The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Rose, by W. B. Yeats

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Title: The Secret Rose

Author: W. B. Yeats


Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5795]
This file was first posted on September 1, 2002
Last Updated: July 3, 2013

Language: English

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THE SECRET ROSE:

By W.B. Yeats

THE SECRET ROSE:

   DEDICATION TO A.E.
   TO THE SECRET ROSE
   THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST
   OUT OF THE ROSE
   THE WISDOM OF THE KING
   THE HEART OF THE SPRING
   THE CURSE OF THE FIRES AND OF THE SHADOWS
   THE OLD MEN OF THE TWILIGHT
   WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD
   OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE
   BITTER TONGUE


As for living, our servants will do that for us.--_Villiers de L'Isle
Adam._


Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles
made in her face by old age, wept, and wondered why she had twice been
carried away.--_Leonardo da Vinci_.


_My dear A.E.--I dedicate this book to you because, whether you think
it well or ill written, you will sympathize with the sorrows and
the ecstasies of its personages, perhaps even more than I do myself.
Although I wrote these stories at different times and in different
manners, and without any definite plan, they have but one subject, the
war of spiritual with natural order; and how can I dedicate such a book
to anyone but to you, the one poet of modern Ireland who has moulded
a spiritual ecstasy into verse? My friends in Ireland sometimes ask me
when I am going to write a really national poem or romance, and by a
national poem or romance I understand them to mean a poem or romance
founded upon some famous moment of Irish history, and built up out of
the thoughts and feelings which move the greater number of patriotic
Irishmen. I on the other hand believe that poetry and romance cannot
be made by the most conscientious study of famous moments and of the
thoughts and feelings of others, but only by looking into that little,
infinite, faltering, eternal flame that we call ourselves. If a writer
wishes to interest a certain people among whom he has grown up, or
fancies he has a duty towards them, he may choose for the symbols of his
art their legends, their history, their beliefs, their opinions, because
he has a right to choose among things less than himself, but he cannot
choose among the substances of art. So far, however, as this book is
visionary it is Irish for Ireland, which is still predominantly Celtic,
has preserved with some less excellent things a gift of vision, which
has died out among more hurried and more successful nations: no shining
candelabra have prevented us from looking into the darkness, and when
one looks into the darkness there is always something there.

W.B. YEATS._




TO THE SECRET ROSE

     Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
     Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
     Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre,
     Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
     And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
     Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep
     Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold
     The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
     Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
     Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise
     In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
     Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
     Who met Fand walking among flaming dew,
     By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
     And lost the world and Emir for a kiss;
     And him who drove the gods out of their liss
     And till a hundred morns had flowered red
     Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
     And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
     And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
     Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
     And him who sold tillage and house and goods,
     And sought through lands and islands numberless years
     Until he found with laughter and with tears
     A woman of so shining loveliness
     That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
     A little stolen tress. I too await
     The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
     When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
     Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
     Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
     Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?




THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST.

A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked,
along the road that wound from the south to the town of Sligo. Many
called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift,
Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured
doublet, and had pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of the
blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field of Gold; but
his eating and sleeping places where the four provinces of Eri, and his
abiding place was not upon the ridge of the earth. His eyes strayed from
the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a row
of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little to the
eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at the
crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering
about them; and he thought how, as like as not, just such another
vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered: 'If it
were hanging or bowstringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad
enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating
your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in
his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of
barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot
of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by
the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep
sea.'

While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and the sweat came out
upon his face, and he knew not why, for he had looked upon many crosses.
He passed over two hills and under the battlemented gate, and then round
by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded with great
nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the lay brother who was the
porter, and of him he asked a place in the guest-house. Then the lay
brother took a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way to a big and
naked outhouse strewn with very dirty rushes; and lighted a rush-candle
fixed between two of the stones of the wall, and set the glowing turf
upon the hearth and gave him two unlighted sods and a wisp of straw,
and showed him a blanket hanging from a nail, and a shelf with a loaf
of bread and a jug of water, and a tub in a far corner. Then the lay
brother left him and went back to his place by the door. And Cumhal the
son of Cormac began to blow upon the glowing turf that he might light
the two sods and the wisp of straw; but the sods and the straw would not
light, for they were damp. So he took off his pointed shoes, and drew
the tub out of the corner with the thought of washing the dust of the
highway from his feet; but the water was so dirty that he could not see
the bottom. He was very hungry, for he had not eaten all that day; so he
did not waste much anger upon the tub, but took up the black loaf, and
bit into it, and then spat out the bite, for the bread was hard and
mouldy. Still he did not give way to his anger, for he had not drunken
these many hours; having a hope of heath beer or wine at his day's end,
he had left the brooks untasted, to make his supper the more delightful.
Now he put the jug to his lips, but he flung it from him straightway,
for the water was bitter and ill-smelling. Then he gave the jug a kick,
so that it broke against the opposite wall, and he took down the blanket
to wrap it about him for the night. But no sooner did he touch it than
it was alive with skipping fleas. At this, beside himself with anger, he
rushed to the door of the guest-house, but the lay brother, being well
accustomed to such outcries, had locked it on the outside; so he emptied
the tub and began to beat the door with it, till the lay brother came
to the door and asked what ailed him, and why he woke him out of sleep.
'What ails me!' shouted Cumhal, 'are not the sods as wet as the sands
of the Three Rosses? and are not the fleas in the blanket as many as
the waves of the sea and as lively? and is not the bread as hard as the
heart of a lay brother who has forgotten God? and is not the water
in the jug as bitter and as ill-smelling as his soul? and is not the
foot-water the colour that shall be upon him when he has been charred in
the Undying Fires?' The lay brother saw that the lock was fast, and
went back to his niche, for he was too sleepy to talk with comfort.
And Cumhal went on beating at the door, and presently he heard the
lay brother's foot once more, and cried out at him, 'O cowardly and
tyrannous race of friars, persecutors of the bard and the gleeman,
haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the
truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with
deceit!'

'Gleeman,' said the lay brother, 'I also make rhymes; I make many while
I sit in my niche by the door, and I sorrow to hear the bards railing
upon the friars. Brother, I would sleep, and therefore I make known to
you that it is the head of the monastery, our gracious abbot, who orders
all things concerning the lodging of travellers.'

'You may sleep,' said Cumhal, 'I will sing a bard's curse on the abbot.
'And he set the tub upside down under the window, and stood upon it, and
began to sing in a very loud voice. The singing awoke the abbot, so that
he sat up in bed and blew a silver whistle until the lay brother came
to him. 'I cannot get a wink of sleep with that noise,' said the abbot.
'What is happening?'

'It is a gleeman,' said the lay brother, 'who complains of the sods,
of the bread, of the water in the jug, of the foot-water, and of the
blanket. And now he is singing a bard's curse upon you, O brother abbot,
and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and your
grandmother, and upon all your relations.'

'Is he cursing in rhyme?'

'He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in every line of his
curse.'

The abbot pulled his night-cap off and crumpled it in his hands, and the
circular brown patch of hair in the middle of his bald head looked like
an island in the midst of a pond, for in Connaught they had not yet
abandoned the ancient tonsure for the style then coming into use. 'If we
do not somewhat,' he said, 'he will teach his curses to the children in
the street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and to the robbers upon
Ben Bulben.'

'Shall I go, then,' said the other, 'and give him dry sods, a fresh
loaf, clean water in a jug, clean foot-water, and a new blanket, and
make him swear by the blessed Saint Benignus, and by the sun and moon,
that no bond be lacking, not to tell his rhymes to the children in the
street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and the robbers upon Ben
Bulben?'

'Neither our Blessed Patron nor the sun and moon would avail at all,'
said the abbot; 'for to-morrow or the next day the mood to curse would
come upon him, or a pride in those rhymes would move him, and he would
teach his lines to the children, and the girls, and the robbers. Or else
he would tell another of his craft how he fared in the guest-house, and
he in his turn would begin to curse, and my name would wither. For learn
there is no steadfastness of purpose upon the roads, but only under
roofs and between four walls. Therefore I bid you go and awaken Brother
Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf, Brother Bald Patrick, Brother
Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother Peter. And they shall take the
man, and bind him with ropes, and dip him in the river that he shall
cease to sing. And in the morning, lest this but make him curse the
louder, we will crucify him.'

'The crosses are all full,' said the lay brother.

'Then we must make another cross. If we do not make an end of him
another will, for who can eat and sleep in peace while men like him
are going about the world? Ill should we stand before blessed Saint
Benignus, and sour would be his face when he comes to judge us at the
Last Day, were we to spare an enemy of his when we had him under our
thumb! Brother, the bards and the gleemen are an evil race, ever cursing
and ever stirring up the people, and immoral and immoderate in all
things, and heathen in their hearts, always longing after the Son of
Lir, and Aengus, and Bridget, and the Dagda, and Dana the Mother, and
all the false gods of the old days; always making poems in praise of
those kings and queens of the demons, Finvaragh, whose home is under
Cruachmaa, and Red Aodh of Cnocna-Sidhe, and Cleena of the Wave, and
Aoibhell of the Grey Rock, and him they call Donn of the Vats of the
Sea; and railing against God and Christ and the blessed Saints.' While
he was speaking he crossed himself, and when he had finished he drew the
nightcap over his ears, to shut out the noise, and closed his eyes, and
composed himself to sleep.

The lay brother found Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf,
Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother
Peter sitting up in bed, and he made them get up. Then they bound
Cumhal, and they dragged him to the river, and they dipped him in it at
the place which was afterwards called Buckley's Ford.

'Gleeman,' said the lay brother, as they led him back to the
guest-house, 'why do you ever use the wit which God has given you to
make blasphemous and immoral tales and verses? For such is the way of
your craft. I have, indeed, many such tales and verses well nigh by
rote, and so I know that I speak true! And why do you praise with rhyme
those demons, Finvaragh, Red Aodh, Cleena, Aoibhell and Donn? I, too, am
a man of great wit and learning, but I ever glorify our gracious abbot,
and Benignus our Patron, and the princes of the province. My soul is
decent and orderly, but yours is like the wind among the salley gardens.
I said what I could for you, being also a man of many thoughts, but who
could help such a one as you?'

'Friend,' answered the gleeman, 'my soul is indeed like the wind, and it
blows me to and fro, and up and down, and puts many things into my mind
and out of my mind, and therefore am I called the Swift, Wild Horse.'
And he spoke no more that night, for his teeth were chattering with the
cold.

The abbot and the friars came to him in the morning, and bade him get
ready to be crucified, and led him out of the guest-house. And while he
still stood upon the step a flock of great grass-barnacles passed high
above him with clanking cries. He lifted his arms to them and said, 'O
great grass-barnacles, tarry a little, and mayhap my soul will travel
with you to the waste places of the shore and to the ungovernable sea!'
At the gate a crowd of beggars gathered about them, being come there to
beg from any traveller or pilgrim who might have spent the night in the
guest-house. The abbot and the friars led the gleeman to a place in the
woods at some distance, where many straight young trees were growing,
and they made him cut one down and fashion it to the right length, while
the beggars stood round them in a ring, talking and gesticulating. The
abbot then bade him cut off another and shorter piece of wood, and nail
it upon the first. So there was his cross for him; and they put it upon
his shoulder, for his crucifixion was to be on the top of the hill where
the others were. A half-mile on the way he asked them to stop and see
him juggle for them; for he knew, he said, all the tricks of Aengus
the Subtle-hearted. The old friars were for pressing on, but the young
friars would see him: so he did many wonders for them, even to the
drawing of live frogs out of his ears. But after a while they turned on
him, and said his tricks were dull and a shade unholy, and set the cross
on his shoulders again. Another half-mile on the way, and he asked them
to stop and hear him jest for them, for he knew, he said, all the jests
of Conan the Bald, upon whose back a sheep's wool grew. And the young
friars, when they had heard his merry tales, again bade him take up
his cross, for it ill became them to listen to such follies. Another
half-mile on the way, he asked them to stop and hear him sing the story
of White-breasted Deirdre, and how she endured many sorrows, and how the
sons of Usna died to serve her. And the young friars were mad to hear
him, but when he had ended they grew angry, and beat him for waking
forgotten longings in their hearts. So they set the cross upon his back
and hurried him to the hill.

When he was come to the top, they took the cross from him, and began to
dig a hole to stand it in, while the beggars gathered round, and talked
among themselves. 'I ask a favour before I die,' says Cumhal.

'We will grant you no more delays,' says the abbot.

'I ask no more delays, for I have drawn the sword, and told the truth,
and lived my vision, and am content.'

'Would you, then, confess?'

'By sun and moon, not I; I ask but to be let eat the food I carry in my
wallet. I carry food in my wallet whenever I go upon a journey, but I
do not taste of it unless I am well-nigh starved. I have not eaten now
these two days.'

'You may eat, then,' says the abbot, and he turned to help the friars
dig the hole.

The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried bacon out of his
wallet and laid them upon the ground. 'I will give a tithe to the poor,'
says he, and he cut a tenth part from the loaf and the bacon. 'Who among
you is the poorest?' And thereupon was a great clamour, for the beggars
began the history of their sorrows and their poverty, and their yellow
faces swayed like Gara Lough when the floods have filled it with water
from the bogs.

He listened for a little, and, says he, 'I am myself the poorest, for
I have travelled the bare road, and by the edges of the sea; and the
tattered doublet of particoloured cloth upon my back and the torn
pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because of the towered
city full of noble raiment which was in my heart. And I have been the
more alone upon the roads and by the sea because I heard in my heart
the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more subtle than
Aengus, the Subtle-hearted, and more full of the beauty of laughter than
Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears than White-breasted
Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them that are lost in
the darkness. Therefore, I award the tithe to myself; but yet, because I
am done with all things, I give it unto you.'

So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars,
and they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But
meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it upright
in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and trampled it
level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars stared on,
sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking, they also got up
to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon as they had gone a
little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on the edge of
a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled closer and
closer. 'Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,' the crucified one called
in a weak voice to the beggars, 'and keep the beasts and the birds from
me.' But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so
they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves
gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds flew lower and lower.
And presently the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and
shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his
feet. 'Outcasts,' he moaned, 'have you also turned against the outcast?'




OUT OF THE ROSE.


One winter evening an old knight in rusted chain-armour rode slowly
along the woody southern slope of Ben Bulben, watching the sun go down
in crimson clouds over the sea. His horse was tired, as after a long
journey, and he had upon his helmet the crest of no neighbouring lord or
king, but a small rose made of rubies that glimmered every moment to a
deeper crimson. His white hair fell in thin curls upon his shoulders,
and its disorder added to the melancholy of his face, which was the face
of one of those who have come but seldom into the world, and always for
its trouble, the dreamers who must do what they dream, the doers who
must dream what they do.

After gazing a while towards the sun, he let the reins fall upon the
neck of his horse, and, stretching out both arms towards the west, he
said, 'O Divine Rose of Intellectual Flame, let the gates of thy peace
be opened to me at last!' And suddenly a loud squealing began in the
woods some hundreds of yards further up the mountain side. He stopped
his horse to listen, and heard behind him a sound of feet and of voices.
'They are beating them to make them go into the narrow path by the
gorge,' said someone, and in another moment a dozen peasants armed with
short spears had come up with the knight, and stood a little apart from
him, their blue caps in their hands. Where do you go with the
spears?' he asked; and one who seemed the leader answered: 'A troop of
wood-thieves came down from the hills a while ago and carried off the
pigs belonging to an old man who lives by Glen Car Lough, and we turned
out to go after them. Now that we know they are four times more than we
are, we follow to find the way they have taken; and will presently tell
our story to De Courcey, and if he will not help us, to Fitzgerald; for
De Courcey and Fitzgerald have lately made a peace, and we do not know
to whom we belong.'

'But by that time,' said the knight, 'the pigs will have been eaten.'

'A dozen men cannot do more, and it was not reasonable that the whole
valley should turn out and risk their lives for two, or for two dozen
pigs.'

'Can you tell me,' said the knight, 'if the old man to whom the pigs
belong is pious and true of heart?'

'He is as true as another and more pious than any, for he says a prayer
to a saint every morning before his breakfast.'

'Then it were well to fight in his cause,' said the knight, 'and if you
will fight against the wood-thieves I will take the main brunt of the
battle, and you know well that a man in armour is worth many like these
wood-thieves, clad in wool and leather.'

And the leader turned to his fellows and asked if they would take the
chance; but they seemed anxious to get back to their cabins.

'Are the wood-thieves treacherous and impious?'

'They are treacherous in all their dealings,' said a peasant, 'and no
man has known them to pray.'

'Then,' said the knight, 'I will give five crowns for the head of every
wood-thief killed by us in the fighting'; and he bid the leader show the
way, and they all went on together. After a time they came to where a
beaten track wound into the woods, and, taking this, they doubled back
upon their previous course, and began to ascend the wooded slope of the
mountains. In a little while the path grew very straight and steep,
and the knight was forced to dismount and leave his horse tied to a
tree-stem. They knew they were on the right track: for they could see
the marks of pointed shoes in the soft clay and mingled with them the
cloven footprints of the pigs. Presently the path became still more
abrupt, and they knew by the ending of the cloven foot-prints that the
thieves were carrying the pigs. Now and then a long mark in the clay
showed that a pig had slipped down, and been dragged along for a little
way. They had journeyed thus for about twenty minutes, when a confused
sound of voices told them that they were coming up with the thieves. And
then the voices ceased, and they understood that they had been overheard
in their turn. They pressed on rapidly and cautiously, and in about five
minutes one of them caught sight of a leather jerkin half hidden by a
hazel-bush. An arrow struck the knight's chain-armour, but glanced off
harmlessly, and then a flight of arrows swept by them with the buzzing
sound of great bees. They ran and climbed, and climbed and ran towards
the thieves, who were now all visible standing up among the bushes
with their still quivering bows in their hands: for they had only their
spears and they must at once come hand to hand. The knight was in the
front and smote down first one and then another of the wood-thieves. The
peasants shouted, and, pressing on, drove the wood-thieves before them
until they came out on the flat top of the mountain, and there they saw
the two pigs quietly grubbing in the short grass, so they ran about them
in a circle, and began to move back again towards the narrow path: the
old knight coming now the last of all, and striking down thief after
thief. The peasants had got no very serious hurts among them, for he had
drawn the brunt of the battle upon himself, as could well be seen from
the bloody rents in his armour; and when they came to the entrance of
the narrow path he bade them drive the pigs down into the valley, while
he stood there to guard the way behind them. So in a moment he was
alone, and, being weak with loss of blood, might have been ended there
and then by the wood-thieves he had beaten off, had fear not made them
begone out of sight in a great hurry.

An hour passed, and they did not return; and now the knight could stand
on guard no longer, but had to lie down upon the grass. A half-hour
more went by, and then a young lad with what appeared to be a number of
cock's feathers stuck round his hat, came out of the path behind him,
and began to move about among the dead thieves, cutting their heads off,
Then he laid the heads in a heap before the knight, and said: 'O great
knight, I have been bid come and ask you for the crowns you promised
for the heads: five crowns a head. They bid me tell you that they have
prayed to God and His Mother to give you a long life, but that they are
poor peasants, and that they would have the money before you die. They
told me this over and over for fear I might forget it, and promised to
beat me if I did.'

The knight raised himself upon his elbow, and opening a bag that hung to
his belt, counted out the five crowns for each head. There were thirty
heads in all.

'O great knight,' said the lad, 'they have also bid me take all care of
you, and light a fire, and put this ointment upon your wounds.' And he
gathered sticks and leaves together, and, flashing his flint and steel
under a mass of dry leaves, had made a very good blaze. Then, drawing of
the coat of mail, he began to anoint the wounds: but he did it clumsily,
like one who does by rote what he had been told. The knight motioned him
to stop, and said: 'You seem a good lad.'

'I would ask something of you for myself.'

'There are still a few crowns,' said the knight; 'shall I give them to
you?'

'O no,' said the lad. 'They would be no good to me. There is only one
thing that I care about doing, and I have no need of money to do it. I
go from village to village and from hill to hill, and whenever I come
across a good cock I steal him and take him into the woods, and I keep
him there under a basket until I get another good cock, and then I set
them to fight. The people say I am an innocent, and do not do me any
harm, and never ask me to do any work but go a message now and then. It
is because I am an innocent that they send me to get the crowns: anyone
else would steal them; and they dare not come back themselves, for now
that you are not with them they are afraid of the wood-thieves. Did you
ever hear how, when the wood-thieves are christened, the wolves are made
their god-fathers, and their right arms are not christened at all?'

'If you will not take these crowns, my good lad, I have nothing for you,
I fear, unless you would have that old coat of mail which I shall soon
need no more.'

'There was something I wanted: yes, I remember now,' said the lad. 'I
want you to tell me why you fought like the champions and giants in the
stories and for so little a thing. Are you indeed a man like us? Are
you not rather an old wizard who lives among these hills, and will not a
wind arise presently and crumble you into dust?'

'I will tell you of myself,' replied the knight, 'for now that I am the
last of the fellowship, 'I may tell all and witness for God. Look at
the Rose of Rubies on my helmet, and see the symbol of my life and of
my hope.' And then he told the lad this story, but with always
more frequent pauses; and, while he told it, the Rose shone a deep
blood-colour in the firelight, and the lad stuck the cock's feathers in
the earth in front of him, and moved them about as though he made them
actors in the play.

'I live in a land far from this, and was one of the Knights of St.
John,' said the old man; 'but I was one of those in the Order who always
longed for more arduous labours in the service of the Most High. At last
there came to us a knight of Palestine, to whom the truth of truths had
been revealed by God Himself. He had seen a great Rose of Fire, and a
Voice out of the Rose had told him how men would turn from the light of
their own hearts, and bow down before outer order and outer fixity, and
that then the light would cease, and none escape the curse except the
foolish good man who could not, and the passionate wicked man who would
not, think. Already, the Voice told him, the wayward light of the heart
was shining out upon the world to keep it alive, with a less clear
lustre, and that, as it paled, a strange infection was touching the
stars and the hills and the grass and the trees with corruption, and
that none of those who had seen clearly the truth and the ancient way
could enter into the Kingdom of God, which is in the Heart of the Rose,
if they stayed on willingly in the corrupted world; and so they must
prove their anger against the Powers of Corruption by dying in the
service of the Rose of God. While the Knight of Palestine was telling
us these things we seemed to see in a vision a crimson Rose spreading
itself about him, so that he seemed to speak out of its heart, and the
air was filled with fragrance. By this we knew that it was the very
Voice of God which spoke to us by the knight, and we gathered about
him and bade him direct us in all things, and teach us how to obey the
Voice. So he bound us with an oath, and gave us signs and words whereby
we might know each other even after many years, and he appointed places
of meeting, and he sent us out in troops into the world to seek good
causes, and die in doing battle for them. At first we thought to die
more readily by fasting to death in honour of some saint; but this he
told us was evil, for we did it for the sake of death, and thus took out
of the hands of God the choice of the time and manner of our death, and
by so doing made His power the less. We must choose our service for its
excellence, and for this alone, and leave it to God to reward us at His
own time and in His own manner. And after this he compelled us to eat
always two at a table to watch each other lest we fasted unduly, for
some among us said that if one fasted for a love of the holiness of
saints and then died, the death would be acceptable. And the years
passed, and one by one my fellows died in the Holy Land, or in warring
upon the evil princes of the earth, or in clearing the roads of robbers;
and among them died the knight of Palestine, and at last I was alone. I
fought in every cause where the few contended against the many, and
my hair grew white, and a terrible fear lest I had fallen under the
displeasure of God came upon me. But, hearing at last how this western
isle was fuller of wars and rapine than any other land, I came hither,
and I have found the thing I sought, and, behold! I am filled with a
great joy.'

Thereat he began to sing in Latin, and, while he sang, his voice grew
fainter and fainter. Then his eyes closed, and his lips fell apart, and
the lad knew he was dead. 'He has told me a good tale,' he said, 'for
there was fighting in it, but I did not understand much of it, and it is
hard to remember so long a story.'

And, taking the knight's sword, he began to dig a grave in the soft
clay. He dug hard, and a faint light of dawn had touched his hair and he
had almost done his work when a cock crowed in the valley below. 'Ah,'
he said, 'I must have that bird'; and he ran down the narrow path to the
valley.




THE WISDOM OF THE KING.


The High-Queen of the Island of Woods had died in childbirth, and
her child was put to nurse with a woman who lived in a hut of mud and
wicker, within the border of the wood. One night the woman sat rocking
the cradle, and pondering over the beauty of the child, and praying that
the gods might grant him wisdom equal to his beauty. There came a knock
at the door, and she got up, not a little wondering, for the nearest
neighbours were in the dun of the High-King a mile away; and the night
was now late. 'Who is knocking?' she cried, and a thin voice answered,
'Open! for I am a crone of the grey hawk, and I come from the darkness
of the great wood.' In terror she drew back the bolt, and a grey-clad
woman, of a great age, and of a height more than human, came in and
stood by the head of the cradle. The nurse shrank back against the wall,
unable to take her eyes from the woman, for she saw by the gleaming
of the firelight that the feathers of the grey hawk were upon her head
instead of hair. But the child slept, and the fire danced, for the
one was too ignorant and the other too full of gaiety to know what a
dreadful being stood there. 'Open!' cried another voice, 'for I am a
crone of the grey hawk, and I watch over his nest in the darkness of the
great wood.' The nurse opened the door again, though her fingers could
scarce hold the bolts for trembling, and another grey woman, not less
old than the other, and with like feathers instead of hair, came in and
stood by the first. In a little, came a third grey woman, and after her
a fourth, and then another and another and another, until the hut was
full of their immense bodies. They stood a long time in perfect silence
and stillness, for they were of those whom the dropping of the sand has
never troubled, but at last one muttered in a low thin voice: 'Sisters,
I knew him far away by the redness of his heart under his silver skin';
and then another spoke: 'Sisters, I knew him because his heart fluttered
like a bird under a net of silver cords '; and then another took up the
word: 'Sisters, I knew him because his heart sang like a bird that is
happy in a silver cage.' And after that they sang together, those who
were nearest rocking the cradle with long wrinkled fingers; and their
voices were now tender and caressing, now like the wind blowing in the
great wood, and this was their song:

     Out of sight is out of mind:
     Long have man and woman-kind,
     Heavy of will and light of mood,
     Taken away our wheaten food,
     Taken away our Altar stone;
     Hail and rain and thunder alone,
     And red hearts we turn to grey,
     Are true till Time gutter away.

When the song had died out, the crone who had first spoken, said: 'We
have nothing more to do but to mix a drop of our blood into his blood.'
And she scratched her arm with the sharp point of a spindle, which she
had made the nurse bring to her, and let a drop of blood, grey as the
mist, fall upon the lips of the child; and passed out into the darkness.
Then the others passed out in silence one by one; and all the while the
child had not opened his pink eyelids or the fire ceased to dance, for
the one was too ignorant and the other too full of gaiety to know what
great beings had bent over the cradle.

When the crones were gone, the nurse came to her courage again, and
hurried to the dun of the High-King, and cried out in the midst of the
assembly hall that the Sidhe, whether for good or evil she knew not, had
bent over the child that night; and the king and his poets and men of
law, and his huntsmen, and his cooks, and his chief warriors went with
her to the hut and gathered about the cradle, and were as noisy as
magpies, and the child sat up and looked at them.

Two years passed over, and the king died fighting against the Fer Bolg;
and the poets and the men of law ruled in the name of the child, but
looked to see him become the master himself before long, for no one
had seen so wise a child, and tales of his endless questions about
the household of the gods and the making of the world went hither and
thither among the wicker houses of the poor. Everything had been well
but for a miracle that began to trouble all men; and all women, who,
indeed, talked of it without ceasing. The feathers of the grey hawk
had begun to grow in the child's hair, and though, his nurse cut them
continually, in but a little while they would be more numerous than
ever. This had not been a matter of great moment, for miracles were a
little thing in those days, but for an ancient law of Eri that none who
had any blemish of body could sit upon the throne; and as a grey
hawk was a wild thing of the air which had never sat at the board, or
listened to the songs of the poets in the light of the fire, it was not
possible to think of one in whose hair its feathers grew as other than
marred and blasted; nor could the people separate from their admiration
of the wisdom that grew in him a horror as at one of unhuman blood. Yet
all were resolved that he should reign, for they had suffered much from
foolish kings and their own disorders, and moreover they desired to
watch out the spectacle of his days; and no one had any other fear but
that his great wisdom might bid him obey the law, and call some other,
who had but a common mind, to reign in his stead.

When the child was seven years old the poets and the men of law were
called together by the chief poet, and all these matters weighed and
considered. The child had already seen that those about him had hair
only, and, though they had told him that they too had had feathers but
had lost them because of a sin committed by their forefathers, they knew
that he would learn the truth when he began to wander into the country
round about. After much consideration they decreed a new law commanding
every one upon pain of death to mingle artificially the feathers of the
grey hawk into his hair; and they sent men with nets and slings and bows
into the countries round about to gather a sufficiency of feathers. They
decreed also that any who told the truth to the child should be flung
from a cliff into the sea.

The years passed, and the child grew from childhood into boyhood and
from boyhood into manhood, and from being curious about all things
he became busy with strange and subtle thoughts which came to him in
dreams, and with distinctions between things long held the same and
with the resemblance of things long held different. Multitudes came from
other lands to see him and to ask his counsel, but there were guards set
at the frontiers, who compelled all that came to wear the feathers of
the grey hawk in their hair. While they listened to him his words seemed
to make all darkness light and filled their hearts like music; but,
alas, when they returned to their own lands his words seemed far off,
and what they could remember too strange and subtle to help them to live
out their hasty days. A number indeed did live differently afterwards,
but their new life was less excellent than the old: some among them had
long served a good cause, but when they heard him praise it and their
labour, they returned to their own lands to find what they had loved
less lovable and their arm lighter in the battle, for he had taught them
how little a hair divides the false and true; others, again, who
had served no cause, but wrought in peace the welfare of their own
households, when he had expounded the meaning of their purpose, found
their bones softer and their will less ready for toil, for he had shown
them greater purposes; and numbers of the young, when they had heard him
upon all these things, remembered certain words that became like a fire
in their hearts, and made all kindly joys and traffic between man and
man as nothing, and went different ways, but all into vague regret.

When any asked him concerning the common things of life; disputes about
the mear of a territory, or about the straying of cattle, or about the
penalty of blood; he would turn to those nearest him for advice; but
this was held to be from courtesy, for none knew that these matters were
hidden from him by thoughts and dreams that filled his mind like the
marching and counter-marching of armies. Far less could any know that
his heart wandered lost amid throngs of overcoming thoughts and dreams,
shuddering at its own consuming solitude.

Among those who came to look at him and to listen to him was the
daughter of a little king who lived a great way off; and when he saw her
he loved, for she was beautiful, with a strange and pale beauty unlike
the women of his land; but Dana, the great mother, had decreed her a
heart that was but as the heart of others, and when she considered the
mystery of the hawk feathers she was troubled with a great horror. He
called her to him when the assembly was over and told her of her beauty,
and praised her simply and frankly as though she were a fable of the
bards; and he asked her humbly to give him her love, for he was
only subtle in his dreams. Overwhelmed with his greatness, she half
consented, and yet half refused, for she longed to marry some warrior
who could carry her over a mountain in his arms. Day by day the king
gave her gifts; cups with ears of gold and findrinny wrought by the
craftsmen of distant lands; cloth from over sea, which, though woven
with curious figures, seemed to her less beautiful than the bright cloth
of her own country; and still she was ever between a smile and a frown;
between yielding and withholding. He laid down his wisdom at her feet,
and told how the heroes when they die return to the world and begin
their labour anew; how the kind and mirthful Men of Dea drove out the
huge and gloomy and misshapen People from Under the Sea; and a multitude
of things that even the Sidhe have forgotten, either because they
happened so long ago or because they have not time to think of them; and
still she half refused, and still he hoped, because he could not believe
that a beauty so much like wisdom could hide a common heart.

There was a tall young man in the dun who had yellow hair, and was
skilled in wrestling and in the training of horses; and one day when the
king walked in the orchard, which was between the foss and the forest,
he heard his voice among the salley bushes which hid the waters of the
foss. 'My blossom,' it said, 'I hate them for making you weave these
dingy feathers into your beautiful hair, and all that the bird of prey
upon the throne may sleep easy o' nights'; and then the low, musical
voice he loved answered: 'My hair is not beautiful like yours; and now
that I have plucked the feathers out of your hair I will put my hands
through it, thus, and thus, and thus; for it casts no shadow of terror
and darkness upon my heart.' Then the king remembered many things that
he had forgotten without understanding them, doubtful words of his poets
and his men of law, doubts that he had reasoned away, his own continual
solitude; and he called to the lovers in a trembling voice. They came
from among the salley bushes and threw themselves at his feet and prayed
for pardon, and he stooped down and plucked the feathers out of the hair
of the woman and then turned away towards the dun without a word. He
strode into the hall of assembly, and having gathered his poets and his
men of law about him, stood upon the dais and spoke in a loud, clear
voice: 'Men of law, why did you make me sin against the laws of Eri? Men
of verse, why did you make me sin against the secrecy of wisdom, for law
was made by man for the welfare of man, but wisdom the gods have made,
and no man shall live by its light, for it and the hail and the rain and
the thunder follow a way that is deadly to mortal things? Men of law and
men of verse, live according to your kind, and call Eocha of the Hasty
Mind to reign over you, for I set out to find my kindred.' He then came
down among them, and drew out of the hair of first one and then another
the feathers of the grey hawk, and, having scattered them over the
rushes upon the floor, passed out, and none dared to follow him, for
his eyes gleamed like the eyes of the birds of prey; and no man saw him
again or heard his voice. Some believed that he found his eternal abode
among the demons, and some that he dwelt henceforth with the dark and
dreadful goddesses, who sit all night about the pools in the forest
watching the constellations rising and setting in those desolate
mirrors.




THE HEART OF THE SPRING.


A very old man, whose face was almost as fleshless as the foot of a
bird, sat meditating upon the rocky shore of the flat and hazel-covered
isle which fills the widest part of the Lough Gill. A russet-faced boy
of seventeen years sat by his side, watching the swallows dipping for
flies in the still water. The old man was dressed in threadbare blue
velvet, and the boy wore a frieze coat and a blue cap, and had about his
neck a rosary of blue beads. Behind the two, and half hidden by trees,
was a little monastery. It had been burned down a long while before by
sacrilegious men of the Queen's party, but had been roofed anew with
rushes by the boy, that the old man might find shelter in his last days.
He had not set his spade, however, into the garden about it, and the
lilies and the roses of the monks had spread out until their confused
luxuriancy met and mingled with the narrowing circle of the fern. Beyond
the lilies and the roses the ferns were so deep that a child walking
among them would be hidden from sight, even though he stood upon his
toes; and beyond the fern rose many hazels and small oak trees.

'Master,' said the boy, 'this long fasting, and the labour of beckoning
after nightfall with your rod of quicken wood to the beings who dwell
in the waters and among the hazels and oak-trees, is too much for your
strength. Rest from all this labour for a little, for your hand seemed
more heavy upon my shoulder and your feet less steady under you to-day
than I have known them. Men say that you are older than the eagles,
and yet you will not seek the rest that belongs to age.' He spoke in an
eager, impulsive way, as though his heart were in the words and thoughts
of the moment; and the old man answered slowly and deliberately, as
though his heart were in distant days and distant deeds.

'I will tell you why I have not been able to rest,' he said. 'It is
right that you should know, for you have served me faithfully these five
years and more, and even with affection, taking away thereby a little of
the doom of loneliness which always falls upon the wise. Now, too, that
the end of my labour and the triumph of my hopes is at hand, it is the
more needful for you to have this knowledge.'

'Master, do not think that I would question you. It is for me to keep
the fire alight, and the thatch close against the rain, and strong, lest
the wind blow it among the trees; and it is for me to take the heavy
books from the shelves, and to lift from its corner the great painted
roll with the names of the Sidhe, and to possess the while an incurious
and reverent heart, for right well I know that God has made out of His
abundance a separate wisdom for everything which lives, and to do these
things is my wisdom.'

'You are afraid,' said the old man, and his eyes shone with a momentary
anger.

'Sometimes at night,' said the boy, 'when you are reading, with the
rod of quicken wood in your hand, I look out of the door and see, now
a great grey man driving swine among the hazels, and now many little
people in red caps who come out of the lake driving little white cows
before them. I do not fear these little people so much as the grey man;
for, when they come near the house, they milk the cows, and they drink
the frothing milk, and begin to dance; and I know there is good in the
heart that loves dancing; but I fear them for all that. And I fear the
tall white-armed ladies who come out of the air, and move slowly hither
and thither, crowning themselves with the roses or with the lilies, and
shaking about their living hair, which moves, for so I have heard them
tell each other, with the motion of their thoughts, now spreading out
and now gathering close to their heads. They have mild, beautiful faces,
but, Aengus, son of Forbis, I fear all these beings, I fear the people
of Sidhe, and I fear the art which draws them about us.'

'Why,' said the old man, 'do you fear the ancient gods who made the
spears of your father's fathers to be stout in battle, and the little
people who came at night from the depth of the lakes and sang among the
crickets upon their hearths? And in our evil day they still watch over
the loveliness of the earth. But I must tell you why I have fasted and
laboured when others would sink into the sleep of age, for without your
help once more I shall have fasted and laboured to no good end. When you
have done for me this last thing, you may go and build your cottage and
till your fields, and take some girl to wife, and forget the ancient
gods. I have saved all the gold and silver pieces that were given to me
by earls and knights and squires for keeping them from the evil eye
and from the love-weaving enchantments of witches, and by earls' and
knights' and squires' ladies for keeping the people of the Sidhe from
making the udders of their cattle fall dry, and taking the butter from
their churns. I have saved it all for the day when my work should be at
an end, and now that the end is at hand you shall not lack for gold and
silver pieces enough to make strong the roof-tree of your cottage and to
keep cellar and larder full. I have sought through all my life to find
the secret of life. I was not happy in my youth, for I knew that it
would pass; and I was not happy in my manhood, for I knew that age
was coming; and so I gave myself, in youth and manhood and age, to the
search for the Great Secret. I longed for a life whose abundance
would fill centuries, I scorned the life of fourscore winters. I would
be--nay, I _will_ be!--like the Ancient Gods of the land. I read in my
youth, in a Hebrew manuscript I found in a Spanish monastery, that there
is a moment after the Sun has entered the Ram and before he has passed
the Lion, which trembles with the Song of the Immortal Powers, and that
whosoever finds this moment and listens to the Song shall become like
the Immortal Powers themselves; I came back to Ireland and asked the
fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they knew when this moment was; but
though all had heard of it, there was none could find the moment upon
the hour-glass. So I gave myself to magic, and spent my life in fasting
and in labour that I might bring the Gods and the Fairies to my side;
and now at last one of the Fairies has told me that the moment is at
hand. One, who wore a red cap and whose lips were white with the froth
of the new milk, whispered it into my ear. Tomorrow, a little before the
close of the first hour after dawn, I shall find the moment, and then
I will go away to a southern land and build myself a palace of white
marble amid orange trees, and gather the brave and the beautiful about
me, and enter into the eternal kingdom of my youth. But, that I may hear
the whole Song, I was told by the little fellow with the froth of the
new milk on his lips, that you must bring great masses of green boughs
and pile them about the door and the window of my room; and you must put
fresh green rushes upon the floor, and cover the table and the rushes
with the roses and the lilies of the monks. You must do this to-night,
and in the morning at the end of the first hour after dawn, you must
come and find me.'

'Will you be quite young then?' said the boy.

'I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and tired,
and you must help me to my chair and to my books.'

When the boy had left Aengus son of Forbis in his room, and had lighted
the lamp which, by some contrivance of the wizard's, gave forth a sweet
odour as of strange flowers, he went into the wood and began cutting
green boughs from the hazels, and great bundles of rushes from the
western border of the isle, where the small rocks gave place to gently
sloping sand and clay. It was nightfall before he had cut enough for his
purpose, and well-nigh midnight before he had carried the last bundle
to its place, and gone back for the roses and the lilies. It was one of
those warm, beautiful nights when everything seems carved of precious
stones. Sleuth Wood away to the south looked as though cut out of green
beryl, and the waters that mirrored them shone like pale opal. The roses
he was gathering were like glowing rubies, and the lilies had the dull
lustre of pearl. Everything had taken upon itself the look of something
imperishable, except a glow-worm, whose faint flame burnt on steadily
among the shadows, moving slowly hither and thither, the only thing that
seemed alive, the only thing that seemed perishable as mortal hope.
The boy gathered a great armful of roses and lilies, and thrusting the
glow-worm among their pearl and ruby, carried them into the room, where
the old man sat in a half-slumber. He laid armful after armful upon
the floor and above the table, and then, gently closing the door, threw
himself upon his bed of rushes, to dream of a peaceful manhood with his
chosen wife at his side, and the laughter of children in his ears.
At dawn he rose, and went down to the edge of the lake, taking the
hour-glass with him. He put some bread and a flask of wine in the boat,
that his master might not lack food at the outset of his journey, and
then sat down to wait until the hour from dawn had gone by. Gradually
the birds began to sing, and when the last grains of sand were falling,
everything suddenly seemed to overflow with their music. It was the
most beautiful and living moment of the year; one could listen to the
spring's heart beating in it. He got up and went to find his master.
The green boughs filled the door, and he had to make a way through them.
When he entered the room the sunlight was falling in flickering circles
on floor and walls and table, and everything was full of soft green
shadows. But the old man sat clasping a mass of roses and lilies in his
arms, and with his head sunk upon his breast. On the table, at his left
hand, was a leathern wallet full of gold and silver pieces, as for a
journey, and at his right hand was a long staff. The boy touched him and
he did not move. He lifted the hands but they were quite cold, and they
fell heavily.

'It were better for him,' said the lad, 'to have told his beads and
said his prayers like another, and not to have spent his days in seeking
amongst the Immortal Powers what he could have found in his own deeds
and days had he willed. Ah, yes, it were better to have said his prayers
and kissed his beads!' He looked at the threadbare blue velvet, and
he saw it was covered with the pollen of the flowers, and while he was
looking at it a thrush, who had alighted among the boughs that were
piled against the window, began to sing.




THE CURSE OF THE FIRES AND OF THE SHADOWS.


One summer night, when there was peace, a score of Puritan troopers
under the pious Sir Frederick Hamilton, broke through the door of the
Abbey of the White Friars which stood over the Gara Lough at Sligo. As
the door fell with a crash they saw a little knot of friars, gathered
about the altar, their white habits glimmering in the steady light of
the holy candles. All the monks were kneeling except the abbot, who
stood upon the altar steps with a great brazen crucifix in his hand.
'Shoot them!' cried Sir Frederick Hamilton, but none stirred, for all
were new converts, and feared the crucifix and the holy candles. The
white lights from the altar threw the shadows of the troopers up on
to roof and wall. As the troopers moved about, the shadows began a
fantastic dance among the corbels and the memorial tablets. For a little
while all was silent, and then five troopers who were the body-guard of
Sir Frederick Hamilton lifted their muskets, and shot down five of the
friars. The noise and the smoke drove away the mystery of the pale altar
lights, and the other troopers took courage and began to strike. In a
moment the friars lay about the altar steps, their white habits stained
with blood. 'Set fire to the house!' cried Sir Frederick Hamilton,
and at his word one went out, and came in again carrying a heap of dry
straw, and piled it against the western wall, and, having done this,
fell back, for the fear of the crucifix and of the holy candles
was still in his heart. Seeing this, the five troopers who were Sir
Frederick Hamilton's body-guard darted forward, and taking each a holy
candle set the straw in a blaze. The red tongues of fire rushed up and
flickered from corbel to corbel and from tablet to tablet, and crept
along the floor, setting in a blaze the seats and benches. The dance of
the shadows passed away, and the dance of the fires began. The troopers
fell back towards the door in the southern wall, and watched those
yellow dancers springing hither and thither.

For a time the altar stood safe and apart in the midst of its white
light; the eyes of the troopers turned upon it. The abbot whom they
had thought dead had risen to his feet and now stood before it with the
crucifix lifted in both hands high above his head. Suddenly he cried
with a loud voice, 'Woe unto all who smite those who dwell within the
Light of the Lord, for they shall wander among the ungovernable shadows,
and follow the ungovernable fires!' And having so cried he fell on his
face dead, and the brazen crucifix rolled down the steps of the altar.
The smoke had now grown very thick, so that it drove the troopers out
into the open air. Before them were burning houses. Behind them shone
the painted windows of the Abbey filled with saints and martyrs,
awakened, as from a sacred trance, into an angry and animated life. The
eyes of the troopers were dazzled, and for a while could see nothing but
the flaming faces of saints and martyrs. Presently, however, they saw a
man covered with dust who came running towards them. 'Two messengers,'
he cried, 'have been sent by the defeated Irish to raise against you the
whole country about Manor Hamilton, and if you do not stop them you
will be overpowered in the woods before you reach home again! They ride
north-east between Ben Bulben and Cashel-na-Gael.'

Sir Frederick Hamilton called to him the five troopers who had first
fired upon the monks and said, 'Mount quickly, and ride through the
woods towards the mountain, and get before these men, and kill them.'

In a moment the troopers were gone, and before many moments they had
splashed across the river at what is now called Buckley's Ford, and
plunged into the woods. They followed a beaten track that wound along
the northern bank of the river. The boughs of the birch and quicken
trees mingled above, and hid the cloudy moonlight, leaving the pathway
in almost complete darkness. They rode at a rapid trot, now chatting
together, now watching some stray weasel or rabbit scuttling away in
the darkness. Gradually, as the gloom and silence of the woods oppressed
them, they drew closer together, and began to talk rapidly; they were
old comrades and knew each other's lives. One was married, and told
how glad his wife would be to see him return safe from this harebrained
expedition against the White Friars, and to hear how fortune had made
amends for rashness. The oldest of the five, whose wife was dead, spoke
of a flagon of wine which awaited him upon an upper shelf; while a
third, who was the youngest, had a sweetheart watching for his return,
and he rode a little way before the others, not talking at all. Suddenly
the young man stopped, and they saw that his horse was trembling. 'I saw
something,' he said, 'and yet I do not know but it may have been one of
the shadows. It looked like a great worm with a silver crown upon his
head.' One of the five put his hand up to his forehead as if about to
cross himself, but remembering that he had changed his religion he put
it down, and said: 'I am certain it was but a shadow, for there are a
great many about us, and of very strange kinds.' Then they rode on in
silence. It had been raining in the earlier part of the day, and the
drops fell from the branches, wetting their hair and their shoulders. In
a little they began to talk again. They had been in many battles against
many a rebel together, and now told each other over again the story
of their wounds, and so awakened in their hearts the strongest of all
fellowships, the fellowship of the sword, and half forgot the terrible
solitude of the woods.

Suddenly the first two horses neighed, and then stood still, and would
go no further. Before them was a glint of water, and they knew by the
rushing sound that it was a river. They dismounted, and after much
tugging and coaxing brought the horses to the river-side. In the midst
of the water stood a tall old woman with grey hair flowing over a grey
dress. She stood up to her knees in the water, and stooped from time to
time as though washing. Presently they could see that she was washing
something that half floated. The moon cast a flickering light upon it,
and they saw that it was the dead body of a man, and, while they were
looking at it, an eddy of the river turned the face towards them, and
each of the five troopers recognised at the same moment his own face.
While they stood dumb and motionless with horror, the woman began to
speak, saying slowly and loudly: 'Did you see my son? He has a crown of
silver on his head, and there are rubies in the crown.' Then the oldest
of the troopers, he who had been most often wounded, drew his sword and
cried: 'I have fought for the truth of my God, and need not fear the
shadows of Satan,' and with that rushed into the water. In a moment he
returned. The woman had vanished, and though he had thrust his sword
into air and water he had found nothing.

The five troopers remounted, and set their horses at the ford, but all
to no purpose. They tried again and again, and went plunging hither and
thither, the horses foaming and rearing. 'Let us,' said the old trooper,
'ride back a little into the wood, and strike the river higher up.' They
rode in under the boughs, the ground-ivy crackling under the hoofs,
and the branches striking against their steel caps. After about twenty
minutes' riding they came out again upon the river, and after another
ten minutes found a place where it was possible to cross without sinking
below the stirrups. The wood upon the other side was very thin, and
broke the moonlight into long streams. The wind had arisen, and had
begun to drive the clouds rapidly across the face of the moon, so that
thin streams of light seemed to be dancing a grotesque dance among the
scattered bushes and small fir-trees. The tops of the trees began also
to moan, and the sound of it was like the voice of the dead in the
wind; and the troopers remembered the belief that tells how the dead in
purgatory are spitted upon the points of the trees and upon the points
of the rocks. They turned a little to the south, in the hope that they
might strike the beaten path again, but they could find no trace of it.

Meanwhile, the moaning grew louder and louder, and the dance of the
white moon-fires more and more rapid. Gradually they began to be aware
of a sound of distant music. It was the sound of a bagpipe, and they
rode towards it with great joy. It came from the bottom of a deep,
cup-like hollow. In the midst of the hollow was an old man with a red
cap and withered face. He sat beside a fire of sticks, and had a burning
torch thrust into the earth at his feet, and played an old bagpipe
furiously. His red hair dripped over his face like the iron rust upon
a rock. 'Did you see my wife?' he cried, looking up a moment; 'she was
washing! she was washing!' 'I am afraid of him,' said the young trooper,
'I fear he is one of the Sidhe.' 'No,' said the old trooper, 'he is a
man, for I can see the sun-freckles upon his face. We will compel him
to be our guide'; and at that he drew his sword, and the others did the
same. They stood in a ring round the piper, and pointed their swords at
him, and the old trooper then told him that they must kill two rebels,
who had taken the road between Ben Bulben and the great mountain spur
that is called Cashel-na-Gael, and that he must get up before one of
them and be their guide, for they had lost their way. The piper turned,
and pointed to a neighbouring tree, and they saw an old white horse
ready bitted, bridled, and saddled. He slung the pipe across his back,
and, taking the torch in his hand, got upon the horse, and started off
before them, as hard as he could go.

The wood grew thinner and thinner, and the ground began to slope up
toward the mountain. The moon had already set, and the little white
flames of the stars had come out everywhere. The ground sloped more and
more until at last they rode far above the woods upon the wide top of
the mountain. The woods lay spread out mile after mile below, and away
to the south shot up the red glare of the burning town. But before and
above them were the little white flames. The guide drew rein suddenly,
and pointing upwards with the hand that did not hold the torch, shrieked
out, 'Look; look at the holy candles!' and then plunged forward at a
gallop, waving the torch hither and thither. 'Do you hear the hoofs of
the messengers?' cried the guide. 'Quick, quick! or they will be gone
out of your hands!' and he laughed as with delight of the chase. The
troopers thought they could hear far off, and as if below them, rattle
of hoofs; but now the ground began to slope more and more, and the speed
grew more headlong moment by moment. They tried to pull up, but in vain,
for the horses seemed to have gone mad. The guide had thrown the reins
on to the neck of the old white horse, and was waving his arms and
singing a wild Gaelic song. Suddenly they saw the thin gleam of a river,
at an immense distance below, and knew that they were upon the brink of
the abyss that is now called Lug-na-Gael, or in English the Stranger's
Leap. The six horses sprang forward, and five screams went up into the
air, a moment later five men and horses fell with a dull crash upon the
green slopes at the foot of the rocks.




THE OLD MEN OF THE TWILIGHT.


At the place, close to the Dead Man's Point, at the Rosses, where the
disused pilot-house looks out to sea through two round windows like
eyes, a mud cottage stood in the last century. It also was a watchhouse,
for a certain old Michael Bruen, who had been a smuggler in his day,
and was still the father and grandfather of smugglers, lived there, and
when, after nightfall, a tall schooner crept over the bay from Roughley,
it was his business to hang a horn lanthorn in the southern window, that
the news might travel to Dorren's Island, and from thence, by another
horn lanthorn, to the village of the Rosses. But for this glimmering of
messages, he had little communion with mankind, for he was very old, and
had no thought for anything but for the making of his soul, at the foot
of the Spanish crucifix of carved oak that hung by his chimney, or bent
double over the rosary of stone beads brought to him a cargo of silks
and laces out of France. One night he had watched hour after hour,
because a gentle and favourable wind was blowing, and _La Mere de
Misericorde_ was much overdue; and he was about to lie down upon his
heap of straw, seeing that the dawn was whitening the east, and that the
schooner would not dare to round Roughley and come to an anchor after
daybreak; when he saw a long line of herons flying slowly from Dorren's
Island and towards the pools which lie, half choked with reeds, behind
what is called the Second Rosses. He had never before seen herons flying
over the sea, for they are shore-keeping birds, and partly because this
had startled him out of his drowsiness, and more because the long
delay of the schooner kept his cupboard empty, he took down his rusty
shot-gun, of which the barrel was tied on with a piece of string, and
followed them towards the pools.

When he came close enough to hear the sighing of the rushes in the
outermost pool, the morning was grey over the world, so that the tall
rushes, the still waters, the vague clouds, the thin mists lying among
the sand-heaps, seemed carved out of an enormous pearl. In a little he
came upon the herons, of whom there were a great number, standing with
lifted legs in the shallow water; and crouching down behind a bank of
rushes, looked to the priming of his gun, and bent for a moment over his
rosary to murmur: 'Patron Patrick, let me shoot a heron; made into a pie
it will support me for nearly four days, for I no longer eat as in my
youth. If you keep me from missing I will say a rosary to you every
night until the pie is eaten.' Then he lay down, and, resting his gun
upon a large stone, turned towards a heron which stood upon a bank of
smooth grass over a little stream that flowed into the pool; for he
feared to take the rheumatism by wading, as he would have to do if he
shot one of those which stood in the water. But when he looked along
the barrel the heron was gone, and, to his wonder and terror, a man of
infinitely great age and infirmity stood in its place. He lowered the
gun, and the heron stood there with bent head and motionless feathers,
as though it had slept from the beginning of the world. He raised the
gun, and no sooner did he look along the iron than that enemy of all
enchantment brought the old man again before him, only to vanish when he
lowered the gun for the second time. He laid the gun down, and crossed
himself three times, and said a _Paternoster_ and an _Ave Maria_, and
muttered half aloud: 'Some enemy of God and of my patron is standing
upon the smooth place and fishing in the blessed water,' and then aimed
very carefully and slowly. He fired, and when the smoke had gone saw an
old man, huddled upon the grass and a long line of herons flying with
clamour towards the sea. He went round a bend of the pool, and coming
to the little stream looked down on a figure wrapped in faded clothes of
black and green of an ancient pattern and spotted with blood. He shook
his head at the sight of so great a wickedness. Suddenly the clothes
moved and an arm was stretched upwards towards the rosary which hung
about his neck, and long wasted fingers almost touched the cross. He
started back, crying: 'Wizard, I will let no wicked thing touch my
blessed beads'; and the sense of a The Old great danger just escaped
made him tremble.

'If you listen to me,' replied a voice so faint that it was like a sigh,
'you will know that I am not a wizard, and you will let me kiss the
cross before I die.'

'I will listen to you,' he answered, 'but I will not let you touch my
blessed beads,' and sitting on the grass a little way from the dying
man, he reloaded his gun and laid it across his knees and composed
himself to listen.

'I know not how many generations ago we, who are now herons, were the
men of learning of the King Leaghaire; we neither hunted, nor went to
battle, nor listened to the Druids preaching, and even love, if it came
to us at all, was but a passing fire. The Druids and the poets told us,
many and many a time, of a new Druid Patrick; and most among them were
fierce against him, while a few thought his doctrine merely the doctrine
of the gods set out in new symbols, and were for giving him welcome; but
we yawned in the midst of their tale. At last they came crying that he
was coming to the king's house, and fell to their dispute, but we would
listen to neither party, for we were busy with a dispute about the
merits of the Great and of the Little Metre; nor were we disturbed
when they passed our door with sticks of enchantment under their arms,
travelling towards the forest to contend against his coming, nor when
they returned after nightfall with torn robes and despairing cries; for
the click of our knives writing our thoughts in Ogham filled us with
peace and our dispute filled us with joy; nor even when in the morning
crowds passed us to hear the strange Druid preaching the commandments of
his god. The crowds passed, and one, who had laid down his knife to yawn
and stretch himself, heard a voice speaking far off, and knew that the
Druid Patrick was preaching within the king's house; but our hearts were
deaf, and we carved and disputed and read, and laughed a thin laughter
together. In a little we heard many feet coming towards the house, and
presently two tall figures stood in the door, the one in white, the
other in a crimson robe; like a great lily and a heavy poppy; and we
knew the Druid Patrick and our King Leaghaire. We laid down the slender
knives and bowed before the king, but when the black and green robes had
ceased to rustle, it was not the loud rough voice of King Leaghaire that
spoke to us, but a strange voice in which there was a rapture as of
one speaking from behind a battlement of Druid flame: "I preached the
commandments of the Maker of the world," it said; "within the king's
house and from the centre of the earth to the windows of Heaven there
was a great silence, so that the eagle floated with unmoving wings in
the white air, and the fish with unmoving fins in the dim water, while
the linnets and the wrens and the sparrows stilled there ever-trembling
tongues in the heavy boughs, and the clouds were like white marble,
and the rivers became their motionless mirrors, and the shrimps in the
far-off sea-pools were still enduring eternity in patience, although it
was hard." And as he named these things, it was like a king numbering
his people. "But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken
staves, and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with
anger. O, little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although
the summer pass above you with innumerable feet. O, men who have no part
in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but dwell
with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot touch you as
they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons cannot sweep about
you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a curse, and change you
to an example for ever and ever; you shall become grey herons and stand
pondering in grey pools and flit over the world in that hour when it is
most full of sighs, having forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet
found the flame of the sun; and you shall preach to the other herons
until they also are like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and
your deaths shall come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of
certainty may visit your hearts."'

The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen bent
over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to understand
something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for a long time,
had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his dream. The old man
of learning had crawled along the grass, and was now trying to draw the
cross down low enough for his lips to reach it.

'You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck
the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not have
trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh and was
still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green clothes,
for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to understand that he
had something the man of learning wanted and pleaded for, and now that
the blessed beads were safe, his fear had nearly all gone; and surely,
he thought, if that big cloak, and that little tight-fitting cloak
under it, were warm and without holes, Saint Patrick would take the
enchantment out of them and leave them fit for human use. But the black
and green clothes fell away wherever his fingers touched them, and while
this was a new wonder, a slight wind blew over the pool and crumbled the
old man of learning and all his ancient gear into a little heap of dust,
and then made the little heap less and less until there was nothing but
the smooth green grass.




WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD.


The little wicker houses at Tullagh, where the Brothers were accustomed
to pray, or bend over many handicrafts, when twilight had driven them
from the fields, were empty, for the hardness of the winter had brought
the brotherhood together in the little wooden house under the shadow of
the wooden chapel; and Abbot Malathgeneus, Brother Dove, Brother
Bald Fox, Brother Peter, Brother Patrick, Brother Bittern, Brother
Fair-Brows, and many too young to have won names in the great battle,
sat about the fire with ruddy faces, one mending lines to lay in the
river for eels, one fashioning a snare for birds, one mending the
broken handle of a spade, one writing in a large book, and one shaping
a jewelled box to hold the book; and among the rushes at their feet lay
the scholars, who would one day be Brothers, and whose school-house
it was, and for the succour of whose tender years the great fire was
supposed to leap and flicker. One of these, a child of eight or nine
years, called Olioll, lay upon his back looking up through the hole in
the roof, through which the smoke went, and watching the stars appearing
and disappearing in the smoke with mild eyes, like the eyes of a beast
of the field. He turned presently to the Brother who wrote in the big
book, and whose duty was to teach the children, and said, 'Brother Dove,
to what are the stars fastened?' The Brother, rejoicing to see so much
curiosity in the stupidest of his scholars, laid down the pen and
said, 'There are nine crystalline spheres, and on the first the Moon
is fastened, on the second the planet Mercury, on the third the planet
Venus, on the fourth the Sun, on the fifth the planet Mars, on the sixth
the planet Jupiter, on the seventh the planet Saturn; these are the
wandering stars; and on the eighth are fastened the fixed stars; but
the ninth sphere is a sphere of the substance on which the breath of God
moved in the beginning.'

'What is beyond that?' said the child. 'There is nothing beyond that;
there is God.'

And then the child's eyes strayed to the jewelled box, where one great
ruby was gleaming in the light of the fire, and he said, 'Why has
Brother Peter put a great ruby on the side of the box?'

'The ruby is a symbol of the love of God.'

'Why is the ruby a symbol of the love of God?'

'Because it is red, like fire, and fire burns up everything, and where
there is nothing, there is God.'

The child sank into silence, but presently sat up and said, 'There is
somebody outside.'

'No,' replied the Brother. 'It is only the wolves; I have heard them
moving about in the snow for some time. They are growing very wild, now
that the winter drives them from the mountains. They broke into a fold
last night and carried off many sheep, and if we are not careful they
will devour everything.'

'No, it is the footstep of a man, for it is heavy; but I can hear the
footsteps of the wolves also.'

He had no sooner done speaking than somebody rapped three times, but
with no great loudness.

'I will go and open, for he must be very cold.'

'Do not open, for it may be a man-wolf, and he may devour us all.'

But the boy had already drawn back the heavy wooden bolt, and all the
faces, most of them a little pale, turned towards the slowly-opening
door.

'He has beads and a cross, he cannot be a man-wolf,' said the child, as
a man with the snow heavy on his long, ragged beard, and on the matted
hair, that fell over his shoulders and nearly to his waist, and dropping
from the tattered cloak that but half-covered his withered brown body,
came in and looked from face to face with mild, ecstatic eyes. Standing
some way from the fire, and with eyes that had rested at last upon the
Abbot Malathgeneus, he cried out, 'O blessed abbot, let me come to the
fire and warm myself and dry the snow from my beard and my hair and my
cloak; that I may not die of the cold of the mountains, and anger the
Lord with a wilful martyrdom.'

'Come to the fire,' said the abbot, 'and warm yourself, and eat the food
the boy Olioll will bring you. It is sad indeed that any for whom Christ
has died should be as poor as you.'

The man sat over the fire, and Olioll took away his now dripping cloak
and laid meat and bread and wine before him; but he would eat only of
the bread, and he put away the wine, asking for water. When his beard
and hair had begun to dry a little and his limbs had ceased to shiver
with the cold, he spoke again.

'O blessed abbot, have pity on the poor, have pity on a beggar who has
trodden the bare world this many a year, and give me some labour to do,
the hardest there is, for I am the poorest of God's poor.'

Then the Brothers discussed together what work they could put him to,
and at first to little purpose, for there was no labour that had not
found its labourer in that busy community; but at last one remembered
that Brother Bald Fox, whose business it was to turn the great quern in
the quern-house, for he was too stupid for anything else, was getting
old for so heavy a labour; and so the beggar was put to the quern from
the morrow.

The cold passed away, and the spring grew to summer, and the quern was
never idle, nor was it turned with grudging labour, for when any passed
the beggar was heard singing as he drove the handle round. The last
gloom, too, had passed from that happy community, for Olioll, who had
always been stupid and unteachable, grew clever, and this was the more
miraculous because it had come of a sudden. One day he had been even
duller than usual, and was beaten and told to know his lesson better
on the morrow or be sent into a lower class among little boys who would
make a joke of him. He had gone out in tears, and when he came the next
day, although his stupidity, born of a mind that would listen to every
wandering sound and brood upon every wandering light, had so long been
the byword of the school, he knew his lesson so well that he passed to
the head of the class, and from that day was the best of scholars. At
first Brother Dove thought this was an answer to his own prayers to the
Virgin, and took it for a great proof of the love she bore him; but when
many far more fervid prayers had failed to add a single wheatsheaf
to the harvest, he began to think that the child was trafficking with
bards, or druids, or witches, and resolved to follow and watch. He had
told his thought to the abbot, who bid him come to him the moment he hit
the truth; and the next day, which was a Sunday, he stood in the path
when the abbot and the Brothers were coming from vespers, with their
white habits upon them, and took the abbot by the habit and said, 'The
beggar is of the greatest of saints and of the workers of miracle. I
followed Olioll but now, and by his slow steps and his bent head I saw
that the weariness of his stupidity was over him, and when he came to
the little wood by the quern-house I knew by the path broken in the
under-wood and by the footmarks in the muddy places that he had gone
that way many times. I hid behind a bush where the path doubled upon
itself at a sloping place, and understood by the tears in his eyes that
his stupidity was too old and his wisdom too new to save him from terror
of the rod. When he was in the quern-house I went to the window and
looked in, and the birds came down and perched upon my head and my
shoulders, for they are not timid in that holy place; and a wolf passed
by, his right side shaking my habit, his left the leaves of a bush.
Olioll opened his book and turned to the page I had told him to learn,
and began to cry, and the beggar sat beside him and comforted him until
he fell asleep. When his sleep was of the deepest the beggar knelt down
and prayed aloud, and said, "O Thou Who dwellest beyond the stars, show
forth Thy power as at the beginning, and let knowledge sent from Thee
awaken in his mind, wherein is nothing from the world, that the nine
orders of angels may glorify Thy name;" and then a light broke out of
the air and wrapped Aodh, and I smelt the breath of roses. I stirred a
little in my wonder, and the beggar turned and saw me, and, bending low,
said, "O Brother Dove, if I have done wrong, forgive me, and I will do
penance. It was my pity moved me;" but I was afraid and I ran away, and
did not stop running until I came here.' Then all the Brothers began
talking together, one saying it was such and such a saint, and one that
it was not he but another; and one that it was none of these, for they
were still in their brotherhoods, but that it was such and such a
one; and the talk was as near to quarreling as might be in that
gentle community, for each would claim so great a saint for his native
province. At last the abbot said, 'He is none that you have named, for
at Easter I had greeting from all, and each was in his brotherhood; but
he is Aengus the Lover of God, and the first of those who have gone to
live in the wild places and among the wild beasts. Ten years ago he felt
the burden of many labours in a brotherhood under the Hill of Patrick
and went into the forest that he might labour only with song to the
Lord; but the fame of his holiness brought many thousands to his cell,
so that a little pride clung to a soul from which all else had been
driven. Nine years ago he dressed himself in rags, and from that day
none has seen him, unless, indeed, it be true that he has been seen
living among the wolves on the mountains and eating the grass of the
fields. Let us go to him and bow down before him; for at last, after
long seeking, he has found the nothing that is God; and bid him lead us
in the pathway he has trodden.'

They passed in their white habits along the beaten path in the wood,
the acolytes swinging their censers before them, and the abbot, with his
crozier studded with precious stones, in the midst of the incense; and
came before the quern-house and knelt down and began to pray, awaiting
the moment when the child would wake, and the Saint cease from his watch
and come to look at the sun going down into the unknown darkness, as his
way was.




OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE BITTER TONGUE.


Costello had come up from the fields and lay upon the ground before the
door of his square tower, resting his head upon his hands and looking
at the sunset, and considering the chances of the weather. Though the
customs of Elizabeth and James, now going out of fashion in England, had
begun to prevail among the gentry, he still wore the great cloak of the
native Irish; and the sensitive outlines of his face and the greatness
of his indolent body had a commingling of pride and strength which
belonged to a simpler age. His eyes wandered from the sunset to where
the long white road lost itself over the south-western horizon and to
a horseman who toiled slowly up the hill. A few more minutes and the
horseman was near enough for his little and shapeless body, his long
Irish cloak, and the dilapidated bagpipes hanging from his shoulders,
and the rough-haired garron under him, to be seen distinctly in the grey
dusk. So soon as he had come within earshot, he began crying: 'Is it
sleeping you are, Tumaus Costello, when better men break their hearts
on the great white roads? Get up out of that, proud Tumaus, for I have
news! Get up out of that, you great omadhaun! Shake yourself out of the
earth, you great weed of a man!'

Costello had risen to his feet, and as the piper came up to him seized
him by the neck of his jacket, and lifting him out of his saddle threw
him on to the ground.

'Let me alone, let me alone,' said the other, but Costello still shook
him.

'I have news from Dermott's daughter, Winny,' The great fingers were
loosened, and the piper rose gasping.

'Why did you not tell me,' said Costello, that you came from her? You
might have railed your fill.'

'I have come from her, but I will not speak unless I am paid for my
shaking.'

Costello fumbled at the bag in which he carried his money, and it was
some time before it would open, for the hand that had overcome many men
shook with fear and hope. 'Here is all the money in my bag,' he said,
dropping a stream of French and Spanish money into the hand of the
piper, who bit the coins before he would answer.

'That is right, that is a fair price, but I will not speak till I have
good protection, for if the Dermotts lay their hands upon me in any
boreen after sundown, or in Cool-a-vin by day, I will be left to rot
among the nettles of a ditch, or hung on the great sycamore, where they
hung the horse-thieves last Beltaine four years.' And while he spoke he
tied the reins of his garron to a bar of rusty iron that was mortared
into the wall.

'I will make you my piper and my bodyservant,' said Costello, 'and no
man dare lay hands upon the man, or the goat, or the horse, or the dog
that is Tumaus Costello's.'

'And I will only tell my message,' said the other, flinging the saddle
on the ground, 'in the corner of the chimney with a noggin in my hand,
and a jug of the Brew of the Little Pot beside me, for though I am
ragged and empty, my forbears were well clothed and full until their
house was burnt and their cattle harried seven centuries ago by the
Dillons, whom I shall yet see on the hob of hell, and they screeching';
and while he spoke the little eyes gleamed and the thin hands clenched.

Costello led him into the great rush-strewn hall, where were none of the
comforts which had begun to grow common among the gentry, but a feudal
gauntness and bareness, and pointed to the bench in the great chimney;
and when he had sat down, filled up a horn noggin and set it on the
bench beside him, and set a great black jack of leather beside the
noggin, and lit a torch that slanted out from a ring in the wall, his
hands trembling the while; and then turned towards him and said: 'Will
Dermott's daughter come to me, Duallach, son of Daly?'

'Dermott's daughter will not come to you, for her father has set women
to watch her, but she bid me tell you that this day sennight will be the
eve of St. John and the night of her betrothal to Namara of the Lake,
and she would have you there that, when they bid her drink to him she
loves best, as the way is, she may drink to you, Tumaus Costello, and
let all know where her heart is, and how little of gladness is in her
marriage; and I myself bid you go with good men about you, for I saw the
horse-thieves with my own eyes, and they dancing the "Blue Pigeon" in
the air.' And then he held the now empty noggin towards Costello, his
hand closing round it like the claw of a bird, and cried: 'Fill my
noggin again, for I would the day had come when all the water in the
world is to shrink into a periwinkle-shell, that I might drink nothing
but Poteen.'

Finding that Costello made no reply, but sat in a dream, he burst out:
'Fill my noggin, I tell you, for no Costello is so great in the world
that he should not wait upon a Daly, even though the Daly travel the
road with his pipes and the Costello have a bare hill, an empty house, a
horse, a herd of goats, and a handful of cows.' 'Praise the Dalys if you
will,' said Costello as he filled the noggin, 'for you have brought me a
kind word from my love.'

For the next few days Duallach went hither and thither trying to raise
a bodyguard, and every man he met had some story of Costello, how he
killed the wrestler when but a boy by so straining at the belt that went
about them both that he broke the big wrestler's back; how when somewhat
older he dragged fierce horses through a ford in the Unchion for a
wager; how when he came to manhood he broke the steel horseshoe in Mayo;
how he drove many men before him through Rushy Meadow at Drum-an-air
because of a malevolent song they had about his poverty; and of many
another deed of his strength and pride; but he could find none who
would trust themselves with any so passionate and poor in a quarrel with
careful and wealthy persons like Dermott of the Sheep and Namara of the
Lake.

Then Costello went out himself, and after listening to many excuses and
in many places, brought in a big half-witted fellow, who followed him
like a dog, a farm-labourer who worshipped him for his strength, a fat
farmer whose forefathers had served his family, and a couple of lads who
looked after his goats and cows; and marshalled them before the fire
in the empty hall. They had brought with them their stout cudgels,
and Costello gave them an old pistol apiece, and kept them all night
drinking Spanish ale and shooting at a white turnip which he pinned
against the wall with a skewer. Duallach of the pipes sat on the
bench in the chimney playing 'The Green Bunch of Rushes', 'The Unchion
Stream,' and 'The Princes of Breffeny' on his old pipes, and railing now
at the appearance of the shooters, now at their clumsy shooting, and
now at Costello because he had no better servants. The labourer, the
half-witted fellow, the farmer and the lads were all well accustomed to
Duallach's railing, for it was as inseparable from wake or wedding as
the squealing of his pipes, but they wondered at the forbearance of
Costello, who seldom came either to wake or wedding, and if he had would
scarce have been patient with a scolding piper.

On the next evening they set out for Cool-a-vin, Costello riding a
tolerable horse and carrying a sword, the others upon rough-haired
garrons, and with their stout cudgels under their arms. As they rode
over the bogs and in the boreens among the hills they could see
fire answering fire from hill to hill, from horizon to horizon, and
everywhere groups who danced in the red light on the turf, celebrating
the bridal of life and fire. When they came to Dermott's house they saw
before the door an unusually large group of the very poor, dancing about
a fire, in the midst of which was a blazing cartwheel, that circular
dance which is so ancient that the gods, long dwindled to be but
fairies, dance no other in their secret places. From the door and
through the long loop-holes on either side came the pale light of
candles and the sound of many feet dancing a dance of Elizabeth and
James.

They tied their horses to bushes, for the number so tied already showed
that the stables were full, and shoved their way through a crowd of
peasants who stood about the door, and went into the great hall where
the dance was. The labourer, the half-witted fellow, the farmer and
the two lads mixed with a group of servants who were looking on from an
alcove, and Duallach sat with the pipers on their bench, but Costello
made his way through the dancers to where Dermott of the Sheep stood
with Namara of the Lake pouring Poteen out of a porcelain jug into horn
noggins with silver rims.

'Tumaus Costello,' said the old man, 'you have done a good deed to
forget what has been, and to fling away enmity and come to the betrothal
of my daughter to Namara of the Lake.'

'I come,' answered Costello, 'because when in the time of Costello De
Angalo my forbears overcame your forbears and afterwards made peace, a
compact was made that a Costello might go with his body-servants and his
piper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a Dermott with
his body-servants and his piper to every feast given by a Costello for
ever.'

'If you come with evil thoughts and armed men,' said the son of Dermott
flushing,' no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to swing the
sword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wife's clan have come
out of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants have come down
from the Ox Mountains'; and while he spoke he kept his hand inside his
coat as though upon the handle of a weapon.

'No,' answered Costello, 'I but come to dance a farewell dance with your
daughter.'

Dermott drew his hand out of his coat and went over to a tall pale girl
who was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes fixed upon
the ground.

'Costello has come to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you will
never see one another again.'

The girl lifted her eyes and gazed at Costello, and in her gaze was that
trust of the humble in the proud, the gentle in the violent, which has
been the tragedy of woman from the beginning. Costello led her among the
dancers, and they were soon drawn into the rhythm of the Pavane, that
stately dance which, with the Saraband, the Gallead, and the Morrice
dances, had driven out, among all but the most Irish of the gentry, the
quicker rhythms of the verse-interwoven, pantomimic dances of earlier
days; and while they danced there came over them the unutterable
melancholy, the weariness with the world, the poignant and bitter pity
for one another, the vague anger against common hopes and fears, which
is the exultation of love. And when a dance ended and the pipers laid
down their pipes and lifted their horn noggins, they stood a little from
the others waiting pensively and silently for the dance to begin again
and the fire in their hearts to leap up and to wrap them anew; and
so they danced and danced Pavane and Saraband and Gallead and Morrice
through the night long, and many stood still to watch them, and the
peasants came about the door and peered in, as though they understood
that they would gather their children's children about them long hence,
and tell how they had seen Costello dance with Dermott's daughter Oona,
and become by the telling themselves a portion of ancient romance; but
through all the dancing and piping Namara of the Lake went hither and
thither talking loudly and making foolish jokes that all might seem
well with him, and old Dermott of the Sheep grew redder and redder, and
looked oftener and oftener at the doorway to see if the candles there
grew yellow in the dawn.

At last he saw that the moment to end had come, and, in a pause after
a dance, cried out from where the horn noggins stood that his daughter
would now drink the cup of betrothal; then Oona came over to where he
was, and the guests stood round in a half-circle, Costello close to
the wall to the right, and the piper, the labourer, the farmer, the
half-witted man and the two farm lads close behind him. The old man took
out of a niche in the wall the silver cup from which her mother and her
mother's mother had drunk the toasts of their betrothals, and poured
Poteen out of a porcelain jug and handed the cup to his daughter with
the customary words, 'Drink to him whom you love the best.'

She held the cup to her lips for a moment, and then said in a clear soft
voice: 'I drink to my true love, Tumaus Costello.'

And then the cup rolled over and over on the ground, ringing like a
bell, for the old man had struck her in the face and the cup had fallen,
and there was a deep silence.

There were many of Namara's people among the servants now come out of
the alcove, and one of them, a story-teller and poet, a last remnant
of the bardic order, who had a chair and a platter in Namara's kitchen,
drew a French knife out of his girdle and made as though he would strike
at Costello, but in a moment a blow had hurled him to the ground, his
shoulder sending the cup rolling and ringing again. The click of steel
had followed quickly, had not there come a muttering and shouting from
the peasants about the door and from those crowding up behind them;
and all knew that these were no children of Queen's Irish or friendly
Namaras and Dermotts, but of the wild Irish about Lough Gara and Lough
Cara, who rowed their skin coracles, and had masses of hair over their
eyes, and left the right arms of their children unchristened that they
might give the stouter blows, and swore only by St. Atty and sun and
moon, and worshipped beauty and strength more than St. Atty or sun and
moon.

Costello's hand had rested upon the handle of his sword and his knuckles
had grown white, but now he drew it away, and, followed by those who
were with him, strode towards the door, the dancers giving way before
him, the most angrily and slowly, and with glances at the muttering and
shouting peasants, but some gladly and quickly, because the glory of
his fame was over him. He passed through the fierce and friendly peasant
faces, and came where his good horse and the rough-haired garrons were
tied to bushes; and mounted and bade his ungainly bodyguard mount
also and ride into the narrow boreen. When they had gone a little way,
Duallach, who rode last, turned towards the house where a little
group of Dermotts and Namaras stood next to a more numerous group of
countrymen, and cried: 'Dermott, you deserve to be as you are this hour,
a lantern without a candle, a purse without a penny, a sheep without
wool, for your hand was ever niggardly to piper and fiddler and
story-teller and to poor travelling people.' He had not done before the
three old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains had run towards their horses,
and old Dermott himself had caught the bridle of a garron of the Namaras
and was calling to the others to follow him; and many blows and many
deaths had been had not the countrymen caught up still glowing sticks
from the ashes of the fires and hurled them among the horses with loud
cries, making all plunge and rear, and some break from those who held
them, the whites of their eyes gleaming in the dawn.

For the next few weeks Costello had no lack of news of Oona, for now a
woman selling eggs or fowls, and now a man or a woman on pilgrimage to
the Well of the Rocks, would tell him how his love had fallen ill the
day after St. John's Eve, and how she was a little better or a little
worse, as it might be; and though he looked to his horses and his cows
and goats as usual, the common and uncomely, the dust upon the roads,
the songs of men returning from fairs and wakes, men playing cards
in the corners of fields on Sundays and Saints' Days, the rumours of
battles and changes in the great world, the deliberate purposes of those
about him, troubled him with an inexplicable trouble; and the country
people still remember how when night had fallen he would bid Duallach
of the Pipes tell, to the chirping of the crickets, 'The Son of Apple,'
'The Beauty of the World,' 'The King of Ireland's Son,' or some other
of those traditional tales which were as much a piper's business as
'The Green Bunch of Rushes,' 'The Unchion Stream,' or 'The Chiefs of
Breffeny'; and while the boundless and phantasmal world of the legends
was a-building, would abandon himself to the dreams of his sorrow.

Duallach would often pause to tell how some clan of the wild Irish had
descended from an incomparable King of the Blue Belt, or Warrior of the
Ozier Wattle, or to tell with many curses how all the strangers and most
of the Queen's Irish were the seed of the misshapen and horned People
from Under the Sea or of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costello
cared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the stories
wandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are,
or to the malign country of the Hag of the East, Oona alone endured
their shadowy hardships; for it was she and no king's daughter of old
who was hidden in the steel tower under the water with the folds of the
Worm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who won
by seven years of service the right to deliver from hell all she could
carry, and carried away multitudes clinging with worn fingers to the hem
of her dress; and it was she who endured dumbness for a year because of
the little thorn of enchantment the fairies had thrust into her tongue;
and it was a lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gave
so great a light that men threshed by it from sundown to sunrise, and
awoke so great a wonder that kings spent years in wandering or fell
before unknown armies in seeking to discover her hiding-place; for there
was no beauty in the world but hers, no tragedy in the world but hers:
and when at last the voice of the piper, grown gentle with the wisdom of
old romance, was silent, and his rheumatic steps had toiled upstairs and
to bed, and Costello had dipped his fingers into the little delf font of
holy water and begun to pray to Mary of the Seven Sorrows, the blue
eyes and star-covered dress of the painting in the chapel faded from his
imagination, and the brown eyes and homespun dress of Dermott's daughter
Winny came in their stead; for there was no tenderness in the passion
who keep their hearts pure for love or for hatred as other men for God,
for Mary and for the Saints, and who, when the hour of their visitation
arrives, come to the Divine Essence by the bitter tumult, the Garden
of Gethsemane, and the desolate Rood ordained for immortal passions in
mortal hearts.

One day a serving-man rode up to Costello, who was helping his two lads
to reap a meadow, and gave him a letter, and rode away without a word;
and the letter contained these words in English: 'Tumaus Costello, my
daughter is very ill. The wise woman from Knock-na-Sidhe has seen her,
and says she will die unless you come to her. I therefore bid you come
to her whose peace you stole by treachery.-DERMOTT, THE SON OF DERMOTT.'

Costello threw down his scythe, and sent one of the lads for Duallach,
who had become woven into his mind with Oona, and himself saddled his
great horse and Duallach's garron.

When they came to Dermott's house it was late afternoon, and Lough Gara
lay down below them, blue, mirror-like, and deserted; and though they
had seen, when at a distance, dark figures moving about the door, the
house appeared not less deserted than the Lough. The door stood half
open, and Costello knocked upon it again and again, so that a number of
lake gulls flew up out of the grass and circled screaming over his head,
but there was no answer.

'There is no one here,' said Duallach, 'for Dermott of the Sheep is too
proud to welcome Costello the Proud,' and he threw the door open, and
they saw a ragged, dirty, very old woman, who sat upon the floor leaning
against the wall. Costello knew that it was Bridget Delaney, a deaf and
dumb beggar; and she, when she saw him, stood up and made a sign to
him to follow, and led him and his companion up a stair and down a long
corridor to a closed door. She pushed the door open and went a little
way off and sat down as before; Duallach sat upon the ground also, but
close to the door, and Costello went and gazed upon Winny sleeping upon
a bed. He sat upon a chair beside her and waited, and a long time passed
and still she slept on, and then Duallach motioned to him through the
door to wake her, but he hushed his very breath, that she might sleep
on, for his heart was full of that ungovernable pity which makes the
fading heart of the lover a shadow of the divine heart. Presently he
turned to Duallach and said: 'It is not right that I stay here where
there are none of her kindred, for the common people are always ready to
blame the beautiful.' And then they went down and stood at the door of
the house and waited, but the evening wore on and no one came.

'It was a foolish man that called you Proud Costello,' Duallach cried
at last; 'had he seen you waiting and waiting where they left none but a
beggar to welcome you, it is Humble Costello he would have called you.'

Then Costello mounted and Duallach mounted, but when they had ridden a
little way Costello tightened the reins and made his horse stand still.
Many minutes passed, and then Duallach cried: 'It is no wonder that
you fear to offend Dermott of the Sheep, for he has many brothers and
friends, and though he is old, he is a strong man and ready with his
hands, and he is of the Queen's Irish, and the enemies of the Gael are
upon his side.'

And Costello answered flushing and looking towards the house: 'I swear
by the Mother of God that I will never return there again if they do not
send after me before I pass the ford in the Brown River,' and he rode
on, but so very slowly that the sun went down and the bats began to fly
over the bogs. When he came to the river he lingered awhile upon the
bank among the flowers of the flag, but presently rode out into the
middle and stopped his horse in a foaming shallow. Duallach, however,
crossed over and waited on a further bank above a deeper place. After
a good while Duallach cried out again, and this time very bitterly: 'It
was a fool who begot you and a fool who bore you, and they are fools of
all fools who say you come of an old and noble stock, for you come of
whey-faced beggars who travelled from door to door, bowing to gentles
and to serving-men.

With bent head, Costello rode through the river and stood beside him,
and would have spoken had not hoofs clattered on the further bank and a
horseman splashed towards them. It was a serving-man of Dermott's, and
he said, speaking breathlessly like one who had ridden hard: 'Tumaus
Costello, I come to bid you again to Dermott's house. When you had gone,
his daughter Winny awoke and called your name, for you had been in her
dreams. Bridget Delaney the Dummy saw her lips move and the trouble upon
her, and came where we were hiding in the wood above the house and took
Dermott of the Sheep by the coat and brought him to his daughter. He
saw the trouble upon her, and bid me ride his own horse to bring you the
quicker.'

Then Costello turned towards the piper Duallach Daly, and taking him
about the waist lifted him out of the saddle and hurled him against a
grey rock that rose up out of the river, so that he fell lifeless into
the deep place, and the waters swept over the tongue which God had made
bitter, that there might be a story in men's ears in after time. Then
plunging his spurs into the horse, he rode away furiously toward the
north-west, along the edge of the river, and did not pause until he came
to another and smoother ford, and saw the rising moon mirrored in the
water. He paused for a moment irresolute, and then rode into the ford
and on over the Ox Mountains, and down towards the sea; his eyes almost
continually resting upon the moon which glimmered in the dimness like
a great white rose hung on the lattice of some boundless and phantasmal
world. But now his horse, long dark with sweat and breathing hard, for
he kept spurring it to an extreme speed, fell heavily, hurling him into
the grass at the roadside. He tried to make it stand up, and failing in
this, went on alone towards the moonlight; and came to the sea and saw a
schooner lying there at anchor. Now that he could go no further because
of the sea, he found that he was very tired and the night very cold,
and went into a shebeen close to the shore and threw himself down upon
a bench. The room was full of Spanish and Irish sailors who had just
smuggled a cargo of wine and ale, and were waiting a favourable wind to
set out again. A Spaniard offered him a drink in bad Gaelic. He drank it
greedily and began talking wildly and rapidly.

For some three weeks the wind blew inshore or with too great violence,
and the sailors stayed drinking and talking and playing cards, and
Costello stayed with them, sleeping upon a bench in the shebeen, and
drinking and talking and playing more than any. He soon lost what little
money he had, and then his horse, which some one had brought from
the mountain boreen, to a Spaniard, who sold it to a farmer from the
mountains, and then his long cloak and his spurs and his boots of soft
leather. At last a gentle wind blew towards Spain, and the crew rowed
out to their schooner, singing Gaelic and Spanish songs, and lifted
the anchor, and in a little while the white sails had dropped under the
horizon. Then Costello turned homeward, his life gaping before him, and
walked all day, coming in the early evening to the road that went from
near Lough Gara to the southern edge of Lough Cay. Here he overtook a
great crowd of peasants and farmers, who were walking very slowly after
two priests and a group of well-dressed persons, certain of whom were
carrying a coffin. He stopped an old man and asked whose burying it was
and whose people they were, and the old man answered: 'It is the burying
of Oona, Dermott's daughter, and we are the Namaras and the Dermotts and
their following, and you are Tumaus Costello who murdered her.'

Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men who
looked at him with fierce eyes and only vaguely understanding what he
had heard, for now that he had lost the understanding that belongs to
good health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty which
had been so long the world's heart could pass away. Presently he stopped
and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered: 'We are
carrying Dermott's daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be buried in the
island of the Holy Trinity,' and the man stooped and picked up a stone
and cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek and making the blood
flow out over his face. Costello went on scarcely feeling the blow, and
coming to those about the coffin, shouldered his way into the midst of
them, and laying his hand upon the coffin, asked in a loud voice: 'Who
is in this coffin?'

The three Old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains caught up stones and bid
those about them do the same; and he was driven from the road, covered
with wounds, and but for the priests would surely have been killed.

When the procession had passed on, Costello began to follow again, and
saw from a distance the coffin laid upon a large boat, and those about
it get into other boats, and the boats move slowly over the water to
Insula Trinitatis; and after a time he saw the boats return and their
passengers mingle with the crowd upon the bank, and all disperse by
many roads and boreens. It seemed to him that Winny was somewhere on the
island smiling gently as of old, and when all had gone he swam in the
way the boats had been rowed and found the new-made grave beside the
ruined Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and threw himself upon it, calling to
Oona to come to him. Above him the square ivy leaves trembled, and all
about him white moths moved over white flowers, and sweet odours drifted
through the dim air.

He lay there all that night and through the day after, from time to
time calling her to come to him, but when the third night came he had
forgotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in the
earth beneath; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not come
to him.

Just before dawn, the hour when the peasants hear his ghostly voice
crying out, his pride awoke and he called loudly: 'Winny, daughter
of Dermott of the Sheep, if you do not come to me I will go and never
return to the island of the Holy Trinity,' and before his voice had died
away a cold and whirling wind had swept over the island and he saw many
figures rushing past, women of the Sidhe with crowns of silver and dim
floating drapery; and then Oona, but no longer smiling gently, for she
passed him swiftly and angrily, and as she passed struck him upon the
face crying: 'Then go and never return.'

He would have followed, and was calling out her name, when the whole
glimmering company rose up into the air, and, rushing together in the
shape of a great silvery rose, faded into the ashen dawn.

Costello got up from the grave, understanding nothing but that he had
made his beloved angry and that she wished him to go, and wading out
into the lake, began to swim. He swam on and on, but his limbs were too
weary to keep him afloat, and her anger was heavy about him, and when
he had gone a little way he sank without a struggle, like a man passing
into sleep and dreams.

The next day a poor fisherman found him among the reeds upon the lake
shore, lying upon the white lake sand with his arms flung out as though
he lay upon a rood, and carried him to his own house. And the very poor
lamented over him and sang the keen, and when the time had come, laid
him in the Abbey on Insula Trinitatis with only the ruined altar between
him and Dermott's daughter, and planted above them two ash-trees that
in after days wove their branches together and mingled their trembling
leaves.








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