018even the generation of images in the mind is from\nwater\u2019?\n\n 1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE OLD TOWN\n\n\nI FELL, one night some fifteen years ago, into what seemed the power of\nfaery.\n\nI had gone with a young man and his sister\u2014friends and relations of my\nown\u2014to pick stories out of an old countryman; and we were coming home\ntalking over what he had told us. It was dark, and our imaginations\nwere excited by his stories of apparitions, and this may have brought\nus, unknown to us, to the threshold, between sleeping and waking,\nwhere Sphinxes and Chim\u00e6ras sit open-eyed and where there are always\nmurmurings and whisperings. I cannot think that what we saw was an\nimagination of the waking mind. We had come under some trees that made\nthe 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\nall so unreal, that I have never written of it until now, and hardly\never spoken of it, and even when thinking, because of some unreasoning\nimpulse, I have avoided giving it weight in the argument. Perhaps\nI have 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\nas were those lights, and without any emotion of unreality, and I\nremember them with perfect distinctness and confidence. The girl was\nsitting reading under a large old-fashioned mirror, and I was reading\nand writing a couple of yards away, when I heard a sound as if a shower\nof peas had been thrown against the mirror, and while I was looking\nat it I heard the sound again, and presently, while I was alone in\nthe room, I heard a sound as if something much bigger than a pea had\nstruck the wainscoting beside my head. And after that for some days\ncame other sights and sounds, not to me but to the girl, her brother,\nand the servants. Now it was a bright light, now it was letters of fire\nthat vanished 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 had\nshone for a moment?\n\n 1902.\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 himself. 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 phantasy.\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\nlived a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he\nwas coming home late at night, and suddenly felt himself sinking in,\nas it were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a\ndead brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not\nstop till he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung\nhimself against the door with so much of violence that he broke the\nthick wooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his\nwild life, but was a hopeless coward. Nothing could ever bring him to\nlook, either by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face,\nand he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, \u2018the\nprettiest girl in the country\u2019 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\u2014the 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 \u2018Cashel Nore.\u2019 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. \u2018That is the third O\u2019Byrne,\u2019 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 got a glimpse of the stone coffer that contained it, but immediately\na thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and tore him to\npieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished deep into\nthe earth. The second O\u2019Byrne came and dug and dug until he found the\ncoffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within. He saw some\nhorrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and soon died. The\ntreasure again sank out of sight. The third O\u2019Byrne is now digging. He\nbelieves that he will die in some terrible way the moment he finds the\ntreasure, but that the spell will be broken, and the O\u2019Byrne family\nmade 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,\ntime after 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 Saint Columba\nhimself, the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed\nthe mountains 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 table-cloth, and lying in the foam midway between the\nround cairn-headed Knocknarea and \u2018Ben Bulben, famous for hawks\u2019:\n\n \u2018But for Benbulben and Knocknarea\n Many a poor sailor\u2019d be cast away,\u2019\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 \u2018silly,\u2019\nthe \u2018good people\u2019 having carried off his soul. There is no more ready\nshort-cut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered\nand smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes\nthither \u2018full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and\ndrawing-rooms.\u2019 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 \u2018reading\u2019 peasant who\nhad come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and\nwhispered in a timid voice, \u2018Are you all right, sir?\u2019 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\nill-boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose\nnorthern slope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer\u2019s young son\ncame from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards\nit, but the \u2018glamour\u2019 fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence,\ncross-legged, and commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined\nthe fence was a horse, and that all night long he went on the most\nwonderful ride through the country. In the morning he was still beating\nhis fence, and they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for\nthree years before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer\ntried to level the fort. His cows and horses died, and all manner of\ntrouble overtook him, and finally he himself was led home, and left\nuseless with \u2018his head on his knees by the fire to the day of his\ndeath.\u2019\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\nor four 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\nin the evening, and, in her own words, \u2018looks at the mountains and\nthinks of the goodness of God,\u2019 God is all the nearer, because the\npagan powers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for\nhawks, the 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. \u2018He fell down, and was dead three days.\u2019 But\nthis is merely the small gossip of faerydom\u2014the little stitches that\njoin this world and the other.\n\nOne night as I sat eating Mrs. H\u2014\u2014\u2018s soda-bread, her husband told me a\nlongish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor man\nfrom Fin M\u2019Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell\nof, for those creatures, the \u2018good people,\u2019 love to repeat themselves.\nAt any rate the story-tellers do. \u2018In the times when we used to travel\nby the canal,\u2019 he said, \u2018I 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. \u201cWe have nothing to put it in here,\u201d they\nsaid, \u201cbut come to the house with us.\u201d 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 the\nother, putting the corpse on the spit, \u201cWho\u2019ll turn the spit?\u201d Says\nthe other, \u201cMichael H\u2014\u2014, come out of that and turn the meat.\u201d I came\nout all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. \u201cMichael H\u2014\u2014,\u201d says\nthe one who spoke first, \u201cif you let it burn we\u2019ll have to put you on\nthe spit instead\u201d; 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: \u201cMichael H\u2014\u2014,\ncan you tell me a story?\u201d \u201cDivil a one,\u201d said I. On which he caught\nme by 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\u2014the 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 \u201cMichael H\u2014\u2014, can you tell a story now?\u201d \u201cI can,\u201d\nsays I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says: \u201cBegin.\u201d \u201cI\nhave no story but the one,\u201d says I, \u201cthat I was sitting here, and you\ntwo men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and set me turning\nit.\u201d \u201cThat will do,\u201d says he; \u201cye may go in there and lie down on the\nbed.\u201d And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning where was I but in\nthe middle of a green field!\u2019\n\n\u2018Drumcliff\u2019 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 Saint 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 Cuchulain 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\nin armour, shadow-hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so\non. A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there\nis a very ancient graveyard. _The Annals of the Four Masters_ have\nthis verse about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: \u2018A pious\nsoldier of the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff.\u2019 Not\nvery long ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night\nto pray, saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where\nshe was going. It was the \u2018pious soldier of the race of Con,\u2019 says\nlocal wisdom, 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\nsnipe-ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know\nwell: for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses\nor on the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea.\nThere is a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived\nthere who 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\u2014one of\nthe few stone ones in Ireland\u2014under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:\n\u2018They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine\u2019: for it\nis dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself\nor knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My\nfriend, \u2018the sweet Harp-String\u2019 (I give no more than his Irish name\nfor fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest\nheart, but then he supplies the _potheen_-makers with grain from his\nown fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who\nraised the \u2018dhoul\u2019 in Great Eliza\u2019s century, and he has a kind of\nprescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures.\nThey are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the\nparentage of magicians 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\nthem feel 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,\nand they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet,\nand worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the\nIcelanders, or \u2018Danes\u2019 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\nof hitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing,\nonly to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a\nman from Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row,\nand made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so\nthin you cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of\npassionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and\ncried, \u2018That little fellow\u2019s skull if ye were to hit it would go like\nan egg-shell,\u2019 he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,\n\u2018but a man might wallop away at your lordship\u2019s for a fortnight.\u2019\n\n\nII\n\nI wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories. I\nwas 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 1902.\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 ss. _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\u2018Sur,\u2019 said he, \u2018did you ever hear tell of the sea captain\u2019s prayer?\u2019\n\n\u2018No,\u2019 said I; \u2018what is it?\u2019\n\n\u2018It is,\u2019 he replied, \u2018\u201cO Lord, give me a stiff upper lip.\u201d\u2019\n\n\u2018And what does that mean?\u2019\n\n\u2018It means,\u2019 he said, \u2018that when they come to me some night and wake me\nup, and say, \u201cCaptain, we\u2019re going down,\u201d 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 lookin\u2019 mortial bad. Says he,\n\u201cCaptain, all\u2019s up with us.\u201d Says I, \u201cDidn\u2019t you know when you joined\nthat a certain percentage go down every year?\u201d \u201cYes, sur,\u201d says he; and\nsays I, \u201cArn\u2019t you paid to go down?\u201d \u201cYes, sur,\u201d says he; and says I,\n\u201cThen 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, \u2018There\nis a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there\nare two souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way\nthe one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has\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\nby it at night.\u2019 Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near\ntogether that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than\nthe shadows 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. \u2018It was my grandmother\u2019s,\u2019\nsaid the child; \u2018would you have her going about yonder with her\npetticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days?\u2019 I have read\na story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had\nmade her 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 go 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 1892 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\nthe power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will,\nand sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands.\nOne day I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went\na circular parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating\nprecious stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered\ngreen and crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable\nhunger. I knew that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell\nof the artist, and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful\nthings with too avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless\nand common. I have seen into other people\u2019s hells also, and saw in\none an infernal Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who\nweighed on a curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed,\nbut the good deeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could\nsee the scales go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were,\nI knew, crowding about him. I saw, on another occasion a quantity of\ndemons of all kinds of shapes\u2014fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and\ndog-like\u2014sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and\nlooking at a moon-like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from\nthe depths of 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\npost-office, 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\u2014every eternal mood,\u2014but now the draw-net is about our feet. A few\nmiles 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, \u2018Ah, you are the Virgin out\no\u2019 the picture!\u2019 \u2018No,\u2019 said another, coming near also, \u2018she is a sky\nfaery, for she has the colour of the sky.\u2019 \u2018No,\u2019 said a third, \u2018she is\nthe faery out of the foxglove grown big.\u2019 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\nno avail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ? \u2018Yes,\u2019 said one;\n\u2018but we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the\nVirgin.\u2019 \u2018Tell Him to be good to me,\u2019 whispered another into her ear.\n\u2018He would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil,\u2019 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 \u2018a divil\u2019 jumped down from the high ditch by the\nlane, and said she would believe her \u2018an ordinary lady\u2019 if she had \u2018two\nskirts,\u2019 for \u2018ladies always had two skirts.\u2019 The \u2018two skirts\u2019 were\nshown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later\njumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, \u2018Dad\u2019s a divil,\nmum\u2019s a divil, and I\u2019m a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady,\u2019\nand having flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When\nmy pretty 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, \u2018I am the lady you\nmet last year, who told you about Christ.\u2019 \u2018No, you are not! no, you\nare not! no, you are not!\u2019 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\nmen 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 peasant 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 corner. 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\nthe more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over\nour fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the\nsong of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of\nthe fiddle. 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 pinprick 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 fiddler\nput away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a copper, and\nthen opened the door and was gone.\n\n\n\n\nA REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF THEIR\nGHOSTS 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\nwill go. 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 to a river, and she grew very restless, fearing\nto cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her. She\ncried out, \u2018Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-like\nslave\u2019 (the needle) \u2018out of me.\u2019 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. \u2018Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the\nminister?\u2019 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 \u2018loyal minority\u2019 knocked out the\neye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town\nof Carrickfergus. But then the \u2018loyal minority\u2019 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 in anger have they said it. The Catholic religion likes to keep\non 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\nto Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of\nmake-believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is\nmade to turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not\nfeel anxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the\ndew on his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have\nsoured the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The\npiper M\u2019Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched\ninto a sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a\nlong time the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a\nmile, when they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased\nsuddenly. Some time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern\ncompletely flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of\nthe cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake\nwhere treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close\nto the coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came.\nHe rose to the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen\nthe treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while\nhis heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw\nthe rest of his body.\n\nThese water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish\nfolk-lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our\ntales turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly\nhumorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one\nof these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does\nnot prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding\nit with conscious phantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day\nfor congers 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. \u2018That was him,\u2019 said the fisherman. \u2018Did\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, \u201cWhat are you after?\u201d \u201cStones, sur,\u201d says\nhe. \u201cDon\u2019t you think you had better be going?\u201d \u201cYes, sur,\u201d says he. And\nthat\u2019s why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got\npoor, but that\u2019s not true.\u2019\n\nYou\u2014you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and\nair and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We\u2014we 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: \u2018The people here are mad\nfor war, but France seems inclined to take things peacefully,\u2019 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\nhad once lived in \u2018a congested district.\u2019 \u2018There are too many over\none another in London. They are getting tired of the world. It is\nkilled they want to be. It will be no matter; but sure the French want\nnothing but peace and quietness. The people here don\u2019t mind the war\ncoming. They could not be worse than they are. They may as well die\nsoldierly before God. Sure they will get quarters in heaven.\u2019 Then\nshe began to say that it would be a hard thing to see children tossed\nabout on bayonets, and I knew her mind was running on traditions of\nthe great rebellion. She said presently, \u2018I never knew a man that was\nin a battle that liked to speak of it after. They\u2019d sooner be throwing\nhay down from a hayrick.\u2019 She told me how she and her neighbours used\nto be sitting over the fire when she was a girl, talking of the war\nthat was coming, and now she was afraid it was coming again, for she\nhad dreamed that all the bay was \u2018stranded and covered with seaweed.\u2019\nI asked her if it was in the Fenian times that she had been so much\nafraid of war coming. But she cried out, \u2018Never had I such fun and\npleasure as in the Fenian times. I was in a house where some of the\nofficers used to be staying, and in the daytime I would be walking\nafter the soldiers\u2019 band, and at night I\u2019d be going down to the end\nof the garden watching a soldier, with his red coat on him, drilling\nthe Fenians in the field behind the house. One night the boys tied the\nliver of an old horse, that had been dead three weeks, to the knocker,\nand I found it when I opened the door in the morning.\u2019 And presently\nour talk of war shifted, as it had a way of doing, to the battle of the\nBlack Pig, which seems to her a battle between Ireland and England,\nbut to me an Armageddon which shall quench all things in the Ancestral\nDarkness again, and from this to sayings about war and vengeance. \u2018Do\nyou know,\u2019 she said, \u2018what the curse of the Four Fathers is? They put\nthe man-child on the spear, and somebody said to them, \u201cYou will be\ncursed in the fourth generation after you,\u201d and that is why disease or\nanything always comes in the fourth generation.\u2019\n\n 1902.\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\nClare and Galway, say that in \u2018every household\u2019 of faery \u2018there is a\nqueen and a fool,\u2019 and that if you are \u2018touched\u2019 by either you never\nrecover, though you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said\nof the fool that he was \u2018maybe the wisest of all,\u2019 and spoke of him\nas dressed like one of \u2018the mummers that used to be going about the\ncountry.\u2019 Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him,\nand I have heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember\nseeing a long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage\nof an old miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told\nthat he was a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has\ngathered that he is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether\nhe becomes an _Amad\u00e1n-na-Breena_, a fool of the forth, and is attached\nto a household there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know\nwell, and who has been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said,\n\u2018There are fools amongst them, and the fools we see, like that _Amad\u00e1n_\nof Ballylee, go away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that\nwe call _Oinseachs_ (apes).\u2019 A woman who is related to the witch-doctor\non the border of Clare, and who can cure people and cattle by spells,\nsaid, \u2018There are some cures I can\u2019t do. I can\u2019t help any one that has\ngot a stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a\nwoman that saw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian.\nI never heard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking\nnear Gort, and she called out, \u201cThere\u2019s the fool of the forth coming\nafter me.\u201d So her friends that were with her called out, though they\ncould see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no\nharm. He was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that\nis all she said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a\ncousin of Hearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years.\u2019 The wife of\nthe old miller said, \u2018It is said they are mostly good neighbours, but\nthe stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets\nthat is gone. The _Amad\u00e1n-na-Breena_ we call him!\u2019 And an old woman\nwho lives in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, \u2018It is true\nenough, there is no cure for the stroke of the _Amad\u00e1n-na-Breena_.\nThere was an old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell\nwhat diseases you had with measuring you; and he knew many things,\nand he said to me one time, \u201cWhat month of the year is the worst?\u201d\nand I said, \u201cThe month of May, of course.\u201d \u201cIt is not,\u201d he said; \u201cbut\nthe month of June, for that\u2019s the month that the _Amad\u00e1n_ gives his\nstroke!\u201d They say he looks like any other man, but he\u2019s leathan (wide),\nand not smart. I knew a boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb\nlooked over the wall at him with a beard on it, and he knew it was the\n_Amad\u00e1n_, for it was the month of June. And they brought him to that\nman I was telling about, that had the tape, and when he saw him he\nsaid, \u201cSend for the priest, and get a Mass said over him.\u201d And so they\ndid, and what would you say but he\u2019s living yet and has a family! A\ncertain Regan said, \u201cThey, the other sort of people, might be passing\nyou close here and they might touch you. But any that gets the touch\nof the _Amad\u00e1n-na-Breena_ is done for.\u201d It\u2019s true enough that it\u2019s in\nthe month of June he\u2019s most likely to give the touch. I knew one that\ngot it, and he told me about it himself. He was a boy I knew well, and\nhe told me that one night a gentleman came to him, that had been his\nlandlord, and that was dead. And he told him to come along with him,\nfor he wanted him to fight another man. And when he went he found two\ngreat troops of them, and the other troop had a living man with them\ntoo, and he was put to fight him. And they had a great fight, and he\ngot the better of the other man, and then the troop on his side gave a\ngreat shout, and he was left home again. But about three years after\nthat he was cutting bushes in a wood and he saw the _Amad\u00e1n_ coming at\nhim. He had a big vessel in his arms, and it was shining, so that the\nboy could see nothing else; but he put it behind his back then and came\nrunning, and the boy said he looked wild and wide, like the side of the\nhill. And the boy ran, and he threw the vessel after him, and it broke\nwith a great noise, and whatever came out of it, his head was gone\nthere and then. He lived for a while after, and used to tell us many\nthings, but his wits were gone. He thought they mightn\u2019t have liked him\nto beat the other man, and he used to be afraid something would come\non him.\u2019 And an old woman in a Galway workhouse, who had some little\nknowledge of Queen Maive, said the other day, \u2018The _Amad\u00e1n-na-Breena_\nchanges his shape every two days. Sometimes he comes like a youngster,\nand then he\u2019ll come like the worst of beasts, trying to give the touch\nhe used to be. I heard it said of late he was shot, but I think myself\nit would be hard to shoot him.\u2019\n\nI knew a man who was trying to bring before his mind\u2019s eye an image of\n\u00c6ngus, 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 \u2018\u00c6ngus\u2019 messenger.\u2019 And I knew another man, a truly\ngreat seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there\nwas a 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\nwonderful that many should see a fool with a shining vessel or some\nenchantment or wisdom or dream too powerful for mortal brains in \u2018every\nhousehold of them.\u2019 It is natural, too, that there should be a queen\nto every 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\nby foolishness, 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, \u2018If I\nhad her power of vision I would know all the wisdom of the gods, and\nher visions do not interest her.\u2019 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\nit that when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of\nthe earth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their\nwisdom when the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make\nthe trees wither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery\nin November, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes. Because\nthe soul 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\u2014\n\n \u2018Heardst 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?\u2019\n\n 1901.\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 \u2018they\u2019 would not let him sleep\nat night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their\npipes. He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend\nhad told him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or\nto play on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and\nhe did, and they always went out into the field when he began to play.\nHe showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he\ndid not 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 \u2018three of them\u2019 had told him he was to die. He said they\nhad gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they\nhad \u2018taken,\u2019 I suppose) who used to come with them, and play about the\nhouse with them, had \u2018gone to some other place,\u2019 because \u2018they found\nthe house too cold for them, maybe\u2019; 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, \u2018Old he is, and it\u2019s all in his brain the things\nhe sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him.\u2019 But he was\nimprovident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, \u2018The\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.\u2019 And she told how Fallon\u2019s little girl\nhad met a woman \u2018with red hair that was as bright as silver,\u2019 who took\nher away. Another neighbour, who was herself \u2018clouted over the ear\u2019 by\none of them for going into a fort where they were, said, \u2018I believe\nit\u2019s mostly in his head they are; and when he stood in the door last\nnight I said, \u201cThe wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it\nnever stops,\u201d to make him think it was the same with him; but he says,\n\u201cI hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them\nis after bringing out a little flute, and it\u2019s on it he\u2019s playing to\nthem.\u201d 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,\nand he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and\nstrong.\u2019\n\nA friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms\nof true 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\nit out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not\nlike being in the house alone because of the ghosts and faeries;\nand the old woman said, \u2018There\u2019s nothing to be frightened about in\nfaeries, miss. Many\u2019s the time I talked to a woman myself that was\na faery, or something of the sort, and no less and more than mortal\nanyhow. She used to come about your grandfather\u2019s house\u2014your mother\u2019s\ngrandfather, that is\u2014in my young days. But you\u2019ll have heard all about\nher.\u2019 My friend said that she had heard about her, but a long time\nbefore, and she wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went\non, \u2018Well, dear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming\nabout was when your uncle\u2014that is, your mother\u2019s uncle\u2014Joseph married,\nand building 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 fornent 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!\u2019 My friend asked how the\nwoman was dressed, and the old woman said, \u2018It was a gray cloak she\nhad on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied\nround her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times.\u2019\nMy friend asked, \u2018How wee was she?\u2019 And the old woman said, \u2018Well now,\nshe wasn\u2019t wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the\nWee Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you\nwould say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round\nin the face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother\u2019s sister, and\nBetty was like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of\nthem. She was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married,\nand she never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee\nWoman\u2014her being like Betty\u2014was, maybe, one of their own people that had\nbeen took 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. \u201cGo over to the Lough\nthis minute!\u201d\u2014ordering her like that\u2014\u201cGo over to the Lough, and tell\nJoseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I\u2019ll\nshow you fornent the thorn-bush. 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.\u201d\nThe house was being built on \u201cthe path\u201d I suppose\u2014the path used by the\npeople of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down\nand shows 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, \u201cHe 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, \u2018Always 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;\nbut I used to be glad when I seen her coming up the burn, and would run\nout and catch her by the hand and the cloak, and call to my mother,\n\u201cHere\u2019s the Wee Woman!\u201d No man body ever seen her. My father used to\nbe wanting to, and was angry with my mother and me, thinking we were\ntelling lies and talking foolish like. And so one day when she had\ncome, and was sitting by the fireside talking to my mother, I slips out\nto the field where he was digging. \u201cCome up,\u201d says I, \u201cif ye want to\nsee her. She\u2019s sitting at the fireside now, talking to mother.\u201d So in\nhe comes with me and looks round angry like and sees nothing, and he up\nwith a broom that was near hand and hits me a crig with it. \u201cTake that\nnow!\u201d says he, \u201cfor making a fool of me!\u201d and away with him as fast as\nhe could, and queer and angry with me. The Wee Woman says to me then,\n\u201cYe got that now for bringing people to see me. No man body ever seen\nme, and none ever will.\u201d\n\n\u2018There was one day, though, she gave him a queer fright anyway, whether\nhe had seen her or not. He was in among the cattle when it happened,\nand he comes up to the house all trembling like. \u201cDon\u2019t let me hear\nyou say another word of your Wee Woman. I have got enough of her this\ntime.\u201d Another time, all the same, he was up Gortin to sell horses, and\nbefore he went off, in steps the Wee Woman and says she to my mother,\nholding out a sort of a weed, \u201cYour man is gone up by Gortin, and\nthere\u2019s a bad fright waiting him coming home, but take this and sew it\nin his coat, and he\u2019ll get no harm by it.\u201d My mother takes the herb,\nbut thinks to herself, \u201cSure there\u2019s nothing in it,\u201d and throws it on\nthe fire, and lo and behold, and sure enough! coming home from Gortin,\nmy father got as bad a fright as ever he got in his life. What it was I\ndon\u2019t right mind, but anyway he was badly damaged by it. My mother was\nin a queer way frightened of the Wee Woman, after what she had done,\nand sure enough the next time she was angry. \u201cYe didn\u2019t believe me,\u201d\nshe said, \u201cand ye threw the herb I gave ye in the fire, and I went far\nenough for it.\u201d There was another time she came and told how William\nHearne was dead in America. \u201cGo over,\u201d she says, \u201cto the Lough, and say\nthat William is dead, and he died happy, and this was the last Bible\nchapter ever he read,\u201d and with that she gave the verse and chapter.\n\u201cGo,\u201d she says, \u201cand tell them to read them at the next class meeting,\nand that I held his head while he died.\u201d And sure enough word came\nafter that how William had died on the day she named. And, doing as she\nbid about the chapter and hymn, they never had such a prayer-meeting as\nthat. One day she and me and my mother was standing talking, and she\nwas warning her about something, when she says of a sudden, \u201cHere comes\nMiss Letty in all her finery, and it\u2019s time for me to be off.\u201d And with\nthat she gave a swirl round on her feet, and raises up in the air, and\nround and round she goes, and up and up, as if it was a winding stairs\nshe went up, only far swifter. She went up and up, till she was no\nbigger than a bird up against the clouds, singing and singing the whole\ntime the loveliest music I ever heard in my life from that day to this.\nIt wasn\u2019t a hymn she was singing, but poetry, lovely poetry, and me and\nmy mother stands gaping up, and all of a tremble. \u201cWhat is she at all,\nmother?\u201d says I. \u201cIs it an angel she is or a faery woman, or what?\u201d\nWith that up come Miss Letty, that was your grandmother, dear, but Miss\nLetty she was then, and no word of her being anything else, and she\nwondered to see us gaping up that way, till me and my mother told her\nof it. She went on gay-dressed then, and was lovely looking. She was up\nthe lane where none of us could see her coming forward when the Wee\nWoman rose up in that queer way, saying, \u201cHere comes Miss Letty in all\nher finery.\u201d Who knows to what far country she went, or to see whom\ndying?\n\n\u2018It 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, \u201cI\u2019m come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,\u201d says\nshe. \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d says my mother, and thinks to herself, \u201cI can\ngive her her supper nicely.\u201d Down she sits by the fire a while. \u201cNow\nI\u2019ll tell you where you\u2019ll bring my supper,\u201d says she. \u201cIn the room\nbeyond there beside the loom\u2014set a chair in and a plate.\u201d \u201cWhen ye\u2019re\nspending the night, mayn\u2019t ye as well sit by the table and eat with the\nrest of us?\u201d \u201cDo what you\u2019re bid, and set whatever you give me in the\nroom beyant. I\u2019ll eat there and nowhere else.\u201d 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!\u2019\n\n 1897.\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\u2018like flies in winter,\u2019 she said; but they forgot the cold when they\nbegan to talk. A man had just left them who had played cards in a\nrath with the people of faery, who had played \u2018very fair\u2019; and one\nold man had seen an enchanted black pig one night, and there were two\nold people my friend had heard quarrelling as to whether Raftery or\nCallanan was the better poet. One had said of Raftery, \u2018He was a big\nman, and his songs have gone through the whole world. I remember him\nwell. He had a voice like the wind\u2019; but the other was certain \u2018that\nyou would stand in the snow to listen to Callanan.\u2019 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 moral-less\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\nhad a good heart, somebody would bring you to life again with a touch\nof a rod, and when if you were a prince and happened to look exactly\nlike your brother, you might go to bed with his queen, and have only\na little 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, \u2018It\u2019s easy enough managed if you do as I tell you. Let\nyou send some one,\u2019 says he, \u2018to such a place to catch a fish. And when\nthe fish is brought in, give it to the queen, your wife, to eat.\u2019\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\nof the 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, \u2018Tell 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.\u2019 \u2018It is easy to know that,\u2019 said the chief adviser, \u2018if\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.\u2019\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, \u2018It is time for you to go away out of this, for you are not\nmy son.\u2019 And her own son, that we will call Bill, said, \u2018Do not send\nhim away, are we not brothers? \u2018But Jack said, \u2018I would have been long\nago out of this house if I knew it was not my own father and mother\nowned it.\u2019 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, \u2018If harm ever happens to me, that water on the top of the\nwell will be blood, and the water below will be honey.\u2019\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\nhe went on till he came to a weaver\u2019s house, and he asked him for\na lodging, and he gave it to him. And then he went on till he came\nto a king\u2019s house, and he sent in at the door to ask, \u2018Did he want a\nservant?\u2019 \u2018All I want,\u2019 said the king, \u2018is a boy that will drive out\nthe cows to the field every morning, and bring them in at night to be\nmilked.\u2019 \u2018I will do that for you,\u2019 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. \u2018Fee-faw-fum,\u2019 says he, \u2018I smell the blood of an Irishman. I see\nyou where you are, up in the tree,\u2019 he said; \u2018you 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.\u2019 \u2018As\nyou are strong, be merciful,\u2019 says Jack up in the tree. \u2018Come down out\nof that, you little dwarf,\u2019 said the giant, \u2018or I\u2019ll tear you and the\ntree asunder.\u2019 So Jack came down. \u2018Would you sooner be driving red-hot\nknives into one another\u2019s hearts,\u2019 said the giant, \u2018or would you sooner\nbe fighting one another on red-hot flags?\u2019 \u2018Fighting on red-hot flags\nis what I\u2019m used to at home,\u2019 said Jack, \u2018and your dirty feet will be\nsinking in them and my feet will be rising.\u2019 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, \u2018If you don\u2019t make an end of him by sunset,\nhe\u2019ll make an end of you.\u2019 Then Jack put out his strength, and he\nbrought the giant down on his knees. \u2018Give me my life,\u2019 says the giant,\n\u2018and I\u2019ll give you the three best gifts.\u2019 \u2018What are those?\u2019 said Jack.\n\u2018A 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 run faster than the wind blows.\u2019 \u2018Where are\nthey to be found?\u2019 said Jack. \u2018In that red door you see there in the\nhill.\u2019 So Jack went and got them out. \u2018Where will I try the sword?\u2019\nsays he. \u2018Try it on that ugly black stump of a tree,\u2019 says the giant.\n\u2018I see nothing blacker or uglier than your own head,\u2019 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. \u2018It is well for you I did not join the body\nagain,\u2019 said the head, \u2018or you would have never been able to strike it\noff again.\u2019 \u2018I did not give you the chance of that,\u2019 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, \u2018I think I only\nhear two roars from beyond to-night in place of three.\u2019\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, \u2018Give me my life, and I\u2019ll give you the best thing I have.\u2019\n\u2018What is that?\u2019 says Jack. \u2018It\u2019s a suit that you can put on, and you\nwill see every one but no one can see you.\u2019 \u2018Where is it?\u2019 said Jack.\n\u2018It\u2019s inside that little red door at the side of the hill.\u2019 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, \u2018Why is it the cows are giving so\nmuch milk these days? Are you bringing them to any other grass?\u2019 \u2018I am\nnot,\u2019 said Jack, \u2018but 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.\u2019\n\nAnd that night at the dinner, the king said, \u2018I hear no roars at all.\u2019\n\nThe next morning the king and the princess were watching at the window\nto see what would Jack do when he got to the field. And Jack knew they\nwere there, and he got a stick, and began to batter the cows, that they\nwent leaping and jumping over stones, and walls, and ditches. \u2018There is\nno lie in what Jack said,\u2019 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 king\u2019s daughter to eat, unless she would\nhave some good man to fight for her. And it was the princess at the\nplace Jack was had to be given to it that time, and the king had been\nfeeding a bully underground for seven years, and you may believe he got\nthe best 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.\n\u2018Is that right for a princess to be tied to a tree?\u2019 said Jack. \u2018It is\nnot, indeed,\u2019 said she, and she told him what had happened, and how the\nserpent was coming to take her. \u2018If you will let me sleep for awhile\nwith my head in your lap,\u2019 said Jack, \u2018you could wake me when it is\ncoming.\u2019 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, \u2018I 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.\u2019\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\nand easy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree. Then Jack put\non the suit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and\nthe princess 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 all 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, \u2018This\ntime I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king\u2019s\ndaughters.\u2019 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. And\nthe chief adviser bade him to give another ball, and this time he said,\n\u2018Give it to poor as well as rich.\u2019\n\nSo the ball was given, and many came flocking to it, but the shoe would\nnot fit any one of them. And the chief adviser said, \u2018Is every one here\nthat belongs to the house?\u2019 \u2018They are all here,\u2019 said the king, \u2018except\nthe boy that minds the cows, and I would not like him to be coming up\nhere.\u2019\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, \u2018Here\nis the hunt, where is the huntsman and the hound?\u2019 So when Jack heard\nthat he got up and took his horse and his hound and went hunting the\ndeer. When it was in the hollow he was on the hill, and when it was on\nthe hill he was in the hollow, and that went on all through the day,\nand when night fell it went into a wood. And Jack went into the wood\nafter it, and all he could see was a mud-wall cabin, and he went in,\nand there he saw an old woman, about two hundred years old, and she\nsitting over the fire. \u2018Did you see a deer pass this way?\u2019 says Jack.\n\u2018I did not,\u2019 says she, \u2018but it\u2019s too late now for you to be following a\ndeer, let you stop the night here.\u2019 \u2018What will I do with my horse and\nmy hound?\u2019 said Jack. \u2018Here are two ribs of hair,\u2019 says she, \u2018and let\nyou tie them up with them.\u2019 So Jack went out and tied up the horse and\nthe hound, and when he came in again the old woman said, \u2018You killed\nmy three sons, and I\u2019m going to kill you now,\u2019 and she put on a pair\nof boxing-gloves, each one of them nine stone weight, and the nails\nin them fifteen inches long. Then they began to fight, and Jack was\ngetting the worst of it. \u2018Help, hound!\u2019 he cried out, then \u2018Squeeze,\nhair,\u2019 cried out the old woman, and the rib of hair that was about the\nhound\u2019s neck squeezed him to death. \u2018Help, horse!\u2019 Jack called out,\nthen \u2018Squeeze, hair,\u2019 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, \u2018I 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.\u2019\n\nSo he took the other horse and hound then, and set off, over 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\nwent in, the weaver says, \u2018You are welcome, and I can give you better\ntreatment than I did the last time you came in to me,\u2019 for she thought\nit was Jack who was there, they were so much like one another. \u2018That is\ngood,\u2019 said Bill to himself, \u2018my brother has been here.\u2019 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, \u2018Welcome\nto you back again.\u2019 And all the people said, \u2018It is a wonder you have\ngone hunting three days after your marriage, and to stop so long away.\u2019\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, \u2018The hunt is here, where are the huntsmen and\nthe hounds?\u2019 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, \u2018Your brother\nkilled my three sons, and I killed him, and I\u2019ll kill you along with\nhim.\u2019 And she put her gloves on, and they began the fight, and then\nBill called out, \u2018Help, horse.\u2019 \u2018Squeeze, hair,\u2019 called the old woman;\n\u2018I can\u2019t squeeze, I\u2019m in the fire,\u2019 said the hair. And the horse came\nin and gave her a blow of his hoof. \u2018Help, hound,\u2019 said Bill then.\n\u2018Squeeze, hair,\u2019 said the old woman; \u2018I can\u2019t, I\u2019m in the fire,\u2019 said\nthe second hair. Then the hound put his teeth in her, and Bill brought\nher down, and she cried for mercy. \u2018Give me my life,\u2019 she said, \u2018and\nI\u2019ll tell you where you\u2019ll get your brother again, and his hound and\nhorse.\u2019 \u2018Where\u2019s that?\u2019 said Bill. \u2018Do you see that rod over the fire?\u2019\nsaid she; \u2018take 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.\u2019 \u2018I will, but\nI\u2019ll make a green stone of you first,\u2019 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, \u2018I\nhave killed my brother.\u2019 And he went back then and brought him to\nlife, and 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 1902.\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,\nbut must turn its head and cock its ears to listen. Presently a score\nof men and boys and girls, with shawls over their heads, gathered\nunder the trees to listen. Somebody sang _Sa Muirn\u00edn D\u00edles_, and then\nsomebody else _Jimmy Mo M\u00edlest\u00f3r_, mournful songs of separation, of\ndeath, and of exile. Then some of the men stood up and began to dance,\nwhile another lilted the measure they danced to, and then somebody\nsang _Eibl\u00edn a R\u00fain_, that glad song of meeting which has always\nmoved me more than other songs, because the lover who made it sang it\nto his sweetheart under the shadow of a mountain I looked at every\nday through my childhood. The voices melted into the twilight, and\nwere mixed into the trees, and when I thought of the words they too\nmelted away, and were mixed with the generations of men. Now it was a\nphrase, now it was an attitude of mind, an emotional form, that had\ncarried my memory to older verses, or even to forgotten mythologies.\nI was carried so far that it was as though I came to one of the four\nrivers, and followed it under the wall of Paradise to the roots of the\ntrees of knowledge and of life. There is no song or story handed down\namong the cottages that has not words and thoughts to carry one as\nfar, for though one can know but a little of their ascent, one knows\nthat they ascend like medi\u00e6val genealogies through unbroken dignities\nto the beginning of the world. Folk art is, indeed, the oldest of the\naristocracies of thought, and because it refuses what is passing and\ntrivial, the merely clever and pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and\ninsincere, and because it has gathered into itself the simplest and\nmost unforgettable thoughts of the generations, it is the soil where\nall great art is rooted. Wherever it is spoken by the fireside, or sung\nby the roadside, or carved upon the lintel, appreciation of the arts\nthat a single mind gives unity and design to, spreads quickly when its\nhour is come.\n\nIn a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few\npeople\u2014three or four thousand out of millions\u2014favoured by their own\ncharacters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour,\nhave understanding of imaginative things, and yet \u2018the imagination\nis the man himself.\u2019 The churches in the Middle Age won all the arts\ninto their service because men understood that when imagination is\nimpoverished, a principal voice\u2014some would say the only voice\u2014for 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\nit has always seemed to me that we, who would reawaken 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 who those who\nwere of Jewry, and yet cried out, \u2018If thou let this man go thou art not\nC\u00e6sar\u2019s friend.\u2019\n\n 1901.\n\n\n\n\n_INTO 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 the 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._\n\n\n\n\nSTORIES OF RED HANRAHAN\n\n\n\n\nRED HANRAHAN\n\n\nHANRAHAN, the hedge schoolmaster, a tall, strong, red-haired young man,\ncame into the barn where some of the men of the village were sitting\non Samhain Eve. It had been a dwelling-house, and when the man that\nowned it had built a better one, he had put the two rooms together, and\nkept it for a place to store one thing or another. There was a fire on\nthe old hearth, and there were dip candles stuck in bottles, and there\nwas a black quart bottle upon some boards that had been put across two\nbarrels to make a table. Most of the men were sitting beside the fire,\nand one of them was singing a long wandering song, about a Munster man\nand a Connaught man that were quarrelling about their two provinces.\n\nHanrahan went to the man of the house and said, \u2018I got your message\u2019;\nbut when he had said that, he stopped, for an old mountainy man that\nhad a shirt and trousers of unbleached flannel, and that was sitting\nby himself near the door, was looking at him, and moving an old pack of\ncards about in his hands and muttering. \u2018Don\u2019t mind him,\u2019 said the man\nof the house; \u2018he is only some stranger came in awhile ago, and we bade\nhim welcome, it being Samhain night, but I think he is not in his right\nwits. Listen to him now and you will hear what he is saying.\u2019\n\nThey listened then, and they could hear the old man muttering to\nhimself as he turned the cards, \u2018Spades and Diamonds, Courage and\nPower; Clubs and Hearts, Knowledge and Pleasure.\u2019\n\n\u2018That is the kind of talk he has been going on with for the last hour,\u2019\nsaid the man of the house, and Hanrahan turned his eyes from the old\nman as if he did not like to be looking at him.\n\n\u2018I got your message,\u2019 Hanrahan said then; \u2018\u201che is in the barn with his\nthree first cousins from Kilchriest,\u201d the messenger said, \u201cand there\nare some of the neighbours with them.\u201d\u2019\n\n\u2018It is my cousin over there is wanting to see you,\u2019 said the man of the\nhouse, and he called over a young frieze-coated man, who was listening\nto the song, and said, \u2018This is Red Hanrahan you have the message for.\u2019\n\n\u2018It is a kind message, indeed,\u2019 said the young man, \u2018for it comes from\nyour sweetheart, Mary Lavelle.\u2019\n\n\u2018How would you get a message from her, and what do you know of her?\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know her, indeed, but I was in Loughrea yesterday, and a\nneighbour of hers that had some dealings with me was saying that she\nbade him send you word, if he met any one from this side in the market,\nthat her mother has died from her, and if you have a mind yet to join\nwith herself, she is willing to keep her word to you.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will go to her indeed,\u2019 said Hanrahan.\n\n\u2018And she bade you make no delay, for if she has not a man in the house\nbefore the month is out, it is likely the little bit of land will be\ngiven to another.\u2019\n\nWhen Hanrahan heard that, he rose up from the bench he had sat down\non. \u2018I will make no delay indeed,\u2019 he said, \u2018there is a full moon, and\nif I get as far as Kilchriest to-night, I will reach to her before the\nsetting of the sun to-morrow.\u2019\n\nWhen the others heard that, they began to laugh at him for being in\nsuch haste to go to his sweetheart, and one asked him if he would leave\nhis school in the old lime-kiln, where he was giving the children such\ngood learning. But he said the children would be glad enough in the\nmorning to find the place empty, and no one to keep them at their task;\nand as for his school he could set it up again in any place, having as\nhe had his little inkpot hanging from his neck by a chain, and his big\nVirgil and his primer in the skirt of his coat.\n\nSome of them asked him to drink a glass before he went, and a young\nman caught hold of his coat, and said he must not leave them without\nsinging the song he had made in praise of Venus and of Mary Lavelle. He\ndrank a glass of whiskey, but he said he would not stop but would set\nout on his journey.\n\n\u2018There\u2019s time enough, Red Hanrahan,\u2019 said the man of the house. \u2018It\nwill be time enough for you to give up sport when you are after your\nmarriage, and it might be a long time before we will see you again.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will not stop,\u2019 said Hanrahan; \u2018my mind would be on the roads all\nthe time, bringing me to the woman that sent for me, and she lonesome\nand watching till I come.\u2019\n\nSome of the others came about him, pressing him that had been such a\npleasant comrade, so full of songs and every kind of trick and fun, not\nto leave them till the night would be over, but he refused them all,\nand shook them off, and went to the door. But as he put his foot over\nthe threshold, the strange old man stood up and put his hand that was\nthin and withered like a bird\u2019s claw on Hanrahan\u2019s hand, and said: \u2018It\nis not Hanrahan, the learned man and the great songmaker, that should\ngo out from a gathering like this, on a Samhain night. And stop here,\nnow,\u2019 he said, \u2018and play a hand with me; and here is an old pack of\ncards has done its work many a night before this, and old as it is,\nthere has been much of the riches of the world lost and won over it.\u2019\n\nOne of the young men said, \u2018It isn\u2019t much of the riches of the world\nhas stopped with yourself, old man,\u2019 and he looked at the old man\u2019s\nbare feet, and they all laughed. But Hanrahan did not laugh, but he sat\ndown very quietly, without a word. Then one of them said, \u2018So you will\nstop with us after all, Hanrahan\u2019; and the old man said: \u2018He will stop\nindeed, did you not hear me asking him?\u2019\n\nThey all looked at the old man then as if wondering where he came\nfrom. \u2018It is far I am come,\u2019 he said, \u2018through France I have come,\nand through Spain, and by Lough Greine of the hidden mouth, and none\nhas refused me anything.\u2019 And then he was silent and nobody liked to\nquestion him, and they began to play. There were six men at the boards\nplaying, and the others were looking on behind. They played two or\nthree games for nothing, and then the old man took a four-penny bit,\nworn very thin and smooth, out from his pocket, and he called to the\nrest to put something on the game. Then they all put down something\non the boards, and little as it was it looked much, from the way it\nwas shoved from one to another, first one man winning it and then his\nneighbour. And sometimes the luck would go against a man and he would\nhave nothing left, and then one or another would lend him something,\nand he would pay it again out of his winnings, for neither good nor bad\nluck stopped long with anyone.\n\nAnd once Hanrahan said as a man would say in a dream, \u2018It is time for\nme to be going the road\u2019; but just then a good card came to him, and\nhe played it out, and all the money began to come to him. And once he\nthought of Mary Lavelle, and he sighed; and that time his luck went\nfrom him, and he forgot her again.\n\nBut at last the luck went to the old man and it stayed with him, and\nall they had flowed into him, and he began to laugh little laughs to\nhimself, and to sing over and over to himself, \u2018Spades and Diamonds,\nCourage and Pleasure,\u2019 and so on, as if it was a verse of a song.\n\nAnd after a while anyone looking at the men, and seeing the way their\nbodies were rocking to and fro, and the way they kept their eyes on the\nold man\u2019s hands, would think they had drink taken, or that the whole\nstore they had in the world was put on the cards; but that was not so,\nfor the quart bottle had not been disturbed since the game began, and\nwas nearly full yet, and all that was on the game was a few sixpenny\nbits and shillings, and maybe a handful of coppers.\n\n\u2018You are good men to win and good men to lose,\u2019 said the old man, \u2018you\nhave play in your hearts.\u2019 He began then to shuffle the cards and to\nmix them, very quick and fast, till at last they could not see them to\nbe cards at all, but you would think him to be making rings of fire in\nthe air, as little lads would make them with whirling a lighted stick;\nand after that it seemed to them that all the room was dark, and they\ncould see nothing but his hands and the cards.\n\nAnd all in a minute a hare made a leap out from between his hands, and\nwhether it was one of the cards that took that shape, or whether it was\nmade out of nothing in the palms of his hands, nobody knew, but there\nit was running on the floor of the barn, as quick as any hare that ever\nlived.\n\nSome looked at the hare, but more kept their eyes on the old man, and\nwhile they were looking at him a hound made a leap out between his\nhands, the same way as the hare did, and after that another hound and\nanother, till there was a whole pack of them following the hare round\nand round the barn.\n\nThe players were all standing up now, with their backs to the boards,\nshrinking from the hounds, and nearly deafened with the noise of their\nyelping, but as quick as the hounds were they could not overtake the\nhare, but it went round, till at the last it seemed as if a blast of\nwind burst open the barn door, and the hare doubled and made a leap\nover the boards where the men had been playing, and went out of the\ndoor and away through the night, and the hounds over the boards and\nthrough the door after it.\n\nThen the old man called out, \u2018Follow the hounds, follow the hounds, and\nit is a great hunt you will see to-night,\u2019 and he went out after them.\nBut used as the men were to go hunting after hares, and ready as they\nwere for any sport, they were in dread to go out into the night, and it\nwas only Hanrahan that rose up and that said, \u2018I will follow, I will\nfollow on.\u2019\n\n\u2018You had best stop here, Hanrahan,\u2019 the young man that was nearest him\nsaid, \u2018for you might be going into some great danger.\u2019 But Hanrahan\nsaid, \u2018I will see fair play, I will see fair play,\u2019 and he went\nstumbling out of the door like a man in a dream, and the door shut\nafter him as he went.\n\nHe thought he saw the old man in front of him, but it was only his own\nshadow that the full moon cast on the road before him, but he could\nhear the hounds crying after the hare over the wide green fields of\nGranagh, and he followed them very fast for there was nothing to stop\nhim; and after a while he came to smaller fields that had little walls\nof loose stones around them, and he threw the stones down as he crossed\nthem, and did not wait to put them up again; and he passed by the place\nwhere the river goes under ground at Ballylee, and he could hear the\nhounds going before him up towards the head of the river. Soon he found\nit harder to run, for it was uphill he was going, and clouds came over\nthe moon, and it was hard for him to see his way, and once he left\nthe path to take a short cut, but his foot slipped into a boghole and\nhe had to come back to it. And how long he was going he did not know,\nor what way he went, but at last he was up on the bare mountain, with\nnothing but the rough heather about him, and he could neither hear the\nhounds nor any other thing. But their cry began to come to him again,\nat first far off and then very near, and when it came quite close to\nhim, it went up all of a sudden into the air, and there was the sound\nof hunting over his head; then it went away northward till he could\nhear nothing more at all. \u2018That\u2019s not fair,\u2019 he said, \u2018that\u2019s not\nfair.\u2019 And he could walk no longer, but sat down on the heather where\nhe was, in the heart of Slieve Echtge, for all the strength had gone\nfrom him, with the dint of the long journey he had made.\n\nAnd after a while he took notice that there was a door close to him,\nand a light coming from it, and he wondered that being so close to\nhim he had not seen it before. And he rose up, and tired as he was he\nwent in at the door, and although it was night time outside, it was\ndaylight he found within. And presently he met with an old man that had\nbeen gathering summer thyme and yellow flag-flowers, and it seemed\nas if all the sweet smells of the summer were with them. And the old\nman said: \u2018It is a long time you have been coming to us, Hanrahan the\nlearned man and the great songmaker.\u2019\n\nAnd with that he brought him into a very big shining house, and every\ngrand thing Hanrahan had ever heard of, and every colour he had ever\nseen, were in it. There was a high place at the end of the house, and\non it there was sitting in a high chair a woman, the most beautiful the\nworld ever saw, having a long pale face and flowers about it, but she\nhad the tired look of one that had been long waiting. And there was\nsitting on the step below her chair four grey old women, and the one of\nthem was holding a great cauldron in her lap; and another a great stone\non her knees, and heavy as it was it seemed light to her; and another\nof them had a very long spear that was made of pointed wood; and the\nlast of them had a sword that was without a scabbard.\n\nHanrahan stood looking at them for a long time, but none of them spoke\nany word to him or looked at him at all. And he had it in his mind to\nask who that woman in the chair was, that was like a queen, and what\nshe was waiting for; but ready as he was with his tongue and afraid of\nno person, he was in dread now to speak to so beautiful a woman, and in\nso grand a place. And then he thought to ask what were the four things\nthe four grey old women were holding like great treasures, but he could\nnot think of the right words to bring out.\n\nThen the first of the old women rose up, holding the cauldron between\nher two hands, and she said \u2018Pleasure,\u2019 and Hanrahan said no word. Then\nthe second old woman rose up with the stone in her hands, and she said\n\u2018Power\u2019; and the third old woman rose up with the spear in her hand,\nand she said \u2018Courage\u2019; and the last of the old women rose up having\nthe sword in her hands, and she said \u2018Knowledge.\u2019 And everyone, after\nshe had spoken, waited as if for Hanrahan to question her, but he said\nnothing at all. And then the four old women went out of the door,\nbringing their four treasures with them, and as they went out one of\nthem said, \u2018He has no wish for us\u2019; and another said, \u2018He is weak, he\nis weak\u2019; and another said, \u2018He is afraid\u2019; and the last said, \u2018His\nwits are gone from him.\u2019 And then they all said \u2018Echtge, daughter of\nthe Silver Hand, must stay in her sleep. It is a pity, it is a great\npity.\u2019\n\nAnd then the woman that was like a queen gave a very sad sigh, and\nit seemed to Hanrahan as if the sigh had the sound in it of hidden\nstreams; and if the place he was in had been ten times grander and more\nshining than it was, he could not have hindered sleep from coming on\nhim; and he staggered like a drunken man and lay down there and then.\n\nWhen Hanrahan awoke, the sun was shining on his face, but there was\nwhite frost on the grass around him, and there was ice on the edge of\nthe stream he was lying by, and that goes running on through Daire-caol\nand Druim-da-rod. He knew by the shape of the hills and by the shining\nof Lough Greine in the distance that he was upon one of the hills of\nSlieve Echtge, but he was not sure how he came there; for all that had\nhappened in the barn had gone from him, and all of his journey but the\nsoreness of his feet and the stiffness in his bones.\n\n * * * * *\n\nIt was a year after that, there were men of the village of Cappaghtagle\nsitting by the fire in a house on the roadside, and Red Hanrahan that\nwas now very thin and worn and his hair very long and wild, came to the\nhalf-door and asked leave to come in and rest himself; and they bid him\nwelcome because it was Samhain night. He sat down with them, and they\ngave him a glass of whiskey out of a quart bottle; and they saw the\nlittle inkpot hanging about his neck, and knew he was a scholar, and\nasked for stories about the Greeks.\n\nHe took the Virgil out of the big pocket of his coat, but the cover was\nvery black and swollen with the wet, and the page when he opened it was\nvery yellow, but that was no great matter, for he looked at it like a\nman that had never learned to read. Some young man that was there began\nto laugh at him then, and to ask why did he carry so heavy a book with\nhim when he was not able to read it.\n\nIt vexed Hanrahan to hear that, and he put the Virgil back in his\npocket and asked if they had a pack of cards among them, for cards were\nbetter than books. When they brought out the cards he took them and\nbegan to shuffle them, and while he was shuffling them something seemed\nto come into his mind, and he put his hand to his face like one that is\ntrying to remember, and he said: \u2018Was I ever here before, or where was\nI on a night like this?\u2019 and then of a sudden he stood up and let the\ncards fall to the floor, and he said, \u2018Who was it brought me a message\nfrom Mary Lavelle?\u2019\n\n\u2018We never saw you before now, and we never heard of Mary Lavelle,\u2019\nsaid the man of the house. \u2018And who is she,\u2019 he said, \u2018and what is it\nyou are talking about?\u2019\n\n\u2018It was this night a year ago, I was in a barn, and there were men\nplaying cards, and there was money on the table, they were pushing\nit from one to another here and there\u2014and I got a message, and I was\ngoing out of the door to look for my sweetheart that wanted me, Mary\nLavelle.\u2019 And then Hanrahan called out very loud: \u2018Where have I been\nsince then? Where was I for the whole year?\u2019\n\n\u2018It is hard to say where you might have been in that time,\u2019 said the\noldest of the men, \u2018or what part of the world you may have travelled;\nand it is like enough you have the dust of many roads on your feet; for\nthere are many go wandering and forgetting like that,\u2019 he said, \u2018when\nonce they have been given the touch.\u2019\n\n\u2018That is true,\u2019 said another of the men. \u2018I knew a woman went wandering\nlike that through the length of seven years; she came back after, and\nshe told her friends she had often been glad enough to eat the food\nthat was put in the pig\u2019s trough. And it is best for you to go to the\npriest now,\u2019 he said, \u2018and let him take off you whatever may have been\nput upon you.\u2019\n\n\u2018It is to my sweetheart I will go, to Mary Lavelle,\u2019 said Hanrahan; \u2018it\nis too long I have delayed, how do I know what might have happened her\nin the length of a year?\u2019\n\nHe was going out of the door then, but they all told him it was best\nfor him to stop the night, and to get strength for the journey; and\nindeed he wanted that, for he was very weak, and when they gave him\nfood he eat it like a man that had never seen food before, and one of\nthem said, \u2018He is eating as if he had trodden on the hungry grass.\u2019 It\nwas in the white light of the morning he set out, and the time seemed\nlong to him till he could get to Mary Lavelle\u2019s house. But when he came\nto it, he found the door broken, and the thatch dropping from the roof,\nand no living person to be seen. And when he asked the neighbours what\nhad happened her, all they could say was that she had been put out\nof the house, and had married some labouring man, and they had gone\nlooking for work to London or Liverpool or some big place. And whether\nshe found a worse place or a better he never knew, but anyway he never\nmet with her or with news of her again.\n\n\n\n\nTHE TWISTING OF THE ROPE\n\n\nHANRAHAN was walking the roads one time near Kinvara at the fall of\nday, and he heard the sound of a fiddle from a house a little way\noff the roadside. He turned up the path to it, for he never had the\nhabit of passing by any place where there was music or dancing or good\ncompany, without going in. The man of the house was standing at the\ndoor, and when Hanrahan came near he knew him and he said: \u2018A welcome\nbefore you, Hanrahan, you have been lost to us this long time.\u2019 But\nthe woman of the house came to the door and she said to her husband:\n\u2018I would be as well pleased for Hanrahan not to come in to-night, for\nhe has no good name now among the priests, or with women that mind\nthemselves, and I wouldn\u2019t wonder from his walk if he has a drop of\ndrink taken.\u2019 But the man said, \u2018I will never turn away Hanrahan of the\npoets from my door,\u2019 and with that he bade him enter.\n\nThere were a good many neighbours gathered in the house, and some of\nthem remembered Hanrahan; but some of the little lads that were in the\ncorners had only heard of him, and they stood up to have a view of him,\nand one of them said: \u2018Is not that Hanrahan that had the school, and\nthat was brought away by Them?\u2019 But his mother put her hand over his\nmouth and bade him be quiet, and not be saying things like that. \u2018For\nHanrahan is apt to grow wicked,\u2019 she said, \u2018if he hears talk of that\nstory, or if anyone goes questioning him.\u2019 One or another called out\nthen, asking him for a song, but the man of the house said it was no\ntime to ask him for a song, before he had rested himself; and he gave\nhim whiskey in a glass, and Hanrahan thanked him and wished him good\nhealth and drank it off.\n\nThe fiddler was tuning his fiddle for another dance, and the man of\nthe house said to the young men, they would all know what dancing was\nlike when they saw Hanrahan dance, for the like of it had never been\nseen since he was there before. Hanrahan said he would not dance, he\nhad better use for his feet now, travelling as he was through the\nfive provinces of Ireland. Just as he said that, there came in at\nthe half-door Oona, the daughter of the house, having a few bits of\nbog deal from Connemara in her arms for the fire. She threw them on\nthe hearth and the flame rose up, and showed her to be very comely\nand smiling, and two or three of the young men rose up and asked for\na dance. But Hanrahan crossed the floor and brushed the others away,\nand said it was with him she must dance, after the long road he had\ntravelled before he came to her. And it is likely he said some soft\nword in her ear, for she said nothing against it, and stood out with\nhim, and there were little blushes in her cheeks. Then other couples\nstood up, but when the dance was going to begin, Hanrahan chanced to\nlook down, and he took notice of his boots that were worn and broken,\nand the ragged grey socks showing through them; and he said angrily it\nwas a bad floor, and the music no great things, and he sat down in the\ndark place beside the hearth. But if he did, the girl sat down there\nwith him.\n\nThe dancing went on, and when that dance was over another was called\nfor, and no one took much notice of Oona and Red Hanrahan for a while,\nin the corner where they were. But the mother grew to be uneasy, and\nshe called to Oona to come and help her to set the table in the inner\nroom. But Oona that had never refused her before, said she would come\nsoon, but not yet, for she was listening to whatever he was saying\nin her ear. The mother grew yet more uneasy then, and she would come\nnearer them, and let on to be stirring the fire or sweeping the hearth,\nand she would listen for a minute to hear what the poet was saying\nto her child. And one time she heard him telling about white-handed\nDeirdre, and how she brought the sons of Usnach to their death; and\nhow the blush in her cheeks was not so red as the blood of kings\u2019 sons\nthat was shed for her, and her sorrows had never gone out of mind;\nand he said it was maybe the memory of her that made the cry of the\nplover on the bog as sorrowful in the ear of the poets as the keening\nof young men for a comrade. And there would never have been that memory\nof her, he said, if it was not for the poets that had put her beauty\nin their songs. And the next time she did not well understand what he\nwas saying, but as far as she could hear, it had the sound of poetry\nthough it was not rhymed, and this is what she heard him say: \u2018The sun\nand the moon are the man and the girl, they are my life and your life,\nthey are travelling and ever travelling through the skies as if under\nthe one hood. It was God made them for one another. He made your life\nand my life before the beginning of the world, he made them that they\nmight go through the world, up and down, like the two best dancers that\ngo on with the dance up and down the long floor of the barn, fresh and\nlaughing, when all the rest are tired out and leaning against the wall.\u2019\n\nThe old woman went then to where her husband was playing cards, but\nhe would take no notice of her, and then she went to a woman of\nthe neighbours and said: \u2018Is there no way we can get them from one\nanother?\u2019 and without waiting for an answer she said to some young men\nthat were talking together: \u2018What good are you when you cannot make\nthe best girl in the house come out and dance with you? And go now\nthe whole of you,\u2019 she said, \u2018and see can you bring her away from the\npoet\u2019s talk.\u2019 But Oona would not listen to any of them, but only moved\nher hand as if to send them away. Then they called to Hanrahan and said\nhe had best dance with the girl himself, or let her dance with one of\nthem. When Hanrahan heard what they were saying he said: \u2018That is so, I\nwill dance with her; there is no man in the house must dance with her\nbut myself.\u2019\n\nHe stood up with her then, and led her out by the hand, and some of the\nyoung men were vexed, and some began mocking at his ragged coat and his\nbroken boots. But he took no notice, and Oona took no notice, but they\nlooked at one another as if all the world belonged to themselves alone.\nBut another couple that had been sitting together like lovers stood out\non the floor at the same time, holding one another\u2019s hands and moving\ntheir feet to keep time with the music. But Hanrahan turned his back on\nthem as if angry, and in place of dancing he began to sing, and as he\nsang he held her hand, and his voice grew louder, and the mocking of\nthe young men stopped, and the fiddle stopped, and there was nothing\nheard but his voice that had in it the sound of the wind. And what he\nsang was a song he had heard or had made one time in his wanderings on\nSlieve Echtge, and the words of it as they can be put into English were\nlike this:\n\n O Death\u2019s old bony finger\n Will never find us there\n In the high hollow townland\n Where love\u2019s to give and to spare;\n Where boughs have fruit and blossom\n At all times of the year;\n Where rivers are running over\n With red beer and brown beer.\n An old man plays the bagpipes\n In a gold and silver wood;\n Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,\n Are dancing in a crowd.\n\nAnd while he was singing it Oona moved nearer to him, and the colour\nhad gone from her cheek, and her eyes were not blue now, but grey with\nthe tears that were in them, and anyone that saw her would have thought\nshe was ready to follow him there and then from the west to the east of\nthe world.\n\nBut one of the young men called out: \u2018Where is that country he is\nsinging about? Mind yourself, Oona, it is a long way off, you might\nbe a long time on the road before you would reach to it.\u2019 And another\nsaid: \u2018It is not to the Country of the Young you will be going if you\ngo with him, but to Mayo of the bogs.\u2019 Oona looked at him then as if\nshe would question him, but he raised her hand in his hand, and called\nout between singing and shouting: \u2018It is very near us that country is,\nit is on every side; it may be on the bare hill behind it is, or it may\nbe in the heart of the wood.\u2019 And he said out very loud and clear: \u2018In\nthe heart of the wood; oh, death will never find us in the heart of\nthe wood. And will you come with me there, Oona?\u2019 he said.\n\nBut while he was saying this the two old women had gone outside the\ndoor, and Oona\u2019s mother was crying, and she said: \u2018He has put an\nenchantment on Oona. Can we not get the men to put him out of the\nhouse?\u2019\n\n\u2018That is a thing you cannot do,\u2019 said the other woman, \u2018for he is a\npoet of the Gael, and you know well if you would put a poet of the Gael\nout of the house, he would put a curse on you that would wither the\ncorn in the fields and dry up the milk of the cows, if it had to hang\nin the air seven years.\u2019\n\n\u2018God help us,\u2019 said the mother, \u2018and why did I ever let him into the\nhouse at all, and the wild name he has!\u2019\n\n\u2018It would have been no harm at all to have kept him outside, but there\nwould great harm come upon you if you put him out by force. But listen\nto the plan I have to get him out of the house by his own doing,\nwithout anyone putting him from it at all.\u2019\n\nIt was not long after that the two women came in again, each of them\nhaving a bundle of hay in her apron. Hanrahan was not singing now, but\nhe was talking to Oona very fast and soft, and he was saying: \u2018The\nhouse is narrow but the world is wide, and there is no true lover\nthat need be afraid of night or morning or sun or stars or shadows\nor evening, or any earthly thing.\u2019 \u2018Hanrahan,\u2019 said the mother then,\nstriking him on the shoulder, \u2018will you give me a hand here for a\nminute?\u2019 \u2018Do that, Hanrahan,\u2019 said the woman of the neighbours, \u2018and\nhelp us to make this hay into a rope, for you are ready with your\nhands, and a blast of wind has loosened the thatch on the haystack.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will do that for you,\u2019 said he, and he took the little stick in his\nhands, and the mother began giving out the hay, and he twisting it, but\nhe was hurrying to have done with it, and to be free again. The women\nwent on talking and giving out the hay, and encouraging him, and saying\nwhat a good twister of a rope he was, better than their own neighbours\nor than anyone they had ever seen. And Hanrahan saw that Oona was\nwatching him, and he began to twist very quick and with his head high,\nand to boast of the readiness of his hands, and the learning he had\nin his head, and the strength in his arms. And as he was boasting, he\nwent backward, twisting the rope always till he came to the door that\nwas open behind him, and without thinking he passed the threshold and\nwas out on the road. And no sooner was he there than the mother made\na sudden rush, and threw out the rope after him, and she shut the door\nand the half-door and put a bolt upon them.\n\nShe was well pleased when she had done that, and laughed out loud, and\nthe neighbours laughed and praised her. But they heard him beating\nat the door, and saying words of cursing outside it, and the mother\nhad but time to stop Oona that had her hand upon the bolt to open it.\nShe made a sign to the fiddler then, and he began a reel, and one of\nthe young men asked no leave but caught hold of Oona and brought her\ninto the thick of the dance. And when it was over and the fiddle had\nstopped, there was no sound at all of anything outside, but the road\nwas as quiet as before.\n\nAs to Hanrahan, when he knew he was shut out and that there was neither\nshelter nor drink nor a girl\u2019s ear for him that night, the anger and\nthe courage went out of him, and he went on to where the waves were\nbeating on the strand.\n\nHe sat down on a big stone, and he began swinging his right arm and\nsinging slowly to himself, the way he did always to hearten himself\nwhen every other thing failed him. And whether it was that time or\nanother time he made the song that is called to this day \u2018The Twisting\nof the Rope,\u2019 and that begins, \u2018What was the dead cat that put me in\nthis place,\u2019 is not known.\n\nBut after he had been singing awhile, mist and shadows seemed to gather\nabout him, sometimes coming out of the sea, and sometimes moving upon\nit. It seemed to him that one of the shadows was the queen-woman he had\nseen in her sleep at Slieve Echtge; not in her sleep now, but mocking,\nand calling out to them that were behind her: \u2018He was weak, he was\nweak, he had no courage.\u2019 And he felt the strands of the rope in his\nhand yet, and went on twisting it, but it seemed to him as he twisted,\nthat it had all the sorrows of the world in it. And then it seemed to\nhim as if the rope had changed in his dream into a great water-worm\nthat came out of the sea, and that twisted itself about him, and held\nhim closer and closer, and grew from big to bigger till the whole of\nthe earth and skies were wound up in it, and the stars themselves were\nbut the shining of the ridges of its skin. And then he got free of it,\nand went on, shaking and unsteady, along the edge of the strand, and\nthe grey shapes were flying here and there around him. And this is what\nthey were saying, \u2018It is a pity for him that refuses the call of the\ndaughters of the Sidhe, for he will find no comfort in the love of the\nwomen of the earth to the end of life and time, and the cold of the\ngrave is in his heart for ever. It is death he has chosen; let him die,\nlet him die, let him die.\u2019\n\n\n\n\nHANRAHAN AND CATHLEEN THE DAUGHTER OF HOOLIHAN\n\n\nIT was travelling northward Hanrahan was one time, giving a hand to a\nfarmer now and again in the hurried time of the year, and telling his\nstories and making his share of songs at wakes and at weddings.\n\nHe chanced one day to overtake on the road to Collooney one Margaret\nRooney, a woman he used to know in Munster when he was a young man. She\nhad no good name at that time, and it was the priest routed her out of\nthe place at last. He knew her by her walk and by the colour of her\neyes, and by a way she had of putting back the hair off her face with\nher left hand. She had been wandering about, she said, selling herrings\nand the like, and now she was going back to Sligo, to the place in the\nBurrough where she was living with another woman, Mary Gillis, who\nhad much the same story as herself. She would be well pleased, she\nsaid, if he would come and stop in the house with them, and be singing\nhis songs to the bacachs and blind men and fiddlers of the Burrough.\nShe remembered him well, she said, and had a wish for him; and as to\nMary Gillis, she had some of his songs off by heart, so he need not be\nafraid of not getting good treatment, and all the bacachs and poor men\nthat heard him would give him a share of their own earnings for his\nstories and his songs while he was with them, and would carry his name\ninto all the parishes of Ireland.\n\nHe was glad enough to go with her, and to find a woman to be listening\nto the story of his troubles and to be comforting him. It was at the\nmoment of the fall of day when every man may pass as handsome and\nevery woman as comely. She put her arm about him when he told her of\nthe misfortune of the Twisting of the Rope, and in the half light she\nlooked as well as another.\n\nThey kept in talk all the way to the Burrough, and as for Mary Gillis,\nwhen she saw him and heard who he was, she went near crying to think of\nhaving a man with so great a name in the house.\n\nHanrahan was well pleased to settle down with them for a while, for he\nwas tired with wandering; and since the day he found the little cabin\nfallen in, and Mary Lavelle gone from it, and the thatch scattered, he\nhad never asked to have any place of his own; and he had never stopped\nlong enough in any place to see the green leaves come where he had seen\nthe old leaves wither, or to see the wheat harvested where he had seen\nit sown. It was a good change to him to have shelter from the wet, and\na fire in the evening time, and his share of food put on the table\nwithout the asking.\n\nHe made a good many of his songs while he was living there, so well\ncared for and so quiet. The most of them were love songs, but some were\nsongs of repentance, and some were songs about Ireland and her griefs,\nunder one name or another.\n\nEvery evening the bacachs and beggars and blind men and fiddlers would\ngather into the house and listen to his songs and his poems, and his\nstories about the old time of the Fianna, and they kept them in their\nmemories that were never spoiled with books; and so they brought his\nname to every wake and wedding and pattern in the whole of Connaught.\nHe was never so well off or made so much of as he was at that time.\n\nOne evening of December he was singing a little song that he said he\nhad heard from the green plover of the mountain, about the fair-haired\nboys that had left Limerick, and that were wandering and going astray\nin all parts of the world. There were a good many people in the room\nthat night, and two or three little lads that had crept in, and sat\non the floor near the fire, and were too busy with the roasting of a\npotato in the ashes or some such thing to take much notice of him;\nbut they remembered long afterwards when his name had gone up, the\nsound of his voice, and what way he had moved his hand, and the look\nof him as he sat on the edge of the bed, with his shadow falling on\nthe whitewashed wall behind him, and as he moved going up as high as\nthe thatch. And they knew then that they had looked upon a king of the\npoets of the Gael, and a maker of the dreams of men.\n\nOf a sudden his singing stopped, and his eyes grew misty as if he was\nlooking at some far thing.\n\nMary Gillis was pouring whiskey into a mug that stood on a table beside\nhim, and she left off pouring and said, \u2018Is it of leaving us you are\nthinking?\u2019\n\nMargaret Rooney heard what she said, and did not know why she said it,\nand she took the words too much in earnest and came over to him, and\nthere was dread in her heart that she was going to lose so wonderful a\npoet and so good a comrade, and a man that was thought so much of, and\nthat brought so many to her house.\n\n\u2018You would not go away from us, my heart?\u2019 she said, catching him by\nthe hand.\n\n\u2018It is not of that I am thinking,\u2019 he said, \u2018but of Ireland and the\nweight of grief that is on her.\u2019 And he leaned his head against his\nhand, and began to sing these words, and the sound of his voice was\nlike the wind in a lonely place.\n\n The old brown thorn trees break in two high over Cummen Strand\n Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;\n Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,\n But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes\n Of Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.\n\n The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea\n And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say;\n Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat,\n But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet\n Of Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.\n\n The yellow pool has overflowed high upon Clooth-na-Bare,\n For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;\n Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood,\n But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood\n Is Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.\n\nWhile he was singing, his voice began to break, and tears came rolling\ndown his cheeks, and Margaret Rooney put down her face into her hands\nand began to cry along with him. Then a blind beggar by the fire shook\nhis rags with a sob, and after that there was no one of them all but\ncried tears down.\n\n\n\n\nRED HANRAHAN\u2019S CURSE\n\n\nONE fine May morning a long time after Hanrahan had left Margaret\nRooney\u2019s house, he was walking the road near Collooney, and the sound\nof the birds singing in the bushes that were white with blossom set\nhim singing as he went. It was to his own little place he was going,\nthat was no more than a cabin, but that pleased him well. For he was\ntired of so many years of wandering from shelter to shelter at all\ntimes of the year, and although he was seldom refused a welcome and a\nshare of what was in the house, it seemed to him sometimes that his\nmind was getting stiff like his joints, and it was not so easy to him\nas it used to be to make fun and sport through the night, and to set\nall the boys laughing with his pleasant talk, and to coax the women\nwith his songs. And a while ago, he had turned into a cabin that some\npoor man had left to go harvesting and had never come to again. And\nwhen he had mended the thatch and made a bed in the corner with a few\nsacks and bushes, and had swept out the floor, he was well content to\nhave a little place for himself, where he could go in and out as he\nliked, and put his head in his hands through the length of an evening\nif the fret was on him, and loneliness after the old times. One by one\nthe neighbours began to send their children in to get some learning\nfrom him, and with what they brought, a few eggs or an oaten cake or a\ncouple of sods of turf, he made out a way of living. And if he went for\na wild day and night now and again to the Burrough, no one would say a\nword, knowing him to be a poet, with wandering in his heart.\n\nIt was from the Burrough he was coming that May morning, light-hearted\nenough, and singing some new song that had come to him. But it was not\nlong till a hare ran across his path, and made away into the fields,\nthrough the loose stones of the wall. And he knew it was no good sign a\nhare to have crossed his path, and he remembered the hare that had led\nhim away to Slieve Echtge the time Mary Lavelle was waiting for him,\nand how he had never known content for any length of time since then.\n\u2018And it is likely enough they are putting some bad thing before me\nnow,\u2019 he said.\n\nAnd after he said that, he heard the sound of crying in the field\nbeside him, and he looked over the wall. And there he saw a young girl\nsitting under a bush of white hawthorn, and crying as if her heart\nwould break. Her face was hidden in her hands, but her soft hair and\nher white neck and the young look of her, put him in mind of Bridget\nPurcell and Margaret Gillane and Maeve Connelan and Oona Curry and\nCelia Driscoll, and the rest of the girls he had made songs for and had\ncoaxed the heart from with his flattering tongue.\n\nShe looked up, and he saw her to be a girl of the neighbours, a\nfarmer\u2019s daughter. \u2018What is on you, Nora?\u2019 he said. \u2018Nothing you could\ntake from me, Red Hanrahan.\u2019 \u2018If there is any sorrow on you it is I\nmyself should be well able to serve you,\u2019 he said then, \u2018for it is I\nknow the history of the Greeks, and I know well what sorrow is and\nparting, and the hardship of the world. And if I am not able to save\nyou from trouble,\u2019 he said, \u2018there is many a one I have saved from it\nwith the power that is in my songs, as it was in the songs of the\npoets that were before me from the beginning of the world. And it is\nwith the rest of the poets I myself will be sitting and talking in some\nfar place beyond the world, to the end of life and time,\u2019 he said. The\ngirl stopped her crying, and she said, \u2018Owen Hanrahan, I often heard\nyou have had sorrow and persecution, and that you know all the troubles\nof the world since the time you refused your love to the queen-woman in\nSlieve Echtge; and that she never left you in quiet since. But when it\nis people of this earth that have harmed you, it is yourself knows well\nthe way to put harm on them again. And will you do now what I ask you,\nOwen Hanrahan?\u2019 she said. \u2018I will do that indeed,\u2019 said he.\n\n\u2018It is my father and my mother and my brothers,\u2019 she said, \u2018that are\nmarrying me to old Paddy Doe, because he has a farm of a hundred acres\nunder the mountain. And it is what you can do, Hanrahan,\u2019 she said,\n\u2018put him into a rhyme the same way you put old Peter Kilmartin in one\nthe time you were young, that sorrow may be over him rising up and\nlying down, that will put him thinking of Collooney churchyard and\nnot of marriage. And let you make no delay about it, for it is for\nto-morrow they have the marriage settled, and I would sooner see the\nsun rise on the day of my death than on that day.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will put him into a song that will bring shame and sorrow over him;\nbut tell me how many years has he, for I would put them in the song?\u2019\n\n\u2018O, he has years upon years. He is as old as you yourself, Red\nHanrahan.\u2019 \u2018As old as myself,\u2019 sang Hanrahan, and his voice was as if\nbroken; \u2018as old as myself; there are twenty years and more between\nus! It is a bad day indeed for Owen Hanrahan when a young girl with\nthe blossom of May in her cheeks thinks him to be an old man. And my\ngrief!\u2019 he said, \u2018you have put a thorn in my heart.\u2019\n\nHe turned from her then and went down the road till he came to a stone,\nand he sat down on it, for it seemed as if all the weight of the years\nhad come on him in the minute. And he remembered it was not many days\nago that a woman in some house had said: \u2018It is not Red Hanrahan you\nare now but yellow Hanrahan, for your hair is turned to the colour of a\nwisp of tow.\u2019 And another woman he had asked for a drink had not given\nhim new milk but sour; and sometimes the girls would be whispering and\nlaughing with young ignorant men while he himself was in the middle of\ngiving out his poems or his talk. And he thought of the stiffness of\nhis joints when he first rose of a morning, and the pain of his knees\nafter making a journey, and it seemed to him as if he was come to be\na very old man, with cold in the shoulders and speckled shins and his\nwind breaking and he himself withering away. And with those thoughts\nthere came on him a great anger against old age and all it brought with\nit. And just then he looked up and saw a great spotted eagle sailing\nslowly towards Ballygawley, and he cried out: \u2018You, too, eagle of\nBallygawley, are old, and your wings are full of gaps, and I will put\nyou and your ancient comrades, the Pike of Dargan Lake and the Yew of\nthe Steep Place of the Strangers into my rhyme, that there may be a\ncurse on you for ever.\u2019\n\nThere was a bush beside him to the left, flowering like the rest, and\na little gust of wind blew the white blossoms over his coat. \u2018May\nblossoms,\u2019 he said, gathering them up in the hollow of his hand, \u2018you\nnever know age because you die away in your beauty, and I will put you\ninto my rhyme and give you my blessing.\u2019\n\nHe rose up then and plucked a little branch from the bush, and carried\nit in his hand. But it is old and broken he looked going home that day\nwith the stoop in his shoulders and the darkness in his face.\n\nWhen he got to his cabin there was no one there, and he went and lay\ndown on the bed for a while as he was used to do when he wanted to make\na poem or a praise or a curse. And it was not long he was in making it\nthis time, for the power of the curse-making bards was upon him. And\nwhen he had made it he searched his mind how he could send it out over\nthe whole countryside.\n\nSome of the scholars began coming in then, to see if there would be\nany school that day, and Hanrahan rose up and sat on the bench by the\nhearth, and they all stood around him.\n\nThey thought he would bring out the Virgil or the Mass book or the\nprimer, but instead of that he held up the little branch of hawthorn he\nhad in his hand yet. \u2018Children,\u2019 he said, \u2018this is a new lesson I have\nfor you to-day.\n\n\u2018You yourselves and the beautiful people of the world are like this\nblossom, and old age is the wind that comes and blows the blossom away.\nAnd I have made a curse upon old age and upon the old men, and listen\nnow while I give it out to you.\u2019 And this is what he said\u2014\n\n The poet, Owen Hanrahan, under a bush of may\n Calls down a curse on his own head because it withers grey;\n Then on the speckled eagle cock of Ballygawley Hill,\n Because it is the oldest thing that knows of cark and ill;\n And on the yew that has been green from the times out of mind\n By the Steep Place of the Strangers and the Gap of the Wind;\n And on the great grey pike that broods in Castle Dargan Lake\n Having in his long body a many a hook and ache;\n Then curses he old Paddy Bruen of the Well of Bride\n Because no hair is on his head and drowsiness inside.\n Then Paddy\u2019s neighbour, Peter Hart, and Michael Gill, his friend,\n Because their wandering histories are never at an end.\n And then old Shemus Cullinan, shepherd of the Green Lands\n Because he holds two crutches between his crooked hands;\n Then calls a curse from the dark North upon old Paddy Doe,\n Who plans to lay his withering head upon a breast of snow,\n Who plans to wreck a singing voice and break a merry heart,\n He bids a curse hang over him till breath and body part;\n But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may,\n Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.\n\nHe said it over to the children verse by verse till all of them could\nsay a part of it, and some that were the quickest could say the whole\nof it.\n\n\u2018That will do for to-day,\u2019 he said then. \u2018And what you have to do now\nis to go out and sing that song for a while, to the tune of the Green\nBunch of Rushes, to everyone you meet, and to the old men themselves.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will do that,\u2019 said one of the little lads; \u2018I know old Paddy Doe\nwell. Last Saint John\u2019s Eve we dropped a mouse down his chimney, but\nthis is better than a mouse.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will go into the town of Sligo and sing it in the street,\u2019 said\nanother of the boys. \u2018Do that,\u2019 said Hanrahan, \u2018and go into the\nBurrough and tell it to Margaret Rooney and Mary Gillis, and bid them\nsing to it, and to make the beggars and the bacachs sing it wherever\nthey go.\u2019 The children ran out then, full of pride and of mischief,\ncalling out the song as they ran, and Hanrahan knew there was no\ndanger it would not be heard.\n\nHe was sitting outside the door the next morning, looking at his\nscholars as they came by in twos and threes. They were nearly all come,\nand he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to know\nwhether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was like the\nbuzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a hidden river\nin time of flood. Then he saw a crowd coming up to the cabin from the\nroad, and he took notice that all the crowd was made up of old men, and\nthat the leaders of it were Paddy Bruen, Michael Gill and Paddy Doe,\nand there was not one in the crowd but had in his hand an ash stick or\na blackthorn. As soon as they caught sight of him, the sticks began to\nwave hither and thither like branches in a storm, and the old feet to\nrun.\n\nHe waited no longer, but made off up the hill behind the cabin till he\nwas out of their sight.\n\nAfter a while he came back round the hill, where he was hidden by the\nfurze growing along a ditch. And when he came in sight of his cabin he\nsaw that all the old men had gathered around it, and one of them was\njust at that time thrusting a rake with a wisp of lighted straw on it\ninto the thatch.\n\n\u2018My grief,\u2019 he said, \u2018I have set Old Age and Time and Weariness and\nSickness against me, and I must go wandering again. And, O Blessed\nQueen of Heaven,\u2019 he said, \u2018protect me from the Eagle of Ballygawley,\nthe Yew Tree of the Steep Place of the Strangers, the Pike of Castle\nDargan Lake, and from the lighted wisps of their kindred, the Old Men!\u2019\n\n\n\n\nHANRAHAN\u2019S VISION\n\n\nIT was in the month of June Hanrahan was on the road near Sligo, but he\ndid not go into the town, but turned towards Beinn Bulben; for there\nwere thoughts of the old times coming upon him, and he had no mind to\nmeet with common men. And as he walked he was singing to himself a song\nthat had come to him one time in his dreams:\n\n O Death\u2019s old bony finger\n Will never find us there\n In the high hollow townland\n Where love\u2019s to give and to spare;\n Where boughs have fruit and blossom\n At all times of the year;\n Where rivers are running over\n With red beer and brown beer.\n An old man plays the bagpipes\n In a gold and silver wood;\n Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,\n Are dancing in a crowd.\n\n The little fox he murmured,\n \u2018O what of the world\u2019s bane?\u2019\n The sun was laughing sweetly,\n The moon plucked at my rein;\n But the little red fox murmured,\n \u2018O do not pluck at his rein,\n He is riding to the townland\n That is the world\u2019s bane.\u2019\n\n When their hearts are so high\n That they would come to blows,\n They unhook their heavy swords\n From golden and silver boughs:\n But all that are killed in battle\n Awaken to life again:\n It is lucky that their story\n Is not known among men.\n For O, the strong farmers\n That would let the spade lie,\n Their hearts would be like a cup\n That somebody had drunk dry.\n\n Michael will unhook his trumpet\n From a bough overhead,\n And blow a little noise\n When the supper has been spread.\n Gabriel will come from the water\n With a fish tail, and talk\n Of wonders that have happened\n On wet roads where men walk,\n And lift up an old horn\n Of hammered silver, and drink\n Till he has fallen asleep\n Upon the starry brink.\n\nHanrahan had begun to climb the mountain then, and he gave over\nsinging, for it was a long climb for him, and every now and again he\nhad to sit down and to rest for a while. And one time he was resting he\ntook notice of a wild briar bush, with blossoms on it, that was growing\nbeside a rath, and it brought to mind the wild roses he used to bring\nto Mary Lavelle, and to no woman after her. And he tore off a little\nbranch of the bush, that had buds on it and open blossoms, and he went\non with his song:\n\n The little fox he murmured,\n \u2018O what of the world\u2019s bane?\u2019\n The sun was laughing sweetly,\n The moon plucked at my rein;\n But the little red fox murmured,\n \u2018O do not pluck at his rein,\n He is riding to the townland\n That is the world\u2019s bane.\u2019\n\nAnd he went on climbing the hill, and left the rath, and there came\nto his mind some of the old poems that told of lovers, good and bad,\nand of some that were awakened from the sleep of the grave itself by\nthe strength of one another\u2019s love, and brought away to a life in some\nshadowy place, where they are waiting for the judgment and banished\nfrom the face of God.\n\nAnd at last, at the fall of day, he came to the Steep Gap of the\nStrangers, and there he laid himself down along a ridge of rock, and\nlooked into the valley, that was full of grey mist spreading from\nmountain to mountain.\n\nAnd it seemed to him as he looked that the mist changed to shapes of\nshadowy men and women, and his heart began to beat with the fear and\nthe joy of the sight. And his hands, that were always restless, began\nto pluck off the leaves of the roses on the little branch, and he\nwatched them as they went floating down into the valley in a little\nfluttering troop.\n\nSuddenly he heard a faint music, a music that had more laughter in it\nand more crying than all the music of this world. And his heart rose\nwhen he heard that, and he began to laugh out loud, for he knew that\nmusic was made by some who had a beauty and a greatness beyond the\npeople of this world. And it seemed to him that the little soft rose\nleaves as they went fluttering down into the valley began to change\ntheir shape till they looked like a troop of men and women far off in\nthe mist, with the colour of the roses on them. And then that colour\nchanged to many colours, and what he saw was a long line of tall\nbeautiful young men, and of queen-women, that were not going from\nhim but coming towards him and past him, and their faces were full of\ntenderness for all their proud looks, and were very pale and worn, as\nif they were seeking and ever seeking for high sorrowful things. And\nshadowy arms were stretched out of the mist as if to take hold of them,\nbut could not touch them, for the quiet that was about them could not\nbe broken. And before them and beyond them, but at a distance as if in\nreverence, there were other shapes, sinking and rising and coming and\ngoing, and Hanrahan knew them by their whirling flight to be the Sidhe,\nthe ancient defeated gods; and the shadowy arms did not rise to take\nhold of them, for they were of those that can neither sin nor obey. And\nthey all lessened then in the distance, and they seemed to be going\ntowards the white door that is in the side of the mountain.\n\nThe mist spread out before him now like a deserted sea washing the\nmountains with long grey waves, but while he was looking at it, it\nbegan to fill again with a flowing broken witless life that was a part\nof itself, and arms and pale heads covered with tossing hair appeared\nin the greyness. It rose higher and higher till it was level with the\nedge of the steep rock, and then the shapes grew to be solid, and a\nnew procession half lost in mist passed very slowly with uneven steps,\nand in the midst of each shadow there was something shining in the\nstarlight. They came nearer and nearer, and Hanrahan saw that they also\nwere lovers, and that they had heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts,\nand they were looking and ever looking on their own faces in one\nanother\u2019s mirrors. They passed on, sinking downward as they passed, and\nother shapes rose in their place, and these did not keep side by side,\nbut followed after one another, holding out wild beckoning arms, and he\nsaw that those who were followed were women, and as to their heads they\nwere beyond all beauty, but as to their bodies they were but shadows\nwithout life, and their long hair was moving and trembling about them,\nas if it lived with some terrible life of its own. And then the mist\nrose of a sudden and hid them, and then a light gust of wind blew them\naway towards the north-east, and covered Hanrahan at the same time with\na white wing of cloud.\n\nHe stood up trembling and was going to turn away from the valley,\nwhen he saw two dark and half-hidden forms standing as if in the air\njust beyond the rock, and one of them that had the sorrowful eyes of\na beggar said to him in a woman\u2019s voice, \u2018Speak to me, for no one in\nthis world or any other world has spoken to me for seven hundred years.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tell me who are those that have passed by,\u2019 said Hanrahan.\n\n\u2018Those that passed first,\u2019 the woman said, \u2018are the lovers that had the\ngreatest name in the old times, Blanad and Deirdre and Grania and their\ndear comrades, and a great many that are not so well known but are as\nwell loved. And because it was not only the blossom of youth they were\nlooking for in one another, but the beauty that is as lasting as the\nnight and the stars, the night and the stars hold them for ever from\nthe warring and the perishing, in spite of the wars and the bitterness\ntheir love brought into the world. And those that came next,\u2019 she said,\n\u2018and that still breathe the sweet air and have the mirrors in their\nhearts, are not put in songs by the poets, because they sought only to\ntriumph one over the other, and so to prove their strength and beauty,\nand out of this they made a kind of love. And as to the women with\nshadow-bodies, they desired neither to triumph nor to love but only\nto be loved, and there is no blood in their hearts or in their bodies\nuntil it flows through them from a kiss, and their life is but for a\nmoment. All these are unhappy, but I am the unhappiest of all, for\nI am Dervadilla, and this is Dermot, and it was our sin brought the\nNorman into Ireland. And the curses of all the generations are upon\nus, and none are punished as we are punished. It was but the blossom\nof the man and of the woman we loved in one another, the dying beauty\nof the dust and not the everlasting beauty. When we died there was no\nlasting unbreakable quiet about us, and the bitterness of the battles\nwe brought into Ireland turned to our own punishment. We go wandering\ntogether for ever, but Dermot that was my lover sees me always as a\nbody that has been a long time in the ground, and I know that is the\nway he sees me. Ask me more, ask me more, for all the years have left\ntheir wisdom in my heart, and no one has listened to me for seven\nhundred years.\u2019\n\nA great terror had fallen upon Hanrahan, and lifting his arms above his\nhead he screamed out loud three times, and the cattle in the valley\nlifted their heads and lowed, and the birds in the wood at the edge\nof the mountain awaked out of their sleep and fluttered through the\ntrembling leaves. But a little below the edge of the rock, the troop of\nrose leaves still fluttered in the air, for the gateway of Eternity had\nopened and shut again in one beat of the heart.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DEATH OF HANRAHAN\n\n\nHANRAHAN, that was never long in one place, was back again among the\nvillages that are at the foot of Slieve Echtge, Illeton and Scalp and\nBallylee, stopping sometimes in one house and sometimes in another,\nand finding a welcome in every place for the sake of the old times and\nof his poetry and his learning. There was some silver and some copper\nmoney in the little leather bag under his coat, but it was seldom he\nneeded to take anything from it, for it was little he used, and there\nwas not one of the people that would have taken payment from him. His\nhand had grown heavy on the blackthorn he leaned on, and his cheeks\nwere hollow and worn, but so far as food went, potatoes and milk and a\nbit of oaten cake, he had what he wanted of it; and it is not on the\nedge of so wild and boggy a place as Echtge a mug of spirits would be\nwanting, with the taste of the turf smoke on it. He would wander about\nthe big wood at Kinadife, or he would sit through many hours of the\nday among the rushes about Lake Belshragh, listening to the streams\nfrom the hills, or watching the shadows in the brown bog pools; sitting\nso quiet as not to startle the deer that came down from the heather\nto the grass and the tilled fields at the fall of night. As the days\nwent by it seemed as if he was beginning to belong to some world out of\nsight and misty, that has for its mearing the colours that are beyond\nall other colours and the silences that are beyond all silences of\nthis world. And sometimes he would hear coming and going in the wood\nmusic that when it stopped went from his memory like a dream; and once\nin the stillness of midday he heard a sound like the clashing of many\nswords, that went on for a long time without any break. And at the fall\nof night and at moonrise the lake would grow to be like a gateway of\nsilver and shining stones, and there would come from its silence the\nfaint sound of keening and of frightened laughter broken by the wind,\nand many pale beckoning hands.\n\nHe was sitting looking into the water one evening in harvest time,\nthinking of all the secrets that were shut into the lakes and the\nmountains, when he heard a cry coming from the south, very faint at\nfirst, but getting louder and clearer as the shadow of the rushes grew\nlonger, till he could hear the words, \u2018I am beautiful, I am beautiful;\nthe birds in the air, the moths under the leaves, the flies over the\nwater look at me, for they never saw any one so beautiful as myself. I\nam young; I am young: look upon me, mountains; look upon me, perishing\nwoods, for my body will shine like the white waters when you have been\nhurried away. You and the whole race of men, and the race of the beasts\nand the race of the fish and the winged race are dropping like a candle\nthat is nearly burned out, but I laugh out because I am in my youth.\u2019\nThe voice would break off from time to time, as if tired, and then it\nwould begin again, calling out always the same words, \u2018I am beautiful,\nI am beautiful.\u2019 Presently the bushes at the edge of the little lake\ntrembled for a moment, and a very old woman forced her way among them,\nand passed by Hanrahan, walking with very slow steps. Her face was of\nthe colour of earth, and more wrinkled than the face of any old hag\nthat was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in wisps, and the\nrags she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by\nall weathers. She passed by him with her eyes wide open, and her head\nhigh, and her arms hanging straight beside her, and she went into the\nshadow of the hills towards the west.\n\nA sort of dread came over Hanrahan when he saw her, for he knew her to\nbe one Winny Byrne, that went begging from place to place crying always\nthe same cry, and he had often heard that she had once such wisdom that\nall the women of the neighbours used to go looking for advice from her,\nand that she had a voice so beautiful that men and women would come\nfrom every part to hear her sing at a wake or a wedding; and that the\nOthers, the great Sidhe, had stolen her wits one Samhain night many\nyears ago, when she had fallen asleep on the edge of a rath, and had\nseen in her dreams the servants of Echtge of the hills.\n\nAnd as she vanished away up the hillside, it seemed as if her cry, \u2018I\nam beautiful, I am beautiful,\u2019 was coming from among the stars in the\nheavens.\n\nThere was a cold wind creeping among the rushes, and Hanrahan began to\nshiver, and he rose up to go to some house where there would be a fire\non the hearth. But instead of turning down the hill as he was used, he\nwent on up the hill, along the little track that was maybe a road and\nmaybe the dry bed of a stream. It was the same way Winny had gone, and\nit led to the little cabin where she stopped when she stopped in any\nplace at all. He walked very slowly up the hill as if he had a great\nload on his back, and at last he saw a light a little to the left, and\nhe thought it likely it was from Winny\u2019s house it was shining, and he\nturned from the path to go to it. But clouds had come over the sky,\nand he could not well see his way, and after he had gone a few steps\nhis foot slipped and he fell into a bog drain, and though he dragged\nhimself out of it, holding on to the roots of the heather, the fall\nhad given him a great shake, and he felt better fit to lie down than\nto go travelling. But he had always great courage, and he made his way\non, step by step, till at last he came to Winny\u2019s cabin, that had no\nwindow, but the light was shining from the door. He thought to go into\nit and to rest for a while, but when he came to the door he did not see\nWinny inside it, but what he saw was four old grey-haired women playing\ncards, but Winny herself was not among them. Hanrahan sat down on a\nheap of turf beside the door, for he was tired out and out, and had no\nwish for talking or for card-playing, and his bones and his joints\naching the way they were. He could hear the four women talking as they\nplayed, and calling out their hands. And it seemed to him that they\nwere saying, like the strange man in the barn long ago: \u2018Spades and\nDiamonds, Courage and Power. Clubs and Hearts, Knowledge and Pleasure.\u2019\nAnd he went on saying those words over and over to himself; and whether\nor not he was in his dreams, the pain that was in his shoulder never\nleft him. And after a while the four women in the cabin began to\nquarrel, and each one to say the other had not played fair, and their\nvoices grew from loud to louder, and their screams and their curses,\ntill at last the whole air was filled with the noise of them around and\nabove the house, and Hanrahan, hearing it between sleep and waking,\nsaid: \u2018That is the sound of the fighting between the friends and the\nill-wishers of a man that is near his death. And I wonder,\u2019 he said,\n\u2018who is the man in this lonely place that is near his death.\u2019\n\nIt seemed as if he had been asleep a long time, and he opened his eyes,\nand the face he saw over him was the old wrinkled face of Winny of the\nCross Roads. She was looking hard at him, as if to make sure he was not\ndead, and she wiped away the blood that had grown dry on his face with\na wet cloth, and after a while she partly helped him and partly lifted\nhim into the cabin, and laid him down on what served her for a bed. She\ngave him a couple of potatoes from a pot on the fire, and, what served\nhim better, a mug of spring water. He slept a little now and again, and\nsometimes he heard her singing to herself as she moved about the house,\nand so the night wore away. When the sky began to brighten with the\ndawn he felt for the bag where his little store of money was, and held\nit out to her, and she took out a bit of copper and a bit of silver\nmoney, but she let it drop again as if it was nothing to her, maybe\nbecause it was not money she was used to beg for, but food and rags; or\nmaybe because the rising of the dawn was filling her with pride and a\nnew belief in her own great beauty. She went out and cut a few armfuls\nof heather, and brought it in and heaped it over Hanrahan, saying\nsomething about the cold of the morning, and while she did that he took\nnotice of the wrinkles in her face, and the greyness of her hair, and\nthe broken teeth that were black and full of gaps. And when he was well\ncovered with the heather she went out of the door and away down the\nside of the mountain, and he could hear her cry, \u2018I am beautiful, I\nam beautiful,\u2019 getting less and less as she went, till at last it died\naway altogether.\n\nHanrahan lay there through the length of the day, in his pains and his\nweakness, and when the shadows of the evening were falling he heard\nher voice again coming up the hillside, and she came in and boiled the\npotatoes and shared them with him the same way as before. And one day\nafter another passed like that, and the weight of his flesh was heavy\nabout him. But little by little as he grew weaker he knew there were\nsome greater than himself in the room with him, and that the house\nbegan to be filled with them; and it seemed to him they had all power\nin their hands, and that they might with one touch of the hand break\ndown the wall the hardness of pain had built about him, and take him\ninto their own world. And sometimes he could hear voices, very faint\nand joyful, crying from the rafters or out of the flame on the hearth,\nand other times the whole house was filled with music that went through\nit like a wind. And after a while his weakness left no place for\npain, and there grew up about him a great silence like the silence in\nthe heart of a lake, and there came through it like the flame of a\nrushlight the faint joyful voices ever and always.\n\nOne morning he heard music somewhere outside the door, and as the day\npassed it grew louder and louder until it drowned the faint joyful\nvoices, and even Winny\u2019s cry upon the hillside at the fall of evening.\nAbout midnight and in a moment, the walls seemed to melt away and to\nleave his bed floating on a pale misty light that shone on every side\nas far as the eye could see; and after the first blinding of his eyes\nhe saw that it was full of great shadowy figures rushing here and there.\n\nAt the same time the music came very clearly to him, and he knew that\nit was but the continual clashing of swords.\n\n\u2018I am after my death,\u2019 he said, \u2018and in the very heart of the music of\nHeaven. O Cherubim and Seraphim, receive my soul!\u2019\n\nAt his cry the light where it was nearest to him filled with sparks of\nyet brighter light, and he saw that these were the points of swords\nturned towards his heart; and then a sudden flame, bright and burning\nlike God\u2019s love or God\u2019s hate, swept over the light and went out and\nhe was in darkness. At first he could see nothing, for all was as dark\nas if there was black bog earth about him, but all of a sudden the\nfire blazed up as if a wisp of straw had been thrown upon it. And as\nhe looked at it, the light was shining on the big pot that was hanging\nfrom a hook, and on the flat stone where Winny used to bake a cake now\nand again, and on the long rusty knife she used to be cutting the roots\nof the heather with, and on the long blackthorn stick he had brought\ninto the house himself. And when he saw those four things, some memory\ncame into Hanrahan\u2019s mind, and strength came back to him, and he rose\nsitting up in the bed, and he said very loud and clear: \u2018The Cauldron,\nthe Stone, the Sword, the Spear. What are they? Who do they belong to?\nAnd I have asked the question this time,\u2019 he said.\n\nAnd then he fell back again, weak, and the breath going from him.\n\nWinny Byrne, that had been tending the fire, came over then, having her\neyes fixed on the bed; and the faint laughing voices began crying out\nagain, and a pale light, grey like a wave, came creeping over the room,\nand he did not know from what secret world it came. He saw Winny\u2019s\nwithered face and her withered arms that were grey like crumbled earth,\nand weak as he was he shrank back farther towards the wall. And then\nthere came out of the mud-stiffened rags arms as white and as shadowy\nas the foam on a river, and they were put about his body, and a voice\nthat he could hear well but that seemed to come from a long way off\nsaid to him in a whisper: \u2018You will go looking for me no more upon the\nbreasts of women.\u2019\n\n\u2018Who are you?\u2019 he said then.\n\n\u2018I am one of the lasting people, of the lasting unwearied Voices, that\nmake my dwelling in the broken and the dying, and those that have lost\ntheir wits; and I came looking for you, and you are mine until the\nwhole world is burned out like a candle that is spent. And look up\nnow,\u2019 she said, \u2018for the wisps that are for our wedding are lighted.\u2019\n\nHe saw then that the house was crowded with pale shadowy hands, and\nthat every hand was holding what was sometimes like a wisp lighted for\na marriage, and sometimes like a tall white candle for the dead.\n\nWhen the sun rose on the morning of the morrow Winny of the Cross Roads\nrose up from where she was sitting beside the body, and began her\nbegging from townland to townland, singing the same song as she walked,\n\u2018I am beautiful, I am beautiful. The birds in the air, the moths under\nthe leaves, the flies over the water look at me. Look at me, perishing\nwoods, for my body will be shining like the lake water after you have\nbeen hurried away. You and the old race of men, and the race of the\nbeasts, and the race of the fish, and the winged race, are wearing away\nlike a candle that has been burned out. But I laugh out loud, because I\nam in my youth.\u2019\n\nShe did not come back that night or any night to the cabin, and it was\nnot till the end of two days that the turf cutters going to the bog\nfound the body of Red Owen Hanrahan, and gathered men to wake him and\nwomen to keen him, and gave him a burying worthy of so great a poet.\n\n\n\n\n _Printed by_ A. H. BULLEN, _at The Shakespeare Head Press,\n Stratford-on-Avon._\n\n * * * * *\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes:\n\nObvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained\nsuch as Drumahair on page 3 and Drum-a-hair on page 96.\n\nPage 85, repeated word \u201ca\u201d removed from text. Original read (I fling a\na pebble on)\n\nPage 191, \u201cunforgetable\u201d changed to \u201cunforgettable\u201d (most unforgettable\nthoughts)\n\nPage 235, \u201csan\u201d changed to \u201csang\u201d (sang Hanrahan, and his)","title":"The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8): The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red Hanrahan","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":54540}