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Title: The Crock of Gold

Author: James Stephens

Release date: January 1, 1999 [eBook #1605]
                Most recently updated: January 13, 2023

Language: English

Credits: An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROCK OF GOLD ***




[Illustration: The Philosophers were able to hear each other
thinking all day long (page 5)]




                                THE
                           CROCK OF GOLD


                                By
                          James Stephens


                WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
                                BY
                         THOMAS MACKENZIE




CONTENTS


                          BOOK I
  THE COMING OF PAN                                  1

                          BOOK II
  THE PHILOSOPHER’S JOURNEY                         91

                          BOOK III
  THE TWO GODS                                     135

                          BOOK IV
  THE PHILOSOPHER’S RETURN                         151

                          BOOK V
  THE POLICEMEN                                    185

                          BOOK VI
  THE THIN WOMAN’S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH     253




ILLUSTRATIONS

IN COLOUR


  The Philosophers were able to hear each other
  thinking all day long (page 5)                      _Frontispiece_

                                                           FACE PAGE

  “Will you never be done talking?” shouted the Thin
  Woman passionately                                              26

  He stood waist-deep in greenery fronting her squarely           42

  “Do you remember,” said Seumas, “the way he hopped and
  waggled his leg the last time he was here?”                     58

  He saw Caitilin Ni Murrachu walking a little way in front
  with a small vessel in her hand                                 74

  At that moment the Philosopher’s cake lost all its savour       97

  A swift shadow darkened the passage                            109

  A young woman came along the road and stood gazing earnestly
  at this house                                                  129

  “Tell me where the money is?” he hissed                        166

  He . . . wept in so loud a voice that his comrades swarmed
  up to see what had happened to him                             200

  When they topped a slight incline they saw a light shining
  some distance away                                             212

  Caitilin danced in uncontrollable gaiety                       222




BOOK I. THE COMING OF PAN


CHAPTER I

In the centre of the pine wood called Coilla Doraca there lived
not long ago two Philosophers. They were wiser than anything else
in the world except the Salmon who lies in the pool of Glyn Cagny
into which the nuts of knowledge fall from the hazel bush on its
bank. He, of course, is the most profound of living creatures, but
the two Philosophers are next to him in wisdom. Their faces looked
as though they were made of parchment, there was ink under their
nails, and every difficulty that was submitted to them, even by
women, they were able to instantly resolve. The Grey Woman of Dun
Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath asked them the three
questions which nobody had ever been able to answer, and they were
able to answer them. That was how they obtained the enmity of these
two women which is more valuable than the friendship of angels. The
Grey Woman and the Thin Woman were so incensed at being answered
that they married the two Philosophers in order to be able to
pinch them in bed, but the skins of the Philosophers were so thick
that they did not know they were being pinched. They repaid the
fury of the women with such tender affection that these vicious
creatures almost expired of chagrin, and once, in a very ecstasy
of exasperation, after having been kissed by their husbands, they
uttered the fourteen hundred maledictions which comprised their
wisdom, and these were learned by the Philosophers who thus became
even wiser than before.

In due process of time two children were born of these marriages.
They were born on the same day and in the same hour, and they were
only different in this, that one of them was a boy and the other
one was a girl. Nobody was able to tell how this had happened, and,
for the first time in their lives, the Philosophers were forced
to admire an event which they had been unable to prognosticate;
but having proved by many different methods that the children were
really children, that what must be must be, that a fact cannot be
controverted, and that what has happened once may happen twice,
they described the occurrence as extraordinary but not unnatural,
and submitted peacefully to a Providence even wiser than they were.

The Philosopher who had the boy was very pleased because, he said,
there were too many women in the world, and the Philosopher who
had the girl was very pleased also because, he said, you cannot
have too much of a good thing: the Grey Woman and the Thin Woman,
however, were not in the least softened by maternity-they said
that they had not bargained for it, that the children were gotten
under false presences, that they were respectable married women,
and that, as a protest against their wrongs, they would not cook
any more food for the Philosophers. This was pleasant news for
their husbands, who disliked the women’s cooking very much, but
they did not say so, for the women would certainly have insisted
on their rights to cook had they imagined their husbands disliked
the results: therefore, the Philosophers besought their wives every
day to cook one of their lovely dinners again, and this the women
always refused to do.

They all lived together in a small house in the very centre of a
dark pine wood. Into this place the sun never shone because the
shade was too deep, and no wind ever came there either, because
the boughs were too thick, so that it was the most solitary and
quiet place in the world, and the Philosophers were able to hear
each other thinking all day long, or making speeches to each other,
and these were the pleasantest sounds they knew of. To them there
were only two kinds of sounds anywhere—these were conversation and
noise: they liked the first very much indeed, but they spoke of
the second with stern disapproval, and, even when it was made by a
bird, a breeze, or a shower of rain, they grew angry and demanded
that it should be abolished. Their wives seldom spoke at all and
yet they were never silent: they communicated with each other by
a kind of physical telegraphy which they had learned among the
Shee-they cracked their finger-joints quickly or slowly and so were
able to communicate with each other over immense distances, for by
dint of long practice they could make great explosive sounds which
were nearly like thunder, and gentler sounds like the tapping of
grey ashes on a hearthstone. The Thin Woman hated her own child,
but she loved the Grey Woman’s baby, and the Grey Woman loved the
Thin Woman’s infant but could not abide her own. A compromise may
put an end to the most perplexing of situations, and, consequently,
the two women swapped children, and at once became the most tender
and amiable mothers imaginable, and the families were able to live
together in a more perfect amity than could be found anywhere else.

The children grew in grace and comeliness. At first the little boy
was short and fat and the little girl was long and thin, then the
little girl became round and chubby while the little boy grew lanky
and wiry. This was because the little girl used to sit very quiet
and be good and the little boy used not.

They lived for many years in the deep seclusion of the pine wood
wherein a perpetual twilight reigned, and here they were wont
to play their childish games, flitting among the shadowy trees
like little quick shadows. At times their mothers, the Grey Woman
and the Thin Woman, played with them, but this was seldom, and
sometimes their fathers, the two Philosophers, came out and looked
at them through spectacles which were very round and very glassy,
and had immense circles of horn all round the edges. They had,
however, other playmates with whom they could romp all day long.
There were hundreds of rabbits running about in the brushwood; they
were full of fun and were very fond of playing with the children.
There were squirrels who joined cheerfully in their games, and some
goats, having one day strayed in from the big world, were made so
welcome that they always came again whenever they got the chance.
There were birds also, crows and blackbirds and willy-wagtails,
who were well acquainted with the youngsters, and visited them as
frequently as their busy lives permitted.

At a short distance from their home there was a clearing in the
wood about ten feet square; through this clearing, as through a
funnel, the sun for a few hours in the summer time blazed down.
It was the boy who first discovered the strange radiant shaft in
the wood. One day he had been sent out to collect pine cones for
the fire. As these were gathered daily the supply immediately near
the house was scanty, therefore he had, while searching for more,
wandered further from his home than usual. The first sight of the
extraordinary blaze astonished him. He had never seen anything
like it before, and the steady, unwinking glare aroused his fear
and curiosity equally. Curiosity will conquer fear even more than
bravery will; indeed, it has led many people into dangers which
mere physical courage would shudder away from, for hunger and love
and curiosity are the great impelling forces of life. When the
little boy found that the light did not move he drew closer to it,
and at last, emboldened by curiosity, he stepped right into it and
found that it was not a thing at all. The instant that he stepped
into the light he found it was hot, and this so frightened him that
he jumped out of it again and ran behind a tree. Then he jumped
into it for a moment and out of it again, and for nearly half an
hour he played a splendid game of tip and tig with the sunlight.
At last he grew quite bold and stood in it and found that it did
not burn him at all, but he did not like to remain in it, fearing
that he might be cooked. When he went home with the pine cones he
said nothing to the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin or to the Thin Woman
of Inis Magrath or to the two Philosophers, but he told the little
girl all about it when they went to bed, and every day afterwards
they used to go and play with the sunlight, and the rabbits and
the squirrels would follow them there and join in their games with
twice the interest they had shown before.


CHAPTER II

To the lonely house in the pine wood people sometimes came for
advice on subjects too recondite for even those extremes of
elucidation, the parish priest and the tavern. These people were
always well received, and their perplexities were attended to
instantly, for the Philosophers liked being wise and they were not
ashamed to put their learning to the proof, nor were they, as so
many wise people are, fearful lest they should become poor or less
respected by giving away their knowledge. These were favourite
maxims with them:

You must be fit to give before you can be fit to receive.

Knowledge becomes lumber in a week, therefore, get rid of it.

The box must be emptied before it can be refilled.

Refilling is progress.

A sword, a spade, and a thought should never be allowed to rust.

The Grey Woman and the Thin Woman, however, held opinions quite
contrary to these, and their maxims also were different:

A secret is a weapon and a friend.

Man is God’s secret, Power is man’s secret, Sex is woman’s secret.

By having much you are fitted to have more.

There is always room in the box.

The art of packing is the last lecture of wisdom.

The scalp of your enemy is progress.

Holding these opposed views it seemed likely that visitors seeking
for advice from the Philosophers might be astonished and captured
by their wives; but the women were true to their own doctrines and
refused to part with information to any persons saving only those
of high rank, such as policemen, gombeen men, and district and
county councillors; but even to these they charged high prices for
their information, and a bonus on any gains which accrued through
the following of their advices. It is unnecessary to state that
their following was small when compared with those who sought the
assistance of their husbands, for scarcely a week passed but some
person came through the pine wood with his brows in a tangle of
perplexity.

In these people the children were deeply interested. They used
to go apart afterwards and talk about them, and would try to
remember what they looked like, how they talked, and their manner
of walking or taking snuff. After a time they became interested in
the problems which these people submitted to their parents and the
replies or instructions wherewith the latter relieved them. Long
training had made the children able to sit perfectly quiet, so
that when the talk came to the interesting part they were entirely
forgotten, and ideas which might otherwise have been spared their
youth became the commonplaces of their conversation.

When the children were ten years of age one of the Philosophers
died. He called the household together and announced that the
time had come when he must bid them all good-bye, and that his
intention was to die as quickly as might be. It was, he continued,
an unfortunate thing that his health was at the moment more
robust than it had been for a long time, but that, of course,
was no obstacle to his resolution, for death did not depend upon
ill-health but upon a multitude of other factors with the details
whereof he would not trouble them.

His wife, the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin, applauded this resolution
and added as an amendment that it was high time he did something,
that the life he had been leading was an arid and unprofitable one,
that he had stolen her fourteen hundred maledictions for which he
had no use and presented her with a child for which she had none,
and that, all things concerned, the sooner he did die and stop
talking the sooner everybody concerned would be made happy.

The other Philosopher replied mildly as he lit his pipe: “Brother,
the greatest of all virtues is curiosity, and the end of all desire
is wisdom; tell us, therefore, by what steps you have arrived at
this commendable resolution.”

To this the Philosopher replied: “I have attained to all the wisdom
which I am fitted to bear. In the space of one week no new truth
has come to me. All that I have read lately I knew before; all that
I have thought has been but a recapitulation of old and wearisome
ideas. There is no longer an horizon before my eves. Space has
narrowed to the petty dimensions of my thumb. Time is the tick of
a clock. Good and evil are two peas in the one pod. My wife’s face
is the same for ever. I want to play with the children, and yet I
do not want to. Your conversation with me, brother, is like the
droning of a bee in a dark cell. The pine trees take root and grow
and die.—It’s all bosh. Good-bye.”

His friend replied:

“Brother, these are weighty reflections, and I do clearly perceive
that the time has come for you to stop. I might observe, not in
order to combat your views, but merely to continue an interesting
conversation, that there are still some knowledges which you have
not assimilated—you do not yet know how to play the tambourine, nor
how to be nice to your wife, nor how to get up first in the morning
and cook the breakfast. Have you learned how to smoke strong
tobacco as I do? or can you dance in the moonlight with a woman of
the Shee? To understand the theory which underlies all things is
not sufficient. It has occurred to me, brother, that wisdom may not
be the end of everything. Goodness and kindliness are, perhaps,
beyond wisdom. Is it not possible that the ultimate end is gaiety
and music and a dance of joy? Wisdom is the oldest of all things.
Wisdom is all head and no heart. Behold, brother, you are being
crushed under the weight of your head. You are dying of old age
while you are yet a child.”

“Brother,” replied the other Philosopher, “your voice is like
the droning of a bee in a dark cell. If in my latter days I am
reduced to playing on the tambourine and running after a hag in the
moonlight, and cooking your breakfast in the grey morning, then it
is indeed time that I should die. Good-bye, brother.”

So saying, the Philosopher arose and removed all the furniture to
the sides of the room so that there was a clear space left in the
centre. He then took off his boots and his coat, and standing on
his toes he commenced to gyrate with extraordinary rapidity. In a
few moments his movements became steady and swift, and a sound came
from him like the humming of a swift saw; this sound grew deeper
and deeper, and at last continuous, so that the room was filled
with a thrilling noise. In a quarter of an hour the movement began
to noticeably slacken. In another three minutes it was quite slow.
In two more minutes he grew visible again as a body, and then he
wobbled to and fro, and at last dropped in a heap on the floor.
He was quite dead, and on his face was an expression of serene
beatitude.

“God be with you, brother,” said the remaining Philosopher, and he
lit his pipe, focused his vision on the extreme tip of his nose,
and began to meditate profoundly on the aphorism whether the good
is the all or the all is the good. In another moment he would have
become oblivious of the room, the company, and the corpse, but the
Grey Woman of Dun Gortin shattered his meditation by a demand for
advice as to what should next be done. The Philosopher, with an
effort, detached his eyes from his nose and his mind from his maxim.

“Chaos,” said he, “is the first condition. Order is the first
law. Continuity is the first reflection. Quietude is the
first happiness. Our brother is dead—bury him.” So saying, he
returned his eyes to his nose, and his mind to his maxim, and
lapsed to a profound reflection wherein nothing sat perched on
insubstantiality, and the Spirit of Artifice goggled at the puzzle.

The Grey Woman of Dun Gortin took a pinch of snuff from her box and
raised the keen over her husband:


    “You were my husband and you are dead.

    It is wisdom that has killed you.

    If you had listened to my wisdom instead of to your own you
    would still be a trouble to me and I would still be happy.

    Women are stronger than men—they do not die of wisdom.

    They are better than men because they do not seek wisdom.

    They are wiser than men because they know less and
    understand more.

    I had fourteen hundred maledictions, my little store, and
    by a trick you stole them and left me empty.

    You stole my wisdom and it has broken your neck.

    I lost my knowledge and I am yet alive raising the keen
    over your body, but it was too heavy for you, my little
    knowledge.

    You will never go out into the pine wood in the morning, or
    wander abroad on a night of stars.

    You will not sit in the chimney-corner on the hard nights,
    or go to bed, or rise again, or do anything at all from
    this day out.

    Who will gather pine cones now when the fire is going down,
    or call my name in the empty house, or be angry when the
    kettle is not boiling?

    Now I am desolate indeed. I have no knowledge, I have no
    husband, I have no more to say.”


“If I had anything better you should have it,” said she politely to
the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath.

“Thank you,” said the Thin Woman, “it was very nice. Shall I begin
now? My husband is meditating and we may be able to annoy him.”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” replied the other, “I am past enjoyment
and am, moreover, a respectable woman.”

“That is no more than the truth, indeed.”

“I have always done the right thing at the right time.”

“I’d be the last body in the world to deny that,” was the warm
response.

“Very well, then,” said the Grey Woman, and she commenced to take
off her boots. She stood in the centre of the room and balanced
herself on her toe.

“You are a decent, respectable lady,” said the Thin Woman of
Inis Magrath, and then the Grey Woman began to gyrate rapidly
and more rapidly until she was a very fervour of motion, and in
three-quarters of an hour (for she was very tough) she began to
slacken, grew visible, wobbled, and fell beside her dead husband,
and on her face was a beatitude almost surpassing his.

The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath smacked the children and put them
to bed, next she buried the two bodies under the hearthstone, and
then, with some trouble, detached her husband from his meditations.
When he became capable of ordinary occurrences she detailed all
that had happened, and said that he alone was to blame for the sad
bereavement. He replied:

“The toxin generates the anti-toxin. The end lies concealed in the
beginning. All bodies grow around a skeleton. Life is a petticoat
about death. I will not go to bed.”


CHAPTER III

On the day following this melancholy occurrence Meehawl MacMurrachu,
a small farmer in the neighbourhood, came through the pine trees
with tangled brows. At the door of the little house he said, “God
be with all here,” and marched in.

The Philosopher removed his pipe from his lips—

“God be with yourself,” said he, and he replaced his pipe.

Meehawl MacMurrachu crooked his thumb at space, “Where is the other
one?” said he.

“Ah!” said the Philosopher.

“He might be outside, maybe?”

“He might, indeed,” said the Philosopher gravely.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said the visitor, “for you have
enough knowledge by yourself to stock a shop. The reason I came
here to-day was to ask your honoured advice about my wife’s
washing-board. She only has it a couple of years, and the last time
she used it was when she washed out my Sunday shirt and her black
skirt with the red things on it—you know the one?”

“I do not,” said the Philosopher.

“Well, anyhow, the washboard is gone, and my wife says it was
either taken by the fairies or by Bessie Hannigan—you know Bessie
Hannigan? She has whiskers like a goat and a lame leg!” “I do not,”
said the Philosopher.

“No matter,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu. “She didn’t take it, because
my wife got her out yesterday and kept her talking for two hours
while I went through everything in her bit of a house—the washboard
wasn’t there.”

“It wouldn’t be,” said the Philosopher.

“Maybe your honour could tell a body where it is then?”

“Maybe I could,” said the Philosopher; “are you listening?”

“I am,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu.

The Philosopher drew his chair closer to the visitor until their
knees were jammed together. He laid both his hands on Meehawl
MacMurrachu’s knees “Washing is an extraordinary custom,” said he.
“We are washed both on coming into the world and on going out of
it, and we take no pleasure from the first washing nor any profit
from the last.”

“True for you, sir,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu.

“Many people consider that scourings supplementary to these are
only due to habit. Now, habit is continuity of action, it is a most
detestable thing and is very difficult to get away from. A proverb
will run where a writ will not, and the follies of our forefathers
are of greater importance to us than is the well-being of our
posterity.”

“I wouldn’t say a word against that, sir,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu.

“Cats are a philosophic and thoughtful race, but they do not
admit the efficacy of either water or soap, and yet it is usually
conceded that they are cleanly folk. There are exceptions to every
rule, and I once knew a cat who lusted after water and bathed
daily: he was an unnatural brute and died ultimately of the head
staggers. Children are nearly as wise as cats. It is true that
they will utilize water in a variety of ways, for instance, the
destruction of a tablecloth or a pinafore, and I have observed
them greasing a ladder with soap, showing in the process a great
knowledge of the properties of this material.”

“Why shouldn’t they, to be sure?” said Meehawl MacMurrachu. “Have
you got a match, sir?”

“I have not,” said the Philosopher. “Sparrows, again, are a highly
acute and reasonable folk. They use water to quench thirst, but
when they are dirty they take a dust bath and are at once cleansed.
Of course, birds are often seen in the water, but they go there to
catch fish and not to wash. I have often fancied that fish are a
dirty, sly, and unintelligent people—this is due to their staying
so much in the water, and it has been observed that on being
removed from this element they at once expire through sheer ecstasy
at escaping from their prolonged washing.”

“I have seen them doing it myself,” said Meehawl. “Did you ever
hear, sir, about the fish that Paudeen MacLoughlin caught in the
policeman’s hat.”

“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “The first person who washed
was possibly a person seeking a cheap notoriety. Any fool can
wash himself, but every wise man knows that it is an unnecessary
labour, for nature will quickly reduce him to a natural and
healthy dirtiness again. We should seek, therefore, not how to
make ourselves clean, but how to attain a more unique and splendid
dirtiness, and perhaps the accumulated layers of matter might, by
ordinary geologic compulsion, become incorporated with the human
cuticle and so render clothing unnecessary—”

“About that washboard,” said Meehawl, “I was just going to say—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “In its proper place I
admit the necessity for water. As a thing to sail a ship on it can
scarcely be surpassed (not, you will understand, that I entirely
approve of ships, they tend to create and perpetuate international
curiosity and the smaller vermin of different latitudes). As an
element wherewith to put out a fire, or brew tea, or make a slide
in winter it is useful, but in a tin basin it has a repulsive and
meagre aspect.—Now as to your wife’s washboard—”

“Good luck to your honour,” said Meehawl.

“Your wife says that either the fairies or a woman with a goat’s
leg has it.”

“It’s her whiskers,” said Meehawl.

“They are lame,” said the Philosopher sternly.

“Have it your own way, sir, I’m not certain now how the creature is
afflicted.”

“You say that this unhealthy woman has not got your wife’s
washboard. It remains, therefore, that the fairies have it.”

“It looks that way,” said Meehawl.

“There are six clans of fairies living in this neighbourhood;
but the process of elimination, which has shaped the world to a
globe, the ant to its environment, and man to the captaincy of the
vertebrates, will not fail in this instance either.”

“Did you ever see anything like the way wasps have increased this
season?” said Meehawl; “faith, you can’t sit down anywhere but your
breeches—”

“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Did you leave out a pan of milk
on last Tuesday?”

“I did then.”

“Do you take off your hat when you meet a dust twirl?”

“I wouldn’t neglect that,” said Meehawl.

“Did you cut down a thorn bush recently?”

“I’d sooner cut my eye out,” said Meehawl, “and go about as
wall-eyed as Lorcan O’Nualain’s ass: I would that. Did you ever see
his ass, sir? It—”

“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Did you kill a robin redbreast?”

“Never,” said Meehawl. “By the pipers,” he added, “that old skinny
cat of mine caught a bird on the roof yesterday.”

“Hah!” cried the Philosopher, moving, if it were possible, even
closer to his client, “now we have it. It is the Leprecauns of Gort
na Cloca Mora took your washboard. Go to the Gort at once. There
is a hole under a tree in the southeast of the field. Try what you
will find in that hole.”

“I’ll do that,” said Meehawl. “Did you ever—”

“I did not,” said the Philosopher.

So Meehawl MacMurrachu went away and did as he had been bidden, and
underneath the tree of Gort na Cloca Mora he found a little crock
of gold.

“There’s a power of washboards in that,” said he.

By reason of this incident the fame of the Philosopher became even
greater than it had been before, and also by reason of it many
singular events were to happen with which you shall duly become
acquainted.


CHAPTER IV

It so happened that the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora were not
thankful to the Philosopher for having sent Meehawl MacMurrachu
to their field. In stealing Meehawl’s property they were quite
within their rights because their bird had undoubtedly been slain
by his cat. Not alone, therefore, was their righteous vengeance
nullified, but the crock of gold which had taken their community
many thousands of years to amass was stolen. A Leprecaun without
a pot of gold is like a rose without perfume, a bird without a
wing, or an inside without an outside. They considered that the
Philosopher had treated them badly, that his action was mischievous
and unneighbourly, and that until they were adequately compensated
for their loss both of treasure and dignity, no conditions other
than those of enmity could exist between their people and the
little house in the pine wood. Furthermore, for them the situation
was cruelly complicated. They were unable to organise a direct,
personal hostility against their new enemy, because the Thin Woman
of Inis Magrath would certainly protect her husband. She belonged
to the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, who had relatives in every fairy
fort in Ireland, and were also strongly represented in the forts
and duns of their immediate neighbours. They could, of course,
have called an extraordinary meeting of the Sheogs, Leprecauns,
and Cluricauns, and presented their case with a claim for damages
against the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, but that Clann would
assuredly repudiate any liability on the ground that no member of
their fraternity was responsible for the outrage, as it was the
Philosopher, and not the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath, who had done
the deed. Notwithstanding this they were unwilling to let the
matter rest, and the fact that justice was out of reach only added
fury to their anger.

One of their number was sent to interview the Thin Woman of Inis
Magrath, and the others concentrated nightly about the dwelling
of Meehawl MacMurrachu in an endeavour to recapture the treasure
which they were quite satisfied was hopeless. They found that
Meehawl, who understood the customs of the Earth Folk very well,
had buried the crock of gold beneath a thorn bush, thereby placing
it under the protection of every fairy in the world—the Leprecauns
themselves included, and until it was removed from this place by
human hands they were bound to respect its hiding-place, and even
guarantee its safety with their blood.

They afflicted Meehawl with an extraordinary attack of rheumatism
and his wife with an equally virulent sciatica, but they got no
lasting pleasure from their groans.

The Leprecaun, who had been detailed to visit the Thin Woman of
Inis Magrath, duly arrived at the cottage in the pine wood and made
his complaint. The little man wept as he told the story, and the
two children wept out of sympathy for him. The Thin Woman said she
was desperately grieved by the whole unpleasant transaction, and
that all her sympathies were with Gort na Cloca Mora, but that she
must disassociate herself from any responsibility in the matter as
it was her husband who was the culpable person, and that she had no
control over his mental processes, which, she concluded, was one of
the seven curious things in the world.

As her husband was away in a distant part of the wood nothing
further could be done at that time, so the Leprecaun returned again
to his fellows without any good news, but he promised to come back
early on the following day. When the Philosopher come home late
that night the Thin Woman was waiting up for him.

“Woman,” said the Philosopher, “you ought to be in bed.”

“Ought I indeed?” said the Thin Woman. “I’d have you know that I’ll
go to bed when I like and get up when I like without asking your or
any one else’s permission.”

“That is not true,” said the Philosopher. “You get sleepy whether
you like it or not, and you awaken again without your permission
being asked. Like many other customs such as singing, dancing,
music, and acting, sleep has crept into popular favour as part of a
religious ceremonial. Nowhere can one go to sleep more easily than
in a church.”

“Do you know,” said the Thin Woman, “that a Leprecaun came here
to-day?”

“I do not,” said the Philosopher, “and notwithstanding the
innumerable centuries which have elapsed since that first sleeper
(probably with extreme difficulty) sank into his religious trance,
we can to-day sleep through a religious ceremony with an ease which
would have been a source of wealth and fame to that prehistoric
worshipper and his acolytes.”

“Are you going to listen to what I am telling you about the
Leprecaun?” said the Thin Woman.

“I am not,” said the Philosopher. “It has been suggested that we go
to sleep at night because it is then too dark to do anything else;
but owls, who are a venerably sagacious folk, do not sleep in the
night time. Bats, also, are a very clear-minded race; they sleep in
the broadest day, and they do it in a charming manner. They clutch
the branch of a tree with their toes and hang head downwards—a
position which I consider singularly happy, for the rush of blood
to the head consequent on this inverted position should engender a
drowsiness and a certain imbecility of mind which must either sleep
or explode.”

[Illustration: “Will you never be done talking?” shouted the Thin
Woman passionately]

“Will you never be done talking?” shouted the Thin Woman
passionately.

“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “In certain ways sleep is
useful. It is an excellent way of listening to an opera or seeing
pictures on a bioscope. As a medium for day-dreams I know of
nothing that can equal it. As an accomplishment it is graceful, but
as a means of spending a night it is intolerably ridiculous. If you
were going to say anything, my love, please say it now, but you
should always remember to think before you speak. A woman should
be seen seldom but never heard. Quietness is the beginning of
virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.
Children should always be in bed. These are serious truths, which
cannot be controverted; therefore, silence is fitting as regards
them.”

“Your stirabout is on the hob,” said the Thin Woman. “You can get
it for yourself. I would not move the breadth of my nail if you
were dying of hunger. I hope there’s lumps in it. A Leprecaun
from Gort na Cloca Mora was here to-day. They’ll give it to you
for robbing their pot of gold. You old thief, you! you lobeared,
crock-kneed fat-eye!”

The Thin Woman whizzed suddenly from where she stood and leaped
into bed. From beneath the blanket she turned a vivid, furious
eye on her husband. She was trying to give him rheumatism and
toothache and lockjaw all at once. If she had been satisfied to
concentrate her attention on one only of these torments she might
have succeeded in afflicting her husband according to her wish, but
she was not able to do that.

“Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect.
There are lumps in it,” said the Philosopher.


CHAPTER V

When the Leprecaun came through the pine wood on the following day
he met two children at a little distance from the house. He raised
his open right hand above his head (this is both the fairy and the
Gaelic form of salutation), and would have passed on but that a
thought brought him to a halt. Sitting down before the two children
he stared at them for a long time, and they stared back at him. At
last he said to the boy:

“What is your name, a vic vig O?”

“Seumas Beg, sir,” the boy replied.

“It’s a little name,” said the Leprecaun.

“It’s what my mother calls me, sir,” returned the boy.

“What does your father call you,” was the next question.

“Seumas Roghan Maelduin O’Carbhail Mac an Droid.”

“It’s a big name,” said the Leprecaun, and he turned to the little
girl. “What is your name, a cailin vig O?”

“Brigid Beg, sir.”

“And what does your father call you?”

“He never calls me at all, sir.”

“Well, Seumaseen and Breedeen, you are good little children, and
I like you very much. Health be with you until I come to see you
again.”

And then the Leprecaun went back the way he had come. As he went he
made little jumps and cracked his fingers, and sometimes he rubbed
one leg against the other.

“That’s a nice Leprecaun,” said Seumas.

“I like him too,” said Brigid.

“Listen,” said Seumas, “let me be the Leprecaun, and you be the two
children, and I will ask you our names.”

So they did that.

The next day the Leprecaun came again. He sat down beside the
children and, as before, he was silent for a little time.

“Are you not going to ask us our names, sir?” said Seumas.

His sister smoothed out her dress shyly. “My name, sir, is Brigid
Beg,” said she.

“Did you ever play Jackstones?” said the Leprecaun.

“No, sir,” replied Seumas.

“I’ll teach you how to play Jackstones,” said the Leprecaun, and he
picked up some pine cones and taught the children that game.

“Did you ever play Ball in the Decker?”

“No, sir,” said Seumas.

“Did you ever play ‘I can make a nail with my ree-ro-raddy-O, I can
make a nail with my ree-ro-ray’?”

“No, sir,” replied Seumas.

“It’s a nice game,” said the Leprecaun, “and so is Capon-the-back,
and Twenty-four yards on the Billy-goat’s Tail, and Towns, and
Relievo, and Leap-frog. I’ll teach you all these games,” said
the Leprecaun, “and I’ll teach you how to play Knifey, and
Hole-and-taw, and Horneys and Robbers.

“Leap-frog is the best one to start with, so I’ll teach it to you
at once. Let you bend down like this, Breedeen, and you bend down
like that a good distance away, Seumas. Now I jump over Breedeen’s
back, and then I run and jump over Seumaseen’s back like this, and
then I run ahead again and I bend down. Now, Breedeen, you jump
over your brother, and then you jump over me, and run a good bit on
and bend down again. Now, Seumas, it’s your turn; you jump over me
and then over your sister, and then you run on and bend down again
and I jump.”

“This is a fine game, sir,” said Seumas.

“It is, a vic vig,—keep in your head,” said the Leprecaun. “That’s
a good jump, you couldn’t beat that jump, Seumas.”

“I can jump better than Brigid already,” replied Seumas, “and I’ll
jump as well as you do when I get more practice—keep in your head,
sir.”

Almost without noticing it they had passed through the edge of the
wood, and were playing into a rough field which was cumbered with
big, grey rocks. It was the very last field in sight, and behind
it the rough, heather-packed mountain sloped distantly away to
the skyline. There was a raggedy blackberry hedge all round the
field, and there were long, tough, haggard-looking plants growing
in clumps here and there. Near a corner of this field there was
a broad, low tree, and as they played they came near and nearer
to it. The Leprecaun gave a back very close to the tree. Seumas
ran and jumped and slid down a hole at the side of the tree. Then
Brigid ran and jumped and slid down the same hole.

“Dear me!” said Brigid, and she flashed out of sight.

The Leprecaun cracked his fingers and rubbed one leg against the
other, and then he also dived into the hole and disappeared from
view.

When the time at which the children usually went home had passed,
the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath became a little anxious. She had
never known them to be late for dinner before. There was one of
the children whom she hated; it was her own child, but as she
had forgotten which of them was hers, and as she loved one of
them, she was compelled to love both for fear of making a mistake
and chastising the child for whom her heart secretly yearned.
Therefore, she was equally concerned about both of them.

Dinner time passed and supper time arrived, but the children did
not. Again and again the Thin Woman went out through the dark pine
trees and called until she was so hoarse that she could not even
hear herself when she roared. The evening wore on to the night, and
while she waited for the Philosopher to come in she reviewed the
situation. Her husband had not come in, the children had not come
in, the Leprecaun had not returned as arranged.... A light flashed
upon her. The Leprecaun had kidnapped her children! She announced
a vengeance against the Leprecauns which would stagger humanity.
While in the extreme centre of her ecstasy the Philosopher came
through the trees and entered the house.

The Thin Woman flew to him—

“Husband,” said she, “the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora have
kidnapped our children.”

The Philosopher gazed at her for a moment.

“Kidnapping,” said he, “has been for many centuries a favourite
occupation of fairies, gypsies, and the brigands of the East. The
usual procedure is to attach a person and hold it to ransom. If the
ransom is not paid an ear or a finger may be cut from the captive
and despatched to those interested, with the statement that an arm
or a leg will follow in a week unless suitable arrangements are
entered into.”

“Do you understand,” said the Thin Woman passionately, “that it is
your own children who have been kidnapped?”

“I do not,” said the Philosopher. “This course, however, is rarely
followed by the fairy people: they do not ordinarily steal for
ransom, but for love of thieving, or from some other obscure and
possibly functional causes, and the victim is retained in their
forts or duns until by the effluxion of time they forget their
origin and become peaceable citizens of the fairy state. Kidnapping
is not by any means confined to either humanity or the fairy
people.”

“Monster,” said the Thin Woman in a deep voice, “will you listen to
me?”

“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Many of the insectivora
also practice this custom. Ants, for example, are a respectable
race living in well-ordered communities. They have attained to
a most complex and artificial civilization, and will frequently
adventure far afield on colonising or other expeditions from
whence they return with a rich booty of aphides and other stock,
who thenceforward become the servants and domestic creatures of
the republic. As they neither kill nor eat their captives, this
practice will be termed kidnapping. The same may be said of bees,
a hardy and industrious race living in hexagonal cells which are
very difficult to make. Sometimes, on lacking a queen of their
own, they have been observed to abduct one from a less powerful
neighbour, and use her for their own purposes without shame, mercy,
or remorse.”

“Will you not understand?” screamed the Thin Woman.

“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Semi-tropical apes have been
rumoured to kidnap children, and are reported to use them very
tenderly indeed, sharing their coconuts, yams, plantains, and other
equatorial provender with the largest generosity, and conveying
their delicate captives from tree to tree (often at great distances
from each other and from the ground) with the most guarded
solicitude and benevolence.”

“I am going to bed,” said the Thin Woman, “your stirabout is on the
hob.”

“Are there lumps in it, my dear?” said the Philosopher.

“I hope there are,” replied the Thin Woman, and she leaped into bed.

That night the Philosopher was afflicted with the most extraordinary
attack of rheumatism he had ever known, nor did he get any ease
until the grey morning wearied his lady into a reluctant slumber.


CHAPTER VI

The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath slept very late that morning, but
when she did awaken her impatience was so urgent that she could
scarcely delay to eat her breakfast. Immediately after she had
eaten she put on her bonnet and shawl and went through the pine
wood in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. In a short time she
reached the rocky field, and, walking over to the tree in the
southeast corner, she picked up a small stone and hammered loudly
against the trunk of the tree. She hammered in a peculiar fashion,
giving two knocks and then three knocks, and then one knock. A
voice came up from the hole.

“Who is that, please?” said the voice.

“Ban na Droid of Inis Magrath, and well you know it,” was her reply.

“I am coming up, Noble Woman,” said the voice, and in another
moment the Leprecaun leaped out of the hole.

“Where are Seumas and Brigid Beg?” said the Thin Woman sternly.

“How would I know where they are?” replied the Leprecaun. “Wouldn’t
they be at home now?”

“If they were at home I wouldn’t have come here looking for them,”
was her reply. “It is my belief that you have them.”

“Search me,” said the Leprecaun, opening his waistcoat.

“They are down there in your little house,” said the Thin Woman
angrily, “and the sooner you let them up the better it will be for
yourself and your five brothers.”

“Noble Woman,” said the Leprecaun, “you can go down yourself into
our little house and look. I can’t say fairer than that.”

“I wouldn’t fit down there,” said she. “I’m too big.”

“You know the way for making yourself little,” replied the
Leprecaun.

“But I mightn’t be able to make myself big again,” said the Thin
Woman, “and then you and your dirty brothers would have it all your
own way. If you don’t let the children up,” she continued, “I’ll
raise the Shee of Croghan Conghaile against you. You know what
happened to the Cluricauns of Oilean na Glas when they stole the
Queen’s baby—It will be a worse thing than that for you. If the
children are not back in my house before moonrise this night, I’ll
go round to my people. Just tell that to your five ugly brothers.
Health with you,” she added, and strode away.

“Health with yourself, Noble Woman,” said the Leprecaun, and he
stood on one leg until she was out of sight and then he slid down
into the hole again.

When the Thin Woman was going back through the pine wood she saw
Meehawl MacMurrachu travelling in the same direction and his brows
were in a tangle of perplexity.

“God be with you, Meehawl MacMurrachu,” said she.

“God and Mary be with you, ma’am,” he replied, “I am in great
trouble this day.”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” said the Thin Woman.

“I came up to have a talk with your husband about a particular
thing.”

“If it’s talk you want you have come to a good house, Meehawl.”

“He’s a powerful man right enough,” said Meehawl.

After a few minutes the Thin Woman spoke again. “I can get the reek
of his pipe from here. Let you go right in to him now and I’ll stay
outside for a while, for the sound of your two voices would give me
a pain in my head.”

“Whatever will please you will please me, ma’am,” said her
companion, and he went into the little house.

Meehawl MacMurrachu had good reason to be perplexed. He was the
father of one child only, and she was the most beautiful girl in
the whole world. The pity of it was that no one at all knew she
was beautiful, and she did not even know it herself. At times when
she bathed in the eddy of a mountain stream and saw her reflection
looking up from the placid water she thought that she looked very
nice, and then a great sadness would come upon her, for what is the
use of looking nice if there is nobody to see one’s beauty? Beauty,
also, is usefulness. The arts as well as the crafts, the graces
equally with the utilities must stand up in the marketplace and be
judged by the gombeen men.

The only house near to her father’s was that occupied by Bessie
Hannigan. The other few houses were scattered widely with long,
quiet miles of hill and bog between them, so that she had hardly
seen more than a couple of men beside her father since she was
born. She helped her father and mother in all the small businesses
of their house, and every day also she drove their three cows and
two goats to pasture on the mountain slopes. Here through the sunny
days the years had passed in a slow, warm thoughtlessness wherein,
without thinking, many thoughts had entered into her mind and many
pictures hung for a moment like birds in the thin air. At first,
and for a long time, she had been happy enough; there were many
things in which a child might be interested: the spacious heavens
which never wore the same beauty on any day; the innumerable little
creatures living among the grasses or in the heather; the steep
swing of a bird down from the mountain to the infinite plains
below; the little flowers which were so contented each in its
peaceful place; the bees gathering food for their houses, and the
stout beetles who are always losing their way in the dusk. These
things, and many others, interested her. The three cows after they
had grazed for a long time would come and lie by her side and look
at her as they chewed their cud, and the goats would prance from
the bracken to push their heads against her breast because they
loved her.

Indeed, everything in her quiet world loved this girl: but very
slowly there was growing in her consciousness an unrest, a
disquietude to which she had hitherto been a stranger. Sometimes an
infinite weariness oppressed her to the earth. A thought was born
in her mind and it had no name. It was growing and could not be
expressed. She had no words wherewith to meet it, to exorcise or
greet this stranger who, more and more insistently and pleadingly,
tapped upon her doors and begged to be spoken to, admitted and
caressed and nourished. A thought is a real thing and words are
only its raiment, but a thought is as shy as a virgin; unless it
is fittingly apparelled we may not look on its shadowy nakedness:
it will fly from us and only return again in the darkness crying
in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with
aching minds, listening and divining, we at last fashion for it
those symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she could
not understand the touch that came to her from afar and yet how
intimately, the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly personal.
The standard of either language or experience was not hers; she
could listen but not think, she could feel but not know, her eyes
looked forward and did not see, her hands groped in the sunlight
and felt nothing. It was like the edge of a little wind which
stirred her tresses but could not lift them, or the first white
peep of the dawn which is neither light nor darkness. But she
listened, not with her ears but with her blood. The fingers of her
soul stretched out to clasp a stranger’s hand, and her disquietude
was quickened through with an eagerness which was neither physical
nor mental, for neither her body nor her mind was definitely
interested. Some dim region between these grew alarmed and watched
and waited and did not sleep or grow weary at all.

One morning she lay among the long, warm grasses. She watched
a bird who soared and sang for a little time, and then it sped
swiftly away down the steep air and out of sight in the blue
distance. Even when it was gone the song seemed to ring in her
ears. It seemed to linger with her as a faint, sweet echo, coming
fitfully, with little pauses as though a wind disturbed it, and
careless, distant eddies. After a few moments she knew it was not a
bird. No bird’s song had that consecutive melody, for their themes
are as careless as their wings. She sat up and looked about her,
but there was nothing in sight: the mountains sloped gently above
her and away to the clear sky; around her the scattered clumps of
heather were drowsing in the sunlight; far below she could see her
father’s house, a little grey patch near some trees—and then the
music stopped and left her wondering.

She could not find her goats anywhere although for a long time she
searched. They came to her at last of their own accord from behind
a fold in the hills, and they were more wildly excited than she
had ever seen them before. Even the cows forsook their solemnity
and broke into awkward gambols around her. As she walked home that
evening a strange elation taught her feet to dance. Hither and
thither she flitted in front of the beasts and behind them. Her
feet tripped to a wayward measure. There was a tune in her ears
and she danced to it, throwing her arms out and above her head
and swaying and bending as she went. The full freedom of her body
was hers now: the lightness and poise and certainty of her limbs
delighted her, and the strength that did not tire delighted her
also. The evening was full of peace and quietude, the mellow, dusky
sunlight made a path for her feet, and everywhere through the wide
fields birds were flashing and singing, and she sang with them a
song that had no words and wanted none.

The following day she heard the music again, faint and thin,
wonderfully sweet and as wild as the song of a bird, but it was a
melody which no bird would adhere to. A theme was repeated again
and again. In the middle of trills, grace-notes, runs and catches
it recurred with a strange, almost holy, solemnity,—a hushing,
slender melody full of austerity and aloofness. There was something
in it to set her heart beating. She yearned to it with her ears and
her lips. Was it joy, menace, carelessness? She did not know, but
this she did know, that however terrible it was personal to her.
It was her unborn thought strangely audible and felt rather than
understood.

On that day she did not see anybody either. She drove her charges
home in the evening listlessly and the beasts also were very quiet.

When the music came again she made no effort to discover where it
came from. She only listened, and when the tune was ended she saw
a figure rise from the fold of a little hill. The sunlight was
gleaming from his arms and shoulders but the rest of his body was
hidden by the bracken, and he did not look at her as he went away
playing softly on a double pipe.

[Illustration: He stood waist-deep in greenery fronting her
squarely]

The next day he did look at her. He stood waist-deep in greenery
fronting her squarely. She had never seen so strange a face before.
Her eyes almost died on him as she gazed and he returned her look
for a long minute with an intent, expressionless regard. His hair
was a cluster of brown curls, his nose was little and straight, and
his wide mouth drooped sadly at the corners. His eyes were wide and
most mournful, and his forehead was very broad and white. His sad
eyes and mouth almost made her weep.

When he turned away he smiled at her, and it was as though the
sun had shone suddenly in a dark place, banishing all sadness
and gloom. Then he went mincingly away. As he went he lifted the
slender double reed to his lips and blew a few careless notes.

The next day he fronted her as before, looking down to her eyes
from a short distance. He played for only a few moments, and
fitfully, and then he came to her. When he left the bracken the
girl suddenly clapped her hands against her eyes affrighted.
There was something different, terrible about him. The upper part
of his body was beautiful, but the lower part.... She dared not
look at him again. She would have risen and fled away but she
feared he might pursue her, and the thought of such a chase and
the inevitable capture froze her blood. The thought of anything
behind us is always terrible. The sound of pursuing feet is worse
than the murder from which we fly—So she sat still and waited but
nothing happened. At last, desperately, she dropped her hands. He
was sitting on the ground a few paces from her. He was not looking
at her but far away sidewards across the spreading hill. His legs
were crossed; they were shaggy and hoofed like the legs of a goat:
but she would not look at these because of his wonderful, sad,
grotesque face. Gaiety is good to look upon and an innocent face
is delightful to our souls, but no woman can resist sadness or
weakness, and ugliness she dare not resist. Her nature leaps to
be the comforter. It is her reason. It exalts her to an ecstasy
wherein nothing but the sacrifice of herself has any proportion.
Men are not fathers by instinct but by chance, but women are
mothers beyond thought, beyond instinct which is the father of
thought. Motherliness, pity, self-sacrifice—these are the charges
of her primal cell, and not even the discovery that men are
comedians, liars, and egotists will wean her from this. As she
looked at the pathos of his face she repudiated the hideousness of
his body. The beast which is in all men is glossed by women; it is
his childishness, the destructive energy inseparable from youth and
high spirits, and it is always forgiven by women, often forgotten,
sometimes, and not rarely, cherished and fostered.

After a few moments of this silence he placed the reed to his lips
and played a plaintive little air, and then he spoke to her in a
strange voice, coming like a wind from distant places.

“What is your name, Shepherd Girl?” said he.

“Caitilin, Ingin Ni Murrachu,” she whispered.

“Daughter of Murrachu,” said he, “I have come from a far place
where there are high hills. The men and maidens who follow their
flocks in that place know me and love me for I am the Master of
the Shepherds. They sing and dance and are glad when I come to
them in the sunlight; but in this country no people have done any
reverence to me. The shepherds fly away when they hear my pipes in
the pastures; the maidens scream in fear when I dance to them in
the meadows. I am very lonely in this strange country. You also,
although you danced to the music of my pipes, have covered your
face against me and made no reverence.”

“I will do whatever you say if it is right,” said she.

“You must not do anything because it is right, but because it is
your wish. Right is a word and Wrong is a word, but the sun shines
in the morning and the dew falls in the dusk without thinking of
these words which have no meaning. The bee flies to the flower and
the seed goes abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd Girl?—it
is wrong also. I come to you because the bee goes to the flower—it
is wrong! If I did not come to you to whom would I go? There is no
right and no wrong but only the will of the gods.”

“I am afraid of you,” said the girl.

“You fear me because my legs are shaggy like the legs of a goat.
Look at them well, O Maiden, and know that they are indeed the
legs of a beast and then you will not be afraid any more. Do you
not love beasts? Surely you should love them for they yearn to you
humbly or fiercely, craving your hand upon their heads as I do. If
I were not fashioned thus I would not come to you because I would
not need you. Man is a god and a brute. He aspires to the stars
with his head but his feet are contented in the grasses of the
field, and when he forsakes the brute upon which he stands then
there will be no more men and no more women and the immortal gods
will blow this world away like smoke.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” said the girl.

“I want you to want me. I want you to forget right and wrong; to be
as happy as the beasts, as careless as the flowers and the birds.
To live to the depths of your nature as well as to the heights.
Truly there are stars in the heights and they will be a garland for
your forehead. But the depths are equal to the heights. Wondrous
deep are the depths, very fertile is the lowest deep. There are
stars there also, brighter than the stars on high. The name of the
heights is Wisdom and the name of the depths is Love. How shall
they come together and be fruitful if you do not plunge deeply
and fearlessly? Wisdom is the spirit and the wings of the spirit,
Love is the shaggy beast that goes down. Gallantly he dives, below
thought, beyond Wisdom, to rise again as high above these as he had
first descended. Wisdom is righteous and clean, but Love is unclean
and holy. I sing of the beast and the descent: the great unclean
purging itself in fire: the thought that is not born in the measure
or the ice or the head, but in the feet and the hot blood and the
pulse of fury. The Crown of Life is not lodged in the sun: the wise
gods have buried it deeply where the thoughtful will not find it,
nor the good: but the Gay Ones, the Adventurous Ones, the Careless
Plungers, they will bring it to the wise and astonish them. All
things are seen in the light—How shall we value that which is easy
to see? But the precious things which are hidden, they will be more
precious for our search: they will be beautiful with our sorrow:
they will be noble because of our desire for them. Come away with
me, Shepherd Girl, through the fields, and we will be careless and
happy, and we will leave thought to find us when it can, for that
is the duty of thought, and it is more anxious to discover us than
we are to be found.”

So Caitilin Ni Murrachu arose and went with him through the fields,
and she did not go with him because of love, nor because his words
had been understood by her, but only because he was naked and
unashamed.


CHAPTER VII

It was on account of his daughter that Meehawl MacMurrachu had come
to visit the Philosopher. He did not know what had become of her,
and the facts he had to lay before his adviser were very few.

He left the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath taking snuff under a pine
tree and went into the house.

“God be with all here,” said he as he entered.

“God be with yourself, Meehawl MacMurrachu,” said the Philosopher.

“I am in great trouble this day, sir,” said Meehawl, “and if you
would give me an advice I’d be greatly beholden to you.”

“I can give you that,” replied the Philosopher.

“None better than your honour and no trouble to you either. It was
a powerful advice you gave me about the washboard, and if I didn’t
come here to thank you before this it was not because I didn’t want
to come, but that I couldn’t move hand or foot by dint of the cruel
rheumatism put upon me by the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora, bad
cess to them for ever: twisted I was the way you’d get a squint in
your eye if you only looked at me, and the pain I suffered would
astonish you.”

“It would not,” said the Philosopher.

“No matter,” said Meehawl. “What I came about was my young daughter
Caitilin. Sight or light of her I haven’t had for three days. My
wife said first, that it was the fairies had taken her, and then
she said it was a travelling man that had a musical instrument she
went away with, and after that she said, that maybe the girl was
lying dead in the butt of a ditch with her eyes wide open, and she
staring broadly at the moon in the night time and the sun in the
day until the crows would be finding her out.”

The Philosopher drew his chair closer to Meehawl.

“Daughters,” said he, “have been a cause of anxiety to their
parents ever since they were instituted. The flightiness of the
female temperament is very evident in those who have not arrived
at the years which teach how to hide faults and frailties, and,
therefore, indiscretions bristle from a young girl the way branches
do from a bush.”

“The person who would deny that—” said Meehawl.

“Female children, however, have the particular sanction of
nature. They are produced in astonishing excess over males, and
may, accordingly, be admitted as dominant to the male; but the
well-proven law that the minority shall always control the majority
will relieve our minds from a fear which might otherwise become
intolerable.”

“It’s true enough,” said Meehawl. “Have you noticed, sir, that in a
litter of pups—”

“I have not,” said the Philosopher. “Certain trades and professions,
it is curious to note, tend to be perpetuated in the female line.
The sovereign profession among bees and ants is always female, and
publicans also descend on the distaff side. You will have noticed
that every publican has three daughters of extraordinary charms.
Lacking these signs we would do well to look askance at such a man’s
liquor, divining that in his brew there will be an undue percentage
of water, for if his primogeniture is infected how shall his honesty
escape?”

“It would take a wise head to answer that,” said Meehawl.

“It would not,” said the Philosopher. “Throughout nature the female
tends to polygamy.”

“If,” said Meehawl, “that unfortunate daughter of mine is lying
dead in a ditch—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “Many races have
endeavoured to place some limits to this increase in females.
Certain Oriental peoples have conferred the titles of divinity
on crocodiles, serpents, and tigers of the jungle, and have fed
these with their surplusage of daughters. In China, likewise, such
sacrifices are defended as honourable and economic practices.
But, broadly speaking, if daughters have to be curtailed I prefer
your method of losing them rather than the religio-hysterical
compromises of the Orient.”

“I give you my word, sir,” said Meehawl, “that I don’t know what
you are talking about at all.”

“That,” said the Philosopher, “may be accounted for in three
ways—firstly, there is a lack of cerebral continuity: that is,
faulty attention; secondly, it might be due to a local peculiarity
in the conformation of the skull, or, perhaps, a superficial
instead of a deep indenting of the cerebral coil; and thirdly—”

“Did you ever hear,” said Meehawl, “of the man that had the scalp
of his head blown off by a gun, and they soldered the bottom of a
tin dish to the top of his skull the way you could hear his brains
ticking inside of it for all the world like a Waterbury watch?”

“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Thirdly, it may—”

“It’s my daughter, Caitilin, sir,” said Meehawl humbly. “Maybe she
is lying in the butt of a ditch and the crows picking her eyes out.”

“What did she die of?” said the Philosopher.

“My wife only put it that maybe she was dead, and that maybe she
was taken by the fairies, and that maybe she went away with the
travelling man that had the musical instrument. She said it was a
concertina, but I think myself it was a flute he had.”

“Who was this traveller?”

“I never saw him,” said Meehawl, “but one day I went a few perches
up the hill and I heard him playing—thin, squeaky music it was
like you’d be blowing out of a tin whistle. I looked about for him
everywhere, but not a bit of him could I see.”

“Eh?” said the Philosopher.

“I looked about—” said Meehawl.

“I know,” said the Philosopher. “Did you happen to look at your
goats?”

“I couldn’t well help doing that,” said Meehawl.

“What were they doing?” said the Philosopher eagerly.

“They were bucking each other across the field, and standing on
their hind legs and cutting such capers that I laughed till I had a
pain in my stomach at the gait of them.”

“This is very interesting,” said the Philosopher.

“Do you tell me so?” said Meehawl.

“I do,” said the Philosopher, “and for this reason-most of the
races of the world have at one time or another—”

“It’s my little daughter, Caitilin, sir,” said Meehawl.

“I’m attending to her,” the Philosopher replied.

“I thank you kindly,” returned Meehawl.

The Philosopher continued “Most of the races of the world have at
one time or another been visited by this deity, whose title is
the ‘Great God Pan,’ but there is no record of his ever having
journeyed to Ireland, and, certainly within historic times, he has
not set foot on these shores. He lived for a great number of years
in Egypt, Persia, and Greece, and although his empire is supposed
to be world-wide, this universal sway has always been, and always
will be, contested; but nevertheless, however sharply his empire
may be curtailed, he will never be without a kingdom wherein his
exercise of sovereign rights will be gladly and passionately
acclaimed.”

“Is he one of the old gods, sir?” said Meehawl.

“He is,” replied the Philosopher, “and his coming intends no good
to this country. Have you any idea why he should have captured your
daughter?”

“Not an idea in the world.”

“Is your daughter beautiful?”

“I couldn’t tell you, because I never thought of looking at her
that way. But she is a good milker, and as strong as a man. She can
lift a bag of meal under her arm easier than I can; but she’s a
timid creature for all that.”

“Whatever the reason is I am certain that he has the girl, and I am
inclined to think that he was directed to her by the Leprecauns of
the Gort. You know they are at feud with you ever since their bird
was killed?”

“I am not likely to forget it, and they racking me day and night
with torments.”

“You may be sure,” said the Philosopher, “that if he’s anywhere at
all it’s at Gort na Cloca Mora he is, for, being a stranger, he
wouldn’t know where to go unless he was directed, and they know
every hole and corner of this countryside since ancient times. I’d
go up myself and have a talk with him, but it wouldn’t be a bit of
good, and it wouldn’t be any use your going either. He has power
over all grown people so that they either go and get drunk or else
they fall in love with every person they meet, and commit assaults
and things I wouldn’t like to be telling you about. The only folk
who can go near him at all are little children, because he has no
power over them until they grow to the sensual age, and then he
exercises lordship over them as over every one else. I’ll send my
two children with a message to him to say that he isn’t doing the
decent thing, and that if he doesn’t let the girl alone and go back
to his own country we’ll send for Angus Óg.”

“He’d make short work of him, I’m thinking.”

“He might surely; but he may take the girl for himself all the
same.”

“Well, I’d sooner he had her than the other one, for he’s one of
ourselves anyhow, and the devil you know is better than the devil
you don’t know.”

“Angus Óg is a god,” said the Philosopher severely.

“I know that, sir,” replied Meehawl; “it’s only a way of talking I
have. But how will your honour get at Angus? for I heard say that
he hadn’t been seen for a hundred years, except one night only when
he talked to a man for half an hour on Kilmasheogue.”

“I’ll find him, sure enough,” replied the Philosopher.

“I’ll warrant you will,” replied Meehawl heartily as he stood up.
“Long life and good health to your honour,” said he as he turned
away.

The Philosopher lit his pipe.

“We live as long as we are let,” said he, “and we get the health we
deserve. Your salutation embodies a reflection on death which is
not philosophic. We must acquiesce in all logical progressions. The
merging of opposites is completion. Life runs to death as to its
goal, and we should go towards that next stage of experience either
carelessly as to what must be, or with a good, honest curiosity as
to what may be.”

“There’s not much fun in being dead, sir,” said Meehawl.

“How do you know?” said the Philosopher.

“I know well enough,” replied Meehawl.


CHAPTER VIII

When the children leaped into the hole at the foot of the tree they
found themselves sliding down a dark, narrow slant which dropped
them softly enough into a little room. This room was hollowed out
immediately under the tree, and great care had been taken not to
disturb any of the roots which ran here and there through the
chamber in the strangest criss-cross, twisted fashion. To get
across such a place one had to walk round, and jump over, and
duck under perpetually. Some of the roots had formed themselves
very conveniently into low seats and narrow, uneven tables, and
at the bottom all the roots ran into the floor and away again in
the direction required by their business. After the clear air
outside this place was very dark to the children’s eyes, so that
they could not see anything for a few minutes, but after a little
time their eyes became accustomed to the semiobscurity and they
were able to see quite well. The first things they became aware
of were six small men who were seated on low roots. They were all
dressed in tight green clothes and little leathern aprons, and they
wore tall green hats which wobbled when they moved. They were all
busily engaged making shoes. One was drawing out wax ends on his
knee, another was softening pieces of leather in a bucket of water,
another was polishing the instep of a shoe with a piece of curved
bone, another was paring down a heel with a short broad-bladed
knife, and another was hammering wooden pegs into a sole. He had
all the pegs in his mouth, which gave him a widefaced, jolly
expression, and according as a peg was wanted he blew it into his
hand and hit it twice with his hammer, and then he blew another
peg, and he always blew the peg with the right end uppermost, and
never had to hit it more than twice. He was a person well worth
watching.

The children had slid down so unexpectedly that they almost forgot
their good manners, but as soon as Seumas Beg discovered that he
was really in a room he removed his cap and stood up.

“God be with all here,” said he.

The Leprecaun who had brought them lifted Brigid from the floor to
which amazement still constrained her.

“Sit down on that little root, child of my heart,” said he, “and
you can knit stockings for us.”

“Yes, sir,” said Brigid meekly.

The Leprecaun took four knitting needles and a ball of green wool
from the top of a high, horizontal root. He had to climb over one,
go round three and climb up two roots to get at it, and he did
this so easily that it did not seem a bit of trouble. He gave the
needles and wool to Brigid Beg.

“Do you know how to turn the heel, Brigid Beg?” said he.

“No, sir,” said Brigid.

“Well, I’ll show you how when you come to it.”

The other six Leprecauns had ceased work and were looking at the
children. Seumas turned to them.

“God bless the work,” said he politely.

One of the Leprecauns, who had a grey, puckered face and a thin
fringe of grey whisker very far under his chin, then spoke.

“Come over here, Seumas Beg,” said he, “and I’ll measure you for a
pair of shoes. Put your foot up on that root.”

The boy did so, and the Leprecaun took the measure of his foot with
a wooden rule.

“Now, Brigid Beg, show me your foot,” and he measured her also.
“They’ll be ready for you in the morning.”

“Do you never do anything else but make shoes, sir?” said Seumas.

“We do not,” replied the Leprecaun, “except when we want new
clothes, and then we have to make them, but we grudge every minute
spent making anything else except shoes, because that is the proper
work for a Leprecaun. In the night time we go about the country
into people’s houses and we clip little pieces off their money,
and so, bit by bit, we get a crock of gold together, because, do
you see, a Leprecaun has to have a crock of gold so that if he’s
captured by men folk he may be able to ransom himself. But that
seldom happens, because it’s a great disgrace altogether to be
captured by a man, and we’ve practiced so long dodging among the
roots here that we can easily get away from them. Of course, now
and again we are caught; but men are fools, and we always escape
without having to pay the ransom at all. We wear green clothes
because it’s the colour of the grass and the leaves, and when we
sit down under a bush or lie in the grass they just walk by without
noticing us.”

“Will you let me see your crock of gold?” said Seumas.

The Leprecaun looked at him fixedly for a moment.

“Do you like griddle bread and milk?” said he.

“I like it well,” Seumas answered.

“Then you had better have some,” and the Leprecaun took a piece of
griddle bread from the shelf and filled two saucers with milk.

While the children were eating the Leprecauns asked them many
questions “What time do you get up in the morning?”

“Seven o’clock,” replied Seumas.

“And what do you have for breakfast?”

“Stirabout and milk,” he replied.

“It’s good food,” said the Leprecaun. “What do you have for dinner?”

“Potatoes and milk,” said Seumas.

“It’s not bad at all,” said the Leprecaun. “And what do you have
for supper?”

Brigid answered this time because her brother’s mouth was full.

“Bread and milk, sir,” said she.

“There’s nothing better,” said the Leprecaun.

“And then we go to bed,” continued Brigid.

“Why wouldn’t you?” said the Leprecaun.

It was at this point the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath knocked on the
tree trunk and demanded that the children should be returned to her.

When she had gone away the Leprecauns held a consultation, whereat
it was decided that they could not afford to anger the Thin Woman
and the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, so they shook hands with the
children and bade them good-bye. The Leprecaun who had enticed
them away from home brought them back again, and on parting he
begged the children to visit Gort na Cloca Mora whenever they felt
inclined.

“There’s always a bit of griddle bread or potato cake, and a noggin
of milk for a friend,” said he.

“You are very kind, sir,” replied Seumas, and his sister said the
same words.

As the Leprecaun walked away they stood watching him.

[Illustration: “Do you remember,” said Seumas, “the way he hopped
and waggled his leg the last time he was here?”]

“Do you remember,” said Seumas, “the way he hopped and waggled his
leg the last time he was here?”

“I do so,” replied Brigid.

“Well, he isn’t hopping or doing anything at all this time,” said
Seumas.

“He’s not in good humour to-night,” said Brigid, “but I like him.”

“So do I,” said Seumas.

When they went into the house the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath was
very glad to see them, and she baked a cake with currants in it,
and also gave them both stirabout and potatoes; but the Philosopher
did not notice that they had been away at all. He said at last that
“talking was bad wit, that women were always making a fuss, that
children should be fed, but not fattened, and that beds were meant
to be slept in.” The Thin Woman replied “that he was a grisly old
man without bowels, that she did not know what she had married him
for, that he was three times her age, and that no one would believe
what she had to put up with.”


CHAPTER IX

Pursuant to his arrangement with Meehawl MacMurrachu, the
Philosopher sent the children in search of Pan. He gave them the
fullest instructions as to how they should address the Sylvan
Deity, and then, having received the admonishments of the Thin
Woman of Inis Magrath, the children departed in the early morning.

When they reached the clearing in the pine wood, through which the
sun was blazing, they sat down for a little while to rest in the
heat. Birds were continually darting down this leafy shaft, and
diving away into the dark wood. These birds always had something in
their beaks. One would have a worm, or a snail, or a grasshopper,
or a little piece of wool torn off a sheep, or a scrap of cloth,
or a piece of hay; and when they had put these things in a certain
place they flew up the sun-shaft again and looked for something
else to bring home. On seeing the children each of the birds
waggled his wings, and made a particular sound. They said “caw” and
“chip” and “twit” and “tut” and “what” and “pit”; and one, whom the
youngsters liked very much, always said “tit-tittit-tit-tit.” The
children were fond of him because he was so all-of-asudden. They
never knew where he was going to fly next, and they did not believe
he knew himself. He would fly backwards and forwards, and up and
down, and sideways and bawways—all, so to speak, in the one breath.
He did this because he was curious to see what was happening
everywhere, and, as something is always happening everywhere, he
was never able to fly in a straight line for more than the littlest
distance. He was a cowardly bird too, and continually fancied that
some person was going to throw a stone at him from behind a bush,
or a wall, or a tree, and these imaginary dangers tended to make
his journeyings still more wayward and erratic. He never flew where
he wanted to go himself, but only where God directed him, and so he
did not fare at all badly.

The children knew each of the birds by their sounds, and always
said these words to them when they came near. For a little time
they had difficulty in saying the right word to the right bird, and
sometimes said “chip” when the salutation should have been “tut.”
The birds always resented this, and would scold them angrily, but
after a little practice they never made any mistakes at all. There
was one bird, a big, black fellow, who loved to be talked to. He
used to sit on the ground beside the children, and say “caw” as
long as they would repeat it after him. He often wasted a whole
morning in talk, but none of the other birds remained for more than
a few minutes at a time. They were always busy in the morning, but
in the evening they had more leisure, and would stay and chat as
long as the children wanted them. The awkward thing was that in the
evening all the birds wanted to talk at the same moment, so that
the youngsters never knew which of them to answer. Seumas Beg got
out of that difficulty for a while by learning to whistle their
notes, but, even so, they spoke with such rapidity that he could
not by any means keep pace with them. Brigid could only whistle
one note; it was a little flat “whoo” sound, which the birds all
laughed at, and after a few trials she refused to whistle any more.

While they were sitting two rabbits came to play about in the
brush. They ran round and round in a circle, and all their
movements were very quick and twisty. Sometimes they jumped over
each other six or seven times in succession, and every now and then
they sat upright on their hind legs, and washed their faces with
their paws. At other times they picked up a blade of grass, which
they ate with great deliberation, pretending all the time that it
was a complicated banquet of cabbage leaves and lettuce.

While the children were playing with the rabbits an ancient,
stalwart he-goat came prancing through the bracken. He was an
old acquaintance of theirs, and he enjoyed lying beside them to
have his forehead scratched with a piece of sharp stick. His
forehead was hard as rock, and the hair grew there as sparse as
grass does on a wall, or rather the way moss grows on a wall—it
was a mat instead of a crop. His horns were long and very sharp,
and brilliantly polished. On this day the he-goat had two chains
around his neck—one was made of butter-cups and the other was made
of daisies, and the children wondered to each other who it was
could have woven these so carefully. They asked the he-goat this
question, but he only looked at them and did not say a word. The
children liked examining this goat’s eyes; they were very big, and
of the queerest light-gray colour. They had a strange steadfast
look, and had also at times a look of queer, deep intelligence, and
at other times they had a fatherly and benevolent expression, and
at other times again, especially when he looked sidewards, they
had a mischievous, light-and-airy, daring, mocking, inviting and
terrifying look; but he always looked brave and unconcerned. When
the he-goat’s forehead had been scratched as much as he desired
he arose from between the children and went pacing away lightly
through the wood. The children ran after him and each caught hold
of one of his horns, and he ambled and reared between them while
they danced along on his either side singing snatches of bird
songs, and scraps of old tunes which the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath
had learned among the people of the Shee.

In a little time they came to Gort na Cloca Mora, but here
the he-goat did not stop. They went past the big tree of the
Leprecauns, through a broken part of the hedge and into another
rough field. The sun was shining gloriously. There was scarcely a
wind at all to stir the harsh grasses. Far and near was silence
and warmth, an immense, cheerful peace. Across the sky a few light
clouds sailed gently on a blue so vast that the eye failed before
that horizon. A few bees sounded their deep chant, and now and
again a wasp rasped hastily on his journey. Than these there was no
sound of any kind. So peaceful, innocent and safe did everything
appear that it might have been the childhood of the world as it was
of the morning.

The children, still clinging to the friendly goat, came near the
edge of the field, which here sloped more steeply to the mountain
top. Great boulders, slightly covered with lichen and moss, were
strewn about, and around them the bracken and gorse were growing,
and in every crevice of these rocks there were plants whose little,
tight-fisted roots gripped a desperate, adventurous habitation in
a soil scarcely more than half an inch deep. At some time these
rocks had been smitten so fiercely that the solid granite surfaces
had shattered into fragments. At one place a sheer wall of stone,
ragged and battered, looked harshly out from the thin vegetation.
To this rocky wall the he-goat danced. At one place there was a
hole in the wall covered by a thick brush. The goat pushed his way
behind this growth and disappeared. Then the children, curious
to see where he had gone, pushed through also. Behind the bush
they found a high, narrow opening, and when they had rubbed their
legs, which smarted from the stings of nettles, thistles and gorse
prickles, they went into the hole which they thought was a place
the goat had for sleeping in on cold, wet nights. After a few paces
they found the passage was quite comfortably big, and then they saw
a light, and in another moment they were blinking at the god Pan
and Caitilin Ni Murrachu.

Caitilin knew them at once and came forward with welcome.

“O, Seumas Beg,” she cried reproachfully, “how dirty you have let
your feet get. Why don’t you walk in the grassy places? And you,
Brigid, have a right to be ashamed of yourself to have your hands
the way they are. Come over here at once.”

Every child knows that every grown female person in the world
has authority to wash children and to give them food; that is
what grown people were made for, consequently Seumas and Brigid
Beg submitted to the scouring for which Caitilin made instant
preparation. When they were cleaned she pointed to a couple of flat
stones against the wall of the cave and bade them sit down and be
good, and this the children did, fixing their eyes on Pan with the
cheerful gravity and curiosity which good-natured youngsters always
give to a stranger.

Pan, who had been lying on a couch of dried grass, sat up and bent
an equally cheerful regard on the children.

“Shepherd Girl,” said he, “who are those children?”

“They are the children of the Philosophers of Coilla Doraca; the
Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath are
their mothers, and they are decent, poor children, God bless them.”

“What have they come here for?”

“You will have to ask themselves that.”

Pan looked at them smilingly.

“What have you come here for, little children?” said he.

The children questioned one another with their eyes to see which of
them would reply, and then Seumas Beg answered:

“My father sent me to see you, sir, and to say that you were not
doing a good thing in keeping Caitilin Ni Murrachu away from her
own place.”

Brigid Beg turned to Caitilin—

“Your father came to see our father, and he said that he didn’t know
what had become of you at all, and that maybe you were lying flat in
a ditch with the black crows picking at your flesh.”

“And what,” said Pan, “did your father say to that?”

“He told us to come and ask her to go home.”

“Do you love your father, little child?” said Pan.

Brigid Beg thought for a moment. “I don’t know, sir,” she replied.

“He doesn’t mind us at all,” broke in Seumas Beg, “and so we don’t
know whether we love him or not.”

“I like Caitilin,” said Brigid, “and I like you.”

“So do I,” said Seumas.

“I like you also, little children,” said Pan. “Come over here and
sit beside me, and we will talk.”

So the two children went over to Pan and sat down one each side of
him, and he put his arms about them. “Daughter of Murrachu,” said
he, “is there no food in the house for guests?”

“There is a cake of bread, a little goat’s milk and some cheese,”
she replied, and she set about getting these things.

“I never ate cheese,” said Seumas. “Is it good?”

“Surely it is,” replied Pan. “The cheese that is made from goat’s
milk is rather strong, and it is good to be eaten by people who
live in the open air, but not by those who live in houses, for such
people do not have any appetite. They are poor creatures whom I do
not like.”

“I like eating,” said Seumas.

“So do I,” said Pan. “All good people like eating. Every person who
is hungry is a good person, and every person who is not hungry is a
bad person. It is better to be hungry than rich.”

Caitilin having supplied the children with food, seated herself in
front of them. “I don’t think that is right,” said she. “I have
always been hungry, and it was never good.”

“If you had always been full you would like it even less,” he
replied, “because when you are hungry you are alive, and when you
are not hungry you are only half alive.”

“One has to be poor to be hungry,” replied Caitilin. “My father is
poor and gets no good of it but to work from morning to night and
never to stop doing that.”

“It is bad for a wise person to be poor,” said Pan, “and it is bad
for a fool to be rich. A rich fool will think of nothing else at
first but to find a dark house wherein to hide away, and there he
will satisfy his hunger, and he will continue to do that until his
hunger is dead and he is no better than dead but a wise person who
is rich will carefully preserve his appetite. All people who have
been rich for a long time, or who are rich from birth, live a great
deal outside of their houses, and so they are always hungry and
healthy.”

“Poor people have no time to be wise,” said Caitilin.

“They have time to be hungry,” said Pan. “I ask no more of them.”

“My father is very wise,” said Seumas Beg.

“How do you know that, little boy?” said Pan.

“Because he is always talking,” replied Seumas. “Do you always
listen, my dear?”

“No, sir,” said Seumas; “I go to sleep when he talks.”

“That is very clever of you,” said Pan.

“I go to sleep too,” said Brigid.

“It is clever of you also, my darling. Do you go to sleep when your
mother talks?”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “If we went to sleep then our mother would
pinch us and say that we were a bad breed.”

“I think your mother is wise,” said Pan. “What do you like best in
the world, Seumas Beg?”

The boy thought for a moment and replied: “I don’t know, sir.”

Pan also thought for a little time.

“I don’t know what I like best either,” said he. “What do you like
best in the world, Shepherd Girl?”

Caitilin’s eyes were fixed on his.

“I don’t know yet,” she answered slowly.

“May the gods keep you safe from that knowledge,” said Pan gravely.

“Why would you say that?” she replied. “One must find out all
things, and when we find out a thing we know if it is good or bad.”

“That is the beginning of knowledge,” said Pan, “but it is not the
beginning of wisdom.”

“What is the beginning of wisdom?”

“It is carelessness,” replied Pan.

“And what is the end of wisdom?” said she.

“I do not know,” he answered, after a little pause.

“Is it greater carelessness?” she enquired.

“I do not know, I do not know,” said he sharply. “I am tired of
talking,” and, so saying, he turned his face away from them and lay
down on the couch.

Caitilin in great concern hurried the children to the door of the
cave and kissed them good-bye.

“Pan is sick,” said the boy gravely.

“I hope he will be well soon again,” the girl murmured.

“Yes, yes,” said Caitilin, and she ran back quickly to her lord.




BOOK II. THE PHILOSOPHER’S JOURNEY


CHAPTER X

When the children reached home they told the Philosopher-the result
of their visit. He questioned them minutely as to the appearance
of Pan, how he had received them, and what he had said in defence
of his iniquities; but when he found that Pan had not returned any
answer to his message he became very angry. He tried to persuade
his wife to undertake another embassy setting forth his abhorrence
and defiance of the god, but the Thin Woman replied sourly that
she was a respectable married woman, that having been already
bereaved of her wisdom she had no desire to be further curtailed
of her virtue, that a husband would go any length to asperse his
wife’s reputation, and that although she was married to a fool
her self-respect had survived even that calamity. The Philosopher
pointed out that her age, her appearance, and her tongue were
sufficient guarantees of immunity against the machinations of
either Pan or slander, and that he had no personal feelings in the
matter beyond a scientific and benevolent interest in the troubles
of Meehawl MacMurrachu; but this was discounted by his wife as the
malignant and subtle tactics customary to all husbands.

Matters appeared to be thus at a deadlock so far as they were
immediately concerned, and the Philosopher decided that he
would lay the case before Angus Óg and implore his protection
and assistance on behalf of the Clann MacMurrachu. He therefore
directed the Thin Woman to bake him two cakes of bread, and set
about preparations for a journey.

The Thin Woman baked the cakes, and put them in a bag, and early
on the following morning the Philosopher swung this bag over his
shoulder, and went forth on his quest.

[Illustration: He saw Caitilin Ni Murrachu walking a little way in
front with a small vessel in her hand]

When he came to the edge of the pine wood he halted for a few
moments, not being quite certain of his bearings, and then went
forward again in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. It came
into his mind as he crossed the Gort that he ought to call on the
Leprecauns and have a talk with them, but a remembrance of Meehawl
MacMurrachu and the troubles under which he laboured (all directly
to be traced to the Leprecauns) hardened his heart against his
neighbours, so that he passed by the yew tree without any stay. In
a short time he came to the rough, heather-clumped field wherein
the children had found Pan, and as he was proceeding up the hill,
he saw Caitilin Ni Murrachu walking a little way in front with a
small vessel in her hand. The she-goat which she had just milked
was bending again to the herbage, and as Caitilin trod lightly in
front of him the Philosopher closed his eyes in virtuous anger and
opened them again in a not unnatural curiosity, for the girl had no
clothes on. He watched her going behind the brush and disappearing
in the cleft of the rock, and his anger, both with her and Pan,
mastering him he forsook the path of prudence which soared to the
mountain top, and followed that leading to the cave. The sound of
his feet brought Caitilin out hastily, but he pushed her by with a
harsh word. “Hussy,” said he, and he went into the cave where Pan
was.

As he went in he already repented of his harshness and said “The
human body is an aggregation of flesh and sinew, around a central
bony structure. The use of clothing is primarily to protect this
organism from rain and cold, and it may not be regarded as the
banner of morality without danger to this fundamental premise.
If a person does not desire to be so protected who will quarrel
with an honourable liberty? Decency is not clothing but Mind.
Morality is behaviour. Virtue is thought; I have often fancied,”
he continued to Pan, whom he was now confronting, “that the effect
of clothing on mind must be very considerable, and that it must
have a modifying rather than an expanding effect, or, even, an
intensifying as against an exuberant effect. With clothing the
whole environment is immediately affected. The air, which is our
proper medium, is only filtered to our bodies in an abated and
niggardly fashion which can scarcely be as beneficial as the
generous and unintermitted elemental play. The question naturally
arises whether clothing is as unknown to nature as we have fancied?
Viewed as a protective measure against atmospheric rigour we find
that many creatures grow, by their own central impulse, some
kind of exterior panoply which may be regarded as their proper
clothing. Bears, cats, dogs, mice, sheep and beavers are wrapped
in fur, hair, fell, fleece or pelt, so these creatures cannot by
any means be regarded as being naked. Crabs, cockroaches, snails
and cockles have ordered around them a crusty habiliment, wherein
their original nakedness is only to be discovered by force, and
other creatures have similarly provided themselves with some
species of covering. Clothing, therefore, is not an art, but an
instinct, and the fact that man is born naked and does not grow
his clothing upon himself from within but collects it from various
distant and haphazard sources is not any reason to call this
necessity an instinct for decency. These, you will admit, are
weighty reflections and worthy of consideration before we proceed
to the wide and thorny subject of moral and immoral action. Now,
what is virtue?” Pan, who had listened with great courtesy to these
remarks, here broke in on the Philosopher.

“Virtue,” said he, “is the performance of pleasant actions.”

The Philosopher held the statement for a moment on his forefinger.

“And what, then, is vice?” said he.

“It is vicious,” said Pan, “to neglect the performance of pleasant
actions.”

“If this be so,” the other commented, “philosophy has up to the
present been on the wrong track.”

“That is so,” said Pan. “Philosophy is an immoral practice because
it suggests a standard of practice impossible of being followed,
and which, if it could be followed, would lead to the great sin of
sterility.”

“The idea of virtue,” said the Philosopher, with some indignation,
“has animated the noblest intellects of the world.”

“It has not animated them,” replied Pan; “it has hypnotised them so
that they have conceived virtue as repression and self-sacrifice as
an honourable thing instead of the suicide which it is.”

“Indeed,” said the Philosopher; “this is very interesting, and if
it is true the whole conduct of life will have to be very much
simplified.”

“Life is already very simple,” said Pan; “it is to be born and to
die, and in the interval to eat and drink, to dance and sing, to
marry and beget children.”

“But it is simply materialism,” cried the Philosopher.

“Why do you say ‘but’?” replied Pan.

“It is sheer, unredeemed animalism,” continued his visitor.

“It is any name you please to call it,” replied Pan.

“You have proved nothing,” the Philosopher shouted.

“What can be sensed requires no proof.”

“You leave out the new thing,” said the Philosopher. “You leave
out brains. I believe in mind above matter. Thought above emotion.
Spirit above flesh.”

“Of course you do,” said Pan, and he reached for his oaten pipe.

The Philosopher ran to the opening of the passage and thrust
Caitilin aside. “Hussy,” said he fiercely to her, and he darted out.

As he went up the rugged path he could hear the pipes of Pan,
calling and sobbing and making high merriment on the air.


CHAPTER XI

“She does not deserve to be rescued,” said the Philosopher, “but I
will rescue her. Indeed,” he thought a moment later, “she does not
want to be rescued, and, _therefore_, I will rescue her.”

As he went down the road her shapely figure floated before his
eyes as beautiful and simple as an old statue. He wagged his head
angrily at the apparition, but it would not go away. He tried
to concentrate his mind on a deep, philosophical maxim, but her
disturbing image came between him and his thought, blotting out the
latter so completely that a moment after he had stated his aphorism
he could not remember what it had been. Such a condition of mind
was so unusual that it bewildered him.

“Is a mind, then, so unstable,” said he, “that a mere figure, an
animated geometrical arrangement can shake it from its foundations?”

The idea horrified him: he saw civilisation building its temples
over a volcano....

“A puff,” said he, “and it is gone. Beneath all is chaos and red
anarchy, over all a devouring and insistent appetite. Our eyes tell
us what to think about, and our wisdom is no more than a catalogue
of sensual stimuli.”

He would have been in a state of deep dejection were it not that
through his perturbation there bubbled a stream of such amazing
well-being as he had not felt since childhood. Years had toppled
from his shoulders. He left one pound of solid matter behind at
every stride. His very skin grew flexuous, and he found a pleasure
in taking long steps such as he could not have accounted for by
thought. Indeed, thought was the one thing he felt unequal to,
and it was not precisely that he could not think but that he did
not want to. All the importance and authority of his mind seemed
to have faded away, and the activity which had once belonged to
that organ was now transferred to his eyes. He saw, amazedly, the
sunshine bathing the hills and the valleys. A bird in the hedge
held him—beak, head, eyes, legs, and the wings that tapered widely
at angles to the wind. For the first time in his life he really
saw a bird, and one minute after it had flown away he could have
reproduced its strident note. With every step along the curving
road the landscape was changing. He saw and noted it almost in an
ecstasy. A sharp hill jutted out into the road, it dissolved into a
sloping meadow, rolled down into a valley and then climbed easily
and peacefully into a hill again. On this side a clump of trees
nodded together in the friendliest fashion. Yonder a solitary tree,
well-grown and clean, was contented with its own bright company. A
bush crouched tightly on the ground as though, at a word, it would
scamper from its place and chase rabbits across the sward with
shouts and laughter. Great spaces of sunshine were everywhere, and
everywhere there were deep wells of shadow; and the one did not
seem more beautiful than the other. That sunshine! Oh, the glory
of it, the goodness and bravery of it, how broadly and grandly
it shone, without stint, without care; he saw its measureless
generosity and gloried in it as though himself had been the flinger
of that largesse. And was he not? Did the sunlight not stream from
his head and life from his finger-tips? Surely the well-being that
was in him did bubble out to an activity beyond the universe.
Thought! Oh! the petty thing! but motion! emotion! these were the
realities. To feel, to do, to stride forward in elation chanting a
paean of triumphant life!

After a time he felt hungry, and thrusting his hand into his wallet
he broke off a piece of one of his cakes and looked about for a
place where he might happily eat it. By the side of the road there
was a well; just a little corner filled with water. Over it was a
rough stone coping, and around, hugging it on three sides almost
from sight, were thick, quiet bushes. He would not have noticed the
well at all but for a thin stream, the breadth of two hands, which
tiptoed away from it through a field. By this well he sat down and
scooped the water in his hand and it tasted good.

He was eating his cake when a sound touched his ear from some
distance, and shortly a woman came down the path carrying a vessel
in her hand to draw water.

She was a big, comely woman, and she walked as one who had no
misfortunes and no misgivings. When she saw the Philosopher sitting
by the well she halted a moment in surprise and then came forward
with a good-humoured smile.

“Good morrow to you, sir,” said she.

“Good morrow to you too, ma’am,” replied the Philosopher. “Sit down
beside me here and eat some of my cake.”

“Why wouldn’t I, indeed,” said the woman, and she did sit beside
him.

The Philosopher cracked a large piece off his cake and gave it to
her and she ate some.

“There’s a taste on that cake,” said she. “Who made it?”

“My wife did,” he replied.

“Well, now!” said she, looking at him. “Do you know, you don’t look
a bit like a married man.”

“No?” said the Philosopher.

“Not a bit. A married man looks comfortable and settled: he looks
finished, if you understand me, and a bachelor looks unsettled and
funny, and he always wants to be running round seeing things. I’d
know a married man from a bachelor any day.”

“How would you know that?” said the Philosopher.

“Easily,” said she, with a nod. “It’s the way they look at a woman.
A married man looks at you quietly as if he knew all about you.
There isn’t any strangeness about him with a woman at all; but a
bachelor man looks at you very sharp and looks away and then looks
back again, the way you’d know he was thinking about you and didn’t
know what you were thinking about him; and so they are always
strange, and that’s why women like them.”

“Why!” said the Philosopher, astonished, “do women like bachelors
better than married men?”

“Of course they do,” she replied heartily. “They wouldn’t look at
the side of the road a married man was on if there was a bachelor
man on the other side.”

“This,” said the Philosopher earnestly, “is very interesting.”

“And the queer thing is,” she continued, “that when I came up the
road and saw you I said to myself ‘it’s a bachelor man.’ How long
have you been married, now?”

“I don’t know,” said the Philosopher. “Maybe it’s ten years.”

“And how many children would you have, mister?”

“Two,” he replied, and then corrected himself, “No, I have only
one.”

“Is the other one dead?”

“I never had more than one.”

“Ten years married and only one child,” said she. “Why, man dear,
you’re not a married man. What were you doing at all, at all! I
wouldn’t like to be telling you the children I have living and
dead. But what I say is that married or not you’re a bachelor man.
I knew it the minute I looked at you. What sort of a woman is
herself?”

“She’s a thin sort of woman,” cried the Philosopher, biting into
his cake.

“Is she now?”

“And,” the Philosopher continued, “the reason I talked to you is
because you are a fat woman.”

“I am not fat,” was her angry response.

“You are fat,” insisted the Philosopher, “and that’s the reason I
like you.”

“Oh, if you mean it that way . . .” she chuckled.

“I think,” he continued, looking at her admiringly, “that women
ought to be fat.”

“Tell you the truth,” said she eagerly, “I think that myself. I
never met a thin woman but she was a sour one, and I never met a
fat man but he was a fool. Fat women and thin men; it’s nature,”
said she.

“It is,” said he, and he leaned forward and kissed her eye.

“Oh, you villain!” said the woman, putting out her hands against
him.

The Philosopher drew back abashed. “Forgive me,” he began, “if I
have alarmed your virtue—”

“It’s the married man’s word,” said she, rising hastily: “now I
know you; but there’s a lot of the bachelor in you all the same,
God help you! I’m going home.” And, so saying, she dipped her
vessel in the well and turned away.

“Maybe,” said the Philosopher, “I ought to wait until your husband
comes home and ask his forgiveness for the wrong I’ve done him.”

The woman turned round on him and each of her eyes was as big as a
plate.

“What do you say?” said she. “Follow me if you dare and I’ll set
the dog on you; I will so,” and she strode viciously homewards.

After a moment’s hesitation the Philosopher took his own path
across the hill.

The day was now well advanced, and as he trudged forward the happy
quietude of his surroundings stole into his heart again and so
toned down his recollection of the fat woman that in a little time
she was no more than a pleasant and curious memory. His mind was
exercised superficially, not in thinking, but in wondering how it
was he had come to kiss a strange woman. He said to himself that
such conduct was not right; but this statement was no more than the
automatic working of a mind long exercised in the distinctions of
right and wrong, for, almost in the same breath, he assured himself
that what he had done did not matter in the least. His opinions
were undergoing a curious change. Right and wrong were meeting and
blending together so closely that it became difficult to dissever
them, and the obloquy attaching to the one seemed out of proportion
altogether to its importance, while the other by no means justified
the eulogy wherewith it was connected. Was there any immediate or
even distant, effect on life caused by evil which was not instantly
swung into equipoise by goodness? But these slender reflections
troubled him only for a little time. He had little desire for any
introspective quarryings. To feel so well was sufficient in itself.
Why should thought be so apparent to us, so insistent? We do not
know we have digestive or circulatory organs until these go out of
order, and then the knowledge torments us. Should not the labours
of a healthy brain be equally subterranean and equally competent?
Why have we to think aloud and travel laboriously from syllogism
to ergo, chary of our conclusions and distrustful of our premises?
Thought, as we know it, is a disease and no more. The healthy
mentality should register its convictions and not its labours. Our
ears should not hear the clamour of its doubts nor be forced to
listen to the pro and con wherewith we are eternally badgered and
perplexed.

The road was winding like a ribbon in and out of the mountains. On
either side there were hedges and bushes,—little, stiff trees which
held their foliage in their hands and dared the winds snatch a leaf
from that grip. The hills were swelling and sinking, folding and
soaring on every view. Now the silence was startled by the falling
tinkle of a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or
a goat’s call trembled from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there
was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small winged life.
Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient,
stamping vigorously as he trod, almost snorting like a bull in the
pride of successful energy. Coming down the slope he braced back
and let his legs loose to do as they pleased. Didn’t they know
their business—Good luck to them, and away!

As he walked along he saw an old woman hobbling in front of him.
She was leaning on a stick and her hand was red and swollen with
rheumatism. She hobbled by reason of the fact that there were
stones in her shapeless boots. She was draped in the sorriest
miscellaneous rags that could be imagined, and these were knotted
together so intricately that her clothing, having once been
attached to her body, could never again be detached from it. As she
walked she was mumbling and grumbling to herself, so that her mouth
moved round and round in an india-rubber fashion.

The Philosopher soon caught up on her.

“Good morrow, ma’am,” said he.

But she did not hear him: she seemed to be listening to the pain
which the stones in her boots gave her.

“Good morrow, ma’am,” said the Philosopher again.

This time she heard him and replied, turning her old, bleared eyes
slowly in his direction—

“Good morrow to yourself, sir,” said she, and the Philosopher
thought her old face was a very kindly one.

“What is it that is wrong with you, ma’am?” said he.

“It’s my boots, sir,” she replied. “Full of stones they are, the
way I can hardly walk at all, God help me!”

“Why don’t you shake them out?”

“Ah, sure, I couldn’t be bothered, sir, for there are so many holes
in the boots that more would get in before I could take two steps,
and an old woman can’t be always fidgeting, God help her!”

There was a little house on one side of the road, and when the old
woman saw this place she brightened up a little.

“Do you know who lives in that house?” said the Philosopher.

“I do not,” she replied, “but it’s a real nice house with clean
windows and a shiny knocker on the door, and smoke in the chimney—I
wonder would herself give me a cup of tea now if I asked her—A poor
old woman walking the roads on a stick! and maybe a bit of meat, or
an egg perhaps....”

“You could ask,” suggested the Philosopher gently.

“Maybe I will, too,” said she, and she sat down by the road just
outside the house and the Philosopher also sat down.

A little puppy dog came from behind the house and approached them
cautiously. Its intentions were friendly but it had already found
that amicable advances are sometimes indifferently received, for,
as it drew near, it wagged its dubious tail and rolled humbly on
the ground. But very soon the dog discovered that here there was no
evil, for it trotted over to the old woman, and without any more
preparation jumped into her lap.

The old woman grinned at the dog “Ah, you thing you!” said she,
and she gave it her finger to bite. The delighted puppy chewed her
bony finger, and then instituted a mimic warfare against a piece of
rag that fluttered from her breast, barking and growling in joyous
excitement, while the old woman fondled and hugged it.

The door of the house opposite opened quickly, and a woman with a
frost-bitten face came out.

“Leave that dog down,” said she.

The old woman grinned humbly at her.

“Sure, ma’am, I wouldn’t hurt the little dog, the thing!”

“Put down that dog,” said the woman, “and go about your business—the
likes of you ought to be arrested.”

A man in shirt sleeves appeared behind her, and at him the old
woman grinned even more humbly.

“Let me sit here for a while and play with the little dog, sir,”
said she; “sure the roads do be lonesome—”

The man stalked close and grabbed the dog by the scruff of the
neck. It hung between his finger and thumb with its tail tucked
between its legs and its eyes screwed round on one side in
amazement.

“Be off with you out of that, you old strap!” said the man in a
terrible voice.

So the old woman rose painfully to her feet again, and as she went
hobbling along the dusty road she began to cry.

The Philosopher also arose; he was very indignant but did not
know what to do. A singular lassitude also prevented him from
interfering. As they paced along his companion began mumbling,
more to herself than to him “Ah, God be with me,” said she, “an
old woman on a stick, that hasn’t a place in the wide world to go
to or a neighbour itself.... I wish I could get a cup of tea, so I
do. I wish to God I could get a cup of tea.... Me sitting down in
my own little house, with the white tablecloth on the table, and
the butter in the dish, and the strong, red tea in the tea-cup;
and me pouring cream into it, and, maybe, telling the children
not to be wasting the sugar, the things! and himself saying he’d
got to mow the big field to-day, or that the red cow was going to
calve, the poor thing, and that if the boys went to school, who was
going to weed the turnips—and me sitting drinking my strong cup of
tea, and telling him where that old trapesing hen was laying....
Ah, God be with me! an old creature hobbling along the roads on
a stick. I wish I was a young girl again, so I do, and himself
coming courting me, and him saying that I was a real nice little
girl surely, and that nothing would make him happy or easy at all
but me to be loving him.—Ah, the kind man that he was, to be sure,
the kind, decent man.... And Sorca Reilly to be trying to get
him from me, and Kate Finnegan with her bold eyes looking after
him in the Chapel; and him to be saying that along with me they
were only a pair of old nanny goats.... And then me to be getting
married and going home to my own little house with my man—ah, God
be with me! and him kissing me, and laughing, and frightening me
with his goings-on. Ah, the kind man, with his soft eyes, and his
nice voice, and his jokes and laughing, and him thinking the world
and all of me—ay, indeed.... And the neighbours to be coming in
and sitting round the fire in the night time, putting the world
through each other, and talking about France and Russia and them
other queer places, and him holding up the discourse like a learned
man, and them all listening to him and nodding their heads at each
other, and wondering at his education and all: or, maybe, the
neighbours to be singing, or him making me sing the Coulin, and him
to be proud of me . . . and then him to be killed on me with a cold
on his chest.... Ah, then, God be with me, a lone, old creature on
a stick, and the sun shining into her eyes and she thirsty—I wish
I had a cup of tea, so I do. I wish to God I had a cup of tea and
a bit of meat . . . or, maybe, an egg. A nice fresh egg laid by
the speckeldy hen that used to be giving me all the trouble, the
thing!... Sixteen hens I had, and they were the ones for laying,
surely.... It’s the queer world, so it is, the queer world—and the
things that do happen for no reason at all.... Ah, God be with me!
I wish there weren’t stones in my boots, so I do, and I wish to
God I had a cup of tea and a fresh egg. Ah, glory be, my old legs
are getting tireder every day, so they are. Wisha, one time—when
himself was in it—I could go about the house all day long, cleaning
the place, and feeding the pigs, and the hens and all, and then
dance half the night, so I could: and himself proud of me....”

The old woman turned up a little rambling road and went on still
talking to herself, and the Philosopher watched her go up that
road for a long time. He was very glad she had gone away, and as
he tramped forward he banished her sad image so that in a little
time he was happy again. The sun was still shining, the birds were
flying on every side, and the wide hillside above him smiled gaily.

A small, narrow road cut at right angles into his path, and as he
approached this he heard the bustle and movement of a host, the
trample of feet, the rolling and creaking of wheels, and the long
unwearied drone of voices. In a few minutes he came abreast of this
small road, and saw an ass and cart piled with pots and pans, and
walking beside this there were two men and a woman. The men and the
woman were talking together loudly, even fiercely, and the ass was
drawing his cart along the road without requiring assistance or
direction. While there was a road he walked on it: when he might
come to a cross road he would turn to the right: when a man said
“whoh” he would stop: when he said “hike” he would go backwards,
and when he said “yep” he would go on again. That was life, and if
one questioned it, one was hit with a stick, or a boot, or a lump
of rock: if one continued walking nothing happened, and that was
happiness.

The Philosopher saluted this cavalcade.

“God be with you,” said he.

“God and Mary be with you,” said the first man.

“God, and Mary, and Patrick be with you,” said the second man.

“God, and Mary, and Patrick, and Brigid be with you,” said the
woman.

The ass, however, did not say a thing. As the word “whoh” had not
entered into the conversation he knew it was none of his business,
and so he turned to the right on the new path and continued his
journey.

“Where are you going to, stranger,” said the first man.

“I am going to visit Angus Óg,” replied the Philosopher.

The man gave him a quick look.

“Well,” said he, “that’s the queerest story I ever heard. Listen
here,” he called to the others, “this man is looking for Angus Óg.”

The other man and woman came closer.

“What would you be wanting with Angus Óg, Mister Honey?” said the
woman.

“Oh,” replied the Philosopher, “it’s a particular thing, a family
matter.”

There was silence for a few minutes, and they all stepped onwards
behind the ass and cart.

“How do you know where to look for himself?” said the first man
again: “maybe you got the place where he lives written down in an
old book or on a carved stone?”

“Or did you find the staff of Amergin or of Ossian in a bog and it
written from the top to the bottom with signs?” said the second man.

“No,” said the Philosopher, “it isn’t that way you’d go visiting a
god. What you do is, you go out from your house and walk straight
away in any direction with your shadow behind you so long as it
is towards a mountain, for the gods will not stay in a valley
or a level plain, but only in high places; and then, if the god
wants you to see him, you will go to his rath as direct as if you
knew where it was, for he will be leading you with an airy thread
reaching from his own place to wherever you are, and if he doesn’t
want to see you, you will never find out where he is, not if you
were to walk for a year or twenty years.”

“How do you know he wants to see you?” said the second man.

“Why wouldn’t he want?” said the Philosopher.

“Maybe, Mister Honey,” said the woman, “you are a holy sort of a
man that a god would like well.”

“Why would I be that?” said the Philosopher. “The gods like a man
whether he’s holy or not if he’s only decent.”

“Ah, well, there’s plenty of that sort,” said the first man. “What
do you happen to have in your bag, stranger?”

“Nothing,” replied the Philosopher, “but a cake and a half that was
baked for my journey.”

“Give me a bit of your cake, Mister Honey,” said the woman. “I like
to have a taste of everybody’s cake.”

“I will, and welcome,” said the Philosopher.

“You may as well give us all a bit while you are about it,” said
the second man. “That woman hasn’t got all the hunger of the world.”

“Why not,” said the Philosopher, and he divided the cake.

“There’s a sup of water up yonder,” said the first man, “and it
will do to moisten the cake—Whoh, you devil,” he roared at the ass,
and the ass stood stock still on the minute.

There was a thin fringe of grass along the road near a wall, and
towards this the ass began to edge very gently.

“Hike, you beast, you,” shouted the man, and the ass at once hiked,
but he did it in a way that brought him close to the grass. The
first man took a tin can out of the cart and climbed over the
little wall for water. Before he went he gave the ass three kicks
on the nose, but the ass did not say a word, he only hiked still
more which brought him directly on to the grass, and when the man
climbed over the wall the ass commenced to crop the grass. There
was a spider sitting on a hot stone in the grass. He had a small
body and wide legs, and he wasn’t doing anything.

“Does anybody ever kick you in the nose?” said the ass to him.

“Ay does there,” said the spider; “you and your like that are
always walking on me, or lying down on me, or running over me with
the wheels of a cart.”

“Well, why don’t you stay on the wall?” said the ass.

“Sure, my wife is there,” replied the spider.

“What’s the harm in that?” said the ass.

“She’d eat me,” said the spider, “and, anyhow, the competition on
the wall is dreadful, and the flies are getting wiser and timider
every season. Have you got a wife yourself, now?”

“I have not,” said the ass; “I wish I had.”

“You like your wife for the first while,” said the spider, “and
after that you hate her.”

“If I had the first while I’d chance the second while,” replied the
ass.

“It’s bachelor’s talk,” said the spider; “all the same, we can’t
keep away from them,” and so saying he began to move all his legs
at once in the direction of the wall. “You can only die once,” said
he.

“If your wife was an ass she wouldn’t eat you,” said the ass.

“She’d be doing something else then,” replied the spider, and he
climbed up the wall.

The first man came back with the can of water and they sat down on
the grass and ate the cake and drank the water. All the time the
woman kept her eyes fixed on the Philosopher.

“Mister Honey,” said she, “I think you met us just at the right
moment.”

The other two men sat upright and looked at each other and then
with equal intentness they looked at the woman.

“Why do you say that?” said the Philosopher.

“We were having a great argument along the road, and if we were to
be talking from now to the day of doom that argument would never be
finished.”

“It must have been a great argument. Was it about predestination or
where consciousness comes from?”

“It was not; it was which of these two men was to marry me.”

“That’s not a great argument,” said the Philosopher.

“Isn’t it,” said the woman. “For seven days and six nights we
didn’t talk about anything else, and that’s a great argument or I’d
like to know what is.”

“But where is the trouble, ma’am?” said the Philosopher.

“It’s this,” she replied, “that I can’t make up my mind which of
the men I’ll take, for I like one as well as the other and better,
and I’d as soon have one as the other and rather.”

“It’s a hard case,” said the Philosopher.

“It is,” said the woman, “and I’m sick and sorry with the trouble
of it.”

“And why did you say that I had come up in a good minute?”

“Because, Mister Honey, when a woman has two men to choose from she
doesn’t know what to do, for two men always become like brothers
so that you wouldn’t know which of them was which: there isn’t any
more difference between two men than there is between a couple
of hares. But when there’s three men to choose from, there’s no
trouble at all; and so I say that it’s yourself I’ll marry this
night and no one else—and let you two men be sitting quiet in your
places, for I’m telling you what I’ll do and that’s the end of it.”

“I’ll give you my word,” said the first man, “that I’m just as glad
as you are to have it over and done with.”

“Moidered I was,” said the second man, “with the whole argument,
and the this and that of it, and you not able to say a word
but—maybe I will and maybe I won’t, and this is true and that is
true, and why not to me and why not to him—I’ll get a sleep this
night.”

The Philosopher was perplexed.

“You cannot marry me, ma’am,” said he, “because I’m married
already.”

The woman turned round on him angrily.

“Don’t be making any argument with me now,” said she, “for I won’t
stand it.”

The first man looked fiercely at the Philosopher, and then motioned
to his companion.

“Give that man a clout in the jaw,” said he.

The second man was preparing to do this when the woman intervened
angrily.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” said she, “or it’ll be the worse for
you. I’m well able to take care of my own husband,” and she drew
nearer and sat between the Philosopher and the men.

[Illustration: At that moment the Philosopher’s cake lost all its
savour]

At that moment the Philosopher’s cake lost all its savour, and he
packed the remnant into his wallet. They all sat silently looking
at their feet and thinking each one according to his nature. The
Philosopher’s mind, which for the past day had been in eclipse,
stirred faintly to meet these new circumstances, but without much
result. There was a flutter at his heart which was terrifying,
but not unpleasant. Quickening through his apprehension was an
expectancy which stirred his pulses into speed. So rapidly did his
blood flow, so quickly were an hundred impressions visualized and
recorded, so violent was the surface movement of his brain that he
did not realize he was unable to think and that he was only seeing
and feeling.

The first man stood up.

“The night will be coming on soon,” said he, “and we had better
be walking on if we want to get a good place to sleep. Yep, you
devil,” he roared at the ass, and the ass began to move almost
before he lifted his head from the grass. The two men walked one on
either side of the cart, and the woman and the Philosopher walked
behind at the tail-board.

“If you were feeling tired, or anything like that, Mister Honey,”
said the woman, “you could climb up into the little cart, and
nobody would say a word to you, for I can see that you are not used
to travelling.”

“I am not indeed, ma’am,” he replied; “this is the first time I
ever came on a journey, and if it wasn’t for Angus Óg I wouldn’t
put a foot out of my own place for ever.”

“Put Angus Óg out of your head, my dear,” she replied, “for what
would the likes of you and me be saying to a god. He might put a
curse on us would sink us into the ground or burn us up like a grip
of straw. Be contented now, I’m saying, for if there is a woman in
the world who knows all things I am that woman myself, and if you
tell your trouble to me I’ll tell you the thing to do just as good
as Angus himself, and better perhaps.”

“That is very interesting,” said the Philosopher. “What kind of
things do you know best?”

“If you were to ask one of them two men walking beside the ass
they’d tell you plenty of things they saw me do when they could
do nothing themselves. When there wasn’t a road to take anywhere
I showed them a road, and when there wasn’t a bit of food in the
world I gave them food, and when they were bet to the last I put
shillings in their hands, and that’s the reason they wanted to
marry me.”

“Do you call that kind of thing wisdom?” said the Philosopher.

“Why wouldn’t I?” said she. “Isn’t it wisdom to go through the
world without fear and not to be hungry in a hungry hour?”

“I suppose it is,” he replied, “but I never thought of it that way
myself.”

“And what would you call wisdom?”

“I couldn’t rightly say now,” he replied, “but I think it was not
to mind about the world, and not to care whether you were hungry or
not, and not to live in the world at all but only in your own head,
for the world is a tyrannous place. You have to raise yourself
above things instead of letting things raise themselves above you.
We must not be slaves to each other, and we must not be slaves to
our necessities either. That is the problem of existence. There
is no dignity in life at all if hunger can shout ‘stop’ at every
turn of the road and the day’s journey is measured by the distance
between one sleep and the next sleep. Life is all slavery, and
Nature is driving us with the whips of appetite and weariness; but
when a slave rebels he ceases to be a slave, and when we are too
hungry to live we can die and have our laugh. I believe that Nature
is just as alive as we are, and that she is as much frightened of
us as we are of her, and, mind you this, mankind has declared war
against Nature and we will win. She does not understand yet that
her geologic periods won’t do any longer, and that while she is
pattering along the line of least resistance we are going to travel
fast and far until we find her, and then, being a female, she is
bound to give in when she is challenged.”

“It’s good talk,” said the woman, “but it’s foolishness. Women
never give in unless they get what they want, and where’s the harm
to them then? You have to live in the world, my dear, whether you
like it or not, and, believe me now, that there isn’t any wisdom
but to keep clear of the hunger, for if that gets near enough it
will make a hare of you. Sure, listen to reason now like a good
man. What is Nature at all but a word that learned men have made
to talk about. There’s clay and gods and men, and they are good
friends enough.”

The sun had long since gone down, and the grey evening was bowing
over the land, hiding the mountain peaks, and putting a shadow
round the scattered bushes and the wide clumps of heather.

“I know a place up here where we can stop for the night,” said she,
“and there’s a little shebeen round the bend of the road where we
can get anything we want.”

At the word “whoh” the ass stopped and one of the men took the
harness off him. When he was unyoked the man gave him two kicks:
“Be off with you, you devil, and see if you can get anything to
eat,” he roared. The ass trotted a few paces off and searched about
until he found some grass. He ate this, and when he had eaten as
much as he wanted he returned and lay down under a wall. He lay for
a long time looking in the one direction, and at last he put his
head down and went to sleep. While he was sleeping he kept one ear
up and the other ear down for about twenty minutes, and then he put
the first ear down and the other one up, and he kept on doing this
all the night. If he had anything to lose you wouldn’t mind him
setting up sentries, but he hadn’t a thing in the world except his
skin and his bones, and no one would be bothered stealing them.

One of the men took a long bottle out of the cart and walked up
the road with it. The other man lifted out a tin bucket which was
punched all over with jagged holes. Then he took out some sods of
turf and lumps of wood and he put these in the bucket, and in a few
minutes he had a very nice fire lit. A pot of water was put on to
boil, and the woman cut up a great lump of bacon which she put into
the pot. She had eight eggs in a place in the cart, and a flat loaf
of bread, and some cold boiled potatoes, and she spread her apron
on the ground and arranged these things on it.

The other man came down the road again with his big bottle filled
with porter, and he put this in a safe place. Then they emptied
everything out of the cart and hoisted it over the little wall.
They turned the cart on one side and pulled it near to the fire,
and they all sat inside the cart and ate their supper. When supper
was done they lit their pipes, and the woman lit a pipe also. The
bottle of porter was brought forward, and they took drinks in turn
out of the bottle, and smoked their pipes, and talked.

There was no moon that night, and no stars, so that just beyond the
fire there was a thick darkness which one would not like to look
at, it was so cold and empty. While talking they all kept their
eyes fixed on the red fire, or watched the smoke from their pipes
drifting and curling away against the blackness, and disappearing
as suddenly as lightning.

“I wonder,” said the first man, “what it was gave you the idea
of marrying this man instead of myself or my comrade, for we are
young, hardy men, and he is getting old, God help him!”

“Aye, indeed,” said the second man; “he’s as grey as a badger, and
there’s no flesh on his bones.”

“You have a right to ask that,” said she, “and I’ll tell you why I
didn’t marry either of you. You are only a pair of tinkers going
from one place to another, and not knowing anything at all of fine
things; but himself was walking along the road looking for strange,
high adventures, and it’s a man like that a woman would be wishing
to marry if he was twice as old as he is. When did either of you go
out in the daylight looking for a god and you not caring what might
happen to you or where you went?”

“What I’m thinking,” said the second man, “is that if you leave the
gods alone they’ll leave you alone. It’s no trouble to them to do
whatever is right themselves, and what call would men like us have
to go mixing or meddling with their high affairs?”

“I thought all along that you were a timid man,” said she, “and
now I know it.” She turned again to the Philosopher—“Take off your
boots, Mister Honey, the way you’ll rest easy, and I’ll be making
down a soft bed for you in the cart.”

In order to take off his boots the Philosopher had to stand up, for
in the cart they were too cramped for freedom. He moved backwards
a space from the fire and took off his boots. He could see the
woman stretching sacks and clothes inside the cart, and the two men
smoking quietly and handing the big bottle from one to the other.
Then in his stockinged feet he stepped a little farther from the
fire, and, after another look, he turned and walked quietly away
into the blackness. In a few minutes he heard a shout from behind
him, and then a number of shouts and then these died away into a
plaintive murmur of voices, and next he was alone in the greatest
darkness he had ever known.

He put on his boots and walked onwards. He had no idea where the
road lay, and every moment he stumbled into a patch of heather or
prickly furze. The ground was very uneven with unexpected mounds
and deep hollows: here and there were water-soaked, soggy places,
and into these cold ruins he sank ankle deep. There was no longer
an earth or a sky, but only a black void and a thin wind and a
fierce silence which seemed to listen to him as he went. Out of
that silence a thundering laugh might boom at an instant and stop
again while he stood appalled in the blind vacancy.

The hill began to grow more steep and rocks were lying everywhere
in his path. He could not see an inch in front, and so he went with
his hands out-stretched like a blind man who stumbles painfully
along. After a time he was nearly worn out with cold and weariness,
but he dared not sit down anywhere; the darkness was so intense
that it frightened him, and the overwhelming, crafty silence
frightened him also.

At last, and at a great distance, he saw a flickering, waving
light, and he went towards this through drifts of heather, and over
piled rocks and sodden bogland. When he came to the light he saw it
was a torch of thick branches, the flame whereof blew hither and
thither on the wind. The torch was fastened against a great cliff
of granite by an iron band. At one side there was a dark opening
in the rock, so he said: “I will go in there and sleep until the
morning comes,” and he went in. At a very short distance the cleft
turned again to the right, and here there was another torch fixed.
When he turned this corner he stood for an instant in speechless
astonishment, and then he covered his face and bowed down upon the
ground.




BOOK III. THE TWO GODS


CHAPTER XII

Caitilin Ni Murrachu was sitting alone in the little cave behind
Gort na Cloca Mora. Her companion had gone out as was his custom
to walk in the sunny morning and to sound his pipe in desolate,
green spaces whence, perhaps, the wanderer of his desire might hear
the guiding sweetness. As she sat she was thinking. The last few
days had awakened her body, and had also awakened her mind, for
with the one awakening comes the other. The despondency which had
touched her previously when tending her father’s cattle came to her
again, but recognizably now. She knew the thing which the wind had
whispered in the sloping field and for which she had no name—it was
Happiness. Faintly she shadowed it forth, but yet she could not see
it. It was only a pearl-pale wraith, almost formless, too tenuous
to be touched by her hands, and too aloof to be spoken to. Pan had
told her that he was the giver of happiness, but he had given her
only unrest and fever and a longing which could not be satisfied.
Again there was a want, and she could not formulate, or even
realize it with any closeness. Her new-born Thought had promised
everything, even as Pan, and it had given—she could not say that
it had given her nothing or anything. Its limits were too quickly
divinable. She had found the Tree of Knowledge, but about on every
side a great wall soared blackly enclosing her in from the Tree of
Life—a wall which her thought was unable to surmount even while
instinct urged that it must topple before her advance; but instinct
may not advance when thought has schooled it in the science of
unbelief; and this wall will not be conquered until Thought and
Instinct are wed, and the first son of that bridal will be called
The Scaler of the Wall.

So, after the quiet weariness of ignorance, the unquiet weariness
of thought had fallen upon her. That travail of mind which, through
countless generations, has throed to the birth of an ecstasy, the
prophecy which humanity has sworn must be fulfilled, seeing through
whatever mists and doubtings the vision of a gaiety wherein the
innocence of the morning will not any longer be strange to our
maturity.

[Illustration: A swift shadow darkened the passage]

While she was so thinking Pan returned, a little disheartened
that he had found no person to listen to his pipings. He had been
seated but a little time when suddenly, from without, a chorus of
birds burst into joyous singing. Limpid and liquid cadenzas, mellow
flutings, and the sweet treble of infancy met and danced and piped
in the airy soundings. A round, soft tenderness of song rose and
fell, broadened and soared, and then the high flight was snatched,
eddied a moment, and was borne away to a more slender and wonderful
loftiness, until, from afar, that thrilling song turned on the very
apex of sweetness, dipped steeply and flashed its joyous return
to the exultations of its mates below, rolling an ecstasy of song
which for one moment gladdened the whole world and the sad people
who moved thereon; then the singing ceased as suddenly as it began,
a swift shadow darkened the passage, and Angus Óg came into the
cave.

Caitilin sprang from her seat Frighted, and Pan also made a half
movement towards rising, but instantly sank back again to his
negligent, easy posture.

The god was slender and as swift as a wind. His hair swung about
his face like golden blossoms. His eyes were mild and dancing and
his lips smiled with quiet sweetness. About his head there flew
perpetually a ring of singing birds, and when he spoke his voice
came sweetly from a centre of sweetness.

“Health to you, daughter of Murrachu,” said he, and he sat down.

“I do not know you, sir,” the terrified girl whispered.

“I cannot be known until I make myself known,” he replied. “I am
called Infinite Joy, O daughter of Murrachu, and I am called Love.”

The girl gazed doubtfully from one to the other.

Pan looked up from his pipes.

“I also am called Love,” said he gently, “and I am called Joy.”

Angus Óg looked for the first time at Pan.

“Singer of the Vine,” said he, “I know your names-they are Desire
and Fever and Lust and Death. Why have you come from your own place
to spy upon my pastures and my quiet fields?”

Pan replied mildly.

“The mortal gods move by the Immortal Will, and, therefore, I am
here.”

“And I am here,” said Angus.

“Give me a sign,” said Pan, “that I must go.”

Angus Óg lifted his hand and from without there came again the
triumphant music of the birds.

“It is a sign,” said he, “the voice of Dana speaking in the air,”
and, saying so, he made obeisance to the great mother.

Pan lifted his hand, and from afar there came the lowing of the
cattle and the thin voices of the goats.

“It is a sign,” said he, “the voice of Demeter speaking from the
earth,” and he also bowed deeply to the mother of the world.

Again Angus Óg lifted his hand, and in it there appeared a spear,
bright and very terrible.

But Pan only said, “Can a spear divine the Eternal Will?” and Angus
Óg put his weapon aside, and he said: “The girl will choose between
us, for the Divine Mood shines in the heart of man.”

Then Caitilin Ni Murrachu came forward and sat between the gods,
but Pan stretched out his hand and drew her to him, so that she sat
resting against his shoulder and his arm was about her body.

“We will speak the truth to this girl,” said Angus Óg.

“Can the gods speak otherwise?” said Pan, and he laughed with
delight.

“It is the difference between us,” replied Angus Óg. “She will
judge.”

“Shepherd Girl,” said Pan, pressing her with his arm, “you will
judge between us. Do you know what is the greatest thing in the
world?—because it is of that you will have to judge.”

“I have heard,” the girl replied, “two things called the greatest
things. You,” she continued to Pan, “said it was Hunger, and long
ago my father said that Commonsense was the greatest thing in the
world.”

“I have not told you,” said Angus Óg, “what I consider is the
greatest thing in the world.”

“It is your right to speak,” said Pan.

“The greatest thing in the world,” said Angus Óg, “is the Divine
Imagination.”

“Now,” said Pan, “we know all the greatest things and we can talk
of them.”

“The daughter of Murrachu,” continued Angus Óg, “has told us what
you think and what her father thinks, but she has not told us what
she thinks herself. Tell us, Caitilin Ni Murrachu, what you think
is the greatest thing in the world.”

So Caitilin Ni Murrachu thought for a few moments and then replied
timidly.

“I think that Happiness is the greatest thing in the world,” said
she.

Hearing this they sat in silence for a little time, and then Angus
Óg spoke again “The Divine Imagination may only be known through
the thoughts of His creatures. A man has said Commonsense and a
woman has said Happiness are the greatest things in the world.
These things are male and female, for Commonsense is Thought and
Happiness is Emotion, and until they embrace in Love the will
of Immensity cannot be fruitful. For, behold, there has been no
marriage of humanity since time began. Men have but coupled with
their own shadows. The desire that sprang from their heads they
pursued, and no man has yet known the love of a woman. And women
have mated with the shadows of their own hearts, thinking fondly
that the arms of men were about them. I saw my son dancing with
an Idea, and I said to him, ‘With what do you dance, my son?’ and
he replied, ‘I make merry with the wife of my affection,’ and
truly she was shaped as a woman is shaped, but it was an Idea he
danced with and not a woman. And presently he went away to his
labours, and then his Idea arose and her humanity came upon her so
that she was clothed with beauty and terror, and she went apart
and danced with the servant of my son, and there was great joy of
that dancing—for a person in the wrong place is an Idea and not a
person. Man is Thought and woman is Intuition, and they have never
mated. There is a gulf between them and it is called Fear, and what
they fear is, that their strengths shall be taken from them and
they may no longer be tyrants. The Eternal has made love blind,
for it is not by science, but by intuition alone, that he may come
to his beloved; but desire, which is science, has many eyes and
sees so vastly that he passes his love in the press, saying there
is no love, and he propagates miserably on his own delusions. The
finger-tips are guided by God, but the devil looks through the
eyes of all creatures so that they may wander in the errors of
reason and justify themselves of their wanderings. The desire of a
man shall be Beauty, but he has fashioned a slave in his mind and
called it Virtue. The desire of a woman shall be Wisdom, but she
has formed a beast in her blood and called it Courage: but the real
virtue is courage, and the real courage is liberty, and the real
liberty is wisdom, and Wisdom is the son of Thought and Intuition;
and his names also are Innocence and Adoration and Happiness.”

When Angus Óg had said these words he ceased, and for a time there
was silence in the little cave. Caitilin had covered her face with
her hands and would not look at him, but Pan drew the girl closer
to his side and peered sideways, laughing at Angus.

“Has the time yet come for the girl to judge between us?” said he.

“Daughter of Murrachu,” said Angus Óg, “will you come away with me
from this place?”

Caitilin then looked at the god in great distress. “I do not know
what to do,” said she. “Why do you both want me? I have given
myself to Pan, and his arms are about me.”

“I want you,” said Angus Óg, “because the world has forgotten me.
In all my nation there is no remembrance of me. I, wandering on
the hills of my country, am lonely indeed. I am the desolate god
forbidden to utter my happy laughter. I hide the silver of my
speech and the gold of my merriment. I live in the holes of the
rocks and the dark caves of the sea. I weep in the morning because
I may not laugh, and in the evening I go abroad and am not happy.
Where I have kissed a bird has flown; where I have trod a flower
has sprung. But Thought has snared my birds in his nets and sold
them in the market-places. Who will deliver me from Thought, from
the base holiness of Intellect, the maker of chains and traps? Who
will save me from the holy impurity of Emotion, whose daughters are
Envy and Jealousy and Hatred, who plucks my flowers to ornament
her lusts and my little leaves to shrivel on the breasts of
infamy? Lo, I am sealed in the caves of nonentity until the head
and the heart shall come together in fruitfulness, until Thought
has wept for Love, and Emotion has purified herself to meet her
lover. Tir-na-nÓg is the heart of a man and the head of a woman.
Widely they are separated. Self-centred they stand, and between
them the seas of space are flooding desolately. No voice can shout
across those shores. No eye can bridge them, nor any desire bring
them together until the blind god shall find them on the wavering
stream—not as an arrow searches straightly from a bow, but gently,
imperceptibly as a feather on the wind reaches the ground on a
hundred starts; not with the compass and the chart, but by the
breath of the Almighty which blows from all quarters without care
and without ceasing. Night and day it urges from the outside to
the inside. It gathers ever to the centre. From the far without
to the deep within, trembling from the body to the soul until the
head of a woman and the heart of a man are filled with the Divine
Imagination. Hymen, Hymenæa! I sing to the ears that are stopped,
the eyes that are sealed, and the minds that do not labour. Sweetly
I sing on the hillside. The blind shall look within and not
without; the deaf shall hearken to the murmur of their own veins,
and be enchanted with the wisdom of sweetness; the thoughtless
shall think without effort as the lightning flashes, that the hand
of Innocence may reach to the stars, that the feet of Adoration may
dance to the Father of Joy, and the laugh of Happiness be answered
by the Voice of Benediction.”

Thus Angus Óg sang in the cave, and ere he had ceased Caitilin Ni
Murrachu withdrew herself from the arms of her desires. But so
strong was the hold of Pan upon her that when she was free her body
bore the marks of his grip, and many days passed away before these
marks faded.

Then Pan arose in silence, taking his double reed in his hand, and
the girl wept, beseeching him to stay to be her brother and the
brother of her beloved, but Pan smiled and said: “Your beloved is
my father and my son. He is yesterday and to-morrow. He is the
nether and the upper millstone, and I am crushed between until I
kneel again before the throne from whence I came,” and, saying so,
he embraced Angus Óg most tenderly and went his way to the quiet
fields, and across the slopes of the mountains, and beyond the blue
distances of space.

And in a little time Caitilin Ni Murrachu went with her companion
across the brow of the hill, and she did not go with him because
she had understood his words, nor because he was naked and
unashamed, but only because his need of her was very great, and,
therefore, she loved him, and stayed his feet in the way, and was
concerned lest he should stumble.




BOOK IV. THE PHILOSOPHER’S RETURN


CHAPTER XIII

Which is, the Earth or the creatures that move upon it, the more
important? This is a question prompted solely by intellectual
arrogance, for in life there is no greater and no less. The thing
that _is_ has justified its own importance by mere existence, for
that is the great and equal achievement. If life were arranged
for us from without such a question of supremacy would assume
importance, but life is always from within, and is modified or
extended by our own appetites, aspirations, and central activities.
From without we get pollen and the refreshment of space and
quietude—it is sufficient. We might ask, is the Earth anything more
than an extension of our human consciousness, or are we, moving
creatures, only projections of the Earth’s antennæ? But these
matters have no value save as a field wherein Thought, like a wise
lamb, may frolic merrily. And all would be very well if Thought
would but continue to frolic, instead of setting up first as _locum
tenens_ for Intuition and sticking to the job, and afterwards as
the counsel and critic of Omnipotence. Everything has two names,
and everything is twofold. The name of male Thought as it faces
the world is Philosophy, but the name it bears in Tir-na-nÓg is
Delusion. Female Thought is called Socialism on earth, but in
Eternity it is known as Illusion; and this is so because there has
been no matrimony of minds, but only an hermaphroditic propagation
of automatic ideas, which in their due rotation assume dominance
and reign severely. To the world this system of thought, because
it is consecutive, is known as Logic, but Eternity has written
it down in the Book of Errors as Mechanism: for life may not be
consecutive, but explosive and variable, else it is a shackled and
timorous slave.

One of the great troubles of life is that Reason has taken charge
of the administration of Justice, and by mere identification it has
achieved the crown and sceptre of its master. But the imperceptible
usurpation was recorded, and discriminating minds understand
the chasm which still divides the pretender Law from the exiled
King. In a like manner, and with feigned humility, the Cold Demon
advanced to serve Religion, and by guile and violence usurped
her throne; but the pure in heart still fly from the spectre
Theology to dance in ecstasy before the starry and eternal goddess.
Statecraft, also, that tender Shepherd of the Flocks, has been
despoiled of his crook and bell, and wanders in unknown desolation
while, beneath the banner of Politics, Reason sits howling over an
intellectual chaos.

Justice is the maintaining of equilibrium. The blood of Cain must
cry, not from the lips of the Avenger, but from the aggrieved Earth
herself who demands that atonement shall be made for a disturbance
of her consciousness. All justice is, therefore, readjustment. A
thwarted consciousness has every right to clamour for assistance,
but not for punishment. This latter can only be sought by timorous
and egotistic Intellect, which sees the Earth from which it has
emerged and into which it must return again in its own despite,
and so, being self-centred and envious and a renegade from life,
Reason is more cruelly unjust, and more timorous than any other
manifestation of the divinely erratic energy—erratic, because, as
has been said, “the crooked roads are the roads of genius.” Nature
grants to all her creatures an unrestricted liberty, quickened by
competitive appetite, to succeed or to fail; save only to Reason,
her Demon of Order, which can do neither, and whose wings she has
clipped for some reason with which I am not yet acquainted. It may
be that an unrestricted mentality would endanger her own intuitive
perceptions by shackling all her other organs of perception, or
annoy her by vexatious efforts at creative rivalry.

It will, therefore, be understood that when the Leprecauns of Gort
na Cloca Mora acted in the manner about to be recorded, they were
not prompted by any lewd passion for revenge, but were merely
striving to reconstruct a rhythm which was their very existence,
and which must have been of direct importance to the Earth. Revenge
is the vilest passion known to life. It has made Law possible, and
by doing so it gave to Intellect the first grip at that universal
dominion which is its ambition. A Leprecaun is of more value to
the Earth than is a Prime Minister or a stockbroker, because a
Leprecaun dances and makes merry, while a Prime Minister knows
nothing of these natural virtues—consequently, an injury done to a
Leprecaun afflicts the Earth with misery, and justice is, for these
reasons, an imperative and momentous necessity.

A community of Leprecauns without a crock of gold is a blighted
and merriless community, and they are certainly justified in
seeking sympathy and assistance for the recovery of so essential
a treasure. But the steps whereby the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca
Mora sought to regain their property must for ever brand their
memory with a certain odium. It should be remembered in their
favour that they were cunningly and cruelly encompassed. Not only
was their gold stolen, but it was buried in such a position as
placed it under the protection of their own communal honour, and
the household of their enemy was secured against their active and
righteous malice, because the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath belonged
to the most powerful Shee of Ireland. It is in circumstances such
as these that dangerous alliances are made, and, for the first time
in history, the elemental beings invoked bourgeois assistance.

They were loath to do it, and justice must record the fact. They
were angry when they did it, and anger is both mental and intuitive
blindness. It is not the beneficent blindness which prevents one
from seeing without, but it is that desperate darkness which
cloaks the within, and hides the heart and the brain from each
other’s husbandry and wifely recognition. But even those mitigating
circumstances cannot justify the course they adopted, and the wider
idea must be sought for, that out of evil good must ultimately
come, or else evil is vitiated beyond even the redemption of usage.
When they were able to realize of what they had been guilty,
they were very sorry indeed, and endeavoured to publish their
repentance in many ways; but, lacking atonement, repentance is only
a post-mortem virtue which is good for nothing but burial.

When the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora found they were unable
to regain their crock of gold by any means they laid an anonymous
information at the nearest Police Station showing that two dead
bodies would be found under the hearthstone in the hut of Coille
Doraca, and the inference to be drawn from their crafty missive was
that these bodies had been murdered by the Philosopher for reasons
very discreditable to him.

The Philosopher had been scarcely more than three hours on his
journey to Angus Óg when four policemen approached the little
house from as many different directions, and without any trouble
they effected an entrance. The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath and the
two children heard from afar their badly muffled advance, and
on discovering the character of their visitors they concealed
themselves among the thickly clustering trees. Shortly after the
men had entered the hut loud and sustained noises began to issue
therefrom, and in about twenty minutes the invaders emerged again
bearing the bodies of the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and her husband.
They wrenched the door off its hinges, and, placing the bodies
on the door, proceeded at a rapid pace through the trees and
disappeared in a short time. When they had departed the Thin Woman
and the children returned to their home and over the yawning hearth
the Thin Woman pronounced a long and fervid malediction wherein
policemen were exhibited naked before the blushes of Eternity....

With your goodwill let us now return to the Philosopher.

Following his interview with Angus Óg the Philosopher received the
blessing of the god and returned on his homeward journey. When
he left the cave he had no knowledge where he was nor whether he
should turn to the right hand or to the left. This alone was his
guiding idea, that as he had come up the mountain on his first
journey his home-going must, by mere opposition, be down the
mountain, and, accordingly, he set his face downhill and trod
lustily forward. He had stamped up the hill with vigour, he strode
down it in ecstasy. He tossed his voice on every wind that went
by. From the wells of forgetfulness he regained the shining words
and gay melodies which his childhood had delighted in, and these
he sang loudly and unceasingly as he marched. The sun had not yet
risen but, far away, a quiet brightness was creeping over the sky.
The daylight, however, was near the full, one slender veil only
remaining of the shadows, and a calm, unmoving quietude brooded
from the grey sky to the whispering earth. The birds had begun to
bestir themselves but not to sing. Now and again a solitary wing
feathered the chill air; but for the most part the birds huddled
closer in the swinging nests, or under the bracken, or in the
tufty grass. Here a faint twitter was heard and ceased. A little
farther a drowsy voice called “cheep-cheep” and turned again to
the warmth of its wing. The very grasshoppers were silent. The
creatures who range in the night time had returned to their cells
and were setting their households in order, and those who belonged
to the day hugged their comfort for but one minute longer. Then the
first level beam stepped like a mild angel to the mountain top. The
slender radiance brightened and grew strong. The grey veil faded
away. The birds leaped from their nests. The grasshoppers awakened
and were busy at a stroke. Voice called to voice without ceasing,
and, momently, a song thrilled for a few wide seconds. But for
the most part it was chatter-chatter they went as they soared and
plunged and swept, each bird eager for its breakfast.

The Philosopher thrust his hand into his wallet and found there the
last broken remnants of his cake, and the instant his hand touched
the food he was seized by a hunger so furious that he sat down
where he stopped and prepared to eat.

The place where he sat was a raised bank under a hedge, and this
place directly fronted a clumsy wooden gate leading into a great
field. When the Philosopher had seated himself he raised his eyes
and saw through the gate a small company approaching. There were
four men and three women, and each of them carried a metal pail.
The Philosopher with a sigh returned the cake to his wallet, saying:

“All men are brothers, and it may be that these people are as
hungry as I am.”

In a short time the strangers came near. The foremost of them was a
huge man who was bearded to the eyelids and who moved like a strong
wind. He opened the gate by removing a piece of wood wherewith it
was jammed, and he and his companions passed through, whereupon he
closed the gate and secured it. To this man, as being the eldest,
the Philosopher approached.

“I am about to breakfast,” said he, “and if you are hungry perhaps
you would like to eat with me.”

“Why not,” said the man, “for the person who would refuse a kind
invitation is a dog. These are my three sons and three of my
daughters, and we are all thankful to you.”

Saying this he sat down on the bank and his companions, placing
their pails behind them, did likewise. The Philosopher divided his
cake into eight pieces and gave one to each person.

“I am sorry it is so little,” said he.

“A gift,” said the bearded man, “is never little,” and he
courteously ate his piece in three bites although he could have
easily eaten it in one, and his children also.

“That was a good, satisfying cake,” said he when he had finished;
“it was well baked and well shared, but,” he continued, “I am in a
difficulty and maybe you could advise me what to do, sir?”

“What might be your trouble?” said the Philosopher.

“It is this,” said the man. “Every morning when we go out to milk
the cows the mother of my clann gives to each of us a parcel of
food so that we need not be any hungrier than we like; but now
we have had a good breakfast with you, what shall we do with the
food that we brought with us? The woman of the house would not be
pleased if we carried it back to her, and if we threw food away it
would be a sin. If it was not disrespectful to your breakfast the
boys and girls here might be able to get rid of it by eating it,
for, as you know, young people can always eat a bit more, no matter
how much they have already eaten.”

“It would surely be better to eat it than to waste it,” said the
Philosopher wistfully.

The young people produced large parcels of food from their pockets
and opened them, and the bearded man said, “I have a little one
myself also, and it would not be wasted if you were kind enough to
help me to eat it,” and he pulled out his parcel, which was twice
as big as any of the others.

He opened the parcel and handed the larger part of its contents to
the Philosopher; he then plunged a tin vessel into one of the milk
pails and set this also by the Philosopher, and, instantly, they
all began to eat with furious appetite.

When the meal was finished the Philosopher filled his tobacco pipe
and the bearded man and his three sons did likewise.

“Sir,” said the bearded man, “I would be glad to know why you are
travelling abroad so early in the morning, for, at this hour,
no one stirs but the sun and the birds and the folk who, like
ourselves, follow the cattle?”

“I will tell you that gladly,” said the Philosopher, “if you will
tell me your name.”

“My name,” said the bearded man, “is Mac Cúl.”

“Last night,” said the Philosopher, “when I came from the house of
Angus Óg in the Caves of the Sleepers of Erinn I was bidden say to
a man named Mac Cúl—that the horses had trampled in their sleep and
the sleepers had turned on their sides.”

“Sir,” said the bearded man, “your words thrill in my heart like
music, but my head does not understand them.”

“I have learned,” said the Philosopher, “that the head does not
hear anything until the heart has listened, and that what the heart
knows to-day the head will understand to-morrow.”

“All the birds of the world are singing in my soul,” said the
bearded man, “and I bless you because you have filled me with hope
and pride.”

So the Philosopher shook him by the hand, and he shook the hands
of his sons and daughters who bowed before him at the mild command
of their father, and when he had gone a little way he looked
around again and he saw that group of people standing where he had
left them, and the bearded man was embracing his children on the
highroad.

A bend in the path soon shut them from view, and then the
Philosopher, fortified by food and the freshness of the morning,
strode onwards singing for very joy. It was still early, but now
the birds had eaten their breakfasts and were devoting themselves
to each other. They rested side by side on the branches of
the trees and on the hedges, they danced in the air in happy
brotherhoods and they sang to one another amiable and pleasant
ditties.

[Illustration: A young woman came along the road and stood gazing
earnestly at this house]

When the Philosopher had walked for a long time he felt a little
weary and sat down to refresh himself in the shadow of a great
tree. Hard by there was a house of rugged stone. Long years ago
it had been a castle, and, even now, though patched by time and
misfortune its front was warlike and frowning. While he sat a young
woman came along the road and stood gazing earnestly at this house.
Her hair was as black as night and as smooth as still water, but
her face came so stormily forward that her quiet attitude had yet
no quietness in it. To her, after a few moments, the Philosopher
spoke.

“Girl,” said he, “why do you look so earnestly at the house?”

The girl turned her pale face and stared at him.

“I did not notice you sitting under the tree,” said she, and she
came slowly forward.

“Sit down by me,” said the Philosopher, “and we will talk. If you
are in any trouble tell it to me, and perhaps you will talk the
heaviest part away.”

“I will sit beside you willingly,” said the girl, and she did so.

“It is good to talk trouble over,” he continued. “Do you know that
talk is a real thing? There is more power in speech than many
people conceive. Thoughts come from God, they are born through the
marriage of the head and the lungs. The head moulds the thought
into the form of words, then it is borne and sounded on the air
which has been already in the secret kingdoms of the body, which
goes in bearing life and come out freighted with wisdom. For
this reason a lie is very terrible, because it is turning mighty
and incomprehensible things to base uses, and is burdening the
life-giving element with a foul return for its goodness; but those
who speak the truth and whose words are the symbols of wisdom and
beauty, these purify the whole world and daunt contagion. The only
trouble the body can know is disease. All other miseries come from
the brain, and, as these belong to thought, they can be driven
out by their master as unruly and unpleasant vagabonds; for a
mental trouble should be spoken to, confronted, reprimanded and
so dismissed. The brain cannot afford to harbour any but pleasant
and eager citizens who will do their part in making laughter and
holiness for the world, for that is the duty of thought.”

While the Philosopher spoke the girl had been regarding him
steadfastly.

“Sir,” said she, “we tell our hearts to a young man and our heads
to an old man, and when the heart is a fool the head is bound to
be a liar. I can tell you the things I know, but how will I tell
you the things I feel when I myself do not understand them? If I
say these words to you ‘I love a man’ I do not say anything at all,
and you do not hear one of the words which my heart is repeating
over and over to itself in the silence of my body. Young people are
fools in their heads and old people are fools in their hearts, and
they can only look at each other and pass by in wonder.”

“You are wrong,” said the Philosopher. “An old person can take
your hand like this and say, ‘May every good thing come to you, my
daughter.’ For all trouble there is sympathy, and for love there
is memory, and these are the head and the heart talking to each
other in quiet friendship. What the heart knows to-day the head
will understand to-morrow, and as the head must be the scholar of
the heart it is necessary that our hearts be purified and free from
every false thing, else we are tainted beyond personal redemption.”

“Sir,” said the girl, “I know of two great follies-they are love
and speech, for when these are given they can never be taken back
again, and the person to whom these are given is not any richer,
but the giver is made poor and abashed. I gave my love to a man who
did not want it. I told him of my love, and he lifted his eyelids
at me; that is my trouble.”

For a moment the Philosopher sat in stricken silence looking on
the ground. He had a strange disinclination to look at the girl
although he felt her eyes fixed steadily on him. But in a little
while he did look at her and spoke again.

“To carry gifts to an ungrateful person cannot be justified and
need not be mourned for. If your love is noble why do you treat it
meanly? If it is lewd the man was right to reject it.”

“We love as the wind blows,” she replied.

“There is a thing,” said the Philosopher, “and it is both the
biggest and the littlest thing in the world.”

“What is that?” said the girl.

“It is pride,” he answered. “It lives in an empty house. The head
which has never been visited by the heart is the house pride lives
in. You are in error, my dear, and not in love. Drive out the knave
pride, put a flower in your hair and walk freely again.”

The girl laughed, and suddenly her pale face became rosy as the
dawn and as radiant and lovely as a cloud. She shed warmth and
beauty about her as she leaned forward.

“You are wrong,” she whispered, “because he does love me; but he
does not know it yet. He is young and full of fury, and has no
time to look at women, but he looked at me. My heart knows it and
my head knows it, but I am impatient and yearn for him to look at
me again. His heart will remember me to-morrow, and he will come
searching for me with prayers and tears, with shouts and threats.
I will be very hard to find to-morrow when he holds out his arms
to the air and the sky, and is astonished and frightened to find
me nowhere. I will hide from him to-morrow, and frown at him when
he speaks, and turn aside when he follows me: until the day after
to-morrow when he will frighten me with his anger, and hold me with
his furious hands, and make me look at him.”

Saying this the girl arose and prepared to go away.

“He is in that house,” said she, “and I would not let him see me
here for anything in the world.”

“You have wasted all my time,” said the Philosopher, smiling.

“What else is time for?” said the girl, and she kissed the
Philosopher and ran swiftly down the road.

She had been gone but a few moments when a man came out of the
grey house and walked quickly across the grass. When he reached
the hedge separating the field from the road he tossed his two
arms in the air, swung them down, and jumped over the hedge into
the roadway. He was a short, dark youth, and so swift and sudden
were his movements that he seemed to look on every side at the one
moment although he bore furiously to his own direction.

The Philosopher addressed him mildly.

“That was a good jump,” said he.

The young man spun around from where he stood, and was by the
Philosopher’s side in an instant.

“It would be a good jump for other men,” said he, “but it is only
a little jump for me. You are very dusty, sir; you must have
travelled a long distance to-day.”

“A long distance,” replied the Philosopher. “Sit down here, my
friend, and keep me company for a little time.”

“I do not like sitting down,” said the young man, “but I always
consent to a request, and I always accept friendship.” And, so
saying, he threw himself down on the grass.

“Do you work in that big house?” said the Philosopher.

“I do,” he replied. “I train the hounds for a fat, jovial man, full
of laughter and insolence.”

“I think you do not like your master.”

“Believe, sir, that I do not like any master; but this man I hate.
I have been a week in his service, and he has not once looked on
me as on a friend. This very day, in the kennel, he passed me as
though I were a tree or a stone. I almost leaped to catch him by
the throat and say: ‘Dog, do you not salute your fellow-man?’ But
I looked after him and let him go, for it would be an unpleasant
thing to strangle a fat person.”

“If you are displeased with your master should you not look for
another occupation?” said the Philosopher.

“I was thinking of that, and I was thinking whether I ought to
kill him or marry his daughter. She would have passed me by as
her father did, but I would not let a woman do that to me: no man
would.”

“What did you do to her?” said the Philosopher.

The young man chuckled “I did not look at her the first time, and
when she came near me the second time I looked another way, and on
the third day she spoke to me, and while she stood I looked over
her shoulder distantly. She said she hoped I would be happy in my
new home, and she made her voice sound pleasant while she said it;
but I thanked her and turned away carelessly.”

“Is the girl beautiful?” said the Philosopher.

“I do not know,” he replied; “I have not looked at her yet,
although now I see her everywhere. I think she is a woman who would
annoy me if I married her.”

“If you haven’t seen her, how can you think that?”

“She has tame feet,” said the youth. “I looked at them and they got
frightened. Where have you travelled from, sir?”

“I will tell you that,” said the Philosopher, “if you will tell me
your name.”

“It is easily told,” he answered; “my name is MacCulain.”

“When I came last night,” said the Philosopher, “from the place of
Angus Óg in the cave of the Sleepers of Erinn I was bidden say to a
man named MacCulain that The Grey of Macha had neighed in his sleep
and the sword of Laeg clashed on the floor as he turned in his
slumber.”

The young man leaped from the grass.

“Sir,” said he in a strained voice, “I do not understand your
words, but they make my heart to dance and sing within me like a
bird.”

“If you listen to your heart,” said the Philosopher, “you will
learn every good thing, for the heart is the fountain of wisdom
tossing its thoughts up to the brain which gives them form,”—and,
so saying, he saluted the youth and went again on his way by the
curving road.

Now the day had advanced, noon was long past, and the strong
sunlight blazed ceaselessly on the world. His path was still on
the high mountains, running on for a short distance and twisting
perpetually to the right hand and to the left. One might scarcely
call it a path, it grew so narrow. Sometimes, indeed, it almost
ceased to be a path, for the grass had stolen forward inch by inch
to cover up the tracks of man. There were no hedges but rough,
tumbled ground only, which was patched by trailing bushes and
stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There
was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun
shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish
of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an
occasional bee that came and was gone in an instant.

The Philosopher was very hungry, and he looked about on all sides
to see if there was anything he might eat. “If I were a goat or a
cow,” said he, “I could eat this grass and be nourished. If I were
a donkey I could crop the hard thistles which are growing on every
hand, or if I were a bird I could feed on the caterpillars and
creeping things which stir innumerably everywhere. But a man may
not eat even in the midst of plenty, because he has departed from
nature, and lives by crafty and twisted thought.”

Speaking in this manner he chanced to lift his eyes from the ground
and saw, far away, a solitary figure which melted into the folding
earth and reappeared again in a different place. So peculiar and
erratic were the movements of this figure that the Philosopher had
great difficulty in following it, and, indeed, would have been
unable to follow, but that the other chanced in his direction. When
they came nearer he saw it was a young boy, who was dancing hither
and thither in any and every direction. A bushy mound hid him for
an instant, and the next they were standing face to face staring
at each other. After a moment’s silence the boy, who was about
twelve years of age, and as beautiful as the morning, saluted the
Philosopher.

“Have you lost your way, sir?” said he.

“All paths,” the Philosopher replied, “are on the earth, and so one
can never be lost—but I have lost my dinner.”

The boy commenced to laugh.

“What are you laughing at, my son?” said the Philosopher.

“Because,” he replied, “I am bringing you your dinner. I wondered
what sent me out in this direction, for I generally go more to the
east.”

“Have you got my dinner?” said the Philosopher anxiously.

“I have,” said the boy: “I ate my own dinner at home, and I put
your dinner in my pocket. I thought,” he explained, “that I might
be hungry if I went far away.”

“The gods directed you,” said the Philosopher.

“They often do,” said the boy, and he pulled a small parcel from
his pocket.

The Philosopher instantly sat down, and the boy handed him the
parcel. He opened this and found bread and cheese.

“It’s a good dinner,” said he, and commenced to eat.

“Would you not like a piece also, my son?”

“I would like a little piece,” said the boy, and he sat down before
the Philosopher, and they ate together happily.

When they had finished the Philosopher praised the gods, and then
said, more to himself than to the boy:

“If I had a little drink of water I would want nothing else.”

“There is a stream four paces from here,” said his companion. “I
will get some water in my cap,” and he leaped away.

In a few moments he came back holding his cap tenderly, and the
Philosopher took this and drank the water.

“I want nothing more in the world,” said he, “except to talk with
you. The sun is shining, the wind is pleasant, and the grass is
soft. Sit down beside me again for a little time.”

So the boy sat down, and the Philosopher lit his pipe.

“Do you live far from here?” said he.

“Not far,” said the boy. “You could see my mother’s house from this
place if you were as tall as a tree, and even from the ground you
can see a shape of smoke yonder that floats over our cottage.”

The Philosopher looked but could see nothing.

“My eyes are not as good as yours are,” said he, “because I am
getting old.”

“What does it feel like to be old?” said the boy.

“It feels stiff like,” said the Philosopher.

“Is that all?” said the boy.

“I don’t know,” the Philosopher replied after a few moments’
silence. “Can you tell me what it looks like to be young?”

“Why not?” said the boy, and then a slight look of perplexity
crossed his face, and he continued, “I don’t think I can.”

“Young people,” said the Philosopher, “do not know what age is, and
old people forget what youth was. When you begin to grow old always
think deeply of your youth, for an old man without memories is a
wasted life, and nothing is worth remembering but our childhood. I
will tell you some of the differences between being old and young,
and then you can ask me questions, and so we will get at both sides
of the matter. First, an old man gets tired quicker than a boy.”

The boy thought for a moment, and then replied:

“That is not a great difference, for a boy does get very tired.”

The Philosopher continued:

“An old man does not want to eat as often as a boy.”

“That is not a great difference either,” the boy replied, “for they
both do eat. Tell me the big difference.”

“I do not know it, my son; but I have always thought there was
a big difference. Perhaps it is that an old man has memories of
things which a boy cannot even guess at.”

“But they both have memories,” said the boy, laughing, “and so it
is not a big difference.”

“That is true,” said the Philosopher. “Maybe there is not so much
difference after all. Tell me things you do, and we will see if I
can do them also.”

“But I don’t know what I do,” he replied.

“You must know the things you do,” said the Philosopher, “but you
may not understand how to put them in order. The great trouble
about any kind of examination is to know where to begin, but there
are always two places in everything with which we can commence—they
are the beginning and the end. From either of these points a view
may be had which comprehends the entire period. So we will begin
with the things you did this morning.”

“I am satisfied with that,” said the boy.

The Philosopher then continued:

“When you awakened this morning and went out of the house what was
the first thing you did?”

The boy thought “I went out, then I picked up a stone and threw it
into the field as far as I could.”

“What then?” said the Philosopher.

“Then I ran after the stone to see could I catch up on it before it
hit the ground.”

“Yes,” said the Philosopher.

“I ran so fast that I tumbled over myself into the grass.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I lay where I fell and plucked handfuls of the grass with both
hands and threw them on my back.”

“Did you get up then?”

“No, I pressed my face into the grass and shouted a lot of times
with my mouth against the ground, and then I sat up and did not
move for a long time.”

“Were you thinking?” said the Philosopher.

“No, I was not thinking or doing anything.”

“Why did you do all these things?” said the Philosopher.

“For no reason at all,” said the boy.

“That,” said the Philosopher triumphantly, “is the difference
between age and youth. Boys do things for no reason, and old people
do not. I wonder do we get old because we do things by reason
instead of instinct?”

“I don’t know,” said the boy, “everything gets old. Have you
travelled very far to-day, sir?”

“I will tell you that if you will tell me your name.”

“My name,” said the boy, “is MacCushin.”

“When I came last night,” said the Philosopher, “from the place
of Angus Óg in the Caste of the Sleepers I was bidden say to one
named MacCushin that a son would be born to Angus Óg and his wife,
Caitilin, and that the sleepers of Erinn had turned in their
slumbers.”

The boy regarded him steadfastly.

“I know,” said he, “why Angus Óg sent me that message. He wants me
to make a poem to the people of Erinn, so that when the Sleepers
arise they will meet with friends.”

“The Sleepers have arisen,” said the Philosopher. “They are about
us on every side. They are walking now, but they have forgotten
their names and the meanings of their names. You are to tell them
their names and their lineage, for I am an old man, and my work is
done.”

“I will make a poem some day,” said the boy, “and every man will
shout when he hears it.”

“God be with you, my son,” said the Philosopher, and he embraced
the boy and went forward on his journey.

About half an hour’s easy travelling brought him to a point from
which he could see far down below to the pine trees of Coille
Doraca. The shadowy evening had crept over the world ere he reached
the wood, and when he entered the little house the darkness had
already descended.

The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath met him as he entered, and was about
to speak harshly of his long absence, but the Philosopher kissed
her with such unaccustomed tenderness, and spoke so mildly to her,
that, first, astonishment enchained her tongue, and then delight
set it free in a direction to which it had long been a stranger.

“Wife,” said the Philosopher, “I cannot say how joyful I am to see
your good face again.”

The Thin Woman was unable at first to reply to this salutation,
but, with incredible speed, she put on a pot of stirabout, began
to bake a cake, and tried to roast potatoes. After a little while
she wept loudly, and proclaimed that the world did not contain the
equal of her husband for comeliness and goodness, and that she was
herself a sinful person unworthy of the kindness of the gods or of
such a mate.

But while the Philosopher was embracing Seumas and Brigid Beg, the
door was suddenly burst open with a great noise, four policemen
entered the little room, and after one dumbfoundered minute they
retreated again bearing the Philosopher with them to answer a
charge of murder.




BOOK V. THE POLICEMEN


CHAPTER XIV

Some distance down the road the policemen halted. The night
had fallen before they effected their capture, and now, in the
gathering darkness, they were not at ease. In the first place, they
knew that the occupation upon which they were employed was not a
creditable one to a man whatever it might be to a policeman. The
seizure of a criminal may be justified by certain arguments as to
the health of society and the preservation of property, but no
person wishes under any circumstances to hale a wise man to prison.
They were further distressed by the knowledge that they were in the
very centre of a populous fairy country, and that on every side the
elemental hosts might be ranging, ready to fall upon them with the
terrors of war or the still more awful scourge of their humour. The
path leading to their station was a long one, winding through great
alleys of trees, which in some places overhung the road so thickly
that even the full moon could not search out that deep blackness.
In the daylight these men would have arrested an Archangel and, if
necessary, bludgeoned him, but in the night time a thousand fears
afflicted and a multitude of sounds shocked them from every quarter.

Two men were holding the Philosopher, one on either side; the other
two walked one before and one behind him. In this order they were
proceeding when just in front through the dim light they saw the
road swallowed up by one of these groves already spoken of. When
they came nigh they halted irresolutely: the man who was in front
(a silent and perturbed sergeant) turned fiercely to the others
“Come on, can’t you?” said he; “what the devil are you waiting
for?” and he strode forward into the black gape.

“Keep a good hold of that man,” said the one behind.

“Don’t be talking out of you,” replied he on the right. “Haven’t we
got a good grip of him, and isn’t he an old man into the bargain?”

“Well, keep a good tight grip of him, anyhow, for if he gave you
the slip in there he’d vanish like a weasel in a bush. Them old
fellows do be slippery customers. Look here, mister,” said he to
the Philosopher, “if you try to run away from us I’ll give you a
clout on the head with my baton; do you mind me now!”

They had taken only a few paces forward when the sound of hasty
footsteps brought them again to a halt, and in a moment the
sergeant came striding back. He was angry.

“Are you going to stay there the whole night, or what are you going
to do at all?” said he.

“Let you be quiet now,” said another; “we were only settling with
the man here the way he wouldn’t try to give us the slip in a dark
place.”

“Is it thinking of giving us the slip he is?” said the sergeant.
“Take your baton in your hand, Shawn, and if he turns his head to
one side of him hit him on that side.”

“I’ll do that,” said Shawn, and he pulled out his truncheon.

The Philosopher had been dazed by the suddenness of these
occurrences, and the enforced rapidity of his movements prevented
him from either thinking or speaking, but during this brief
stoppage his scattered wits began to return to their allegiance.
First, bewilderment at his enforcement had seized him, and the four
men, who were continually running round him and speaking all at
once, and each pulling him in a different direction, gave him the
impression that he was surrounded by a great rabble of people, but
he could not discover what they wanted. After a time he found that
there were only four men, and gathered from their remarks that he
was being arrested for murder—this precipitated him into another
and a deeper gulf of bewilderment. He was unable to conceive why
they should arrest him for murder when he had not committed any;
and, following this, he became indignant.

“I will not go another step,” said he, “unless you tell me where
you are bringing me and what I am accused of.”

“Tell me,” said the sergeant, “what did you kill them with? for
it’s a miracle how they came to their ends without as much as a
mark on their skins or a broken tooth itself.”

“Who are you talking about?” the Philosopher demanded.

“It’s mighty innocent you are,” he replied. “Who would I be talking
about but the man and woman that used to be living with you beyond
in the little house? Is it poison you gave them now, or what was
it? Take a hold of your note-book, Shawn.”

“Can’t you have sense, man?” said Shawn. “How would I be writing in
the middle of a dark place and me without as much as a pencil, let
alone a book?”

“Well, we’ll take it down at the station, and himself can tell us
all about it as we go along. Move on now, for this is no place to
be conversing in.”

They paced on again, and in another moment they were swallowed up
by the darkness. When they had proceeded for a little distance
there came a peculiar sound in front like the breathing of some
enormous animal, and also a kind of shuffling noise, and so they
again halted.

“There’s a queer kind of a thing in front of us,” said one of the
men in a low voice.

“If I had a match itself,” said another.

The sergeant had also halted.

“Draw well into the side of the road,” said he, “and poke your
batons in front of you. Keep a tight hold of that man, Shawn.”

“I’ll do that,” said Shawn.

Just then one of them found a few matches in his pocket, and he
struck a light; there was no wind, so that it blazed easily enough,
and they all peered in front. A big black cart-horse was lying in
the middle of the road having a gentle sleep, and when the light
shone it scrambled to its feet and went thundering away in a panic.

“Isn’t that enough to put the heart crossways in you?” said one of
the men, with a great sigh.

“Ay,” said another; “if you stepped on that beast in the darkness
you wouldn’t know what to be thinking.”

“I don’t quite remember the way about here,” said the sergeant
after a while, “but I think we should take the first turn to the
right. I wonder have we passed the turn yet; these criss-cross
kinds of roads are the devil, and it dark as well. Do any of you
men know the way?”

“I don’t,” said one voice; “I’m a Cavan man myself.”

“Roscommon,” said another, “is my country, and I wish I was there
now, so I do.”

“Well, if we walk straight on we’re bound to get somewhere, so step
it out. Have you got a good hold of that man, Shawn?”

“I have so,” said Shawn.

The Philosopher’s voice came pealing through the darkness.

“There is no need to pinch me, sir,” said he.

“I’m not pinching you at all,” said the man.

“You are so,” returned the Philosopher. “You have a big lump of
skin doubled up in the sleeve of my coat, and unless you instantly
release it I will sit down in the road.”

“Is that any better?” said the man, relaxing his hold a little.

“You have only let out half of it,” replied the Philosopher.
“That’s better now,” he continued, and they resumed their journey.

After a few minutes of silence the Philosopher began to speak.

“I do not see any necessity in nature for policemen,” said he,
“nor do I understand how the custom first originated. Dogs and
cats do not employ these extraordinary mercenaries, and yet their
polity is progressive and orderly. Crows are a gregarious race with
settled habitations and an organized commonwealth. They usually
congregate in a ruined tower or on the top of a church, and their
civilization is based on mutual aid and tolerance for each other’s
idiosyncrasies. Their exceeding mobility and hardiness renders them
dangerous to attack, and thus they are free to devote themselves to
the development of their domestic laws and customs. If policemen
were necessary to a civilization crows would certainly have
evolved them, but I triumphantly insist that they have not got any
policemen in their republic—”

“I don’t understand a word you are saying,” said the sergeant.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “Ants and bees also live
in specialized communities and have an extreme complexity both of
function and occupation. Their experience in governmental matters
is enormous, and yet they have never discovered that a police force
is at all essential to their well-being—”

“Do you know,” said the sergeant, “that whatever you say now will
be used in evidence against you later on?”

“I do not,” said the Philosopher. “It may be said that these races
are free from crime, that such vices as they have are organized
and communal instead of individual and anarchistic, and that,
consequently, there is no necessity for policecraft, but I cannot
believe that these large aggregations of people could have attained
their present high culture without an interval of both national and
individual dishonesty—”

“Tell me now, as you are talking,” said the sergeant, “did you buy
the poison at a chemist’s shop, or did you smother the pair of them
with a pillow?”

“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “If crime is a condition
precedent to the evolution of policemen, then I will submit that
jackdaws are a very thievish clan—they are somewhat larger than a
blackbird, and will steal wool off a sheep’s back to line their
nests with; they have, furthermore, been known to abstract one
shilling in copper and secrete this booty so ingeniously that it
has never since been recovered—”

“I had a jackdaw myself,” said one of the men. “I got it from a
woman that came to the door with a basket for fourpence. My mother
stood on its back one day, and she getting out of bed. I split its
tongue with a threepenny bit the way it would talk, but devil the
word it ever said for me. It used to hop around letting on it had a
lame leg, and then it would steal your socks.”

“Shut up!” roared the sergeant.

“If,” said the Philosopher, “these people steal both from sheep and
from men, if their peculations range from wool to money, I do not
see how they can avoid stealing from each other, and consequently,
if anywhere, it is amongst jackdaws one should look for the growth
of a police force, but there is no such force in existence. The
real reason is that they are a witty and thoughtful race who look
temperately on what is known as crime and evil—one eats, one
steals; it is all in the order of things, and therefore not to be
quarrelled with. There is no other view possible to a philosophical
people—”

“What the devil is he talking about?” said the sergeant.

“Monkeys are gregarious and thievish and semi-human. They inhabit
the equatorial latitudes and eat nuts—”

“Do you know what he is saying, Shawn?”

“I do not,” said Shawn.

“—they ought to have evolved professional thief-takers, but it is
common knowledge that they have not done so. Fishes, squirrels,
rats, beavers, and bison have also abstained from this singular
growth—therefore, when I insist that I see no necessity for
policemen and object to their presence, I base that objection on
logic and facts, and not on any immediate petty prejudice.”

“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “have you got a good grip on that man?”

“I have,” said Shawn.

“Well, if he talks any more hit him with your baton.”

“I will so,” said Shawn.

“There’s a speck of light down yonder, and, maybe, it’s a candle in
a window—we’ll ask the way at that place.”

In about three minutes they came to a small house which was
overhung by trees. If the light had not been visible they would
undoubtedly have passed it in the darkness. As they approached the
door the sound of a female voice came to them scoldingly.

“There’s somebody up anyhow,” said the sergeant, and he tapped at
the door.

The scolding voice ceased instantly. After a few seconds he tapped
again; then a voice was heard from just behind the door.

“Tomas,” said the voice, “go and bring up the two dogs with you
before I take the door off the chain.”

The door was then opened a few inches and a face peered out “What
would you be wanting at this hour of the night?” said the woman.

“Not much, ma’am,” said the sergeant; “only a little direction
about the road, for we are not sure whether we’ve gone too far or
not far enough.”

The woman noticed their uniforms.

“Is it policemen ye are? There’s no harm in your coming in, I
suppose, and if a drink of milk is any good to ye I have plenty of
it.”

“Milk’s better than nothing,” said the sergeant with a sigh.

“I’ve a little sup of spirits,” said she, “but it wouldn’t be
enough to go around.”

“Ah, well,” said he, looking sternly at his comrades, “everybody
has to take their chance in this world,” and he stepped into the
house followed by his men.

The women gave him a little sup of whisky from a bottle, and to
each of the other men she gave a cup of milk.

“It’ll wash the dust out of our gullets, anyhow,” said one of them.

There were two chairs, a bed, and a table in the room. The
Philosopher and his attendants sat on the bed. The sergeant sat
on the table, the fourth man took a chair, and the woman dropped
wearily into the remaining chair from which she looked with pity at
the prisoner.

“What are you taking the poor man away for?” she asked.

“He’s a bad one, ma’am,” said the sergeant. “He killed a man and
a woman that were staying with him and he buried their corpses
underneath the hearthstone of his house. He’s a real malefactor,
mind you.”

“Is it hanging him you’ll be, God help us?”

“You never know, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it came to
that. But you were in trouble yourself, ma’am, for we heard your
voice lamenting about something as we came along the road.”

“I was, indeed,” she replied, “for the person that has a son in her
house has a trouble in her heart.”

“Do you tell me now—What did he do on you?” and the sergeant bent a
look of grave reprobation on a young lad who was standing against
the wall between two dogs.

“He’s a good boy enough in some ways,” said she, “but he’s too fond
of beasts. He’ll go and lie in the kennel along with them two dogs
for hours at a time, petting them and making a lot of them, but if
I try to give him a kiss, or to hug him for a couple of minutes
when I do be tired after the work, he’ll wriggle like an eel till
I let him out—it would make a body hate him, so it would. Sure,
there’s no nature in him, sir, and I’m his mother.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you young whelp,” said the
sergeant very severely.

“And then there’s the horse,” she continued. “Maybe you met it down
the road a while ago?”

“We did, ma’am,” said the sergeant.

“Well, when he came in Tomas went to tie him up, for he’s a caution
at getting out and wandering about the road, the way you’d break
your neck over him if you weren’t minding. After a while I told the
boy to come in, but he didn’t come, so I went out myself, and there
was himself and the horse with their arms round each other’s necks
looking as if they were moonstruck.”

“Faith, he’s the queer lad!” said the sergeant. “What do you be
making love to the horse for, Tomas?”

“It was all I could do to make him come in,” she continued, “and
then I said to him, ‘Sit down alongside of me here, Tomas, and
keep me company for a little while’—for I do be lonely in the
night time—but he wouldn’t stay quiet at all. One minute he’d
say, ‘Mother, there’s a moth flying round the candle and it’ll be
burnt,’ and then, ‘There was a fly going into the spider’s web in
the corner,’ and he’d have to save it, and after that, ‘There’s a
daddy-long-legs hurting himself on the window-pane,’ and he’d have
to let it out; but when I try to kiss him he pushes me away. My
heart is tormented, so it is, for what have I in the world but him?”

“Is his father dead, ma’am?” said the sergeant kindly.

“I’ll tell the truth,” said she. “I don’t know whether he is or
not, for a long time ago, when we used to live in the city of
Bla’ Cliah, he lost his work one time and he never came back to
me again. He was ashamed to come home I’m thinking, the poor man,
because he had no money; as if I would have minded whether he had
any money or not—sure, he was very fond of me, sir, and we could
have pulled along somehow. After that I came back to my father’s
place here; the rest of the children died on me, and then my father
died, and I’m doing the best I can by myself. It’s only that I’m a
little bit troubled with the boy now and again.”

“It’s a hard case, ma’am,” said the sergeant, “but maybe the boy is
only a bit wild not having his father over him, and maybe it’s just
that he’s used to yourself, for there isn’t a child at all that
doesn’t love his mother. Let you behave yourself now, Tomas; attend
to your mother, and leave the beasts and the insects alone, like a
decent boy, for there’s no insect in the world will ever like you
as well as she does. Could you tell me, ma’am, if we have passed
the first turn on this road, or is it in front of us still, for we
are lost altogether in the darkness?”

“It’s in front of you still,” she replied, “about ten minutes down
the road; you can’t miss it, for you’ll see the sky where there is
a gap in the trees, and that gap is the turn you want.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said the sergeant; “we’d better be moving on,
for there’s a long tramp in front of us before we get to sleep this
night.”

He stood up and the men rose to follow him when, suddenly, the boy
spoke in a whisper.

“Mother,” said he, “they are going to hang the man,” and he burst
into tears.

“Oh, hush, hush,” said the woman, “sure, the men can’t help it.”
She dropped quickly on her knees and opened her arms, “Come over to
your mother, my darling.”

The boy ran to her.

“They are going to hang him,” he cried in a high, thin voice, and
he plucked at her arm violently.

“Now, then, my young boy-o,” said the sergeant, “none of that
violence.”

The boy turned suddenly and flew at him with astonishing ferocity.
He hurled himself against the sergeant’s legs and bit, and kicked,
and struck at him. So furiously sudden was his attack that the
man went staggering back against the wall, then he plucked at the
boy and whirled him across the room. In an instant the two dogs
leaped at him snarling with rage—one of these he kicked into a
corner, from which it rebounded again bristling and red-eyed; the
other dog was caught by the woman, and after a few frantic seconds
she gripped the first dog also. To a horrible chorus of howls and
snapping teeth the men hustled outside and slammed the door.

“Shawn,” the sergeant bawled, “have you got a good grip of that
man?”

“I have so,” said Shawn.

“If he gets away I’ll kick the belly out of you; mind that now!
Come along with you and no more of your slouching.”

They marched down the road in a tingling silence.

“Dogs,” said the Philosopher, “are a most intelligent race of
people—”

“People, my granny!” said the sergeant.

“From the earliest ages their intelligence has been observed and
recorded, so that ancient literatures are bulky with references to
their sagacity and fidelity—”

“Will you shut your old jaw?” said the sergeant.

“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Elephants also are credited
with an extreme intelligence and devotion to their masters, and
they will build a wall or nurse a baby with equal skill and
happiness. Horses have received high recommendations in this
respect, but crocodiles, hens, beetles, armadillos, and fish do not
evince any remarkable partiality for man—”

“I wish,” said the sergeant bitterly, “that all them beasts were
stuffed down your throttle the way you’d have to hold your prate.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “I do not know why these
animals should attach themselves to men with gentleness and love
and yet be able to preserve intact their initial bloodthirstiness,
so that while they will allow their masters to misuse them in
any way they will yet fight most willingly with each other, and
are never really happy saving in the conduct of some private and
nonsensical battle of their own. I do not believe that it is fear
which tames these creatures into mildness, but that the most savage
animal has a capacity for love which has not been sufficiently
noted, and which, if more intelligent attention had been directed
upon it, would have raised them to the status of intellectual
animals as against intelligent ones, and, perhaps, have opened
to us a correspondence which could not have been other than
beneficial.”

“Keep your eyes out for that gap in the trees, Shawn,” said the
sergeant.

“I’m doing that,” said Shawn.

The Philosopher continued:

“Why can I not exchange ideas with a cow? I am amazed at the
incompleteness of my growth when I and a fellow-creature stand
dumbly before each other without one glimmer of comprehension,
locked and barred from all friendship and intercourse—”

“Shawn,” cried the sergeant.

“Don’t interrupt,” said the Philosopher; “you are always
talking.—The lower animals, as they are foolishly called, have
abilities at which we can only wonder. The mind of an ant is one
to which I would readily go to school. Birds have atmospheric and
levitational information which millions of years will not render
accessible to us; who that has seen a spider weaving his labyrinth,
or a bee voyaging safely in the trackless air, can refuse to credit
that a vivid, trained intelligence animates these small enigmas?
and the commonest earthworm is the heir to a culture before which I
bow with the profoundest veneration—”

“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “say something for goodness’ sake to
take the sound of that man’s clack out of my ear.”

“I wouldn’t know what to be talking about,” said Shawn, “for I
never was much of a hand at conversation, and, barring my prayers,
I got no education—I think myself that he was making a remark about
a dog. Did you ever own a dog, sergeant?”

“You are doing very well, Shawn,” said the sergeant, “keep it up
now.”

“I knew a man had a dog would count up to a hundred for you. He won
lots of money in bets about it, and he’d have made a fortune, only
that I noticed one day he used to be winking at the dog, and when
he’d stop winking the dog would stop counting. We made him turn his
back after that, and got the dog to count sixpence, but he barked
for more than five shillings, he did so, and he would have counted
up to a pound, maybe, only that his master turned round and hit
him a kick. Every person that ever paid him a bet said they wanted
their money back, but the man went away to America in the night,
and I expect he’s doing well there for he took the dog with him. It
was a wire-haired terrier bitch, and it was the devil for having
pups.”

“It is astonishing,” said the Philosopher, “on what slender
compulsion people will go to America—”

“Keep it up, Shawn,” said the sergeant, “you are doing me a favour.”

“I will so,” said Shawn. “I had a cat one time and it used to have
kittens every two months.”

The Philosopher’s voice arose:

“If there was any periodicity about these migrations one could
understand them. Birds, for example, migrate from their homes in
the late autumn and seek abroad the sustenance and warmth which
the winter would withhold if they remained in their native lands.
The salmon also, a dignified fish with a pink skin, emigrates from
the Atlantic Ocean, and betakes himself inland to the streams and
lakes, where he recuperates for a season, and is often surprised by
net, angle, or spear—”

“Cut in now, Shawn,” said the sergeant anxiously.

Shawn began to gabble with amazing speed and in a mighty voice:

“Cats sometimes eat their kittens, and sometimes they don’t. A cat
that eats its kittens is a heartless brute. I knew a cat used to
eat its kittens—it had four legs and a long tail, and it used to
get the head-staggers every time it had eaten its kittens. I killed
it myself one day with a hammer for I couldn’t stand the smell it
made, so I couldn’t—”

“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “can’t you talk about something else
besides cats and dogs?”

“Sure, I don’t know what to talk about,” said Shawn. “I’m sweating
this minute trying to please you, so I arm. If you’ll tell me what
to talk about I’ll do my endeavours.”

“You’re a fool,” said the sergeant sorrowfully; “you’ll never make
a constable. I’m thinking that I would sooner listen to the man
himself than to you. Have you got a good hold of him now?”

“I have so,” said Shawn.

“Well, step out and maybe we’ll reach the barracks this night,
unless this is a road that there isn’t any end to at all. What was
that? Did you hear a noise?”

“I didn’t hear a thing,” said Shawn.

“I thought,” said another man, “that I heard something moving in
the hedge at the side of the road.”

“That’s what I heard,” said the sergeant. “Maybe it was a weasel.
I wish to the devil that we were out of this place where you can’t
see as much as your own nose. Now did you hear it, Shawn?”

“I did so,” said Shawn; “there’s some one in the hedge, for a
weasel would make a different kind of a noise if it made any at
all.”

“Keep together, men,” said the sergeant, “and march on; if there’s
anybody about they’ve no business with us.”

He had scarcely spoken when there came a sudden pattering of feet,
and immediately the four men were surrounded and were being struck
at on every side with sticks and hands and feet.

“Draw your batons,” the sergeant roared; “keep a good grip of that
man, Shawn.”

“I will so,” said Shawn.

“Stand round him, you other men, and hit anything that comes near
you.”

There was no sound of voices from the assailants, only a rapid
scuffle of feet, the whistle of sticks as they swung through the
air or slapped smartly against a body or clashed upon each other,
and the quick breathing of many people; but from the four policemen
there came noise and to spare as they struck wildly on every side,
cursing the darkness and their opposers with fierce enthusiasm.

“Let out,” cried Shawn suddenly. “Let out or I’ll smash your nut
for you. There’s some one pulling at the prisoner, and I’ve dropped
my baton.”

The truncheons of the policemen had been so ferociously exercised
that their antagonists departed as swiftly and as mysteriously as
they came. It was just two minutes of frantic, aimless conflict,
and then the silent night was round them again, without any sound
but the slow creaking of branches, the swish of leaves as they
swung and poised, and the quiet croon of the wind along the road.

“Come on, men,” said the sergeant, “we’d better be getting out of
this place as quick as we can. Are any of ye hurted?”

“I’ve got one of the enemy,” said Shawn, panting.

“You’ve got what?” said the sergeant.

“I’ve got one of them, and he is wriggling like an eel on a pan.”

“Hold him tight,” said the sergeant excitedly.

“I will so,” said Shawn. “It’s a little one by the feel of it. If
one of ye would hold the prisoner, I’d get a better grip on this
one. Aren’t they dangerous villains now?”

Another man took hold of the Philosopher’s arm, and Shawn got both
hands on his captive.

“Keep quiet, I’m telling you,” said he, “or I’ll throttle you, I
will so. Faith, it seems like a little boy by the feel of it!”

“A little boy!” said the sergeant.

“Yes, he doesn’t reach up to my waist.”

“It must be the young brat from the cottage that set the dogs on
us, the one that loves beasts. Now then, boy, what do you mean by
this kind of thing? You’ll find yourself in gaol for this, my young
buck-o. Who was with you, eh? Tell me that now?” and the sergeant
bent forward.

“Hold up your head, sonny, and talk to the sergeant,” said Shawn.
“Oh!” he roared, and suddenly he made a little rush forward. “I’ve
got him,” he gasped; “he nearly got away. It isn’t a boy at all,
sergeant; there’s whiskers on it!”

“What do you say?” said the sergeant.

“I put my hand under its chin and there’s whiskers on it. I nearly
let him out with the surprise, I did so.”

“Try again,” said the sergeant in a low voice; “you are making a
mistake.”

“I don’t like touching them,” said Shawn. “It’s a soft whisker like
a billy-goat’s. Maybe you’d try yourself, sergeant, for I tell you
I’m frightened of it.”

“Hold him over here,” said the sergeant, “and keep a good grip of
him.”

“I’ll do that,” said Shawn, and he hauled some reluctant object
towards his superior.

The sergeant put out his hand and touched a head.

“It’s only a boy’s size to be sure,” said he, then he slid his hand
down the face and withdrew it quickly.

“There are whiskers on it,” said he soberly. “What the devil can
it be? I never met whiskers so near the ground before. Maybe they
are false ones, and it’s just the boy yonder trying to disguise
himself.” He put out his hand again with an effort, felt his way to
the chin, and tugged.

Instantly there came a yell, so loud, so sudden, that every man of
them jumped in a panic.

“They are real whiskers,” said the sergeant with a sigh. “I wish I
knew what it is. His voice is big enough for two men, and that’s a
fact. Have you got another match on you?”

“I have two more in my waistcoat pocket,” said one of the men.

“Give me one of them,” said the sergeant; “I’ll strike it myself.”

He groped about until he found the hand with the match.

“Be sure and hold him tight, Shawn, the way we can have a good look
at him, for this is like to be a queer miracle of a thing.”

“I’m holding him by the two arms,” said Shawn, “he can’t stir
anything but his head, and I’ve got my chest on that.”

The sergeant struck the match, shading it for a moment with his
hand, then he turned it on their new prisoner.

They saw a little man dressed in tight green clothes; he had a
broad pale face with staring eyes, and there was a thin fringe of
grey whisker under his chin—then the match went out.

“It’s a Leprecaun,” said the sergeant.

The men were silent for a full couple of minutes—at last Shawn
spoke.

“Do you tell me so?” said he in a musing voice; “that’s a queer
miracle altogether.”

“I do,” said the sergeant. “Doesn’t it stand to reason that it
can’t be anything else? You saw it yourself.”

Shawn plumped down on his knees before his captive.

[Illustration: “Tell me where the money is?” he hissed]

“Tell me where the money is?” he hissed. “Tell me where the money
is or I’ll twist your neck off.”

The other men also gathered eagerly around, shouting threats and
commands at the Leprecaun.

“Hold your whist,” said Shawn fiercely to them. “He can’t answer
the lot of you, can he?” and he turned again to the Leprecaun and
shook him until his teeth chattered.

“If you don’t tell me where the money is at once I’ll kill you, I
will so.”

“I haven’t got any money at all, sir,” said the Leprecaun.

“None of your lies,” roared Shawn. “Tell the truth now or it’ll be
worse for you.”

“I haven’t got any money,” said the Leprecaun, “for Meehawl
MacMurrachu of the Hill stole our crock a while back, and he buried
it under a thorn bush. I can bring you to the place if you don’t
believe me.”

“Very good,” said Shawn. “Come on with me now, and I’ll clout you
if you as much as wriggle; do you mind me?”

“What would I wriggle for?” said the Leprecaun: “sure I like being
with you.”

Hereupon the sergeant roared at the top of his voice.

“Attention,” said he, and the men leaped to position like automata.

“What is it you are going to do with your prisoner, Shawn?” said he
sarcastically. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough tramping of these
roads for one night, now? Bring up that Leprecaun to the barracks
or it’ll be the worse for you—do you hear me talking to you?”

“But the gold, sergeant,” said Shawn sulkily.

“If there’s any gold it’ll be treasure trove, and belong to the
Crown. What kind of a constable are you at all, Shawn? Mind what
you are about now, my man, and no back answers. Step along there.
Bring that murderer up at once, whichever of you has him.”

There came a gasp from the darkness.

“Oh, Oh, Oh!” said a voice of horror.

“What’s wrong with you?” said the sergeant: “are you hurted?”

“The prisoner!” he gasped, “he, he’s got away!”

“Got away?” and the sergeant’s voice was a blare of fury.

“While we were looking at the Leprecaun,” said the voice of woe, “I
must have forgotten about the other one—I, I haven’t got him—”

“You gawm!” gritted the sergeant.

“Is it my prisoner that’s gone?” said Shawn in a deep voice. He
leaped forward with a curse and smote his negligent comrade so
terrible a blow in the face, that the man went flying backwards,
and the thud of his head on the road could have been heard anywhere.

“Get up,” said Shawn, “get up till I give you another one.”

“That will do,” said the sergeant, “we’ll go home. We’re the
laughing-stock of the world. I’ll pay you out for this some time,
every damn man of ye. Bring that Leprecaun along with you, and
quick march.”

“Oh!” said Shawn in a strangled tone.

“What is it now?” said the sergeant testily.

“Nothing,” replied Shawn.

“What did you say ‘Oh!’ for then, you block-head?”

“It’s the Leprecaun, sergeant,” said Shawn in a whisper—“he’s
got away—when I was hitting the man there I forgot all about the
Leprecaun: he must have run into the hedge. Oh, sergeant, dear,
don’t say anything to me now—!”

“Quick march,” said the sergeant, and the four men moved on through
the darkness in a silence, which was only skin deep.


CHAPTER XV

By reason of the many years which he had spent in the gloomy pine
wood, the Philosopher could see a little in the darkness, and when
he found there was no longer any hold on his coat he continued his
journey quietly, marching along with his head sunken on his breast
in a deep abstraction. He was meditating on the word “Me,” and
endeavouring to pursue it through all its changes and adventures.
The fact of “me-ness” was one which startled him. He was amazed at
his own being. He knew that the hand which he held up and pinched
with another hand was not him and the endeavour to find out what
was him was one which had frequently exercised his leisure. He had
not gone far when there came a tug at his sleeve and looking down
he found one of the Leprecauns of the Gort trotting by his side.

“Noble Sir,” said the Leprecaun, “you are terrible hard to get into
conversation with. I have been talking to you for the last long
time and you won’t listen.”

“I am listening now,” replied the Philosopher.

“You are, indeed,” said the Leprecaun heartily. “My brothers are on
the other side of the road over there beyond the hedge, and they
want to talk to you: will you come with me, Noble Sir?”

“Why wouldn’t I go with you?” said the Philosopher, and he turned
aside with the Leprecaun.

They pushed softly through a gap in the hedge and into a field
beyond.

“Come this way, sir,” said his guide, and the Philosopher followed
him across the field. In a few minutes they came to a thick bush
among the leaves of which the other Leprecauns were hiding. They
thronged out to meet the Philosopher’s approach and welcomed him
with every appearance of joy. With them was the Thin Woman of Inis
Magrath, who embraced her husband tenderly and gave thanks for his
escape.

“The night is young yet,” remarked one of the Leprecauns. “Let us
sit down here and talk about what should be done.”

“I am tired enough,” said the Philosopher, “for I have been
travelling all yesterday, and all this day and the whole of this
night I have been going also, so I would be glad to sit down
anywhere.”

They sat down under the bush and the Philosopher lit his pipe. In
the open space where they were there was just light enough to see
the smoke coming from his pipe, but scarcely more. One recognized
a figure as a deeper shadow than the surrounding darkness; but as
the ground was dry and the air just touched with a pleasant chill,
there was no discomfort. After the Philosopher had drawn a few
mouthfuls of smoke he passed his pipe on to the next person, and in
this way his pipe made the circuit of the party.

“When I put the children to bed,” said the Thin Woman, “I came down
the road in your wake with a basin of stirabout, for you had no
time to take your food, God help you! and I was thinking you must
have been hungry.”

“That is so,” said the Philosopher in a very anxious voice: “but I
don’t blame you, my dear, for letting the basin fall on the road—”

“While I was going along,” she continued, “I met these good people
and when I told them what happened they came with me to see if
anything could be done. The time they ran out of the hedge to
fight the policemen I wanted to go with them, but I was afraid the
stirabout would be spilt.”

The Philosopher licked his lips.

“I am listening to you, my love,” said he.

“So I had to stay where I was with the stirabout under my shawl—”

“Did you slip then, dear wife?”

“I did not, indeed,” she replied: “I have the stirabout with me
this minute. It’s rather cold, I’m thinking, but it is better than
nothing at all,” and she placed the bowl in his hands.

“I put sugar in it,” said she shyly, “and currants, and I have a
spoon in my pocket.”

“It tastes well,” said the Philosopher, and he cleaned the basin so
speedily that his wife wept because of his hunger.

By this time the pipe had come round to him again and it was
welcomed.

“Now we can talk,” said he, and he blew a great cloud of smoke into
the darkness and sighed happily.

“We were thinking,” said the Thin Woman, “that you won’t be able
to come back to our house for a while yet: the policemen will
be peeping about Coille Doraca for a long time, to be sure; for
isn’t it true that if there is a good thing coming to a person,
nobody takes much trouble to find him, but if there is a bad thing
or a punishment in store for a man, then the whole world will be
searched until he be found?”

“It is a true statement,” said the Philosopher.

“So what we arranged was this—that you should go to live with these
little men in their house under the yew tree of the Gort. There is
not a policeman in the world would find you there; or if you went
by night to the Brugh of the Boyne, Angus Óg himself would give you
a refuge.”

One of the Leprecauns here interposed.

“Noble Sir,” said he, “there isn’t much room in our house but
there’s no stint of welcome in it. You would have a good time with
us travelling on moonlit nights and seeing strange things, for we
often go to visit the Shee of the Hills and they come to see us;
there is always something to talk about, and we have dances in the
caves and on the tops of the hills. Don’t be imagining now that we
have a poor life for there is fun and plenty with us and the Brugh
of Angus Mac an Óg is hard to be got at.”

“I would like to dance, indeed,” returned the Philosopher, “for I
do believe that dancing is the first and last duty of man. If we
cannot be gay what can we be? Life is not any use at all unless we
find a laugh here and there—but this time, decent men of the Gort,
I cannot go with you, for it is laid on me to give myself up to the
police.”

“You would not do that,” exclaimed the Thin Woman pitifully: “You
wouldn’t think of doing that now!”

“An innocent man,” said he, “cannot be oppressed, for he is
fortified by his mind and his heart cheers him. It is only on
a guilty person that the rigour of punishment can fall, for he
punishes himself. This is what I think, that a man should always
obey the law with his body and always disobey it with his mind. I
have been arrested, the men of the law had me in their hands, and I
will have to go back to them so that they may do whatever they have
to do.”

The Philosopher resumed his pipe, and although the others reasoned
with him for a long time they could not by any means remove him
from his purpose. So, when the pale glimmer of dawn had stolen over
the sky, they arose and went downwards to the cross-roads and so to
the Police Station.

Outside the village the Leprecauns bade him farewell and the Thin
Woman also took her leave of him, saying she would visit Angus Óg
and implore his assistance on behalf of her husband, and then the
Leprecauns and the Thin Woman returned again the way they came, and
the Philosopher walked on to the barracks.


CHAPTER XVI

When he knocked at the barracks door it was opened by a man with
tousled, red hair, who looked as though he had just awakened from
sleep.

“What do you want at this hour of the night?” said he.

“I want to give myself up,” said the Philosopher. The policeman
looked at him “A man as old as you are,” said he, “oughtn’t to be
a fool. Go home now, I advise you, and don’t say a word to any one
whether you did it or not. Tell me this now, was it found out, or
are you only making a clean breast of it?”

“Sure I must give myself up,” said the Philosopher.

“If you must, you must, and that’s an end of it. Wipe your feet on
the rail there and come in—I’ll take your deposition.”

“I have no deposition for you,” said the Philosopher, “for I didn’t
do a thing at all.”

The policeman stared at him again.

“If that’s so,” said he, “you needn’t come in at all, and you
needn’t have wakened me out of my sleep either. Maybe, tho’, you
are the man that fought the badger on the Naas Road—Eh?”

“I am not,” replied the Philosopher: “but I was arrested for
killing my brother and his wife, although I never touched them.”

“Is that who you are?” said the policeman; and then, briskly,
“You’re as welcome as the cuckoo, you are so. Come in and make
yourself comfortable till the men awaken, and they are the lads
that’ll be glad to see you. I couldn’t make head or tail of what
they said when they came in last night, and no one else either, for
they did nothing but fight each other and curse the banshees and
cluricauns of Leinster. Sit down there on the settle by the fire
and, maybe, you’ll be able to get a sleep; you look as if you were
tired, and the mud of every county in Ireland is on your boots.”

The Philosopher thanked him and stretched out on the settle. In a
short time, for he was very weary, he fell asleep.

Many hours later he was awakened by the sound of voices, and found
on rising, that the men who had captured him on the previous
evening were standing by the bed. The sergeant’s face beamed with
joy. He was dressed only in his trousers and shirt. His hair was
sticking up in some places and sticking out in others which gave
a certain wild look to him, and his feet were bare. He took the
Philosopher’s two hands in his own and swore if ever there was
anything he could do to comfort him he would do that and more.
Shawn, in a similar state of unclothedness, greeted the Philosopher
and proclaimed himself his friend and follower for ever. Shawn
further announced that he did not believe the Philosopher had
killed the two people, that if he had killed them they must have
richly deserved it, and that if he was hung he would plant flowers
on his grave; for a decenter, quieter, and wiser man he had never
met and never would meet in the world.

These professions of esteem comforted the Philosopher, and he
replied to them in terms which made the red-haired policeman gape
in astonishment and approval.

He was given a breakfast of bread and cocoa which he ate with his
guardians, and then, as they had to take up their outdoor duties,
he was conducted to the backyard and informed he could walk about
there and that he might smoke until he was black in the face. The
policemen severally presented him with a pipe, a tin of tobacco,
two boxes of matches and a dictionary, and then they withdrew,
leaving him to his own devices.

The garden was about twelve feet square, having high, smooth walls
on every side, and into it there came neither sun nor wind. In
one corner a clump of rusty-looking sweet-pea was climbing up
the wall—every leaf of this plant was riddled with holes, and
there were no flowers on it. Another corner was occupied by dwarf
nasturtiums, and on this plant, in despite of every discouragement,
two flowers were blooming, but its leaves also were tattered and
dejected. A mass of ivy clung to the third corner, its leaves were
big and glossy at the top, but near the ground there was only grey,
naked stalks laced together by cobwebs. The fourth wall was clothed
in a loose Virginia creeper every leaf of which looked like an
insect that could crawl if it wanted to. The centre of this small
plot had used every possible artifice to cover itself with grass,
and in some places it had wonderfully succeeded, but the pieces of
broken bottles, shattered jampots, and sections of crockery were so
numerous that no attempt at growth could be other than tentative
and unpassioned.

Here, for a long time, the Philosopher marched up and down. At one
moment he examined the sweet-pea and mourned with it on a wretched
existence. Again he congratulated the nasturtium on its two
bright children; but he thought of the gardens wherein they might
have bloomed and the remembrance of that spacious, sunny freedom
saddened him.

“Indeed, poor creatures!” said he, “ye also are in gaol.”

The blank, soundless yard troubled him so much that at last he
called to the red-haired policeman and begged to be put into a
cell in preference; and to the common cell he was, accordingly,
conducted.

This place was a small cellar built beneath the level of the
ground. An iron grating at the top of the wall admitted one
blanched wink of light, but the place was bathed in obscurity. A
wooden ladder led down to the cell from a hole in the ceiling, and
this hole also gave a spark of brightness and some little air to
the room. The walls were of stone covered with plaster, but the
plaster had fallen away in many places leaving the rough stones
visible at every turn of the eye.

There were two men in the cell, and these the Philosopher saluted;
but they did not reply, nor did they speak to each other. There was
a low, wooden form fixed to the wall, running quite round the room,
and on this, far apart from each other, the two men were seated,
with their elbows resting on their knees, their heads propped upon
their hands, and each of them with an unwavering gaze fixed on the
floor between his feet.

The Philosopher walked for a time up and down the little cell, but
soon he also sat down on the low form, propped his head on his
hands and lapsed to a melancholy dream.

So the day passed. Twice a policeman came down the ladder bearing
three portions of food, bread and cocoa; and by imperceptible
gradations the light faded away from the grating and the darkness
came. After a great interval the policeman again approached
carrying three mattresses and three rough blankets, and these he
bundled through the hole. Each of the men took a mattress and a
blanket and spread them on the floor, and the Philosopher took his
share also.

By this time they could not see each other and all their operations
were conducted by the sense of touch alone. They laid themselves
down on the beds and a terrible, dark silence brooded over the room.

But the Philosopher could not sleep, he kept his eyes shut, for
the darkness under his eyelids was not so dense as that which
surrounded him; indeed, he could at will illuminate his own
darkness and order around him the sunny roads or the sparkling
sky. While his eyes were closed he had the mastery of all pictures
of light and colour and warmth, but an irresistible fascination
compelled him every few minutes to reopen them, and in the sad
space around he could not create any happiness. The darkness
weighed very sadly upon him so that in a short time it did creep
under his eyelids and drowned his happy pictures until a blackness
possessed him both within and without “Can one’s mind go to prison
as well as one’s body?” said he.

He strove desperately to regain his intellectual freedom, but he
could not. He could conjure up no visions but those of fear. The
creatures of the dark invaded him, fantastic terrors were thronging
on every side: they came from the darkness into his eyes and beyond
into himself, so that his mind as well as his fancy was captured,
and he knew he was, indeed, in gaol.

It was with a great start that he heard a voice speaking from the
silence—a harsh, yet cultivated voice, but he could not imagine
which of his companions was speaking. He had a vision of that man
tormented by the mental imprisonment of the darkness, trying to get
away from his ghosts and slimy enemies, goaded into speech in his
own despite lest he should be submerged and finally possessed by
the abysmal demons. For a while the voice spoke of the strangeness
of life and the cruelty of men to each other—disconnected
sentences, odd words of selfpity and self-encouragement, and then
the matter became more connected and a story grew in the dark cell
“I knew a man,” said the voice, “and he was a clerk. He had thirty
shillings a week, and for five years he had never missed a day
going to his work. He was a careful man, but a person with a wife
and four children cannot save much out of thirty shillings a week.
The rent of a house is high, a wife and children must be fed, and
they have to get boots and clothes, so that at the end of each week
that man’s thirty shillings used to be all gone. But they managed
to get along somehow—the man and his wife and the four children
were fed and clothed and educated, and the man often wondered how
so much could be done with so little money; but the reason was
that his wife was a careful woman . . . and then the man got sick.
A poor person cannot afford to get sick, and a married man cannot
leave his work. If he is sick he has to be sick; but he must go
to his work all the same, for if he stayed away who would pay the
wages and feed his family? and when he went back to work he might
find that there was nothing for him to do. This man fell sick, but
he made no change in his way of life: he got up at the same time
and went to the office as usual, and he got through the day somehow
without attracting his employer’s attention. He didn’t know what
was wrong with him: he only knew that he was sick. Sometimes he had
sharp, swift pains in his head, and again there would be long hours
of languor when he could scarcely bear to change his position or
lift a pen. He would commence a letter with the words ‘Dear Sir,’
forming the letter ‘D’ with painful, accurate slowness, elaborating
and thickening the up and down strokes, and being troubled when he
had to leave that letter for the next one; he built the next letter
by hair strokes and would start on the third with hatred. The end
of a word seemed to that man like the conclusion of an event—it was
a surprising, isolated, individual thing, having no reference to
anything else in the world, and on starting a new word he seemed
bound, in order to preserve its individuality, to write it in a
different handwriting. He would sit with his shoulders hunched up
and his pen resting on the paper, staring at a letter until he
was nearly mesmerized, and then come to himself with a sense of
fear, which started him working like a madman, so that he might
not be behind with his business. The day seemed to be so long. It
rolled on rusty hinges that could scarcely move. Each hour was like
a great circle swollen with heavy air, and it droned and buzzed
into an eternity. It seemed to the man that his hand in particular
wanted to rest. It was luxury not to work with it. It was good to
lay it down on a sheet of paper with the pen sloping against his
finger, and then watch his hand going to sleep—it seemed to the
man that it was his hand and not himself wanted to sleep, but it
always awakened when the pen slipped. There was an instinct in him
somewhere not to let the pen slip, and every time the pen moved
his hand awakened, and began to work languidly. When he went home
at night he lay down at once and stared for hours at a fly on the
wall or a crack on the ceiling. When his wife spoke to him he heard
her speaking as from a great distance, and he answered her dully as
though he was replying through a cloud. He only wanted to be let
alone, to be allowed to stare at the fly on the wall, or the crack
on the ceiling.

“One morning he found that he couldn’t get up, or rather, that
he didn’t want to get up. When his wife called him he made no
reply, and she seemed to call him every ten seconds—the words,
‘get up, get up,’ were crackling all round him; they were bursting
like bombs on the right hand and on the left of him: they were
scattering from above and all around him, bursting upwards from the
floor, swirling, swaying, and jostling each other. Then the sounds
ceased, and one voice only said to him ‘You are late!’ He saw these
words like a blur hanging in the air, just beyond his eyelids, and
he stared at the blur until he fell asleep.”

The voice in the cell ceased speaking for a few minutes, and then
it went on again.

“For three weeks the man did not leave his bed—he lived faintly
in a kind of trance, wherein great forms moved about slowly and
immense words were drumming gently for ever. When he began to
take notice again everything in the house was different. Most of
the furniture, paid for so hardly, was gone. He missed a thing
everywhere—chairs, a mirror, a table: wherever he looked he missed
something; and downstairs was worse—there, everything was gone. His
wife had sold all her furniture to pay for doctors, for medicine,
for food and rent. And she was changed too: good things had gone
from her face; she was gaunt, sharp-featured, miserable—but she was
comforted to think he was going back to work soon.

“There was a flurry in his head when he went to his office. He
didn’t know what his employer would say for stopping away. He
might blame him for being sick—he wondered would his employer pay
him for the weeks he was absent. When he stood at the door he was
frightened. Suddenly the thought of his master’s eye grew terrible
to him: it was a steady, cold, glassy eye; but he opened the door
and went in. His master was there with another man and he tried to
say ‘Good morning, sir,’ in a natural and calm voice; but he knew
that the strange man had been engaged instead of himself, and this
knowledge posted itself between his tongue and his thought. He
heard himself stammering, he felt that his whole bearing had become
drooping and abject. His master was talking swiftly and the other
man was looking at him in an embarrassed, stealthy, and pleading
manner: his eyes seemed to be apologising for having supplanted
him—so he mumbled ‘Good day, sir,’ and stumbled out.

“When he got outside he could not think where to go. After a while
he went in the direction of the little park in the centre of the
city. It was quite near and he sat down on an iron bench facing
a pond. There were children walking up and down by the water
giving pieces of bread to the swans. Now and again a labouring
man or a messenger went by quickly; now and again a middleaged,
slovenly-dressed man drooped past aimlessly: sometimes a tattered,
self-intent woman with a badgered face flopped by him. When he
looked at these dull people the thought came to him that they
were not walking there at all; they were trailing through hell,
and their desperate eyes saw none but devils around them. He saw
himself joining these battered strollers . . . and he could not
think what he would tell his wife when he went home. He rehearsed
to himself the terms of his dismissal a hundred times. How his
master looked, what he had said: and then the fine, ironical things
he had said to his master. He sat in the park all day, and when
evening fell he went home at his accustomed hour.

“His wife asked him questions as to how he had got on, and wanted
to know was there any chance of being paid for the weeks of
absence; the man answered her volubly, ate his supper and went to
bed: but he did not tell his wife that he had been dismissed and
that there would be no money at the end of the week. He tried to
tell her, but when he met her eye he found that he could not say
the words—he was afraid of the look that might come into her face
when she heard it—she, standing terrified in those dismantled
rooms...!

“In the morning he ate his breakfast and went out again—to work,
his wife thought. She bid him ask the master about the three weeks’
wages, or to try and get an advance on the present week’s wages,
for they were hardly put to it to buy food. He said he would do his
best, but he went straight to the park and sat looking at the pond,
looking at the passers-by and dreaming. In the middle of the day he
started up in a panic and went about the city asking for work in
offices, shops, warehouses, everywhere, but he could not get any.
He trailed back heavy-footed again to the park and sat down.

“He told his wife more lies about his work that night and what his
master had said when he asked for an advance. He couldn’t bear the
children to touch him. After a little time he sneaked away to his
bed.

“A week went that way. He didn’t look for work any more. He sat in
the park, dreaming, with his head bowed into his hands. The next
day would be the day he should have been paid his wages. The next
day! What would his wife say when he told her he had no money? She
would stare at him and flush and say—’Didn’t you go out every day
to work?’—How would he tell her then so that she could understand
quickly and spare him words?

“Morning came and the man ate his breakfast silently. There was no
butter on the bread, and his wife seemed to be apologising to him
for not having any. She said, ‘We’ll be able to start fair from
to-morrow,’ and when he snapped at her angrily she thought it was
because he had to eat dry bread.

“He went to the park and sat there for hours. Now and again he got
up and walked into a neighbouring street, but always, after half an
hour or so, he came back. Six o’clock in the evening was his hour
for going home. When six o’clock came he did not move, he still sat
opposite the pond with his head bowed down into his arms. Seven
o’clock passed. At nine o’clock a bell was rung and every one had
to leave. He went also. He stood outside the gates looking on this
side and on that. Which way would he go? All roads were alike to
him, so he turned at last and walked somewhere. He did not go home
that night. He never went home again. He never was heard of again
anywhere in the wide world.”

The voice ceased speaking and silence swung down again upon the
little cell. The Philosopher had been listening intently to this
story, and after a few minutes he spoke “When you go up this road
there is a turn to the left and all the path along is bordered with
trees—there are birds in the trees, Glory be to God! There is only
one house on that road, and the woman in it gave us milk to drink.
She has but one son, a good boy, and she said the other children
were dead; she was speaking of a husband who went away and left
her—‘Why should he have been afraid to come home?’ said she—‘sure,
I loved him.’”

After a little interval the voice spoke again “I don’t know what
became of the man I was speaking of. I am a thief, and I’m well
known to the police everywhere. I don’t think that man would get a
welcome at the house up here, for why should he?”

Another, a different, querulous kind of voice came from the
silence “If I knew a place where there was a welcome I’d go there
as quickly as I could, but I don’t know a place and I never will,
for what good would a man of my age be to any person? I am a thief
also. The first thing I stole was a hen out of a little yard. I
roasted it in a ditch and ate it, and then I stole another one and
ate it, and after that I stole everything I could lay my hands on.
I suppose I will steal as long as I live, and I’ll die in a ditch
at the heel of the hunt. There was a time, not long ago, and if
any one had told me then that I would rob, even for hunger, I’d
have been insulted: but what does it matter now? And the reason I
am a thief is because I got old without noticing it. Other people
noticed it, but I did not. I suppose age comes on one so gradually
that it is seldom observed. If there are wrinkles on one’s face we
do not remember when they were not there: we put down all kind of
little infirmities to sedentary living, and you will see plenty of
young people bald. If a man has no occasion to tell any one his
age, and if he never thinks of it himself, he won’t see ten years’
difference between his youth and his age, for we live in slow,
quiet times, and nothing ever happens to mark the years as they go
by, one after the other, and all the same.

“I lodged in a house for a great many years, and a little girl grew
up there, the daughter of my landlady. She used to slide down the
bannisters very well, and she used to play the piano very badly.
These two things worried me many a time. She used to bring me my
meals in the morning and the evening, and often enough she’d stop
to talk with me while I was eating. She was a very chatty girl and
I was a talkative person myself. When she was about eighteen years
of age I got so used to her that if her mother came with the food
I would be worried for the rest of the day. Her face was as bright
as a sunbeam, and her lazy, careless ways, big, free movements,
and girlish chatter were pleasant to a man whose loneliness was
only beginning to be apparent to him through her company. I’ve
thought of it often since, and I suppose that’s how it began. She
used to listen to all my opinions and she’d agree with them because
she had none of her own yet. She was a good girl, but lazy in her
mind and body; childish, in fact. Her talk was as involved as her
actions: she always seemed to be sliding down mental bannisters;
she thought in kinks and spoke in spasms, hopped mentally from one
subject to another without the slightest difficulty, and could use
a lot of language in saying nothing at all. I could see all that
at the time, but I suppose I was too pleased with my own sharp
business brains, and sick enough, although I did not know it, of my
sharp-brained, business companions—dear Lord! I remember them well.
It’s easy enough to have brains as they call it, but it is not so
easy to have a little gaiety or carelessness or childishness or
whatever it was she had. It is good, too, to feel superior to some
one, even a girl.

“One day this thought came to me—‘It is time that I settled down.’
I don’t know where the idea came from; one hears it often enough
and it always seems to apply to some one else, but I don’t know
what brought it to roost with me. I was foolish, too: I bought ties
and differently shaped collars, and took to creasing my trousers
by folding them under the bed and lying on them all night—It never
struck me that I was more than three times her age. I brought home
sweets for her and she was delighted. She said she adored sweets,
and she used to insist on my eating some of them with her; she
liked to compare notes as to how they tasted while eating them.
I used to get a toothache from them, but I bore with it although
at that time I hated toothache almost as much as I hated sweets.
Then I asked her to come out with me for a walk. She was willing
enough and it was a novel experience for me. Indeed, it was rather
exciting. We went out together often after that, and sometimes we’d
meet people I knew, young men from my office or from other offices.
I used to be shy when some of these people winked at me as they
saluted. It was pleasant, too, telling the girl who they were,
their business and their salaries: for there was little I didn’t
know. I used to tell her of my own position in the office and what
the chief said to me through the day. Sometimes we talked of the
things that had appeared in the evening papers. A murder perhaps,
some phase of a divorce case, the speech a political person had
made, or the price of stock. She was interested in anything so long
as it was talk. And her own share in the conversation was good
to hear. Every lady that passed us had a hat that stirred her to
the top of rapture or the other pinnacle of disgust. She told me
what ladies were frights and what were ducks. Under her scampering
tongue I began to learn something of humanity, even though she saw
most people as delightfully funny clowns or superb, majestical
princes, but I noticed that she never said a bad word of a man,
although many of the men she looked after were ordinary enough.
Until I went walking with her I never knew what a shop window was.
A jeweller’s window especially: there were curious things in it.
She told me how a tiara should be worn, and a pendant, and she
explained the kind of studs I should wear myself; they were made of
gold and had red stones in them; she showed me the ropes of pearl
or diamonds that she thought would look pretty on herself: and one
day she said that she liked me very much. I was pleased and excited
that day, but I was a business man and I said very little in reply.
I never liked a pig in a poke.

“She used to go out two nights in the week, Monday and Thursday,
dressed in her best clothes. I didn’t know where she went, and I
didn’t ask—I thought she visited an acquaintance, a girl friend or
some such. The time went by and I made up my mind to ask her to
marry me. I had watched her long enough and she was always kind
and bright. I liked the way she smiled, and I liked her obedient,
mannerly bearing. There was something else I liked, which I did
not recognise then, something surrounding all her movements, a
graciousness, a spaciousness: I did not analyse it; but I know now
that it was her youth. I remember that when we were out together
she walked slowly, but in the house she would leap up and down the
stairs—she moved furiously, but I didn’t.

“One evening she dressed to go out as usual, and she called at my
door to know had I everything I wanted. I said I had something to
tell her when she came home, something important. She promised to
come in early to hear it, and I laughed at her and she laughed back
and went sliding down the bannisters. I don’t think I have had any
reason to laugh since that night. A letter came for me after she
had gone, and I knew by the shape and the handwriting that it was
from the office. It puzzled me to think why I should be written to.
I didn’t like opening it somehow.... It was my dismissal on account
of advancing age, and it hoped for my future welfare politely
enough. It was signed by the Senior. I didn’t grip it at first, and
then I thought it was a hoax. For a long time I sat in my room with
an empty mind. I was watching my mind: there were immense distances
in it that drowsed and buzzed; large, soft movements seemed to be
made in my mind, and although I was looking at the letter in my
hand I was really trying to focus those great, swinging spaces
in my brain, and my ears were listening for a movement of some
kind. I can see back to that time plainly. I went walking up and
down the room. There was a dull, subterranean anger in me. I
remember muttering once or twice, ‘Shameful!’ and again I said,
‘Ridiculous!’ At the idea of age I looked at my face in the glass,
but I was looking at my mind, and it seemed to go grey, there was a
heaviness there also. I seemed to be peering from beneath a weight
at something strange. I had a feeling that I had let go a grip
which I had held tightly for a long time, and I had a feeling that
the letting go was a grave disaster . . . that strange face in the
glass! how wrinkled it was! there were only a few hairs on the head
and they were grey ones. There was a constant twitching of the lips
and the eyes were deep-set, little and dull. I left the glass and
sat down by the window, looking out. I saw nothing in the street: I
just looked into a blackness. My mind was as blank as the night and
as soundless. There was a swirl outside the window, rain tossed by
the wind; without noticing, I saw it, and my brain swung with the
rain until it heaved in circles, and then a feeling of faintness
awakened me to myself. I did not allow my mind to think, but now
and again a word swooped from immense distances through my brain,
swinging like a comet across a sky and jarring terribly when it
struck: ‘Sacked’ was one word, ‘Old’ was another word.

“I don’t know how long I sat watching the flight of these dreadful
words and listening to their clanking impact, but a movement in
the street aroused me. Two people, the girl and a young, slender
man, were coming slowly up to the house. The rain was falling
heavily, but they did not seem to mind it. There was a big puddle
of water close to the kerb, and the girl, stepping daintily as a
cat, went round this, but the young man stood for a moment beyond
it. He raised both arms, clenched his fists, swung them, and jumped
over the puddle. Then he and the girl stood looking at the water,
apparently measuring the jump. I could see them plainly by a street
lamp. They were bidding each other good-bye. The girl put her hand
to his neck and settled the collar of his coat, and while her hand
rested on him the young man suddenly and violently flung his arms
about her and hugged her; then they kissed and moved apart. The
man walked to the rain puddle and stood there with his face turned
back laughing at her, and then he jumped straight into the middle
of the puddle and began to dance up and down in it, the muddy
water splashing up to his knees. She ran over to him crying ‘Stop,
silly!’ When she came into the house, I bolted my door and I gave
no answer to her knock.

“In a few months the money I had saved was spent. I couldn’t get
any work, I was too old; they put it that they wanted a younger
man. I couldn’t pay my rent. I went out into the world again,
like a baby, an old baby in a new world. I stole food, food, food
anywhere and everywhere. At first I was always caught. Often I was
sent to gaol; sometimes I was let go; sometimes I was kicked; but I
learned to live like a wolf at last. I am not often caught now when
I steal food. But there is something happening every day, whether
it is going to gaol or planning how to steal a hen or a loaf of
bread. I find that it is a good life, much better than the one I
lived for nearly sixty years, and I have time to think over every
sort of thing....”

When the morning came the Philosopher was taken on a car to the big
City in order that he might be put on his trial and hanged. It was
the custom.




BOOK VI. THE THIN WOMAN’S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH


CHAPTER XVII

The ability of the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath for anger was
unbounded. She was not one of those limited creatures who are swept
clean by a gust of wrath and left placid and smiling after its
passing. She could store her anger in those caverns of eternity
which open into every soul, and which are filled with rage and
violence until the time comes when they may be stored with wisdom
and love; for, in the genesis of life, love is at the beginning
and the end of things. First, like a laughing child, love came to
labour minutely in the rocks and sands of the heart, opening the
first of those roads which lead inwards for ever, and then, the
labour of his day being done, love fled away and was forgotten.
Following came the fierce winds of hate to work like giants and
gnomes among the prodigious debris, quarrying the rocks and
levelling the roads which soar inwards; but when that work is
completed love will come radiantly again to live for ever in the
human heart, which is Eternity.

Before the Thin Woman could undertake the redemption of her husband
by wrath, it was necessary that she should be purified by the
performance of that sacrifice which is called the Forgiveness of
Enemies, and this she did by embracing the Leprecauns of the Gort
and in the presence of the sun and the wind remitting their crime
against her husband. Thus she became free to devote her malice
against the State of Punishment, while forgiving the individuals
who had but acted in obedience to the pressure of their infernal
environment, which pressure is Sin.

This done she set about baking the three cakes against her journey
to Angus Óg.

While she was baking the cakes, the children, Seumas and Brigid
Beg, slipped away into the wood to speak to each other and to
wonder over this extraordinary occurrence.

At first their movements were very careful, for they could not be
quite sure that the policemen had really gone away, or whether they
were hiding in dark places waiting to pounce on them and carry
them away to captivity. The word “murder” was almost unknown to
them, and its strangeness was rendered still more strange by reason
of the nearness of their father to the term. It was a terrible
word and its terror was magnified by their father’s unthinkable
implication. What had he done? Almost all his actions and habits
were so familiar to them as to be commonplace, and yet, there was a
dark something to which he was a party and which dashed before them
as terrible and ungraspable as a lightning-flash. They understood
that it had something to do with that other father and mother whose
bodies had been snatched from beneath the hearthstone, but they
knew the Philosopher had done nothing in that instance, and, so,
they saw murder as a terrible, occult affair which was quite beyond
their mental horizons.

No one jumped out on them from behind the trees, so in a little
time their confidence returned and they walked less carefully.
When they reached the edge of the pine wood the brilliant sunshine
invited them to go farther, and after a little hesitation they did
so. The good spaces and the sweet air dissipated their melancholy
thoughts, and very soon they were racing each other to this
point and to that. Their wayward flights had carried them in the
direction of Meehawl MacMurrachu’s cottage, and here, breathlessly,
they threw themselves under a small tree to rest. It was a thorn
bush, and as they sat beneath it the cessation of movement gave
them opportunity to again consider the terrible position of their
father. With children thought cannot be separated from action for
very long. They think as much with their hands as with their heads.
They have to do the thing they speak of in order to visualise the
idea, and, consequently, Seumas Beg was soon reconstructing the
earlier visit of the policemen to their house in grand pantomime.
The ground beneath the thorn bush became the hearthstone of their
cottage; he and Brigid became four policemen, and in a moment he
was digging furiously with a broad piece of wood to find the two
hidden bodies. He had digged for only a few minutes when the piece
of wood struck against something hard. A very little time sufficed
to throw the soil off this, and their delight was great when they
unearthed a beautiful little earthen crock filled to the brim with
shining, yellow dust. When they lifted this they were astonished
at its great weight. They played for a long time with it, letting
the heavy, yellow shower slip through their fingers and watching
it glisten in the sunshine. After they tired of this they decided
to bring the crock home, but by the time they reached the Gort
na Cloca Mora they were so tired that they could not carry it
any farther, and they decided to leave it with their friends the
Leprecauns. Seumas Beg gave the taps on the tree trunk which they
had learned, and in a moment the Leprecaun whom they knew came up.

[Illustration: He . . . wept in so loud a voice that his comrades
swarmed up to see what had happened to him]

“We have brought this, sir,” said Seumas. But he got no further,
for the instant the Leprecaun saw the crock he threw his arms
around it and wept in so loud a voice that his comrades swarmed
up to see what had happened to him, and they added their laughter
and tears to his, to which chorus the children subjoined their
sympathetic clamour, so that a noise of great complexity rang
through all the Gort.

But the Leprecauns’ surrender to this happy passion was short.
Hard on their gladness came remembrance and consternation; and
then repentance, that dismal virtue, wailed in their ears and
their hearts. How could they thank the children whose father and
protector they had delivered to the unilluminated justice of
humanity? that justice which demands not atonement but punishment;
which is learned in the Book of Enmity but not in the Book of
Friendship; which calls hatred Nature, and Love a conspiracy; whose
law is an iron chain and whose mercy is debility and chagrin; the
blind fiend who would impose his own blindness; that unfruitful
loin which curses fertility; that stony heart which would petrify
the generations of man; before whom life withers away appalled and
death would shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the
inadequate ooze from their eyes and danced joyfully for spite. They
could do no more, so they fed the children lovingly and carried
them home.

The Thin Woman had baked three cakes. One of these she gave to each
of the children and one she kept herself, whereupon they set out
upon their journey to Angus Óg.

It was well after midday when they started. The fresh gaiety of the
morning was gone, and a tyrannous sun, whose majesty was almost
insupportable, lorded it over the world. There was but little shade
for the travellers, and, after a time, they became hot and weary
and thirsty—that is, the children did, but the Thin Woman, by
reason of her thinness, was proof against every elemental rigour,
except hunger, from which no creature is free.

She strode in the centre of the road, a very volcano of silence,
thinking twenty different thoughts at the one moment, so that
the urgency of her desire for utterance kept her terribly quiet;
but against this crust of quietude there was accumulating a mass
of speech which must at the last explode or petrify. From this
congestion of thought there arose the first deep rumblings,
precursors of uproar, and another moment would have heard the
thunder of her varied malediction, but that Brigid Beg began to
cry: for, indeed, the poor child was both tired and parched to
distraction, and Seumas had no barrier against a similar surrender,
but two minutes’ worth of boyish pride. This discovery withdrew the
Thin Woman from her fiery contemplations, and in comforting the
children she forgot her own hardships.

It became necessary to find water quickly: no difficult thing,
for the Thin Woman, being a Natural, was like all other creatures
able to sense the whereabouts of water, and so she at once led the
children in a slightly different direction. In a few minutes they
reached a well by the road-side, and here the children drank deeply
and were comforted. There was a wide, leafy tree growing hard by
the well, and in the shade of this tree they sat down and ate their
cakes.

While they rested the Thin Woman advised the children on many
important matters. She never addressed her discourse to both of
them at once, but spoke first to Seumas on one subject and then
to Brigid on another subject; for, as she said, the things which
a boy must learn are not those which are necessary to a girl. It
is particularly important that a man should understand how to
circumvent women, for this and the capture of food forms the basis
of masculine wisdom, and on this subject she spoke to Seumas. It
is, however, equally urgent that a woman should be skilled to
keep a man in his proper place, and to this thesis Brigid gave an
undivided attention.

She taught that a man must hate all women before he is able to
love a woman, but that he is at liberty, or rather he is under
express command, to love all men because they are of his kind.
Women also should love all other women as themselves, and they
should hate all men but one man only, and him they should seek to
turn into a woman, because women, by the order of their beings,
must be either tyrants or slaves, and it is better they should
be tyrants than slaves. She explained that between men and women
there exists a state of unremitting warfare, and that the endeavour
of each sex is to bring the other to subjection; but that women
are possessed by a demon called Pity which severely handicaps
their battle and perpetually gives victory to the male, who is
thus constantly rescued on the very ridges of defeat. She said
to Seumas that his fatal day would dawn when he loved a woman,
because he would sacrifice his destiny to her caprice, and she
begged him for love of her to beware of all that twisty sex. To
Brigid she revealed that a woman’s terrible day is upon her when
she knows that a man loves her, for a man in love submits only to
a woman, a partial, individual and temporary submission, but a
woman who is loved surrenders more fully to the very god of love
himself, and so she becomes a slave, and is not alone deprived of
her personal liberty, but is even infected in her mental processes
by this crafty obsession. The fates work for man, and therefore,
she averred, woman must be victorious, for those who dare to war
against the gods are already assured of victory: this being the law
of life, that only the weak shall conquer. The limit of strength
is petrifaction and immobility, but there is no limit to weakness,
and cunning or fluidity is its counsellor. For these reasons, and
in order that life might not cease, women should seek to turn their
husbands into women; then they would be tyrants and their husbands
would be slaves, and life would be renewed for a further period.

As the Thin Woman proceeded with this lesson it became at last so
extremely complicated that she was brought to a stand by the knots,
so she decided to resume their journey and disentangle her argument
when the weather became cooler.

They were repacking the cakes in their wallets when they observed a
stout, comely female coming towards the well. This woman, when she
drew near, saluted the Thin Woman, and her the Thin Woman saluted
again, whereupon the stranger sat down.

“It’s hot weather, surely,” said she, “and I’m thinking it’s as
much as a body’s life is worth to be travelling this day and the
sun the way it is. Did you come far, now, ma’am, or is it that you
are used to going the roads and don’t mind it?”

“Not far,” said the Thin Woman.

“Far or near,” said the stranger, “a perch is as much as I’d like
to travel this time of the year. That’s a fine pair of children you
have with you now, ma’am.”

“They are,” said the Thin Woman.

“I’ve ten of them myself,” the other continued, “and I often
wondered where they came from. It’s queer to think of one woman
making ten new creatures and she not getting a penny for it, nor
any thanks itself.”

“It is,” said the Thin Woman.

“Do you ever talk more than two words at the one time, ma’am?” said
the stranger.

“I do,” said the Thin Woman.

“I’d give a penny to hear you,” replied the other angrily, “for a
more bad-natured, cross-grained, cantankerous person than yourself
I never met among womankind. It’s what I said to a man only
yesterday, that thin ones are bad ones, and there isn’t any one
could be thinner than you are yourself.”

“The reason you say that,” said the Thin Woman calmly, “is because
you are fat and you have to tell lies to yourself to hide your
misfortune, and let on that you like it. There is no one in the
world could like to be fat, and there I leave you, ma’am. You can
poke your finger in your own eye, but you may keep it out of mine
if you please, and, so, good-bye to you; and if I wasn’t a quiet
woman I’d pull you by the hair of the head up a hill and down a
hill for two hours, and now there’s an end of it. I’ve given you
more than two words; let you take care or I’ll give you two more
that will put blisters on your body for ever. Come along with me
now, children, and if ever you see a woman like that woman you’ll
know that she eats until she can’t stand, and drinks until she
can’t sit, and sleeps until she is stupid; and if that sort of
person ever talks to you remember that two words are all that’s due
to her, and let them be short ones, for a woman like that would be
a traitor and a thief, only that she’s too lazy to be anything but
a sot, God help her I and, so, good-bye.”

Thereupon the Thin Woman and the children arose, and having saluted
the stranger they went down the wide path; but the other woman
stayed where she was sitting, and she did not say a word even to
herself.

As she strode along the Thin Woman lapsed again to her anger, and
became so distant in her aspect that the children could get no
companionship from her; so, after a while, they ceased to consider
her at all and addressed themselves to their play. They danced
before and behind and around her. They ran and doubled, shouted
and laughed and sang. Sometimes they pretended they were husband
and wife, and then they plodded quietly side by side, making wise,
occasional remarks on the weather, or the condition of their
health, or the state of the fields of rye. Sometimes one was a
horse and the other was a driver, and then they stamped along the
road with loud, fierce snortings and louder and fiercer commands.
At another moment one was a cow being driven with great difficulty
to market by a driver whose temper had given way hours before; or
they both became goats and with their heads jammed together they
pushed and squealed viciously; and these changes lapsed into one
another so easily that at no moment were they unoccupied. But
as the day wore on to evening the immense surrounding quietude
began to weigh heavily upon them. Saving for their own shrill
voices there was no sound, and this unending, wide silence at last
commanded them to a corresponding quietness. Little by little they
ceased their play. The scamper became a trot, each run was more and
more curtailed in its length, the race back became swifter than the
run forth, and, shortly, they were pacing soberly enough one on
either side of the Thin Woman sending back and forth a few quiet
sentences. Soon even these sentences trailed away into the vast
surrounding stillness. Then Brigid Beg clutched the Thin Woman’s
right hand, and not long after Seumas gently clasped her left hand,
and these mute appeals for protection and comfort again released
her from the valleys of fury through which she had been so fiercely
careering.

As they went gently along they saw a cow lying in a field, and,
seeing this animal, the Thin Woman stopped thoughtfully.

“Everything,” said she, “belongs to the wayfarer,” and she crossed
into the field and milked the cow into a vessel which she had.

“I wonder,” said Seumas, “who owns that cow.”

“Maybe,” said Brigid Beg, “nobody owns her at all.”

“The cow owns herself,” said the Thin Woman, “for nobody can own a
thing that is alive. I am sure she gives her milk to us with great
goodwill, for we are modest, temperate people without greed or
pretension.”

On being released the cow lay down again in the grass and resumed
its interrupted cud. As the evening had grown chill the Thin Woman
and the children huddled close to the warm animal. They drew pieces
of cake from their wallets, and ate these and drank happily from
the vessel of milk. Now and then the cow looked benignantly over
its shoulder bidding them a welcome to its hospitable flanks. It
had a mild, motherly eye, and it was very fond of children. The
youngsters continually deserted their meal in order to put their
arms about the cow’s neck to thank and praise her for her goodness,
and to draw each other’s attention to various excellences in its
appearance.

“Cow,” said Brigid Beg in an ecstasy, “I love you.”

“So do I,” said Seumas. “Do you notice the kind of eyes it has?”

“Why does a cow have horns?” said Brigid.

So they asked the cow that question, but it only smiled and said
nothing.

“If a cow talked to you,” said Brigid, “what would it say?”

“Let us be cows,” replied Seumas, “and then, maybe, we will find
out.”

So they became cows and ate a few blades of grass, but they found
that when they were cows they did not want to say anything but
“moo,” and they decided that cows did not want to say anything more
than that either, and they became interested in the reflection
that, perhaps, nothing else was worth saying.

A long, thin, yellow-coloured fly was going in that direction on a
journey, and he stopped to rest himself on the cow’s nose.

“You are welcome,” said the cow.

“It’s a great night for travelling,” said the fly, “but one gets
tired alone. Have you seen any of my people about?”

“No,” replied the cow, “no one but beetles to-night, and they
seldom stop for a talk. You’ve rather a good kind of life, I
suppose, flying about and enjoying yourself.”

“We all have our troubles,” said the fly in a melancholy voice, and
he commenced to clean his right wing with his leg.

“Does any one ever lie against your back the way these people are
lying against mine, or do they steal your milk?”

“There are too many spiders about,” said the fly.

“No corner is safe from them; they squat in the grass and pounce on
you. I’ve got a twist, my eye trying to watch them. They are ugly,
voracious people without manners or neighbourliness, terrible,
terrible creatures.”

“I have seen them,” said the cow, “but they never done me any harm.
Move up a little bit please, I want to lick my nose: it’s queer
how itchy my nose gets”—the fly moved up a bit. “If,” the cow
continued, “you had stayed there, and if my tongue had hit you, I
don’t suppose you would ever have recovered.”

“Your tongue couldn’t have hit me,” said the by. “I move very
quickly you know.”

Hereupon the cow slily whacked her tongue across her nose. She did
not see the fly move, but it was hovering safely half an inch over
her nose.

“You see,” said the fly.

“I do,” replied the cow, and she bellowed so sudden and furious a
snort of laughter that the fly was blown far away by that gust and
never came back again.

This amused the cow exceedingly, and she chuckled and sniggered
to herself for a long time. The children had listened with great
interest to the conversation, and they also laughed delightedly,
and the Thin Woman admitted that the fly had got the worse of
it; but, after a while, she said that the part of the cow’s back
against which she was resting was bonier than anything she had ever
leaned upon before, and that while thinness was a virtue no one had
any right to be thin in lumps, and that on this count the cow was
not to be commended. On hearing this the cow arose, and without
another look at them it walked away into the dusky field. The Thin
Woman told the children afterwards that she was sorry she had said
anything, but she was unable to bring her self to apologise to the
cow, and so they were forced to resume their journey in order to
keep themselves warm.

There was a sickle moon in the sky, a tender sword whose radiance
stayed in its own high places and did not at all illumine the heavy
world below; the glimmer of infrequent stars could also be seen
with spacious, dark solitudes between them; but on the earth the
darkness gathered in fold on fold of misty veiling, through which
the trees uttered an earnest whisper, and the grasses lifted their
little voices, and the wind crooned its thrilling, stern lament.

As the travellers walked on, their eyes, flinching from the
darkness, rested joyfully on the gracious moon, but that joy lasted
only for a little time. The Thin Woman spoke to them curiously
about the moon, and, indeed, she might speak with assurance on that
subject, for her ancestors had sported in the cold beam through
countless dim generations.

“It is not known,” said she, “that the fairies seldom dance for
joy, but for sadness that they have been expelled from the sweet
dawn, and therefore their midnight revels are only ceremonies
to remind them of their happy state in the morning of the world
before thoughtful curiosity and self-righteous moralities drove
them from the kind face of the sun to the dark exile of midnight.
It is strange that we may not be angry while looking on the moon.
Indeed, no mere appetite or passion of any kind dare become
imperative in the presence of the Shining One; and this, in a more
limited degree, is true also of every form of beauty; for there
is something in an absolute beauty to chide away the desires of
materiality and yet to dissolve the spirit in ecstasies of fear and
sadness. Beauty has no liking for Thought, but will send terror
and sorrow on those who look upon her with intelligent eyes. We
may neither be angry nor gay in the presence of the moon, nor may
we dare to think in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely
afflict us. I think that she is not benevolent but malign, and
that her mildness is a cloak for many shy infamies. I think that
beauty tends to become frightful as it becomes perfect, and that,
if we could see it comprehendingly, the extreme of beauty is a
desolating hideousness, and that the name of ultimate, absolute
beauty is Madness. Therefore men should seek loveliness rather
than beauty, and so they would always have a friend to go beside
them, to understand and to comfort them, for that is the business
of loveliness: but the business of beauty—there is no person
at all knows what that is. Beauty is the extreme which has not
yet swung to and become merged in its opposite. The poets have
sung of this beauty and the philosophers have prophesied of it,
thinking that the beauty which passes all understanding is also
the peace which passeth understanding; but I think that whatever
passes understanding, which is imagination, is terrible, standing
aloof from humanity and from kindness, and that this is the sin
against the Holy Ghost, the great Artist. An isolated perfection
is a symbol of terror and pride, and it is followed only by the
head of man, but the heart winces from it aghast, cleaving to
that loveliness which is modesty and righteousness. Every extreme
is bad, in order that it may swing to and fertilize its equally
horrible opposite.”

Thus, speaking more to herself than to the children, the Thin Woman
beguiled the way. The moon had brightened as she spoke, and on
either side of the path, wherever there was a tree or a rise in the
ground, a black shadow was crouching tensely watchful, seeming as
if it might spring into terrible life at a bound. Of these shadows
the children became so fearful that the Thin Woman forsook the path
and adventured on the open hillside, so that in a short time the
road was left behind and around them stretched the quiet slopes in
the full shining of the moon.

When they had walked for a long time the children became sleepy;
they were unused to being awake in the night, and as there was no
place where they could rest, and as it was evident that they could
not walk much further, the Thin Woman grew anxious. Already Brigid
had made a tiny, whimpering sound, and Seumas had followed this
with a sigh, the slightest prolongation of which might have trailed
into a sob, and when children are overtaken by tears they do not
understand how to escape from them until they are simply bored by
much weeping.

[Illustration: When they topped a slight incline they saw a light
shining some distance away]

When they topped a slight incline they saw a light shining some
distance away, and toward this the Thin Woman hurried. As they drew
near she saw it was a small fire, and around this some figures were
seated. In a few minutes she came into the circle of the firelight,
and here she halted suddenly. She would have turned and fled, but
fear loosened her knees so that they would not obey her will;
also the people by the fire had observed her, and a great voice
commanded that she should draw near.

The fire was made of branches of heather, and beside it three
figures sat. The Thin Woman, hiding her perturbation as well as
she could, came nigh and sat down by the fire. After a low word of
greeting she gave some of her cake to the children, drew them close
to her, wrapped her shawl about their heads and bade them sleep.
Then, shrinkingly, she looked at her hosts.

They were quite naked, and each of them gazed on her with intent
earnestness. The first was so beautiful that the eye failed upon
him, flinching aside as from a great brightness. He was of mighty
stature, and yet so nobly proportioned, so exquisitely slender and
graceful, that no idea of gravity or bulk went with his height.
His face was kingly and youthful and of a terrifying serenity. The
second man was of equal height, but broad to wonderment. So broad
was he that his great height seemed diminished. The tense arm on
which he leaned was knotted and ridged with muscle, and his hand
gripped deeply into the ground. His face seemed as though it had
been hammered from hard rock, a massive, blunt face as rigid as
his arm. The third man can scarcely be described. He was neither
short nor tall. He was muscled as heavily as the second man. As he
sat he looked like a colossal toad squatting with his arms about
his knees, and upon these his chin rested. He had no shape nor
swiftness, and his head was flattened down and was scarcely wider
than his neck. He had a protruding dog-like mouth that twitched
occasionally, and from his little eyes there glinted a horrible
intelligence. Before this man the soul of the Thin Woman grovelled.
She felt herself crawling to him. The last terrible abasement of
which humanity is capable came upon her: a fascination which would
have drawn her to him in screaming adoration. Hardly could she look
away from him, but her arms were about the children, and love,
mightiest of the powers, stirred fiercely in her heart.

The first man spoke to her.

“Woman,” said he, “for what purpose do you go abroad on this night
and on this hill?”

“I travel, sir,” said the Thin Woman, “searching for the Brugh of
Angus the son of the Dagda Mór.”

“We are all children of the Great Father,” said he. “Do you know
who we are?”

“I do not know that,” said she.

“We are the Three Absolutes, the Three Redeemers, the three
Alembics—the Most Beautiful Man, the Strongest Man and the Ugliest
Man. In the midst of every strife we go unhurt. We count the slain
and the victors and pass on laughing, and to us in the eternal
order come all the peoples of the world to be regenerated for ever.
Why have you called to us?”

“I did not call to you, indeed,” said the Thin Woman; “but why do
you sit in the path so that travellers to the House of the Dagda
are halted on their journey?”

“There are no paths closed to us,” he replied; “even the gods seek
us, for they grow weary in their splendid desolation—saving Him who
liveth in all things and in us; Him we serve and before His awful
front we abase ourselves. You, O Woman, who are walking in the
valleys of anger, have called to us in your heart, therefore we are
waiting for you on the side of the hill. Choose now one of us to be
your mate, and do not fear to choose, for our kingdoms are equal
and our powers are equal.”

“Why would I choose one of you,” replied the Thin Woman, “when I am
well married already to the best man in the world?”

“Beyond us there is no best man,” said he, “for we are the best in
beauty, and the best in strength, and the best in ugliness; there
is no excellence which is not contained in us three. If you are
married what does that matter to us who are free from the pettiness
of jealousy and fear, being at one with ourselves and with every
manifestation of nature.”

“If,” she replied, “you are the Absolute and are above all
pettiness, can you not be superior to me also and let me pass
quietly on my road to the Dagda!”

“We are what all humanity desire,” quoth he, “and we desire all
humanity. There is nothing, small or great, disdained by our
immortal appetites. It is not lawful, even for the Absolute, to
outgrow Desire, which is the breath of God quick in his creatures
and not to be bounded or surmounted by any perfection.”

During this conversation the other great figures had leaned forward
listening intently but saying nothing. The Thin Woman could feel
the children like little, terrified birds pressing closely and very
quietly to her sides.

“Sir,” said she, “tell me what is Beauty and what is Strength and
what is Ugliness? for, although I can see these things, I do not
know what they are.”

“I will tell you that,” he replied—“Beauty is Thought and Strength
is Love and Ugliness is Generation. The home of Beauty is the head
of man. The home of Strength is the heart of man, and in the loins
Ugliness keeps his dreadful state. If you come with me you shall
know all delight. You shall live unharmed in the flame of the
spirit, and nothing that is gross shall bind your limbs or hinder
your thought. You shall move as a queen amongst all raging passions
without torment or despair. Never shall you be driven or ashamed,
but always you will choose your own paths and walk with me in
freedom and contentment and beauty.”

“All things,” said the Thin Woman, “must act according to the order
of their being, and so I say to Thought, if you hold me against my
will presently I will bind you against your will, for the holder
of an unwilling mate becomes the guardian and the slave of his
captive.”

“That is true,” said he, “and against a thing that is true I cannot
contend; therefore, you are free from me, but from my brethren you
are not free.”

The Thin Woman turned to the second man.

“You are Strength?” said she.

“I am Strength and Love,” he boomed, “and with me there is safety
and peace; my days have honour and my nights quietness. There is
no evil thing walks near my lands, nor is any sound heard but the
lowing of my cattle, the songs of my birds and the laughter of my
happy children. Come then to me who gives protection and happiness
and peace, and does not fail or grow weary at any time.”

“I will not go with you,” said the Thin Woman, “for I am a mother
and my strength cannot be increased; I am a mother and my love
cannot be added to. What have I further to desire from thee, thou
great man?”

“You are free of me,” said the second man, “but from my brother you
are not free.”

Then to the third man the Thin Woman addressed herself in terror,
for to that hideous one something cringed within her in an ecstasy
of loathing. That repulsion which at its strongest becomes
attraction gripped her. A shiver, a plunge, and she had gone, but
the hands of the children withheld her while in woe she abased
herself before him.

He spoke, and his voice came clogged and painful as though it urged
from the matted pores of the earth itself.

“There is none left to whom you may go but me only. Do not be
afraid, but come to me and I will give you these wild delights
which have been long forgotten. All things which are crude and
riotous, all that is gross and without limit is mine. You shall
not think and suffer any longer; but you shall feel so surely that
the heat of the sun will be happiness: the taste of food, the wind
that blows upon you, the ripe ease of your body—these things will
amaze you who have forgotten them. My great arms about you will
make you furious and young again; you shall leap on the hillside
like a young goat and sing for joy as the birds sing. Leave this
crabbed humanity that is barred and chained away from joy and come
with me, to whose ancient quietude at the last both Strength and
Beauty will come like children tired in the evening, returning to
the freedom of the brutes and the birds, with bodies sufficient for
their pleasure and with no care for Thought or foolish curiosity.”

But the Thin Woman drew back from his hand, saying “It is not
lawful to turn again when the journey is commenced, but to go
forward to whatever is appointed; nor may we return to your meadows
and trees and sunny places who have once departed from them. The
torments of the mind may not be renounced for any easement of
the body until the smoke that blinds us is blown away, and the
tormenting flame has fitted us for that immortal ecstasy which is
the bosom of God. Nor is it lawful that ye great ones should beset
the path of travellers, seeking to lure them away with cunning
promises. It is only at the cross-roads ye may sit where the
traveller will hesitate and be in doubt, but on the highway ye have
no power.”

“You are free of me,” said the third man, “until you are ready
to come to me again, for I only of all things am steadfast
and patient, and to me all return in their seasons. There are
brightnesses in my secret places in the woods, and lamps in my
gardens beneath the hills, tended by the angels of God, and behind
my face there is another face not hated by the Bright Ones.”

So the three Absolutes arose and strode mightily away; and as they
went their thunderous speech to each other boomed against the
clouds and the earth like a gusty wind, and, even when they had
disappeared, that great rumble could be heard dying gently away in
the moonlit distances.

The Thin Woman and the children went slowly forward on the rugged,
sloping way. Far beyond, near the distant summit of the hill there
was a light gleaming.

“Yonder,” said the Thin Woman, “is the Brugh of Angus Mac an Óg,
the son of the Dagda Mór,” and toward this light she assisted the
weary children.

In a little she was in the presence of the god and by him refreshed
and comforted. She told him all that had happened to her husband
and implored his assistance. This was readily accorded, for the
chief business of the gods is to give protection and assistance
to such of their people as require it; but (and this is their
limitation) they cannot give any help until it is demanded, the
freewill of mankind being the most jealously guarded and holy
principle in life; therefore, the interference of the loving gods
comes only on an equally loving summons.


CHAPTER XVIII

Caitilin Ni Murrachu sat alone in the Brugh of Angus much as she
had sat on the hillside and in the cave of Pan, and again she was
thinking. She was happy now. There was nothing more she could
desire, for all that the earth contained or the mind could describe
was hers. Her thoughts were no longer those shy, subterranean
gropings which elude the hand and the understanding. Each thought
was a thing or a person, visible in its own radiant personal life,
and to be seen or felt, welcomed or repulsed, as was its due. But
she had discovered that happiness is not laughter or satisfaction,
and that no person can be happy for themselves alone. So she had
come to understand the terrible sadness of the gods, and why Angus
wept in secret; for often in the night she had heard him weeping,
and she knew that his tears were for those others who were unhappy,
and that he could not be comforted while there was a woeful person
or an evil deed hiding in the world. Her own happiness also had
become infected with this alien misery, until she knew that nothing
was alien to her, and that in truth all persons and all things were
her brothers and sisters and that they were living and dying in
distress; and at the last she knew that there was not any man but
mankind, nor any human being but only humanity. Never again could
the gratification of a desire give her pleasure for her sense of
oneness was destroyed—she was not an individual only; she was also
part of a mighty organism ordained, through whatever stress, to
achieve its oneness, and this great being was threefold, comprising
in its mighty units God and Man and Nature—the immortal trinity.
The duty of life is the sacrifice of self: it is to renounce the
little ego that the mighty ego may be freed; and, knowing this,
she found at last that she knew Happiness, that divine discontent
which cannot rest nor be at ease until its bourne is attained and
the knowledge of a man is added to the gaiety of a child. Angus
had told her that beyond this there lay the great ecstasy which
is Love and God and the beginning and the end of all things; for
everything must come from the Liberty into the Bondage, that it may
return again to the Liberty comprehending all things and fitted for
that fiery enjoyment. This cannot be until there are no more fools
living, for until the last fool has grown wise wisdom will totter
and freedom will still be invisible. Growth is not by years but by
multitudes, and until there is a common eye no one person can see
God, for the eye of all nature will scarcely be great enough to
look upon that majesty. We shall greet Happiness by multitudes, but
we can only greet Him by starry systems and a universal love.

She was so thinking when Angus Óg came to her from the fields. The
god was very radiant, smiling like the young morn when the buds
awake, and to his lips song came instead of speech.

“My beloved,” said he, “we will go on a journey to-day.”

“My delight is where you go,” said Caitilin.

“We will go down to the world of men—from our quiet dwelling among
the hills to the noisy city and the multitude of people. This will
be our first journey, but on a time not distant we will go to them
again, and we will not return from that journey, for we will live
among our people and be at peace.”

“May the day come soon,” said she.

“When thy son is a man he will go before us on that journey,” said
Angus, and Caitilin shivered with a great delight, knowing that a
son would be born to her.

[Illustration: Caitilin danced in uncontrollable gaiety]

Then Angus Óg put upon his bride glorious raiment, and they went
out to the sunlight. It was the early morning, the sun had just
risen and the dew was sparkling on the heather and the grass. There
was a keen stir in the air that stung the blood to joy, so that
Caitilin danced in uncontrollable gaiety, and Angus, with a merry
voice, chanted to the sky and danced also. About his shining head
the birds were flying; for every kiss he gave to Caitilin became a
bird, the messengers of love and wisdom, and they also burst into
triumphant melody, so that the quiet place rang with their glee.
Constantly from the circling birds one would go flying with great
speed to all quarters of space. These were his messengers flying to
every fort and dún, every rath and glen and valley of Eiré to raise
the Sluaige Shee (the Fairy Host). They were birds of love that
flew, for this was a hosting of happiness, and, therefore the Shee
would not bring weapons with them.

It was towards Kilmasheogue their happy steps were directed, and
soon they came to the mountain.

After the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath had left the god she visited
all the fairy forts of Kilmasheogue, and directed the Shee who
lived there to be in waiting at the dawn on the summit of the
mountain; consequently, when Angus and Caitilin came up the hill,
they found the six clans coming to receive them, and with these
were the people of the younger Shee, members of the Tuatha da
Danaan, tall and beautiful men and women who had descended to the
quiet underworld when the pressure of the sons of Milith forced
them with their kind enchantments and invincible valour to the
country of the gods.

Of those who came were Aine Ni Eogáil of Cnoc Aine and Ivil of
Craglea, the queens of North and South Munster, and Una the queen
of Ormond; these, with their hosts, sang upon the summit of the
hill welcoming the god. There came the five guardians of Ulster,
the fomentors of combat:—Brier Mac Belgan of Dromona Breg, Redg
Rotbill from the slopes of Magh-Itar, Tinnel the son of Boclacthna
of Slieve Edlicon, Grici of Cruachán-Aigle, a goodly name, and
Gulban Glas Mac Grici, whose dún is in the Ben of Gulban. These
five, matchless in combat, marched up the hill with their tribes,
shouting as they went. From north and south they came, and from
east and west, bright and happy beings, a multitude, without fear,
without distraction, so that soon the hill was gay with their
voices and their noble raiment.

Among them came the people of the Lupra, the ancient Leprecauns
of the world, leaping like goats among the knees of the heroes.
They were headed by their king Udán Mac Audain and Beg Mac Beg his
tanist, and, following behind, was Glomhar O’Glomrach of the sea,
the strongest man of their people, dressed in the skin of a weasel;
and there were also the chief men of that clan, well known of old,
Conan Mac Rihid, Gaerku Mac Gairid, Mether Mac Mintan and Esirt
Mac Beg, the son of Bueyen, born in a victory. This king was that
same Udán the chief of the Lupra who had been placed under bonds
to taste the porridge in the great cauldron of Emania, into which
pot he fell, and was taken captive with his wife, and held for five
weary years, until he surrendered that which he most valued in the
world, even his boots: the people of the hills laugh still at the
story, and the Leprecauns may still be mortified by it.

There came Bove Derg, the Fiery, seldom seen, and his harper the
son of Trogain, whose music heals the sick and makes the sad heart
merry; Rochy Mac Elathan, Dagda Mór, the Father of Stars, and his
daughter from the Cave of Cruachán; Credh Mac Aedh of Raghery and
Cas Corach son of the great Ollav; Mananaan Mac Lir came from his
wide waters shouting louder than the wind, with his daughters
Cliona and Aoife and Etain Fair-Hair; and Coll and Cecht and Mac
Greina, the Plough, the Hazel, and the Sun came with their wives,
whose names are not forgotten, even Banba and Fodla and Eiré, names
of glory. Lugh of the Long-Hand, filled with mysterious wisdom,
was not absent, whose father was sadly avenged on the sons of
Turann—these with their hosts.

And one came also to whom the hosts shouted with mighty love, even
the Serene One, Dana, the Mother of the gods, steadfast for ever.
Her breath is on the morning, her smile is summer. From her hand
the birds of the air take their food. The mild ox is her friend,
and the wolf trots by her friendly side; at her voice the daisy
peeps from her cave and the nettle couches his lance. The rose
arrays herself in innocence, scattering abroad her sweetness with
the dew, and the oak tree laughs to her in the air. Thou beautiful!
the lambs follow thy footsteps, they crop thy bounty in the meadows
and are not thwarted: the weary men cling to thy bosom everlasting.
Through thee all actions and the deeds of men, through thee all
voices come to us, even the Divine Promise and the breath of the
Almighty from afar laden with goodness.

With wonder, with delight, the daughter of Murrachu watched the
hosting of the Shee. Sometimes her eyes were dazzled as a jewelled
forehead blazed in the sun, or a shoulder-torque of broad gold
flamed like a torch. On fair hair and dark the sun gleamed: white
arms tossed and glanced a moment and sank and reappeared. The eyes
of those who did not hesitate nor compute looked into her eyes,
not appraising, not questioning, but mild and unafraid. The voices
of free people spoke in her ears and the laughter of happy hearts,
unthoughtful of sin or shame, released from the hard bondage of
selfhood. For these people, though many, were one. Each spoke to
the other as to himself, without reservation or subterfuge. They
moved freely each in his personal whim, and they moved also with
the unity of one being: for when they shouted to the Mother of the
gods they shouted with one voice, and they bowed to her as one man
bows. Through the many minds there went also one mind, correcting,
commanding, so that in a moment the interchangeable and fluid
became locked, and organic with a simultaneous understanding, a
collective action-which was freedom.

While she looked the dancing ceased, and they turned their faces
with one accord down the mountain. Those in the front leaped
forward, and behind them the others went leaping in orderly
progression.

Then Angus Óg ran to where she stood, his bride of Beauty “Come, my
beloved,” said he, and hand in hand they raced among the others,
laughing as they ran.

Here there was no green thing growing; a carpet of brown turf
spread to the edge of sight on the sloping plain and away to
where another mountain soared in the air. They came to this and
descended. In the distance, groves of trees could be seen, and,
very far away, the roofs and towers and spires of the Town of the
Ford of Hurdles, and the little roads that wandered everywhere; but
on this height there was only prickly furze growing softly in the
sunlight; the bee droned his loud song, the birds flew and sang
occasionally, and the little streams grew heavy with their falling
waters. A little further and the bushes were green and beautiful,
waving their gentle leaves in the quietude, and beyond again,
wrapped in sunshine and peace, the trees looked on the world from
their calm heights, having no complaint to make of anything.

In a little they reached the grass land and the dance began. Hand
sought for hand, feet moved companionably as though they loved each
other; quietly intimate they tripped without faltering, and, then,
the loud song arose—they sang to the lovers of gaiety and peace,
long defrauded “Come to us, ye who do not know where ye are—ye who
live among strangers in the house of dismay and self-righteousness.
Poor, awkward ones! How bewildered and bedevilled ye go! Amazed ye
look and do not comprehend, for your eyes are set upon a star and
your feet move in the blessed kingdoms of the Shee Innocents! in
what prisons are ye flung? To what lowliness are ye bowed? How are
ye ground between the laws and the customs? The dark people of the
Fomor have ye in thrall; and upon your minds they have fastened a
band of lead, your hearts are hung with iron, and about your loins
a cincture of brass impressed, woeful! Believe it, that the sun
does shine, the flowers grow, and the birds sing pleasantly in the
trees. The free winds are everywhere, the water tumbles on the
hills, the eagle calls aloud through the solitude, and his mate
comes speedily. The bees are gathering honey in the sunlight, the
midges dance together, and the great bull bellows across the river.
The crow says a word to his brethren, and the wren snuggles her
young in the hedge.... Come to us, ye lovers of life and happiness.
Hold out thy hand—a brother shall seize it from afar. Leave the
plough and the cart for a little time: put aside the needle and the
awl—Is leather thy brother, O man?... Come away! come away! from
the loom and the desk, from the shop where the carcasses are hung,
from the place where raiment is sold and the place where it is sewn
in darkness: O bad treachery! Is it for joy you sit in the broker’s
den, thou pale man? Has the attorney enchanted thee?... Come away!
for the dance has begun lightly, the wind is sounding over the
hill, the sun laughs down into the valley, and the sea leaps upon
the shingle, panting for joy, dancing, dancing, dancing for joy....”

They swept through the goat tracks and the little boreens and the
curving roads. Down to the city they went dancing and singing;
among the streets and the shops telling their sunny tale; not
heeding the malignant eyes and the cold brows as the sons of Balor
looked sidewards. And they took the Philosopher from his prison,
even the Intellect of Man they took from the hands of the doctors
and lawyers, from the sly priests, from the professors whose mouths
are gorged with sawdust, and the merchants who sell blades of
grass—the awful people of the Fomor . . . and then they returned
again, dancing and singing, to the country of the gods....






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