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Title: Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse
Plays stories poems
Author: Pádraic H. Pearse
Translator: Joseph Campbell
Contributor: P. Brown
Release date: April 19, 2026 [eBook #78495]
Language: English
Original publication: Dublin: Phoenix Publishing Co., Ltd, 1917
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78495
Credits: Chris Hapka and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLECTED WORKS OF PÁDRAIC H. PEARSE ***
COLLECTED WORKS OF
PADRAIC H. PEARSE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sixth Edition
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Padraic H. Pearse, From a photograph by Lafayette Ltd.
Dublin]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COLLECTED WORKS OF
PADRAIC H. PEARSE
_PLAYS_
_STORIES_
_POEMS_
THE PHŒNIX PUBLISHING CO., LTD.
DUBLIN CORK BELFAST
1924
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1917. Margaret Pearse
Printed by Maunsel & Roberts Ltd., Dublin
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ix
PLAYS
THE SINGER p. 1
THE KING 45
THE MASTER 69
IOSAGAN 101
STORIES
THE MOTHER 125
THE DEARG-DAOL 137
THE ROADS 147
BRIGID OF THE SONGS 169
THE THIEF 179
THE KEENING WOMAN 193
IOSAGAN 227
THE PRIEST 245
BARBARA 259
EOINEEN OF THE BIRDS 287
POEMS
LULLABY OF A WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAIN 311
A WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAIN KEENS HER SON 312
O LITTLE BIRD 314
WHY DO YE TORTURE ME? 315
LITTLE LAD OF THE TRICKS 316
O LOVELY HEAD 318
LONG TO ME THY COMING 319
A RANN I MADE 320
TO A BELOVED CHILD 321
I HAVE NOT GARNERED GOLD 322
I AM IRELAND 323
RENUNCIATION 324
THE RANN OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE 326
A SONG FOR MARY MAGDALENE 327
CHRIST’S COMING 328
ON THE STRAND OF HOWTH 329
THE DORD FEINNE 332
THE MOTHER 333
THE FOOL 334
THE REBEL 337
CHRISTMAS, 1915 340
THE WAYFARER 341
APPENDIX
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This volume of the Collected Works of Padraic Pearse contains his
English Versions of Plays and Poems, many of which have not been
previously published. The Author’s final copies of the manuscripts of
THE SINGER and THE MASTER were burnt in the Publisher’s office at
Easter, 1916, but, fortunately, other copies of these manuscripts,
apparently containing the Author’s corrections, were forthcoming. On
page 35 of THE SINGER, there was one page of manuscript missing which
evidently contained dialogue covering the exit of MacDara and the
entrance of Diarmaid, and it seemed better to leave a blank here than to
have the missing speeches written by another hand. Towards the end of
this play there were some pages of manuscript giving a slightly
different version, and it was difficult to say whether this version was
an earlier or later one than the manuscript which has been followed.
This fragment has been printed as an Appendix.
The Translations of the Stories from the Irish were made by Mr. Joseph
Campbell.
In the Author’s Manuscript, the play THE SINGER was dedicated “To My
Mother.”
The Publisher wishes to thank _An Clodhanna Teoranta_ for the permission
accorded to Mrs. Pearse to publish translations of _Iosagan_, _An
Sagart_, _Bairbre_, _Eogainin na nEan_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
It must be evident to all who read this collection of plays, stories and
poems in the spirit which their author would have wished for, that it
would be utterly wrong to preface them with remarks applying merely to
their literary qualities.
For they are something more than literature. On the pages as we read
they seem to grow into flesh and blood and spirit. They are a record of
the emotions of a life which was devoured by one idea, the native beauty
of Ireland, its manners, its speech, its people, its history. And we see
how that idea was coupled in the mind with a poignant sense of the
danger that threatened the vitality of all those things. The writer saw
the thought of the Gall spreading like a destructive growth through the
body of Irish nationality. He felt that an imported politeness mocked at
the Gaelic ways; he knew that the Irish language had been extinguished
in the greater part of Ireland by the sense of shame working on poverty,
and that many of the people of the Irish-speaking fringe were also
growing ashamed of the priceless treasure they possessed; he saw that
the lessons of Irish history, which the leaders of the past had taught
by their labours and often sealed with their blood, were being ignored
in the modern political game.
Earnestness of purpose had always marked him. He threw his heart and
soul and strength into the Gaelic movement; he learned the language so
thoroughly as to be able to use it with ease as his medium of literary
expression, to recapture the old forms of poetry and story-telling, and
to infuse into them the modernity of his own modes of thought. He fought
the battles of Irish with a vigour that we all remember. He founded a
school--against what difficulties!--where education was Irish, and aimed
at the free development of personality in the Irish way. All that was
hard and earnest work, but its earnestness was nothing to the terrible
seriousness that grew upon him when he came to realize the maladies of
the political movement that was supposed to aim at Irish nationhood. The
Volunteers, at whose foundation he had assisted, were at first
negotiated with and then divided by the constitutional Party; the
original founders, who determined to adhere to their principles, were
left high and dry without any constitutional support. The conviction
gained on him that only blood could vivify what tameness and corruption
had weakened, and that he and his comrades were destined to go down the
same dark road by which so many brave and illustrious Irishmen had gone
before them.
It is in the light of this progress of thought that we must read his
writings. We find the fresh notes of tenderness and sweetness in the
early stories, IOSAGAN, THE PRIEST, BARBARA, and EOINEEN OF THE BIRDS.
The psychology of children, their sorrows and joys, are the theme. The
older people are merely foils to the children; we learn nothing of their
inner story, except in the case of Old Matthias--and even here we have
merely an account of a return to the innocence of second childhood.
Iosagan coming to play with the little ones on the green, while the old
folks are at Sunday Mass, Paraig wearing a surplice and saying _Dominus
Vobiscum_, and _Orate Fratres_, in anticipation of the priestly office,
Brideen holding converse grave and gay with her doll, Eoineen watching
with joy the return of the swallows in spring, and broken-hearted at
their departure in late autumn, all pass before our eyes as dwellers in
a _Tír-ná-n-óg_ in _Iar-Connacht_, where the waves sing a careless song,
and the sun shines only on innocent faces. But in THE MOTHER and other
stories we are on different ground, and are told of “the heavy and the
weary weight” that lies on the hearts of the Western poor. We see the
tragic pride of Gaelic culture that impels old Brigid of the Songs to
walk across Ireland to sing at the Oireachtas in Dublin, only to die of
hunger and exhaustion at the end, the listless face of the old tramp,
who tells how through the Dearg-Daol he had lost his luck, his farm and
his family, and had become “a walking man, and the roads of Connacht
before him, from that day to this”; and even more significant is the
story of the death in prison of Coilin, with its undercurrent of hatred
for the foreign laws. The manner of narration in these stories is brief
and severe; there is scarcely a phrase too many, and even purists would
be hard set to detect an alien note. The most perfect instance seems to
me to be the story of the DEARG-DAOL.
Of the little collection of poems, _Suantraighe agus Goltraidhe_ (Songs
of Sleep and Sorrow), Mr. MacDonagh rightly said: “One need not ask if
it be worth while having books of such poetry. The production of this is
already a success for the new literature.” The old forms, with their
full-sounding assonances and alliterations are beautifully wrought, and
the modern thoughts, the latter-day enthusiasms and dejections, when
they come, never strike us as intruders. To illustrate their beauty,
quotation in English would not serve my purpose; I will quote from the
Irish original a single verse from the poem, _A Chinn Aluinn_:
_A ghlóir ionmhuin dob’íseal aoibhinn,
An fíor gó gcualas trém’ shuanaibh thú?
Nó an fíor an t-eólas atá dom’bheo-ghoin?
Mo bhrón, sa tuamba níl fuaim ná guth!_
Quite suddenly, in the second last of the collection, the image of
Ireland stands out, bowed beneath the weight of the ages, the mother of
Cuchulainn the valiant, but also of shameful children who betrayed her,
lonely and imperious. And the last poem is an exquisite farewell to the
beauty that is seen and heard and felt, before gathering the pack and
going the stern way whither the service of Ireland pointed.
The plays, THE SINGER, THE KING, THE MASTER, and the last poems, THE
REBEL, THE FOOL, THE MOTHER, are those of a man in whom meditation on
coming struggle, agony and death have become one with life and art. They
are weighted with the concept of a nation inheriting an original sin of
slavery, for whose salvation the death of one man is a necessity. “One
man can free a nation as one Man redeemed the world,” says MacDara in
THE SINGER. “I will take no pike, I will go into the battle with bare
hands, I will stand up before the Gall as Christ hung naked before men
on the tree!” And the mother says: “My son, MacDara, is the Singer that
has quickened the dead years and all the quiet dust.” And the sharp
anguish of doubt is there too, the ever-recurring thought of the apathy
of the nation, and the vision of those “that cursed me in their hearts
for having brought death into their houses,” of “the wise, sad faces of
the dead, and the keening of women.” But the doubt comes from outside,
it is not born within the soul, and the stern resolution and _saeva
indignatio_ conquer it and persist. The mother is evoked in whose
calendar of saints the martyrs will be inscribed, who will ponder at
night in her heart in religious quiet on “the little names that were
familiar once round her dead hearth.” And through all, as if nature
would have her revenge for the over-strain, breaks in a flash the love
of the old-sought, fugitive beauty of things, the
“Little rabbits in a field at evening
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by,
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht.”
Taken in the order I have indicated, the work of Padraic Pearse seems to
me to constitute a mystical book of the love of Ireland. In _Iosagán_ we
have the tender and satisfied love of the fervent novice, delighting in
the old-world, yet ever youthful charm of the Gaelic race, untroubled by
the clouded day of maturity. We find in _An Mátair_, and in some of the
poems and plays the way of purgation by doubt and suffering. In the last
plays and poems we reach unity and illumination, the glow of the soul in
the fire of martyrdom. And all these states of love are interwoven, as
they should be, in the separate stages, though a different one may have
predominance in each. I believe the generations of Irishmen yet to be
born into the national faith will come to the reading of this book as to
a kind of _Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum_, a journey to the realization of
Ireland, past, present and to come, a learning of all the love and
enthusiasm and resolve which that realization implies:
“Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same;
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame.
Live here, great heart; and love, and die, and kill;
And bleed and wound; and yield and conquer still.”
Those who look in these pages for a vision of Pagan Ireland, with its
pre-Christian gods and heroes, will be disappointed. The old divinities
and figures of the sagas are there, and the remnants of the old worship
in the minds of the people are delineated, but everything is
overshadowed by the Christian concept, and the religion that is found
here centres in Christ and Mary. The effect of fifteen centuries of
Christianity is not ignored or despised. The ideas of sacrifice and
atonement, of the blood of martyrs that makes fruitful the seed of the
faith, are to be found all through these writings; nay, they have here
even more than their religious significance, and become vitalizing
factors in the struggle for Irish nationality. The doubts and weaknesses
which are described are not those of people who are inclined to return
to the former beliefs, but of men whose souls are grown faint on account
of the lethargy which they see around them. For years they have preached
and laboured and sung; but the masses remain unmoved. What wonder if
they feel unable to repeat with conviction: “Think you not that I can
ask the Father, and He will give me presently twelve legions of angels?”
No, the Ireland about which Pearse writes is not the land of the early
heroes, but of people deeply imbued with the Christian idea and will.
And yet we feel that the ancient and mediæval and modern Gaelic currents
meet in him. By his life and death he has become one with Cuchulainn and
Fionn and Oisin, with the early teachers, terrible or gentle, of
Christianity, with Hugh of Dungannon and Owen Roe and all the chieftains
who fought against the growing power of the Sassenach, with Wolfe Tone
and the United Irishmen, with Rossa, O’Leary, and the Fenians. He will
appeal to the imagination of times to come more than any of the rebels
of the last hundred and thirty years, because in him all the tendencies
of Irish thought, culture and nationality were more fully developed. His
name and deeds will be taught by mothers to their children long before
the time when they will be learned in school histories. To older people
he will be a watchword in the national fight, a symbol of the unbroken
continuity and permanence of the Gaelic tradition. And they will think
of him forever in different ways, as a poet who sang the songs of his
country, as a soldier who died for it, as a martyr who bore witness with
his blood to the truth of his faith, as a hero, a second Cuchulainn, who
battled with a divine frenzy to stem the waves of the invading tide.
P. BROWNE.
Maynooth, 21st May, 1917.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SINGER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARACTERS
MACDARA, _the Singer_
COLM, _his Brother_
MAIRE NI FHIANNACHTA, _Mother of MacDara_
SIGHLE
MAOILSHEACHLAINN, _a Schoolmaster_
CUIMIN EANNA
DIARMAID OF THE BRIDGE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SINGER
_The wide, clean kitchen of a country house. To the left a door, which
when open, shows a wild country with a background of lonely hills; to
the right a fireplace, beside which another door leads to a room. A
candle burns on the table._
_Maire ni Fhiannachta, a sad, grey-haired woman, is spinning wool near
the fire. Sighle, a young girl, crouches in the ingle nook, carding.
She is bare-footed._
MAIRE. Mend the fire, Sighle, jewel.
SIGHLE. Are you cold?
MAIRE. The feet of me are cold.
_Sighle rises and mends the fire, putting on more turf; then she sits
down again and resumes her carding._
SIGHLE. You had a right to go to bed.
MAIRE. I couldn’t have slept, child. I had a feeling that something was
drawing near to us. That something or somebody was coming here. All day
yesterday I heard footsteps abroad on the street.
SIGHLE. ’Twas the dry leaves. The quicken trees in the gap were losing
their leaves in the high wind.
MAIRE. Maybe so. Did you think that Colm looked anxious in himself last
night when he was going out?
SIGHLE. I may as well quench that candle. The dawn has whitened.
_She rises and quenches the candle; then resumes her place._
MAIRE. Did you think, daughter, that Colm looked anxious and sorrowful
in himself when he was going out?
SIGHLE. I did.
MAIRE. Was he saying anything to you?
SIGHLE. He was. (_They work silently for a few minutes; then Sighle
stops and speaks._) Maire ni Fhiannachta, I think I ought to tell you
what your son said to me. I have been going over and over it in my mind
all the long hours of the night. It is not right for the two of us to be
sitting at this fire with a secret like that coming between us. Will I
tell you what Colm said to me?
MAIRE. You may tell me if you like, Sighle girl.
SIGHLE. He said to me that he was very fond of me.
MAIRE (_who has stopped spinning_). Yes, daughter?
SIGHLE. And ... and he asked me if he came safe out of the trouble,
would I marry him.
MAIRE. What did you say to him?
SIGHLE. I told him that I could not give him any answer.
MAIRE. Did he ask you why you could not give him an answer?
SIGHLE. He did; and I didn’t know what to tell him.
MAIRE. Can you tell me?
SIGHLE. Do you remember the day I first came to your house, Maire?
MAIRE. I do well.
SIGHLE. Do you remember how lonely I was?
MAIRE. I do, you creature. Didn’t I cry myself when the priest brought
you in to me? And you caught hold of my skirt and wouldn’t let it go,
but cried till I thought your heart would break. “They’ve put my mammie
in the ground,” you kept saying. “She was asleep, and they put her in
the ground.”
SIGHLE. And you went down on your knees beside me and put your two arms
around me, and put your cheek against my cheek and said nothing but “God
comfort you; God comfort you.” And when I stopped crying a little, you
brought me over to the fire. Your two sons were at the fire, Maire. Colm
was in the ingle where I am now; MacDara was sitting where you are.
MacDara stooped down and lifted me on to his knee--I was only a weeshy
child. He stroked my hair. Then he began singing a little song to me, a
little song that had sad words in it, but that had joy in the heart of
it, and in the beat of it; and the words and the music grew very
caressing and soothing like, ... like my mother’s hand when it was on my
cheek, or my mother’s kiss on my mouth when I’d be half asleep--
MAIRE. Yes, daughter?
SIGHLE. And it soothed me, and soothed me; and I began to think that I
was at home again, and I fell asleep in MacDara’s arms--oh, the strong,
strong arms of him, with his soft voice soothing me--when I woke up long
after that I was still in his arms with my head on his shoulder. I
opened my eyes and looked up at him. He smiled at me and said, “That was
a good, long sleep.” I ... put up my face to him to be kissed, and he
bent down his head and kissed me. He was so gentle, so gentle. (_Maire
cries silently._) I had no right to tell you all this. God forgive me
for bringing those tears to you, Maire ni Fhiannachta.
MAIRE. Whist, girl. You had a right to tell me. Go on, jewel ... my boy,
my poor boy!
SIGHLE. I was only a weeshy child--
MAIRE. Eight years you were, no more, the day the priest brought you
into the house.
SIGHLE. How old was MacDara?
MAIRE. He was turned fifteen. Fifteen he was on St. MacDara’s day, the
year your mother died.
SIGHLE. This house was as dear to me nearly as my mother’s house from
that day. You were good to me, Maire ni Fhiannachta, and your two boys
were good to me, but--
MAIRE. Yes, daughter?
SIGHLE. MacDara was like sun and moon to me, like dew and rain to me,
like strength and sweetness to me. I don’t know did he know I was so
fond of him. I think he did, because--
MAIRE. He did know, child.
SIGHLE. How do you know that he knew? Did he tell you? Did _you_ know?
MAIRE. I am his mother. Don’t I know every fibre of his body? Don’t I
know every thought of his mind? He never told me; but well I knew.
SIGHLE. He put me into his songs. That is what made me think he knew. My
name was in many a song that he made. Often when I was at the
_fosaidheacht_ he would come up into the green _mám_ to me, with a
little song that he had made. It was happy for us in the green _mám_
that time.
MAIRE. It was happy for us all when MacDara was here.
SIGHLE. The heart in the breast of me nearly broke when they banished
him from us.
MAIRE. I knew it well.
SIGHLE. I used to lie awake in the night with his songs going through my
brain, and the music of his voice. I used to call his name up in the
green _mám_. At Mass his face used to come between me and the white
Host.
MAIRE. We have both been lonely for him. The house has been lonely for
him.
SIGHLE. Colm never knew I was so fond of MacDara. When MacDara went away
Colm was kinder to me than ever,--but, indeed, he was always kind.
MAIRE. Colm is a kind boy.
SIGHLE. It was not till yesterday he told me he was fond of me; I never
thought it, I liked him well, but I never thought there would be word of
marriage between us. I don’t think he would have spoken if it was not
for the trouble coming. He says it will be soon now.
MAIRE. It will be very soon.
SIGHLE. I shiver when I think of them all going out to fight. They will
go out laughing: I see them with their cheeks flushed and their red lips
apart. And then they will lie very still on the hillside,--so still and
white, with no red in their cheeks, but maybe a red wound in their white
breasts, or on their white foreheads. Colm’s hair will be dabbled with
blood.
MAIRE. Whist, daughter. That is no talk for one that was reared in this
house. I am his mother, and I do not grudge him.
SIGHLE. Forgive me, you have known more sorrow than I, and I think only
of my own sorrow. (_She rises and kisses Maire._) I am proud other times
to think: of so many young men, young men with straight, strong limbs,
and smooth, white flesh, going out into great peril because a voice has
called to them to right the wrong of the people. Oh, I would like to see
the man that has set their hearts on fire with the breath of his voice!
They say that he is very young. They say that he is one of ourselves,--a
mountainy man that speaks our speech, and has known hunger and sorrow.
MAIRE. The strength and the sweetness he has come, maybe, out of his
sorrow.
SIGHLE. I heard Diarmaid of the Bridge say that he was at the fair of
Uachtar Ard yesterday. There were hundreds in the streets striving to
see him.
MAIRE. I wonder would he be coming here into Cois-Fhairrge, or is it
into the Joyce country he would go? I don’t know but it’s his coming I
felt all day yesterday, and all night. I thought, maybe, it might be--
SIGHLE. Who did you think it might be?
MAIRE. I thought it might be my son was coming to me.
SIGHLE. Is it MacDara?
MAIRE. Yes, MacDara.
SIGHLE. Do you think would he come back to be with the boys in the
trouble?
MAIRE. He would.
SIGHLE. Would he be left back now?
MAIRE. Who would let or stay him and he homing like a homing bird? Death
only; God between us and harm!
SIGHLE. Amen.
MAIRE. There is Colm in to us.
SIGHLE (_looking out of the window_). Aye, he’s on the street.
MAIRE. Poor Colm!
_The door opens and Colm comes in. He is a lad of twenty._
COLM. Did you not go to bed, mother?
MAIRE. I did not, Colm. I was too uneasy to sleep. Sighle kept me
company all night.
COLM. It’s a pity of the two of you to be up like this.
MAIRE. We would be more lonesome in bed than here chatting. Had you many
boys at the drill to-night?
COLM. We had, then. There were ten and three score.
MAIRE. When will the trouble be, Colm?
COLM. It will be to-morrow, or after to-morrow; or maybe sooner. There’s
a man expected from Galway with the word.
MAIRE. Is it the mountains you’ll take to, or to march to Uachtar Ard or
to Galway?
COLM. It’s to march we’ll do, I’m thinking. Diarmaid of the Bridge and
Cuimin Eanna and the master will be into us shortly. We have some plans
to make and the master wants to write some orders.
MAIRE. Is it you will be their captain?
COLM. It is, unless a better man comes in my place.
MAIRE. What better man would come?
COLM. There is talk of the Singer coming. He was at the fair of Uachtar
Ard yesterday.
MAIRE. Let you put on the kettle, Sighle, and ready the room. The master
will be asking a cup of tea. Will you lie down for an hour, Colm?
COLM. I will not. They will be in on us now.
MAIRE. Let you make haste, Sighle. Ready the room. Here, give me the
kettle.
_Sighle, who has brought a kettle full of water, gives it to Maire,
who hangs it over the fire; Sighle goes into the room._
COLM (_after a pause_). Was Sighle talking to you, mother?
MAIRE. She was, son.
COLM. What did she say?
MAIRE. She told me what you said to her last night. You must be patient,
Colm. Don’t press her to give you an answer too soon. She has strange
thoughts in her heart, and strange memories.
COLM. What memories has she?
MAIRE. Many a woman has memories.
COLM. Sighle has no memories but of this house and of her mother. What
is she but a child?
MAIRE. And what are you but a child? Can’t you have patience? Children
have memories, but the memories sometimes die. Sighle’s memories have
not died yet.
COLM. This is queer talk. What does she remember?
MAIRE. Whist, there’s someone on the street.
COLM (_looking out of the window_). It’s Cuimin and the master.
MAIRE. Be patient, son. Don’t vex your head. What are you both but
children yet?
_The door opens and Cuimin Eanna and Maoilsheachlainn come in. Cuimin
is middle aged; Maoilsheachlainn past middle age, turning grey, and a
little stooped._
CUIMIN AND MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_entering_). God save all here.
MAIRE. God save you men. Will you sit? The kettle is on the boil. Give
the master the big chair, Colm.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_sitting down near the fire on the chair which Colm
places for him_). You’re early stirring, Maire.
MAIRE. I didn’t lie down at all, master.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is it to sit up all night you did?
MAIRE. It is, then. Sighle kept me company.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. ’Tis a pity of the women of the world. Too good they
are for us, and too full of care. I’m afraid that there was many a woman
on this mountain that sat up last night. Aye, and many a woman in
Ireland. ’Tis women that keep all the great vigils.
MAIRE (_wetting the tea_). Why wouldn’t we sit up to have a cup of tea
ready for you? Won’t you go west into the room?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. We’d as lief drink it here beside the fire.
MAIRE. Sighle is readying the room. You’ll want the table to write on,
maybe.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. We’ll go west so.
MAIRE. Wait till Sighle has the table laid. The tea will be drawn in a
minute.
COLM (_to Maoilsheachlainn_). Was there any word of the messenger at the
forge, master?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. There was not.
CUIMIN. When we were coming up the boreen I saw a man breasting Cnoc an
Teachta that I thought might be him.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I don’t think it was him. He was walking slowly, and
sure the messenger that brings that great story will come on the wings
of the wind.
COLM. Perhaps it was one of the boys you saw going home from the drill.
CUIMIN. No, it was a stranger. He looked like a mountainy man that would
be coming from a distance. He might be someone that was at the fair of
Uachtar Ard yesterday, and that stayed the evening after selling.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Aye, there did a lot stay, I’m told, talking about the
word that’s expected.
CUIMIN. The Singer was there, I believe. Diarmaid of the Bridge said
that he spoke to them all at the fair, and that there did a lot stay in
the town after the fair thinking he’d speak to them again. They say he
has the talk of an angel.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What sort is he to look at?
CUIMIN. A poor man of the mountains. Young they say he is, and pale like
a man that lived in cities, but with the dress and the speech of a
mountainy man; shy in himself and very silent, till he stands up to talk
to the people. And then he has the voice of a silver trumpet, and words
so beautiful that they make the people cry. And there is terrible anger
in him, for all that he is shrinking and gentle. Diarmaid said that in
the Joyce country they think it is some great hero that has come back
again to lead the people against the Gall, or maybe an angel, or the Son
of Mary Himself that has come down on the earth.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_looking towards the door_). There’s a footstep
abroad.
MAIRE (_who has been sitting very straight in her chair listening
intently_). That is my son’s step.
COLM. Sure, amn’t I here, mother?
MAIRE. That is MacDara’s step.
_All start and look first towards Maire, then towards the door, the
latch of which has been touched._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I wish it was MacDara, Maire. ’Tis maybe Diarmaid or
the mountainy man we saw on the road.
MAIRE. It is not Diarmaid. It is MacDara.
_The door opens slowly and MacDara, a young man of perhaps
twenty-five, dressed like a man of the mountains, stands on the
threshold._
MACDARA. God save all here.
ALL. And you, likewise.
MAIRE (_who has risen and is stretching out her hands_). I felt you
coming to me, little son!
MACDARA (_springing to her and folding her in his arms_). Little mother!
little mother!
_While they still embrace Sighle re-enters from the room and stands
still on the threshold looking at MacDara._
MAIRE (_raising her head_). Along all the quiet roads and across all the
rough mountains, and through all the crowded towns, I felt you drawing
near to me.
MACDARA. Oh, the long years, the long years!
MAIRE. I am crying for pride at the sight of you. Neighbours,
neighbours, this is MacDara, the first child that I bore to my husband.
MACDARA (_kissing Colm_). My little brother! (_To Cuimin_), Cuimin
Eanna! (_To Maoilsheachlainn_), Master! (_They shake hands._)
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Welcome home.
CUIMIN. Welcome home.
MACDARA (_looking round_). Where is.... (_He sees Sighle in the
doorway._) Sighle! (_He approaches her and takes her hand._) Little,
little Sighle!... I.... Mother, sometimes when I was in the middle of
great crowds, I have seen this fireplace, and you standing with your
hands stretched out to me as you stood a minute ago, and Sighle in the
doorway of the room; and my heart has cried out to you.
MAIRE. I used to hear the crying of your heart. Often and often here by
the fireside or abroad on the street I would stand and say, “MacDara is
crying out to me now. The heart in him is yearning.” And this while back
I felt you draw near, draw near, step by step. Last night I felt you
very near to me. Do you remember me saying, Sighle, that I felt someone
coming, and that I thought maybe it might be MacDara?
SIGHLE. You did.
MAIRE. I knew that something glorious was coming to the mountain with
to-day’s dawn. Red dawns and white dawns I have seen on the hills, but
none like this dawn. Come in, jewel, and sit down awhile in the room.
Sighle has the table laid. The tea is drawn. Bring in the griddle-cakes,
Sighle. Come in, master. Come in, Cuimin.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. No, Maire, we’ll sit here a while. You and the
children will like to be by yourselves. Go in, west, children. Cuimin
and I have plans to make. We’re expecting Diarmaid of the Bridge in.
MAIRE. We don’t grudge you a share in our joy, master. Nor you, Cuimin.
CUIMIN. No, go on in, Maire. We’ll go west after you. We want to talk
here.
MAIRE. Well, come in when you have your talk out. There’s enough tea on
the pot for everybody. In with you, children.
_MacDara, Colm, Sighle and Maire go into the room, Sighle carrying the
griddle-cakes and Maire the tea._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. This is great news, MacDara to be back.
CUIMIN. Do you think will he be with us?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is it a boy with that gesture of the head, that proud,
laughing gesture, to be a coward or a stag? You don’t know the heart of
this boy, Cuimin; the love that’s in it, and the strength. You don’t
know the mind he has, so gracious, so full of wisdom. I taught him when
he was only a little ladeen. ’Tis a pity that he had ever to go away
from us. And yet, I think, his exile has made him a better man. His soul
must be full of great remembrances.
CUIMIN. I never knew rightly why he was banished.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Songs he was making that were setting the people’s
hearts on fire.
CUIMIN. Aye, I often heard his songs.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. They were full of terrible love for the people and of
great anger against the Gall. Some said there was irreligion in them and
blasphemy against God. But I never saw it, and I don’t believe it. There
are some would have us believe that God is on the side of the Gall.
Well, word came down from Galway or from Dublin that he would be put in
prison, and maybe excommunicated if he did not go away. He was only a
gossoon of eighteen, or maybe twenty. The priest counselled him to go,
and not to bring sorrow on his mother’s house. He went away one evening
without taking farewell or leave of anyone.
CUIMIN. Where has he been since, I don’t know?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. In great cities, I’d say, and in lonely places. He has
the face of a scholar, or of a priest, or of a clerk, on him. He must
have read a lot, and thought a lot, and made a lot of songs.
CUIMIN. I don’t know is he as strong a boy as Colm.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. He’s not as robust in himself as Colm is, but there
was great strength in the grip of his hand. I’d say that he’d wield a
camán or a pike with any boy on the mountain.
CUIMIN. He’ll be a great backing to us if he is with us. The people love
him on account of the songs he used to make. There’s not a man that
won’t do his bidding.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. That’s so. And his counsel will be useful to us. He’ll
make better plans than you or I, Cuimin.
CUIMIN. I wonder what’s keeping Diarmaid.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Some news that was at the forge or at the priest’s
house, maybe. He went east the road to see if there was sign of a word
from Galway.
CUIMIN. I’ll be uneasy till he comes. (_He gets up and walks to the
window and looks out; Maoilsheachlainn remains deep in thought by the
fire. Cuimin returns from the window and continues._) Is it to march
we’ll do, or to fight here in the hills?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Out Maam Gap we’ll go and meet the boys from the Joyce
country. We’ll leave some to guard the Gap and some at Leenane. We’ll
march the road between the lakes, through Maam and Cornamona and Clonbur
to Cong. Then we’ll have friends on our left at Ballinrobe and on our
right at Tuam. What is there to stop us but the few men the Gall have in
Clifden?
CUIMIN. And if they march against us, we can destroy them from the
mountains.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. We can. It’s into a trap they’ll walk.
_MacDara appears in the doorway of the room with a cup of tea and some
griddle-cake in his hand._
MACDARA. I’ve brought you out a cup of tea, master. I thought it long
you were sitting here.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_taking it_). God bless you, MacDara.
MACDARA. Go west, Cuimin. There’s a place at the table for you now.
CUIMIN (_rising and going in_). I may as well. Give me a call, boy, when
Diarmaid comes.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. This is a great day, MacDara.
MACDARA. It is a great day and a glad day, and yet it is a sorrowful
day.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. How can the day of your home-coming be sorrowful?
MACDARA. Has not every great joy a great sorrow at its core? Does not
the joy of home-coming enclose the pain of departing? I have a strange
feeling, master, I have only finished a long journey, and I feel as if I
were about to take another long journey. I meant this to be a
home-coming, but it seems only like a meeting on the way.... When my
mother stood up to meet me with her arms stretched out to me, I thought
of Mary meeting her Son on the Dolorous Way.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. That was a queer thought. What was it that drew you
home?
MACDARA. Some secret thing that I have no name for. Some feeling that I
must see my mother, and Colm, and Sighle, again. A feeling that I must
face some great adventure with their kisses on my lips. I seemed to see
myself brought to die before a great crowd that stood cold and silent;
and there were some that cursed me in their hearts for having brought
death into their houses. Sad dead faces seemed to reproach me. Oh, the
wise, sad faces of the dead--and the keening of women rang in my ears.
But I felt that the kisses of those three, warm on my mouth, would be as
wine in my blood, strengthening me to bear what men said, and to die
with only love and pity in my heart, and no bitterness.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. It was strange that you should see yourself like that.
MACDARA. It was foolish. One has strange, lonesome thoughts when one is
in the middle of crowds. But I am glad of that thought, for it drove me
home. I felt so lonely away from here.... My mother’s hair is greyer
than it was.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Aye, she has been ageing. She has had great sorrows:
your father dead and you banished. Colm is grown a fine, strapping boy.
MACDARA. He is. There is some shyness between Colm and me. We have not
spoken yet as we used to.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. When boys are brought up together and then parted for
a long time there is often shyness between them when they meet again....
Do you find Sighle changed?
MACDARA. No; and, yet--yes. Master, she is very beautiful. I did not
know a woman could be so beautiful. I thought that all beauty was in the
heart, that beauty was a secret thing that could be seen only with the
eyes of reverie, or in a dream of some unborn splendour. I had schooled
myself to think physical beauty an unholy thing. I tried to keep my
heart virginal; and sometimes in the street of a city when I have
stopped to look at the white limbs of some beautiful child, and have
felt the pain that the sight of great beauty brings, I have wished that
I could blind my eyes so that I might shut out the sight of everything
that tempted me. At times I have rebelled against that, and have cried
aloud that God would not have filled the world with beauty, even to the
making drunk of the sight, if beauty were not of heaven. But, then,
again, I have said, “This is the subtlest form of temptation; this is to
give to one’s own desire the sanction of God’s will.” And I have
hardened my heart and kept myself cold and chaste as the top of a high
mountain. But now I think I was wrong, for beauty like Sighle’s must be
holy.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Surely a good and comely girl is holy. You question
yourself too much, MacDara. You brood too much. Do you remember when you
were a gossoon, how you cried over the wild duck whose wing you broke by
accident with a stone, and made a song about the crane whose nest you
found ravished, and about the red robin you found perished on the
doorstep? And how the priest laughed because you told him in confession
that you had stolen drowned lilies from the river?
MACDARA (_laughing_). Aye, it was at a station in Diarmaid of the
Bridge’s, and when the priest laughed my face got red, and everyone
looked at us, and I got up and ran out of the house.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_laughing_). I remember it well. We thought it was
what you told him you were in love with his house-keeper.
MACDARA. It’s little but I was, too. She used to give me apples out of
the priest’s apple-garden. Little brown russet apples, the sweetest I
ever tasted. I used to think that the apples of the Hesperides that the
Children of Tuireann went to quest must have been like them.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. It’s a wonder but you made a poem about them.
MACDARA. I did. I made a poem in Deibhidhe of twenty quatrains.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did you make many songs while you were away?
MACDARA. When I went away first my heart was as if dead and dumb and I
could not make any songs. After a little while, when I was going through
the sweet, green country, and I used to come to little towns where I’d
see children playing, my heart seemed to open again like hard ground
that would be watered with rain. The first song that I made was about
the children that I saw playing in the street of Kilconnell. The next
song that I made was about an old dark man that I met on the causeway of
Aughrim. I made a glad, proud song when I saw the broad Shannon flow
under the bridge of Athlone. I made many a song after that before I
reached Dublin.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. How did it fare with you in Dublin?
MACDARA. I went to a bookseller and gave him the book of my songs to
print. He said that he dared not print them; that the Gall would put him
in prison and break up his printing-press. I was hungry and I wandered
through the streets. Then a man who saw me read an Irish poster on the
wall spoke to me and asked me where I came from. I told him my story. In
a few days he came to me and said that he had found work for me to teach
Irish and Latin and Greek in a school. I went to the school and taught
in it for a year. I wrote a few poems and they were printed in a paper.
One day the Brother who was over the school came to me and asked me was
it I that had written those poems. I said it was. He told me then that I
could not teach in the school any longer. So I went away.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What happened to you after that?
MACDARA. I wandered in the streets until I saw a notice that a teacher
was wanted to teach a boy. I went to the house and a lady engaged me to
teach her little son for ten shillings a week. Two years I spent at
that. The boy was a winsome child, and he grew into my heart. I thought
it a wonderful thing to have the moulding of a mind, of a life, in my
hands. Do you ever think that, you who are a schoolmaster?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. It’s not much time I get for thinking.
MACDARA. I have done nothing all my life but think: think and make
poems.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. If the thoughts and the poems are good, that is a good
life’s work.
MACDARA. Aye, they say that to be busy with the things of the spirit is
better than to be busy with the things of the body. But I am not sure,
master. Can the Vision Beautiful alone content a man? I think true man
is divine in this, that, like God, he must needs create, he must needs
do.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is not a poet a maker?
MACDARA. No, he is only a voice that cries out, a sigh that trembles
into rest. The true teacher must suffer and do. He must break bread to
the people: he must go into Gethsemane and toil up the steep of
Golgotha.... Sometimes I think that to be a woman and to serve and
suffer as women do is to be the highest thing. Perhaps that is why I
felt it proud and wondrous to be a teacher, for a teacher does that. I
gave to the little lad I taught the very flesh and blood and breath that
were my life. I fed him on the milk of my kindness; I breathed into him
my spirit.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did he repay you for that great service?
MACDARA. Can any child repay its mother? Master, your trade is the most
sorrowful of all trades. You are like a poor mother who spends herself
in nursing children who go away and never come back to her.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Was your little pupil untrue to you?
MACDARA. Nay; he was so true to me that his mother grew jealous of me. A
good mother and a good teacher are always jealous of each other. That is
why a teacher’s trade is the most sorrowful of all trades. If he is a
bad teacher his pupil _wanders_ away from him. If he is a good teacher
his pupil’s folk grow jealous of him. My little pupil’s mother bade him
choose between her and me.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Which did he choose?
MACDARA. He chose his mother. How could I blame him?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What did you do?
MACDARA. I shouldered my bundle and took to the roads.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. How did it fare with you?
MACDARA. It fares ill with one who is so poor that he has no longer even
his dreams. I was the poorest _shuiler_ on the roads of Ireland, for I
had no single illusion left to me. I could neither pray when I came to a
holy well nor drink in a public-house when I had got a little money. One
seemed to me as foolish as the other.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did you make no songs in those days?
MACDARA. I made one so bitter that when I recited it at a wake they
thought I was some wandering, wicked spirit, and they put me out of the
house.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Did you not pray at all?
MACDARA. Once, as I knelt by the cross of Kilgobbin, it became clear to
me, with an awful clearness, that there was no God. Why pray after that?
I burst into a fit of laughter at the folly of men in thinking that
there is a God. I felt inclined to run through the villages and cry
aloud, “People, it is all a mistake; there is no God.”
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. MacDara, this grieves me.
MACDARA. Then I said, “why take away their illusion? If they find out
that there is no God, their hearts will be as lonely as mine.” So I
walked the roads with my secret.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. MacDara, I am sorry for this. You must pray, you must
pray. You will find God again. He has only hidden His face from you.
MACDARA. No, He has revealed His Face to me. His Face is terrible and
sweet, Maoilsheachlainn. I know It well now.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Then you found Him again?
MACDARA. His Name is suffering. His Name is loneliness. His Name is
abjection.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I do not rightly understand you, and yet I think you
are saying something that is true.
MACDARA. I have lived with the homeless and with the breadless. Oh,
Maoilsheachlainn, the poor, the poor! I have seen such sad childings,
such bare marriage feasts, such candleless wakes! In the pleasant
country places I have seen them, but oftener in the dark, unquiet
streets of the city. My heart has been heavy with the sorrow of mothers,
my eyes have been wet with the tears of children. The people,
Maoilsheachlainn, the dumb, suffering people: reviled and outcast, yet
pure and splendid and faithful. In them I saw, or seemed to see again,
the Face of God. Ah, it is a tear-stained face, blood-stained, defiled
with ordure, but it is the Holy Face!
* * * * *
_There is a page of MS. missing here, which evidently covered the exit
to the room of MacDara and the entrance of Diarmaid._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What news have you with you?
DIARMAID. The Gall have marched from Clifden.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Is it into the hills?
DIARMAID. By Letterfrack they have come, and the Pass of Kylemore, and
through Glen Inagh.
COLM. And no word from Galway yet?
DIARMAID. No word, nor sign of a word.
COLM. They told us to wait for the word. We’ve waited too long.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. The messenger may have been caught. Perhaps the Gall
are marching from Galway too.
COLM. We’d best strike ourselves, so.
CUIMIN. Is it to strike before the word is given?
COLM. Is it to die like rats you’d have us because the word is not
given?
CUIMIN. Our plans are not finished; our orders are not here.
COLM. Our plans will never be finished. Our orders may never be here.
CUIMIN. We’ve no one to lead us.
COLM. Didn’t you elect me your captain?
CUIMIN. We did: but not to bid us rise out when the whole country is
quiet. We were to get the word from the men that are over the people.
They’ll speak when the time comes.
COLM. They should have spoken before the Gall marched.
CUIMIN. What call have you to say what they should or what they should
not have done? Am I speaking lie or truth, men? Are we to rise out
before the word comes? I say we must wait for the word. What do you say,
Diarmaid, you that was our messenger to Galway?
DIARMAID. I like the way Colm has spoken, and we may live to say that he
spoke wisely as well as bravely; but I’m slow to give my voice to send
out the boys of this mountain--our poor little handful--to stand with
their poor pikes against the big guns of the Gall. If we had news that
they were rising in the other countrysides; but we’ve got no news.
CUIMIN. What do you say, master? You’re wiser than any of us.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I say to Colm that a greater one than he or I may give
us the word before the day is old. Let you have patience, Colm--
COLM. My mother told me to have patience this morning, when MacDara’s
step was on the street. Patience, and I after waiting seven years before
I spoke, and then to speak too late!
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. What are you saying at all?
COLM. I am saying this, master, that I’m going out the road to meet the
Gall, if only five men of the mountain follow me.
_Sighle has appeared in the doorway and stands terror-stricken._
CUIMIN. You will not, Colm.
COLM. I will.
DIARMAID. This is throwing away men’s lives.
COLM. Men’s lives get very precious to them when they have bought out
their land.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Listen to me, Colm--
_Colm goes out angrily, and the others follow him, trying to restrain
him. Sighle comes to the fire, where she kneels._
SIGHLE (_as in a reverie_). “They will go out laughing,” I said, but
Colm has gone out with anger in his heart. And he was so kind.... Love
is a terrible thing. There is no pain so great as the pain of love.... I
wish MacDara and I were children in the green _mám_ and that we did not
know that we loved each other.... Colm will lie dead on the road to Glen
Inagh, and MacDara will go out to die.... There is nothing in the world
but love and death. _MacDara comes out of the room._
MACDARA (_in a low voice_). She has dropped asleep, Sighle.
SIGHLE. She watched long, MacDara. We all watched long.
MACDARA. Every long watch ends. Every traveller comes home.
SIGHLE. Sometimes when people watch it is death that comes.
MACDARA. Could there be a royaller coming, Sighle?... Once I wanted
life. You and I to be together in one place always: that is what I
wanted. But now I see that we shall be together for a little time only;
that I have to do a hard, sweet thing, and that I must do it alone. And
because I love you I would not have it different.... I wanted to have
your kiss on my lips, Sighle, as well as my mother’s and Colm’s. But I
will deny myself that. (_Sighle is crying._) Don’t cry, child. Stay near
my mother while she lives--it may be for a little while of years. You
poor women suffer so much pain, so much sorrow, and yet you do not die
until long after your strong, young sons and lovers have died.
_Maire’s voice is heard from the room, crying_: MacDara!
MACDARA. She is calling me.
_He goes into the room; Sighle cries on her knees by the fire. After a
little while voices are heard outside, the latch is lifted, and
Maoilsheachlainn comes in._
SIGHLE. Is he gone, master?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Gone out the road with ten or fifteen of the young
lads. Is MacDara within still?
SIGHLE. He was here in the kitchen a while. His mother called him and he
went back to her.
_Maoilsheachlainn goes over and sits down near the fire._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I think, maybe, that Colm did what was right. We are
too old to be at the head of work like this. Was MacDara talking to you
about the trouble?
SIGHLE. He said that he would have to do a hard, sweet thing, and that
he would have to do it alone.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. I’m sorry but I called him before Colm went out.
_A murmur is heard as of a crowd of men talking as they come up the
hill._
SIGHLE. What is that noise like voices?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. It is the boys coming up the hillside. There was a
great crowd gathering below at the cross.
_The voices swell loud outside the door. Cuimin Eanna, Diarmaid, and
some others come in._
DIARMAID. The men say we did wrong to let Colm go out with that little
handful. They say we should all have marched.
CUIMIN. And I say Colm was wrong to go before he got his orders. Are we
all to go out and get shot down because one man is hotheaded? Where is
the plan that was to come from Galway?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Men, I’m blaming myself for not saying the thing I’m
going to say before we let Colm go. We talk about getting word from
Galway. What would you say, neighbours, if the man that will give the
word is under the roof of this house.
CUIMIN. Who is it you mean?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_going to the door of the room and throwing it open_).
Let you rise out, MacDara, and reveal yourself to the men that are
waiting for your word.
ONE OF THE NEWCOMERS. Has MacDara come home?
_MacDara comes out of the room: Maire ni Fhiannachta stands behind him
in the doorway._
DIARMAID (_starting up from where he has been sitting_). That is the man
that stood among the people in the fair of Uachtar Ard! (_He goes up to
MacDara and kisses his hand._) I could not get near you yesterday,
MacDara, with the crowds that were round you. What was on me that didn’t
know you? Sure, I had a right to know that sad, proud head. Maire ni
Fhiannachta, men and women yet unborn will bless the pains of your first
childing.
_Maire ni Fhiannachta comes forward slowly and takes her son’s hand
and kisses it._
MAIRE (_in a low voice_). Soft hand that played at my breast, strong
hand that will fall heavy on the Gall, brave hand that will break the
yoke! Men of this mountain, my son MacDara is the Singer that has
quickened the dead years and all the quiet dust! Let the horsemen that
sleep in Aileach rise up and follow him into the war! Weave your
winding-sheets, women, for there will be many a noble corpse to be waked
before the new moon!
_Each comes forward and kisses his hand._
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Let you speak, MacDara, and tell us is it time.
MACDARA. Where is Colm?
DIARMAID. Gone out the road to fight the Gall, himself and fifteen.
MACDARA. Has not Colm spoken by his deed already?
CUIMIN. You are our leader.
MACDARA. Your leader is the man that spoke first. Give me a pike and I
will follow Colm. Why did you let him go out with fifteen men only? You
are fourscore on the mountain.
DIARMAID. We thought it a foolish thing for fourscore to go into battle
against four thousand, or, maybe, forty thousand.
MACDARA. And so it is a foolish thing. Do you want us to be wise?
CUIMIN. This is strange talk.
MACDARA. I will talk to you more strangely yet. It is for your own
souls’ sakes I would have had the fourscore go, and not for Colm’s sake,
or for the battle’s sake, for the battle is won whether you go or not.
_A cry is heard outside. One rushes in terror-stricken._
THE NEWCOMER. Young Colm has fallen at the Glen foot.
MACDARA. The fifteen were too many. Old men, you did not do your work
well enough. You should have kept all back but one. One man can free a
people as one Man redeemed the world. I will take no pike, I will go
into the battle with bare hands. I will stand up before the Gall as
Christ hung naked before men on the tree!
_He moves through them, pulling off his clothes as he goes. As he
reaches the threshold a great shout goes up from the people. He passes
out and the shout dies slowly away. The other men follow him slowly.
Maire ni Fhiannachta sits down at the fire, where Sighle still
crouches._
THE CURTAIN DESCENDS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE KING
A MORALITY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARACTERS
GIOLLA NA NAOMH (“_the Servant of the Saints_”), _a Little Boy_
BOYS
AN ABBOT
MONKS
A KING
HEROES
GILLIES
WOMEN
_PLACE_--_An ancient monastery_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE KING
_A green before the monastery. The voices of monks are heard chanting.
Through the chanting breaks the sound of a trumpet. A little boy runs
out from the monastery and stands on the green looking in the
direction whence the trumpet has spoken._
THE BOY. Conall, Diarmaid, Giolla na Naomh!
_The voices of other boys answer him._
FIRST BOY. There is a host marching from the North.
SECOND BOY. Where is it?
FIRST BOY. See it beneath you in the glen.
THIRD BOY. It is the King’s host.
FOURTH BOY. The King is going to battle.
_The trumpet speaks again, nearer. The boys go upon the rampart of the
monastery. The murmur of a marching host is heard._
FIRST BOY. I see the horses and the riders.
SECOND BOY. I see the swords and the spears.
FOURTH BOY. I see the standards and the banners.
THIRD BOY. I see the King’s banner.
FOURTH BOY. I see the King!
FIRST BOY. Which of them is the King?
FOURTH BOY. The tall comely man on the black horse.
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. Let us salute the King.
THE BOYS (_with the voice of one_). Take victory in battle and slaying,
O King!
_The voices of warriors are heard acclaiming the King as the host
marches past with din of weapons and music of trumpet and pipes.
Silence succeeds._
FIRST BOY. I would like to be a King.
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. Why?
FIRST BOY. The King has gold and silver.
SECOND BOY. He has noble jewels in his jewel-house.
THIRD BOY. He has slender steeds and gallant hounds.
FOURTH BOY. He has a keen-edged, gold-hilted sword and a mighty-shafted,
blue-headed spear and a glorious red-emblazoned shield. I saw him once
in my father’s house.
FIRST BOY. What was he like?
FOURTH BOY. He was tall and noble. He was strong and broad-shouldered.
He had long fair hair. He had a comely proud face. He had two piercing
grey eyes. A white vest of satin next his skin. A very beautiful red
tunic, with a white hood, upon his body. A royal mantle of purple about
him. Seven colours upon him, between vest and tunic and hood and mantle.
A silver brooch upon his breast. A kingly diadem upon his head, and the
colour of gold upon it. Two great wings rising above his head, as white
as the two wings of a sea-gull and as broad as the two wings of an
eagle. He was a gallant man.
SECOND BOY. And what was the look of his face?
THIRD BOY. Did he look angry, stern?
FOURTH BOY. He did, at times.
FIRST BOY. Had he a laughing look?
FOURTH BOY. He laughed only once.
SECOND BOY. How did he look mostly? Stern or laughing?
FOURTH BOY. He looked sorrowful. When he was talking to the kings and
the heroes he had an angry and a laughing look every second while, but
when he was silent he was sorrowful.
FIRST BOY. What sorrow can he have?
FOURTH BOY. I do not know. The thousands he has slain, perhaps.
SECOND BOY. The churches he has plundered.
THIRD BOY. The battles he has lost.
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. Alas, the poor King!
SECOND BOY. You would not like to be a King, Giolla na Naomh?
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. I would not. I would rather be a monk that I might pray
for the King.
FOURTH BOY. I may have the kingship of this country when I am a man, for
my father is of the royal blood.
SECOND BOY. And my father is of the royal blood, too.
THIRD BOY. Aye, and mine.
FOURTH BOY. I will not let the kingdom go with either of you. It is
mine!
SECOND BOY. It is not, but mine.
THIRD BOY. It matters not whose it is, for _I_ will have it!
SECOND BOY. No, nor anyone of your house!
FOURTH BOY (_seizing a switch of sally and brandishing it_). I will ply
the venom of my sword upon you! I will defend my kingdom against my
enemies! Giolla na Naomh, pray for the King!
_A bell sounds from the monastery._
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. The bell is ringing.
_The people of the monastery come upon the green in ones and twos, the
Abbot last. The boys gather a little apart. Distant sounds of battle
are heard._
THE ABBOT. My children, the King is giving battle to his foes.
FIRST MONK. This King has lost every battle into which he has gone up to
this.
THE ABBOT. In a vision that I saw last night as I knelt before my God it
was revealed to me that the battle will be broken on the King again.
SECOND MONK. My grief!
THIRD MONK. My grief!
FIRST MONK. Tell us, Father, the cause of these unnumbered defeats.
THE ABBOT. Do you think that an offering will be accepted from polluted
hands? This King has shed the blood of the innocent. He has made spoils
and forays. He has oppressed the poor. He has forsaken the friendship of
God and made friends with evil-doers.
FIRST MONK. That is true. Yet it is a good fight that the King fights
now, for he gives battle for his people.
THE ABBOT. It is an angel that should be sent to pour out the wine and
to break the bread of this sacrifice. Not by an unholy King should the
noble wine that is in the veins of good heroes be spilt; not at the
behest of a guilty king should fair bodies be mangled. I say to you that
the offering will not be accepted.
FIRST MONK. And are all guilty of the sins of the King? If the King is
defeated it’s grief will be for all. Why must all suffer for the sins of
the King? On the King the eric!
THE ABBOT. The nation is guilty of the sins of its princes. I say to you
that this nation shall not be freed until it chooses for itself a
righteous King.
SECOND MONK. Where shall a righteous King be found?
THE ABBOT. I do not know, unless he be found among these little boys.
_The boys have drawn near and are gathered about the Abbot._
FIRST MONK. And shall the people be in bondage until these little lads
are fit for battle? It is not the King’s case I pity, but the case of
the people. I heard women mourning last night. Shall women be mourning
in this land till doom?
THIRD MONK. As I went out from the monastery yesterday there was a dead
man on the verge of the wood. Battle is terrible.
SECOND MONK. No, battle is glorious! While we were singing our None but
now, Father, I heard, through the psalmody of the brethren, the voice of
a trumpet. My heart leaped, and I would fain have risen from the place
where I was and gone after that gallant music. I should not have cared
though it were to my death I went.
THE ABBOT. That is the voice of a young man. The old wait for death, but
the young go to meet it. If into this quiet place, where monks chant and
children play, there were to come from yonder battlefield a bloodstained
man, calling upon all to follow him into the battle-press, there is none
here that would not rise and follow him, but I myself and the old
brother that rings our bell. There is none of you, young brothers, no,
nor any of these little lads, that would not rise from me and go into
the battle. That music of the fighters makes drunk the hearts of young
men.
SECOND MONK. It is good for young men to be made drunk.
FIRST MONK. Brother, you speak wickedness.
THE ABBOT. There is a heady ale which all young men should drink, for he
who has not been made drunk with it has not lived. It is with that ale
that God makes drunk the hearts of the saints. I would not forbid you
your intoxication, O young men!
FIRST MONK. This is not plain, Father.
THE ABBOT. Do you think if that terrible, beautiful voice for which
young men strain their ears were to speak from yon place where the
fighters are, and the horses, and the music, that I would stay you, did
ye rise to obey it? Do you think I would grudge any of you? Do you think
I would grudge the dearest of these little boys, to death calling with
that terrible, beautiful voice? I would let you all go, though I and the
old brother should be very lonely here.
SECOND BOY. Giolla na Naomh would not go, Father.
THE ABBOT. Why do you say that?
SECOND BOY. He said that he would rather be a monk.
THE ABBOT. Would you not go into the battle, Giolla na Naomh?
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. I would. I would go as a gilly to the King, that I
might serve him when all would forsake him.
THE ABBOT. But it is to the saints you are gilly, Giolla na Naomh, and
not to the King.
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. It were not much for the poor King to have one little
gilly that would not forsake him when the battle would be broken on him
and all forsaking him.
THE ABBOT. This child is right. While we think of glory he thinks of
service.
_An outcry as of grief and dismay is heard from the battlefield._
FIRST MONK. I fear me that the King is beaten!
THE ABBOT. Go upon the rampart and tell us what you see.
FIRST MONK (_having gone upon the rampart_). A man comes towards us in
flight.
SECOND MONK. What manner of man is he?
FIRST MONK. A bloodstained man, all spent, his feet staggering and
stumbling under him.
SECOND MONK. Is he a man of the King’s people?
FIRST MONK. He is. _A soldier comes upon the green all spent._
THE SOLDIER. The King is beaten!
THE MONKS. My sorrow, my sorrow!
THE SOLDIER. The King is beaten, I say to you! O ye of the books and the
bells, small was your help to us in the hard battle! The King is beaten!
THE ABBOT. Where is the King?
THE SOLDIER. He is flying.
THE ABBOT. Give us the description of the battle.
THE SOLDIER. I cannot speak. Let a drink be given to me.
THE ABBOT. Let a drink be given to this man.
_The little boy who is called Giolla na Naomh gives him a drink of
water._
THE ABBOT. Speak to us now and give us the description of the battle.
THE SOLDIER. Each man of us was a fighter of ten. The King was a fighter
of a hundred. But what availed us our valour? We were beaten and we
fled. Hundreds lie sole to sole on the lea.
THE MONKS. My sorrow! My sorrow! _A din grows._
SECOND MONK. Who comes?
FIRST MONK. The King!
_Riders and gillies come upon the green pell-mell, the King in their
midst. The King goes upon his knees before the Abbot, and throws his
sword upon the ground._
THE KING. Give me your curse, O man of God, and let me go to my death! I
am beaten. My people are beaten. Ten battles have I fought against my
foes, and every battle of them has been broken on me. It is I who have
brought God’s wrath upon this land. Ask your God not to wreak his anger
on my people henceforth, but to wreak it on me. Have pity on my people,
O man of God!
THE ABBOT. God will have pity on them.
THE KING. God has forsaken me.
THE ABBOT. You have forsaken God.
THE KING. God has forsaken my people.
THE ABBOT. He has not, neither will He. He will save this nation if it
choose a righteous King.
THE KING. Give it then a righteous King. Give it one of your monks or
one of these little lads to be its King. The battle on your protection,
O man of God!
THE ABBOT. Not so, but on the protection of the sword of a righteous
King. Speak to me, my children, and tell me who among you is the most
righteous?
FIRST MONK. I have sinned.
SECOND MONK. And I.
THIRD MONK. Father, we have all sinned.
THE ABBOT. I, too, have sinned. All that are men have sinned. How soon
we exchange the wisdom of children for the folly of men! O wise
children, busy with your toys while we are busy with our sins! I see
clearly now. I shall find a sinless King among these little boys. Speak
to me, boys, and tell me who is most innocent among you?
THE BOYS (_with one voice_). Giolla na Naomh.
THE ABBOT. The little lad that waits upon all! Ye are right. The last
shall be first. Giolla na Naomh, will you be King over this nation?
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. I am too young, Father, I am too weak.
THE ABBOT. Come hither to me, child. (_The child goes over to him._) O
fosterling that I have nourished, if I ask this thing of you, will you
not do it?
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. I will be obedient to you, Father.
THE ABBOT. Will you turn your face into the battle?
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. I will do the duty of a King.
THE ABBOT. Little one, it may be that your death will come of it.
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. Welcome is death if it be appointed to me.
THE ABBOT. Did I not say that the young seek death? They are spendthrift
of all that we hoard jealously; they pursue all that we shun. The
terrible, beautiful voice has spoken to this child. O herald death, you
shall be answered! I will not grudge you my fosterling.
THE KING. Abbot, I will fight my own battles: no child shall die for me!
THE ABBOT. You have given me your sword, and I give it to this child.
God has spoken through the voice of His ancient herald, the terrible,
beautiful voice that comes out of the heart of battles.
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. Let me do this little thing, King. I will guard your
banner well. I will bring you back your sword after the battle. I am
only your little gilly, who watches while the tired King sleeps. I will
sleep to-night while you shall watch.
THE KING. My pity, my three pities!
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. We slept last night while you were marching through the
dark country. Poor King, your marchings have been long. My march will be
very short.
THE ABBOT. Let this gentle asking prevail with you, King. I say to you
that God has spoken.
THE KING. I do not understand your God.
THE ABBOT. Who understands Him? He demands not understanding, but
obedience. This child is obedient, and because he is obedient, God will
do mighty things through him. King, you must yield to this.
THE KING. I yield, I yield! Woe is me that I did not fall in yonder
onset!
THE ABBOT. Let this child be stripped that the raiment of a King may be
put about him. (_The child is stripped of his clothing._) Let a royal
vest be put next the skin of the child. (_A royal vest is put upon
him._) Let a royal tunic be put about him. (_A royal tunic is put about
him above the vest, and sandals upon his feet._) Let the royal mantle be
put about him. (_The King takes off the royal mantle and it is put upon
the child._) Let a royal diadem be put upon his head. (_The King takes
off the royal diadem and it is put upon the child’s head._) Let him be
given the shield of the King. (_The shieldbearer holds up the shield._)
A blessing on this shield! May it be firm against foes!
THE HEROES. A blessing on this shield!
_The shield is put on the child’s left arm._
THE ABBOT. Let him be given the spear of the King. (_The spearbearer
comes forward and holds up the spear._) A blessing on this spear! May it
be sharp against foes!
THE HEROES. A blessing on this spear!
THE ABBOT. Let him be given the sword of the King. (_The King lifts his
sword and girds it round the child’s waist. Giolla na Naomh draws the
sword and holds it in his right hand._) A blessing on this sword! May it
be hard to smite foes!
THE HEROES. A blessing on this sword!
THE ABBOT. I call this little lad King, and I put the battle under his
protection in the name of God.
THE KING (_kneeling before the boy_). I do homage to thee, O King, and I
put the battle under thy protection.
THE HEROES, MONKS, BOYS, etc. (_kneeling_). We do homage to thee, O
King, and we put the battle under thy protection.
GIOLLA NA NAOMH. I undertake to sustain the battle in the name of God.
THE ABBOT. Let a steed be brought him. (_A steed is brought._) Let the
banner of the King be unfurled. (_The banner is unfurled._) Turn thy
face to the battle, O King!
GIOLLA NA NAOMH (_kneeling_). Bless me, Father.
THE ABBOT. A blessing on thee, little one.
THE HEROES, etc. (_with one voice_). Take victory in battle and slaying,
O King.
_The little King mounts, and, with the heroes and soldiers and
gillies, rides to the battle. The Abbot, the King, the Monks, and the
Boys watch them._
THE ABBOT. King, I have given you the noblest jewel that was in my
house. I loved yonder child.
THE KING. Priest, I have never received from my tributary kings a
kinglier gift.
FIRST MONK. They have reached the place of battle.
THE ABBOT. O strong God, make strong the hand of this child. Make firm
his foot. Make keen his sword. Let the purity of his heart and the
humbleness of his spirit be unto him a magnifying of courage and an
exaltation of mind. Ye angels that fought the ancient battles, ye
veterans of God, make a battle-pen about him and fight before him with
flaming swords.
THE MONKS AND BOYS. Amen, Amen.
THE ABBOT. O God, save this nation by the sword of the sinless boy.
THE KING. And O Christ, that was crucified on the hill, bring the child
safe from the perilous battle.
THE ABBOT. King, King, freedom is not purchased but with a great price.
(_A trumpet speaks._) Let the description of the battle be given us.
_The First Monk and the Second Monk go upon the rampart._
FIRST MONK. The two hosts are face to face. _Another trumpet speaks._
SECOND MONK. That is sweet! It is the trumpet of the King! _Shouts._
FIRST MONK. The King’s host raises shouts. _Other shouts._
SECOND MONK. The enemy answers them.
FIRST MONK. The hosts advance against each other.
SECOND MONK. They fight.
FIRST MONK. Our people are yielding.
THIRD MONK. Say not so.
SECOND MONK. My grief, they are yielding. _A trumpet speaks._
THIRD MONK. Sweet again! It is timely spoken, O trumpet of the King!
FIRST MONK. The King’s banner is going into the battle!
SECOND MONK. I see the little King!
THIRD MONK. Is he going into the battle?
FIRST MONK. Yes.
THE MONKS AND BOYS (_with one voice_). Take victory in battle and
slaying, O King!
SECOND MONK. It is a good fight now.
FIRST MONK. Two seas have met on the plain.
SECOND MONK. Two raging seas!
FIRST MONK. One sea rolls back.
SECOND MONK. It is the enemy that retreats!
FIRST MONK. The little King goes through them.
SECOND MONK. He goes through them like a hawk through small birds.
FIRST MONK. Yea, like a wolf through a flock of sheep on a plain.
SECOND MONK. Like a torrent through a mountain gap.
FIRST MONK. It is a road of rout before him.
SECOND MONK. There are great uproars in the battle. It is a roaring path
down which the King rides.
FIRST MONK. O golden head above the slaughter! O shining, terrible sword
of the King!
SECOND MONK. The enemy flies!
FIRST MONK. They are beaten! They are beaten! It is a red road of rout!
Raise shouts of exultation!
SECOND MONK. My grief!
FIRST MONK. My grief! My grief!
THE ABBOT. What is that?
FIRST MONK. The little King is down!
THE ABBOT. Has he the victory?
FIRST MONK. Yes, but he himself is down. I do not see his golden head. I
do not see his shining sword. My grief! They raise his body from the
plain.
THE ABBOT. Is the enemy flying?
SECOND MONK. Yes, they fly. They are pursued. They are scattered. They
are scattered as a mist would be scattered. They are no longer seen on
the plain.
THE ABBOT. It’s thanks to God! (_Keening is heard._) Thou hast been
answered, O terrible voice! Old herald, my foster child has answered!
THIRD MONK. They bear hither a dead child.
THE KING. He said that he would sleep to-night and that I should watch.
_Heroes come upon the green bearing the body of Giolla na Naomh on a
bier; there are women keening it. The bier is laid in the centre of
the green._
THE KING. He has brought me back my sword. He has guarded my banner
well.
THE ABBOT (_lifting the sword from the bier_). Take the sword.
THE KING. No, I will let him keep it. A King should sleep with a sword.
This was a very valiant King. (_He takes the sword from the Abbot and
lays it again upon the bier. He kneels._) I do homage to thee, O dead
King, O victorious child! I kiss thee, O white body, since it is thy
purity that hath redeemed my people. (_He kisses the forehead of Giolla
na Naomh. They commence to keen again._)
THE ABBOT. Do not keen this child, for he hath purchased freedom for his
people. Let shouts of exultation be raised and let a canticle be sung in
praise of God.
_The body is borne into the monastery with a Te Deum._
THE SCENE CLOSES.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MASTER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARACTERS
CIARAN, _the Master_
PUPILS:
IOLLANN BEAG
ART
BREASAL
MAINE
RONAN
CEALLACH
DAIRE, _the King_
MESSENGER
THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MASTER
_A little cloister in a woodland. The subdued sunlight of a forest
place comes through the arches. On the left, one arch gives a longer
vista where the forest opens and the sun shines upon a far hill. In
the centre of the cloister two or three steps lead to an inner place,
as it were a little chapel or cell._
_Art, Breasal, and Maine are busy with a game of jackstones about the
steps. They play silently._
_Ronan enters from the left._
RONAN. Where is the Master?
ART. He has not left his cell yet.
RONAN. He is late. Who is with him, Art?
ART. I was with him till a while ago. When he had finished his
thanksgiving he told me he had one other little prayer to say which he
could not leave over. He said it was for a soul that was in danger. I
left him on his knees and came out into the sunshine.
MAINE. Aye, you knew that Breasal and I were here with the jackstones.
BREASAL. I served his Mass yesterday, and he stayed praying so long
after it that I fell asleep. I did not stir till he laid his hand upon
my shoulder. Then I started up and said I, “Is that you, little mother?”
He laughed and said he, “No, Breasal, it’s no one so good as your
mother.”
RONAN. He is merry and gentle this while back, although he prays and
fasts longer than he used to. Little Iollann says he tells him the
merriest stories.
BREASAL. He is fond of little Iollann.
MAINE. Aye; when Iollann is late, or when he is inattentive, the Master
pretends not to notice it.
BREASAL. Well, Iollann is only a little lad.
MAINE. He is more like a little maid, with his fair cheek that reddens
when the Master speaks to him.
ART. Faith, you wouldn’t call him a little maid when you’d see him strip
to swim a river.
RONAN. Or when you’d see him spring up to meet the ball in a hurley
match.
MAINE. He has, certainly, many accomplishments.
BREASAL. He has a high, manly heart.
MAINE. He has a beautiful white body, and, therefore, you all love him;
aye, the Master and all. We have no woman here and so we make love to
our little Iollann.
RONAN (_laughing_). Why, I thrashed him ere-yesterday for putting
magories down my neck!
MAINE. Men sometimes thrash their women, Ronan. It is one of the ways of
loving.
ART. Maine, you have been listening to some satirist making satires.
There was once a Maine that was called Maine Honey-mouth. You will be
called Maine Bitter-Tongue.
MAINE. Well, I’ve won this game of jackstones. Will you play another?
CEALLACH (_enters hastily_). Lads, do you know what I have seen?
ART. What is it, Ceallach?
CEALLACH. A host of horsemen riding through the dark of the wood. A grim
host, with spears.
MAINE. The King goes hunting.
CEALLACH. My grief for the noble deer that the King hunts!
BREASAL. What deer is that?
CEALLACH. Our Master, Ciaran.
RONAN. I heard one of the captains say that the cell was to be
surrounded.
ART. But why does the King come against Ciaran?
CEALLACH. It is the Druids that have incited him. They say that Ciaran
is overturning the ancient law of the people.
MAINE. The King has ordered him to leave the country.
BREASAL. Aye, there was a King’s Messenger here the other day who spoke
long to the Master.
ART. It is since then that the Master has been praying so long every
day.
RONAN. Is he afraid that the King will kill him?
ART. No, it is for a soul that is in danger that he prays. Is it the
King’s soul that is in danger?
MAINE. Hush, the Master is coming.
CIARAN (_comes out from the inner place; the pupils rise_). Are all
here?
BREASAL. Iollann Beag has not come yet.
CIARAN. Not yet?
CEALLACH. Master, the King’s horsemen are in the wood.
CIARAN. I hope no evil has chanced to little Iollann.
MAINE. What evil could chance to him?
CEALLACH. Master, the King is seeking you in the wood.
CIARAN. Does he not know where my cell is?
BREASAL. The King has been stirred up against you, Master, rise and fly
before the horsemen surround the cell.
CIARAN. No, if the King seeks me he will find me here.... I wish little
Iollann were come. (_The voice of Iollann Beag is heard singing. All
listen._) That is his voice.
ART. He always comes singing.
MAINE. Aye, he sings profane songs in the very church porch.
RONAN. Which is as bad as if one were to play with jackstones on the
church steps.
CIARAN. I am glad little Iollann has come safe.
_Iollann Beag comes into the cloister singing._
IOLLANN BEAG (_sings_).
We watch the wee lady-bird fly far away,
With an óró and an iero and an úmbó éró.
ART. Hush, Iollann. You are in God’s place.
IOLLANN BEAG. Does God not like music? Why then did he make the finches
and the chafers?
MAINE. Your song is profane.
IOLLANN BEAG. I didn’t know.
CIARAN. Nay, Maine, no song is profane unless there be profanity in the
heart. But why do you come so late, Iollann Beag?
IOLLANN BEAG. There was a high oak tree that I had never climbed. I went
up to its top, and swung myself to the top of the next tree. I saw the
tops of all the trees like the green waves of the sea.
CIARAN. Little truant!
IOLLANN BEAG. I am sorry, Master.
CIARAN. Nay, I am not vext with you. But you must not climb tall trees
again at lesson time. We have been waiting for you. Let us begin our
lesson, lads. _He sits down._
CEALLACH. Dear Master, I ask you to fly from this place ere the King’s
horsemen close you in.
CIARAN. My boy, you must not tempt me. He is a sorry champion who
forsakes his place of battle. This is my place of battle. You would not
have me do a coward thing?
ART. But the King has many horsemen. It is not cowardly for one to fly
before a host.
CIARAN. Has not the high God captains and legions? What are the King’s
horsemen to the heavenly riders?
CEALLACH. O my dear Master!--
RONAN. Let be, Ceallach. You cannot move him.
CIARAN. Of what were we to speak to-day?
_They have sat down around him._
ART. You said you would speak of the friends of Our Lord.
CIARAN. Aye, I would speak of friendship and kindly fellowship. Is it
not a sad thing that every good fellowship is broken up? No league that
is made among men has more than its while, its little, little while.
Even that little league of twelve in Galilee was broken full soon. The
shepherd was struck and the sheep of the flock scattered. The hardest
thing Our dear Lord had to bear was the scattering of His friends.
IOLLANN BEAG. Were none faithful to Him?
CIARAN. One man only and a few women.
IOLLANN BEAG. Who was the man?
CEALLACH. I know! It was John, the disciple that He loved.
CIARAN. Aye, John of the Bosom they call him, for he was Iosa’s bosom
friend. Can you tell me the names of any others of His friends?
ART. There was James, his brother.
RONAN. There was Lazarus, for whom He wept.
BREASAL. There was Mary, the poor woman that loved Him.
MAINE. There was her sister Martha, who busied herself to make Him
comfortable; and the other Mary.
CEALLACH. Mary and Martha; but that other Mary is only a name.
CIARAN. Nay, she was the mother of the sons of Zebedee. She stands for
all lowly, hidden women, all the nameless women of the world who are
just the mothers of their children. And so we name her one of the three
great Marys, with poor Mary that sinned, and with Mary of the Sorrows,
the greatest of the Marys. What other friends can you tell me of?
IOLLANN BEAG. There was John the Baptist, His little playmate.
CIARAN. That is well said. Those two Johns were good comrades to Iosa.
RONAN. There was Thomas.
CIARAN. Poor, doubting Thomas. I am glad you did not leave him out.
MAINE. There was Judas who betrayed Him.
ART. There was Peter who--
IOLLANN BEAG. Aye, good Peter of the Sword!
CIARAN. Nay, Iollann, it is Paul that carries a sword.
IOLLANN BEAG. Peter should have a sword, too. I will not have him
cheated of his sword! It was a good blow he struck!
BREASAL. Yet the Lord rebuked him for it.
IOLLANN BEAG. The Lord did wrong to rebuke him. He was always down on
Peter.
CIARAN. Peter was fiery, and the Lord was very gentle.
IOLLANN BEAG. But when He wanted a rock to build His church on He had to
go to Peter. No John of the Bosom then, but the old swordsman. Paul must
yield his sword to Peter. I do not like that Paul.
CIARAN. Paul said many hard things and many dark things. When you
understand him, Iollann, you will like him.
MAINE. Let him not arrogate a sword merely because his head was cut off,
and Iollann will tolerate him.
CIARAN. Who has brought me a poem to-day? You were to bring me poems of
Christ’s friends.
BREASAL. I have made a Song for Mary Magdalene. Shall I say it to you?
CIARAN. Do, Breasal.
BREASAL (_chants_).
O woman of the gleaming hair
(Wild hair that won men’s gaze to thee),
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the _shuiler_ Christ is calling thee.
O woman, of the snowy side,
Many a lover hath lain with thee,
Yet left thee sad at the morning tide;
But thy lover Christ shall comfort thee.
O woman with the wild thing’s heart,
Old sin hath set a snare for thee;
In the forest ways forspent thou art,
But the hunter Christ shall pity thee.
O woman spendthrift of thyself,
Spendthrift of all the love in thee,
Sold unto sin for little pelf,
The captain Christ shall ransom thee.
O woman that no lover’s kiss
(Tho’ many a kiss was given thee)
Could slake thy love, is it not for this
The hero Christ shall die for thee?
CIARAN. That is a good song, Breasal. What you have said is true, that
love is a very great thing. I do not think faith will be denied to him
that loves.... Iollann was to make me a song to-day, too.
IOLLANN BEAG. I have made only a little rann. I couldn’t think of rhymes
for a big song.
CIARAN. What do you call your rann?
IOLLANN BEAG. It is the Rann of the Little Playmate. It is a rann that
John the Baptist made when he was on the way to Iosa’s house one day.
CIARAN. Sing it to us, Iollann.
IOLLANN (_sings_):
Young Iosa plays with me every day
(_With an óró and an iero_)
Tig and Pookeen and Hide-in-the-Hay
(_With an óró and an iero._)
We race in the river with otters gray,
We climb the tall trees where red squirrels play,
We watch the wee lady-bird fly far away,
(_With an óró and an iero and an imbó éro_).
_A knocking is heard._
CIARAN. Run and open the postern, Iollann.
CEALLACH. Master, this may be the King’s people.
CIARAN. If it be, Iollann will let them in.
_Iollann Beag goes to the door._
CEALLACH. Why have good men such pride?
_A King’s Messenger appears upon the threshold. Iollann Beag holds the
curtain of the door while the Messenger speaks._
THE MESSENGER. Who in this house is Ciaran?
CIARAN. I am Ciaran.
THE MESSENGER. I bring you greeting from the King.
CIARAN. Take back to him my greeting.
THE MESSENGER. The King has come to make the hunting of this wood.
CIARAN. It is the King’s privilege to hunt the woods of the cantred.
THE MESSENGER. Not far from here is a green glade of the forest in which
the King with his nobles and good men, his gillies and his runners, has
sat down to meat.
CIARAN. May it be a merry sitting for them.
THE MESSENGER. It has seemed to the King an unroyal thing to taste of
the cheer of this greenwood while he is at enmity with you; for he has
remembered the old saying that friendship is more welcome at meat than
ale or music. Therefore, he has sent me to say to you that he has put
all enmity out of his heart, and that in token thereof he invites you to
share his forest feast, such as it is, you and your pupils.
CIARAN. The King is kind. I would like well to come to him, but my rule
forbids me to leave this house.
THE MESSENGER. The King will take badly any refusal. It is not usual to
refuse a King’s invitation.
CIARAN. When I came to this place, after journeying many long roads of
land and sea, I said to myself: “I will abide here henceforth, this
shall be the sod of my death.” And I made a vow to live in this little
cloister alone, or with a few pupils, I who had been restless and a
wanderer, and a seeker after difficult things; the King will not grudge
me the loneliness of my cloister.
THE MESSENGER. I will say all this to the King. These lads will come
with me?
CIARAN. Will ye go to the King’s feast, lads?
BREASAL. May we go, Master.
CIARAN. I will not gainsay you.
MAINE. It will be a great thing to sit at the King’s table.
CEALLACH. Master, it may turn aside the King’s displeasure for your not
going if we go in your name. We may, perchance, bring the King here, and
peace will be bound between you.
CIARAN. May God be near you in the places to which you go.
CEALLACH. I am loath to leave you alone, Master.
CIARAN. Little Iollann will stay with me. Will you not, little Iollann.
_Iollann Beag looks yearningly towards the Messenger and the others as
if he would fain go; then he turns to Ciaran._
IOLLANN BEAG. I will.
CIARAN (_caressing him_). That is my good little lad.
ART. We will bring you back some of the King’s mead, Iollann.
IOLLANN BEAG. Bring me some of his apples and his hazel-nuts.
RONAN. We will, and, maybe, a roast capon, or a piece of venison.
_They all go out laughing. Ceallach turns back in the door._
CEALLACH. Good-bye, Master.
CIARAN. May you go safe, lad. (_To Iollann_). You are my whole school
now, Iollann.
IOLLANN (_sitting down at his knee_). Do you think the King will come
here?
CIARAN. Yes, I think he will come.
IOLLANN. I would like to see him. Is he a great, tall man?
CIARAN. I have not seen him for a long time; not since he and I were
lads.
IOLLANN. Were you friends?
CIARAN. We were fostered together.
IOLLANN. Is he a wicked King?
CIARAN. No; he has ruled this country well. His people love him. They
have gone into many perilous places with him, and he has never failed
them.
IOLLANN. Why then does he hate you? Why do Ceallach and the others fear
that he may do you harm?
CIARAN. For twenty years Daire and I have stood over against each other.
When we were at school we were rivals for the first place. I was first
in all manly games; Daire was first in learning. Everyone said “Ciaran
will be a great warrior and Daire will be a great poet or a great
teacher.” And yet it has not been so. I was nearly as good as he in
learning, and he was nearly as good as I in manly feats. I said that I
would be his master in all things, and he said that he would be my
master. And we strove one against the other.
IOLLANN BEAG. Why did you want to be his master?
CIARAN. I do not know. I thought that I should be happy if I were first
and Daire only second. But Daire was always first. I sought out
difficult things to do that I might become a better man than he: I went
into far countries and won renown among strange peoples, but very little
wealth and no happiness; I sailed into seas that no man before me had
sailed into, and saw islands that only God and the angels had seen
before me; I learned outland tongues and read the books of many peoples
and their old lore; and when I came back to my own country I found that
Daire was its king, and that all men loved him. Me they had forgotten.
IOLLANN BEAG. Were you sad when you came home and found that you were
forgotten?
CIARAN. No, I was glad. I said, “This is a hard thing that I have found
to do, to live lonely and unbeloved among my own kin. Daire has not done
anything as hard as this.” In one of the cities that I had sailed to I
had heard of the true, illustrious God, and of men who had gone out from
warm and pleasant houses, and from the kindly faces of neighbours to
live in desert places, where God walked alone and terrible; and I said
that I would do that hard thing, though I would fain have stayed in my
father’s house. And so I came into this wilderness, where I have lived
for seven years. For a few years I was alone; then pupils began to come
to me. By-and-bye the druids gave out word that I was teaching new
things and breaking established custom; and the King has forbade my
teaching, and I have not desisted, and so he and I stand opposed as of
old.
IOLLANN BEAG. You will win this time, little Master.
CIARAN. I think so; I hope so, dear. (_Aside._) I would I could say “I
know so.” This seems to me the hardest thing I have tried to do. Can a
soldier fight for a cause of which he is not sure? Can a teacher die for
a thing he does not believe?... Forgive me, Lord! It is my weakness that
cries out. I believe, I believe; help my unbelief. (_To Iollann Beag._)
Why do you think I shall win this time, Iollann,--I who have always
lost?
IOLLANN BEAG. Because God’s great angels will fight for you. Will they
not?
CIARAN. Yes, I think they will. All that old chivalry stands harnessed
in Heaven.
IOLLANN BEAG. Will they not come if you call them?
CIARAN. Yes, they will come. (_Aside._) Is it a true thing I tell this
child or do I lie to him? Will they come at my call? Will they come at
my call? My spirit reaches out and finds Heaven empty. The great halls
stand horseless and riderless. I have called to you, O riders, and I
have not heard the thunder of your coming. The multitudinous,
many-voiced sea and the green, quiet earth have each its children, but
where are the sons of Heaven? Where in all this temple of the world,
this dim and wondrous temple, does its God lurk?
IOLLANN BEAG. And would they come if I were to call them--old Peter, and
the Baptist John, and Michael and his riders?
CIARAN. We are taught that if one calls them with faith they will come.
IOLLANN BEAG. Could I see them and speak to them?
CIARAN. If it were necessary for any dear purpose of God’s, as to save a
soul that were in peril, we are taught that they would come in bodily
presence, and that one could see them and speak to them.
IOLLANN BEAG. If the soul of any dear friend of mine be ever in peril I
will call upon them. I will say, “Baptist John, Baptist John, attend
him. Good Peter of the Sword, strike valiantly. Young Michael, stand
near with all the heroes of Heaven!”
CIARAN (_aside_). If the soul of any dear friend of his were in peril!
The peril is near! The peril is near!
_A knock at the postern; Iollann Beag looks towards Ciaran._
CIARAN. Run, Iollann, and see who knocks. (_Iollann Beag goes out._) I
have looked back over the journey of my life as a man at evening might
look back from a hill on the roads he had travelled since morning. I
have seen with a great clearness as if I had left this green, dim wood
and climbed to the top of that far hill I have seen from me for seven
years now, yet never climbed. And I see that all my wayfaring has been
in vain. A man may not escape from that which is in himself. A man shall
not find his quest unless he kill the dearest thing he has. I thought
that I was sacrificing everything, but I have not sacrificed the old
pride of my heart. I chose self-abnegation, not out of humility, but out
of pride: and God, that terrible hidden God, has punished me by
withholding from me His most precious gift of faith. Faith comes to the
humble only.... Nay, Lord, I believe: this is but a temptation. Thou,
too, wast tempted. Thou, too, wast forsaken. O valiant Christ, give me
Thy strength! My need is great. _Iollann Beag returns._
IOLLANN BEAG. There is a warrior at the door, Master, that asks a
shelter. He says he has lost his way in the wood.
CIARAN. Bid him to come in, Iollann. (_Iollann Beag goes to the door
again._) I, too, have lost my way. I am like one that has trodden
intricate forest paths that have crossed and recrossed and never led him
to any homestead; or like a mariner that has voyaged on a shoreless sea
yearning for a glimpse of green earth, yet never descrying it. If I
could find some little place to rest, if I could but lie still at last
after so much wayfaring, after such clamour of loud-voiced winds,
methinks that would be to find God; for is not God quiet, is not God
peace? But always I go on with a cry as of baying winds or of vociferous
hounds about me.... They say the King hunts me to-day: but the King is
not so terrible a hunter as the desires and the doubts of a man’s heart.
The King I can meet unafraid, but who is not afraid of himself? (_Daire
enters, wrapped in a long mantle, and stands a little within the
threshold: Iollann Beag behind him. Ciaran looks fixedly at him; then
speaks._) You have hunted well to-day, O Daire!
DAIRE. I am famed as a hunter.
CIARAN. When I was a young man I said, “I will strive with the great
untamed elements, with the ancient, illimitable sea and the anarchic
winds;” you, in the manner of Kings, have warred with timid, furtive
creatures, and it has taught you only cruelty and craft.
DAIRE. What has your warfare taught you? I do not find you changed,
Ciaran. Your old pride but speaks a new language.... I am, as you remind
me, only a King; but I have been a good King. Have you been a good
teacher?
CIARAN. My pupils must answer.
DAIRE. Where are your pupils?
CIARAN. True; they are not here.
DAIRE. They are at an ale-feast in my tent.... (_Coming nearer to
Ciaran._) I have not come to taunt you, Ciaran. Nor should you taunt me.
You seem to me to have spent your life pursuing shadows that fled before
you; yea, pursuing ghosts over wide spaces and through the devious
places of the world: and I pity you for the noble manhood you have
wasted. I seem to you to have spent my life busy with the little, vulgar
tasks and the little, vulgar pleasures of a King: and you pity me
because I have not adventured, because I have not been tried, because I
have not suffered as you have. It should be sufficient triumph for each
of us that each pities the other.
CIARAN. You speak gently, Daire; and you speak wisely. You were always
wise. And yet, methinks, you are wrong. There is a deeper antagonism
between you and me than you are aware of. It is not merely that the
little things about you, the little, foolish, mean, discordant things of
a man’s life, have satisfied you, and that I have been discontent,
seeking things remote and holy and perilous--
DAIRE. Ghosts, ghosts!
CIARAN. Nay, they alone are real; or, rather, it alone is real. For
though its names be many, its substance is one. One man will call it
happiness, another will call it beauty, a third will call it holiness, a
fourth will call it rest. I have sought it under all its names.
DAIRE. What is it that you have sought?
CIARAN. I have sought truth.
DAIRE. And have you found truth? (_Ciaran bows his head in dejection._)
Ciaran, was it worth your while to give up all goodly life to follow
that mocking phantom? I do not say that a man should not renounce ease.
I have not loved ease. But I have loved power, and victory, and life,
and men, and women, and the gracious sun. He who renounces these things
to follow a phantom across a world has given his all for nothing.
CIARAN. Is not the mere quest often worth while, even if the thing
quested be never found?
DAIRE. And so you have not found your quest?
CIARAN. You lay subtle traps for me in your speeches, Daire. It was your
way at school when we disputed.
DAIRE. Kings must be subtle. It is by craft we rule.... Ciaran, for the
shadow you have pursued I offer you a substance; in place of vain
journeying I invite you to rest.... If you make your peace with me you
shall be the second man in my kingdom.
CIARAN (_in scorn and wrath_). The second man!
DAIRE. There speaks your old self, Ciaran. I did not mean to wound you.
I am the King, chosen by the people to rule and lead. I could not, even
if I would, place you above me; but I will place you at my right hand.
CIARAN. You would bribe me with this petty honour?
DAIRE. No. I would gain you for the service of your people. What other
service should a man take upon him?
CIARAN. I told you that you did not understand the difference between
you and me. May one not serve the people by bearing testimony in their
midst to a true thing even as by feeding them with bread?
DAIRE. Again you prate of truth. Are you fond enough to think that what
has not imposed even upon your pupils will impose upon me?
CIARAN. My pupils believe. You must not wrong them, Daire.
DAIRE. Are you sure of them?
CIARAN. Yes, I am sure. (_Aside._) Yet sometimes I thought that that
gibing Maine did not believe. It may be--
DAIRE. Where are your pupils? Why are they not here to stand by you in
your bitter need?
CIARAN. You enticed them from me by guile.
DAIRE. I invited them; they came. You could not keep them, Ciaran. Think
you my young men would have left me, in similar case? Their bodies would
have been my bulwark against a host.
CIARAN. You hint unspeakable things.
DAIRE. I do but remind you that you have to-day no disciples;
(_smiling_) except, perhaps, this little lad. Come, I will win him from
you with an apple.
CIARAN. You shall not tempt him!
DAIRE (_laughing_). Ciaran, you stand confessed: you have no faith in
your disciples; methinks you have no faith in your religion.
CIARAN. You are cruel, Daire. You were not so cruel when we were lads.
DAIRE. You have come into my country preaching to my people new things,
incredible things, things you dare not believe yourself. I will not have
this lie preached to men. If your religion be true, you must give me a
sign of its truth.
CIARAN. It is true, it is true!
DAIRE. Give me a sign. Nay, show me that you yourself believe. Call upon
your God to reveal Himself. I do not trust these skulking gods.
CIARAN. Who am I to ask that great Mystery to unveil Its face? Who are
you that a miracle should be wrought for you?
DAIRE. This is not an answer. So priests ever defend their mysteries. I
will not be put off as one would put off a child that asks questions.
Lo, here I bare my sword against God; lo, here I lift up my shield. Let
one of his great captains come down to answer the challenge!
CIARAN. This the bragging of a fool.
DAIRE. Nor does that answer me. Ciaran, you are in my power. My young
men surround this house. Yours are at an ale-feast.
CIARAN. O wise and far-seeing King! You have planned all well.
DAIRE. There is a watcher at every door of your house. There a tracker
on every path of the forest. The wild boar crouches in his lair for fear
of the men that fill this wood. Three rings of champions ring round the
tent in which your pupils feast. Your God had need to show Himself a
God!
CIARAN. Nay, slay me, Daire. I will bear testimony with my life.
DAIRE. What will that prove? Men die for false things, for ridiculous
things, for evil things. What vile cause has not its heroes? Though you
were to die here with joy and laughter you would not prove your cause a
true one. Ciaran, let God send down an angel to stand between you and
me.
CIARAN. Do you think that to save my poor life Omnipotence will display
Itself?
DAIRE. Who talks of your life? It is your soul that is at stake, and
mine, and this little boy’s, and the souls of all this nation, born and
unborn.
CIARAN (_aside_). He speaks true.
DAIRE. Nay, I will put you to the proof. (_To Iollann._) Come hither,
child. (_Iollann Beag approaches._) He is daintily fashioned, Ciaran,
this last little pupil of yours. I swear to you that he shall die unless
your God sends down an angel to rescue him. Kneel boy. (_Iollann Beag
kneels._) Speak now, if God has ears to hear. _He raises his sword._
CIARAN (_aside_). I dare not speak. My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me?
IOLLANN BEAG. Fear not, little Master, I remember the word you taught
me.... Young Michael, stand near me!
_The figure of a mighty Warrior, winged, and clothed in light, seems
to stand beside the boy. Ciaran bends on one knee._
DAIRE. Who art thou, O Soldier?
MICHAEL. I am he that waiteth at the portal. I am he that hasteneth. I
am he that rideth before the squadron. I am he that holdeth a shield
over the retreat of man’s host when Satan cometh in war. I am he that
turneth and smiteth. I am he that is Captain of the Host of God.
_Daire bends slowly on one knee._
CIARAN. The Seraphim and the Cherubim stand horsed. I hear the thunder
of their coming.... O Splendour! _He falls forward, dead._
CURTAIN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IOSAGAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARACTERS
IOSAGAN
OLD MATTHIAS
THE PRIEST
BOYS:--DARAGH, PADRAIC, COILIN, CUIMIN, FEICHIN, EOGHAN
_Daragh and Padraic are a little older than the other boys_
_PLACE--A sea-strand beside a village in Iar-Connacht_
_TIME--The present_
IOSAGAN, loving diminutive of Íosa; “Jesukin” (“Ísuccán”) is the name
of the Child Jesus in the exquisite hymn attributed to St. Ita, b.
470, d. 580, A.D.--_Author’s Note._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IOSAGAN
SCENE I
_A sea-strand beside a village in Iar-Connacht. A house on the
right-hand side. The sound of a bell comes east, very clearly. The
door of the house is opened. An aged man, old Matthias, comes out on
the door-flag and stands for a spell looking down the road. He sits
then on a chair that is outside the door, his two hands gripping a
stick, his head bent, and he listening attentively to the sound of the
bell. The bell stops ringing. Daragh, Padraic and Coilin come up from
the sea and they putting on their share of clothes after bathing._
DARAGH (_stretching his finger towards the sea_). The flowers are white
in the fisherman’s garden.
PADRAIC. They are, _muise_.
COILIN. Where are they?
DARAGH. See them out on the sea.
COILIN. Those are not white flowers. Those are white horses.
DARAGH. They’re like white flowers.
COILIN. No; Old Matthias says those are the white horses that go
galloping across the sea from the Other Country.
PADRAIC. I heard Iosagan saying they were flowers.
COILIN. What way would flowers grow on the sea?
PADRAIC. And what way would horses travel on the sea?
COILIN. Easy, if they were fairy horses would be in them.
PADRAIC. And wouldn’t flowers grow on the sea as easy, if they were
fairy flowers would be in them? Isn’t it often you saw the water-lilies
on Loch Ellery? And couldn’t they grow on the sea as well as on the
lake?
COILIN. I don’t know if they could.
PADRAIC. They could, _muise_.
DARAGH. The sea was fine to-day, lad.
COILIN. It was, but it was devilish cold.
PADRAIC. Why wouldn’t you be cold when you’d only go into your knees?
COILIN. By my word, I was afraid the waves would knock me down if I’d go
in any further. They were terrible big.
DARAGH. That’s what I like, lad. Do you mind yon terrible big one that
came over our heads?
PADRAIC. Aye, and Coilin screaming out he was drowned.
COILIN. It went down my throat; it did that, and it nearly smothered me.
PADRAIC. Sure, you had your mouth open, and you shouting. It would be a
queer story if it didn’t go down your throat.
COILIN. Yon one gave me enough. I kept out of their way after that.
DARAGH. Have the other lads on them yet?
PADRAIC. Aye. Here they are.
COILIN. Look at Feichin’s hair!
_Feichin, Eoghan and Cuimin come up from the sea and they drying their
hair._
CUIMIN. What’ll we play to-day?
COILIN. “Blind Man’s Buff!”
PADRAIC. Ara, shut up, yourself and your “Blind Man’s Buff.”
COILIN. “High Gates,” then!
PADRAIC. No. We’re tired of those “High Gates.”
DARAGH. “Hide and Seek!”
FEICHIN. Away!
EOGHAN. “Fox and Chickens!”
COILIN. No. We’ll play “_Lúrabóg Lárabóg_.”
PADRAIC. I’ll make a _lúrabóg_ of you!
COILIN. You do be always at me, Padraic. (_Padraic catches hold of
him._) Listen to me, will you?
CUIMIN. Ara, listen to him, Padraic.
DARAGH. Listen to him. _Padraic lets him go._
COILIN. Speak yourself, Padraic, if you won’t give leave to anyone else.
PADRAIC. Let’s jump!
EOGHAN. Let’s jump! Let’s jump!
DARAGH. I’ll bet I’ll beat you, Padraic.
PADRAIC. At jumping, is it?
DARAGH. Aye.
PADRAIC. Didn’t I beat you the day before yesterday at the School Rock?
DARAGH. I’ll bet you won’t beat me to-day. Will you try?
PADRAIC. I won’t. My feet are sore. (_The other boys begin laughing;
Padraic speaks with a shamed face._) I’d rather play ball.
EOGHAN. Ball! Ball!
DARAGH. Has anybody a ball?
CUIMIN. And if they had, itself, where would we play?
PADRAIC. Against Old Matthias’s gable-end. There’s no nicer place to be
found.
COILIN. Who has the ball?
CUIMIN. My soul, I haven’t it.
DARAGH. No, nor I.
PADRAIC. You yourself, Coilin, had it on Friday.
COILIN. By my word, didn’t the master grab it where I was hopping it in
the school at Catechism?
FEICHIN. True for you, lad.
CUIMIN. My soul, but I thought he’d give you the rod that time.
COILIN. He would, too, only he was expecting the priest to come in.
DARAGH. It’s the ball he wanted. He’ll have a game with the peelers
to-day after Mass.
PADRAIC. My soul, but he will, and it’s he can beat the peelers, too.
DARAGH. He can’t beat the sergeant. The sergeant’s the best man of them
all. He beat Hoskins and the red man together last Sunday.
FEICHIN. Ara, stop! Did he beat them?
DARAGH. He did, _muise_. The red man was raging, and the master and the
peelers all laughing at him.
PADRAIC. I bet the master will beat the sergeant.
DARAGH. I’ll bet he won’t.
PADRAIC. Do ye hear him?
DARAGH. I’ll bet the sergeant can beat any man in this country.
PADRAIC. Ara, how do you know whether he can or not?
DARAGH. I know well he can. Don’t I be always watching them?
PADRAIC. You don’t know!
DARAGH. I do know! It’s I that know it!
_They threaten each other. A quarrel arises among the boys, a share of
them saying, _“The sergeant’s the best!”_ and others, _“The master’s
best!”_ Old Matthias gets up to listen to them. He comes forward,
twisted and bent in his body, and barely able to drag his feet along.
He speaks to them quietly, laying his hand on Daragh’s head._
MATTHIAS. O! O! O! My shame ye are!
PADRAIC. This fellow says the master can’t beat the sergeant playing
ball.
DARAGH. By my word, wouldn’t the sergeant beat anybody at all in this
country, Matthias?
MATTHIAS. Never mind the sergeant. Look at that lonesome wild goose
that’s making on us over Loch Ellery! Look! _All the boys look up._
PADRAIC. I see it, by my soul!
DARAGH. Where’s she coming from, Matthias?
MATTHIAS. From the Eastern World. I would say she has travelled a
thousand miles since she left her nest in the lands to the north.
COILIN. The poor thing. And where will she drop?
MATTHIAS. To Aran she’ll go, it’s a chance. See her now out over the
sea. My love you are, lonesome wild goose!
COILIN. Tell us a story, Matthias.
_He sits on a stone by the strand-edge, and the boys gather round
him._
MATTHIAS. What story shall I tell?
FEICHIN. “The Adventures of the Grey Horse!”
CUIMIN. “The Hen-Harrier and the Wren!”
PADRAIC. “The Two-Headed Giant!”
COILIN. “The Adventures of the Piper in the Snail’s Castle!”
EOGHAN. Aye, by my soul, “The Adventures of the Piper in the Snail’s
Castle!”
THE BOYS (_with one voice_). “The Adventures of the Piper in the Snail’s
Castle!”
MATTHIAS. I’ll do that. “There was a Snail in it long ago, and it’s long
since it was. If we’d been there that time, we wouldn’t be here now; and
if we were, itself, we’d have a new story or an old story, and that’s
better than to be without e’er a story at all. The Castle this Snail
lived in was the finest that man’s eye ever saw. It was greater
entirely, and it was a thousand times richer than Meave’s Castle in Rath
Cruachan, or than the Castle of the High-King of Ireland itself in Tara
of the Kings. This Snail made love to a Spider--”
COILIN. No, Matthias, wasn’t it to a Granny’s Needle he made love?
MATTHIAS. My soul, but you’re right. What’s coming on me?
PADRAIC. Go on, Matthias.
MATTHIAS. “This Nettle-Worm was very comely entirely--”
FEICHIN. What’s the Nettle-Worm, Matthias?
MATTHIAS. Why, the Nettle-Worm he made love to.
CUIMIN. But I thought it was to a Granny’s Needle he made love.
MATTHIAS. Was it? The story’s going from me. “This Piper was in love
with the daughter of the King of Connacht--”
EOGHAN. But you didn’t mention the Piper yet, Matthias!
MATTHIAS. Didn’t I! “The Piper...” yes, by my soul, the Piper--I’m
losing my memory. Look here, neighbours, we won’t meddle with the story
to-day. Let’s have a song.
COILIN. “Hi diddle dum!”
MATTHIAS. Are ye satisfied?
THE BOYS. We are.
MATTHIAS. I’ll do that. (_He sings the following rhyme_):
“Hi diddle dum, the cat and his mother,
That went to Galway riding a drake.”
THE BOYS. And hi diddle dum!
MATTHIAS.
“Hi diddle dum, the rain came pelting,
And drenched to the skin the cat and his mother.”
THE BOYS. And hi diddle dum!
MATTHIAS.
“Hi diddle dum, ’twas like in the deluge
The cat and his mother would both be drownded.”
THE BOYS. And hi diddle dum!
MATTHIAS.
“Hi diddle dum, my jewel the drake was,
That carried his burden--”
COILIN. Swimming--
MATTHIAS. Good man, Coilin.
“That carried his burden swimming to Galway.”
THE BOYS. And hi diddle dum!
_Old Matthias shakes his head wearily; he speaks in a sad voice._
MATTHIAS. My songs are going from me, neighbours. I’m like an old fiddle
that’s lost all its strings.
CUIMIN. Haven’t you the “_Báidín_” always, Matthias?
MATTHIAS. I have, my soul; I have it as long as I’m living. I won’t lose
the “_Báidín_” till I’m stretched in the clay. Shall we have it?
THE BOYS. Aye.
MATTHIAS. Are ye ready to go rowing?
THE BOYS. We are!
_They order themselves as they would be rowing. Old Matthias sings
these verses._
MATTHIAS.
“I will hang a sail, and I will go west.”
THE BOYS. _Oró, mo churaichín, O!_
MATTHIAS.
“And till St. John’s Day I will not rest.”
THE BOYS. _Oró, mo churaichín, O!_
_Oró, mo churaichín, O!_
_’S óró, mo bháidín!_
MATTHIAS.
“Isn’t it fine, my little boat, sailing on the bay.”
THE BOYS. _Oró, mo churaichín, O!_
MATTHIAS. “The oars pulling--”
_He stops suddenly, and puts his hand to his head._
PADRAIC. What’s on you, Matthias?
EOGHAN. Are you sick, Matthias?
MATTHIAS. Something that came on my head. It’s nothing. What’s this I
was saying?
COILIN. You were saying the “_Báidín_,” Matthias, but don’t mind if you
don’t feel well. Are you sick?
MATTHIAS. Sick? By my word, I’m not sick. What would make me sick? We’ll
start again:
“Isn’t it fine, my little boat, sailing on the bay.”
THE BOYS. _Oró, mo churaichín, O!_
MATTHIAS. “The oars pulling strongly--” (_He stops again._)
Neighbours, the “_Báidín_” itself is gone from me. (_They remain silent
for a spell, the old man sitting and his head bent on his breast, and
the boys looking on him sorrowfully. The old man speaks with a start._)
Are those the people coming home from Mass?
CUIMIN. No. They won’t be free for a half hour yet.
COILIN. Why don’t you go to Mass, Matthias?
_The old man rises up and puts his hand to his head again. He speaks
angrily at first, and after that softly._
MATTHIAS. Why don’t I go?... I’m not good enough. By my word, God
wouldn’t hear me.... What’s this I’m saying?... (_He laughs._) And I
have lost the “_Báidín_,” do ye say? Amn’t I the pitiful object without
my “_Báidín_!”
_He hobbles slowly across the road. Coilin rises and puts his shoulder
under the old man’s hand to support him. The boys begin playing
“jackstones” quietly. Old Matthias sits on the chair again, and Coilin
returns. Daragh speaks in a low voice._
DARAGH. There’s something on Old Matthias to-day. He never forgot the
“_Báidín_” before.
CUIMIN. I heard my father saying to my mother, the other night, that
it’s not long he has to live.
COILIN. Do you think is he very old?
PADRAIC. Why did you put that question on him about the Mass? Don’t you
know he hasn’t been seen at Mass in the memory of the people?
DARAGH. I heard Old Cuimin Enda saying to my father that he himself saw
Old Matthias at Mass when he was a youth.
COILIN. Do you know why he doesn’t go to Mass now?
PADRAIC (_in a whisper_). It’s said he doesn’t believe there’s a God.
CUIMIN. I heard Father Sean Eamonn saying it’s the way he did some
terrible sin at the start of his life, and when the priest wouldn’t give
him absolution in confession there came a raging anger on him, and he
swore an oath he wouldn’t touch priest or chapel for ever again.
DARAGH. That’s not how I heard it. One night when I was in bed the old
people were talking and whispering by the fireside, and I heard Maire of
the Bridge saying to the other old women that it’s the way Matthias sold
his soul to some Great Man he met once on the top of Cnoc-a’-Daimh, and
that this Man wouldn’t allow him to go to Mass.
PADRAIC. Do you think was it the devil he saw?
DARAGH. I don’t know. A “Great Man,” said Maire of the Bridge.
CUIMIN. I wouldn’t believe a word of it. Sure, if Matthias sold his soul
to the devil it must be he’s a wicked person.
PADRAIC. He’s not a wicked person, _muise_. Don’t you mind the day
Iosagan said that his father told him Matthias would be among the saints
on the Day of the Mountain?
CUIMIN. I mind it well.
COILIN. Where’s Iosagan from us to-day?
DARAGH. He never comes when there does be a grown person watching us.
CUIMIN. Wasn’t he here a week ago to-day when old Matthias was watching
us?
DARAGH. Was he?
CUIMIN. He was.
PADRAIC. Aye, and a fortnight to-day, as well.
DARAGH. There’s a chance he’ll come to-day, then.
_Cuimin rises and looks east._
CUIMIN. O, see, he’s coming.
_Iosagan enters--a little, brown-haired boy, a white coat on him, and
he without shoes or cap like the other boys. The boys welcome him._
THE BOYS. God save you, Iosagan!
IOSAGAN. God and Mary save you!
_He sits among them, a hand of his about Daragh’s neck; the boys begin
playing again, gently, without noise or quarrelling. Iosagan joins in
the game. Matthias rises with a start on the coming of Iosagan, and
stands gazing at him. After they have played for a spell he comes
towards them, and then stands again and calls over to Coilin._
MATTHIAS. Coilin!
COILIN. What do you want?
MATTHIAS. Come here to me. (_Coilin rises and goes to him._) Who is that
boy I see among you this fortnight back--he, yonder, with the brown head
on him--but take care it’s not red he is; I don’t know is it black or is
it fair he is, the way the sun is burning on him? Do you see him--him
that has his arm about Daragh’s neck?
COILIN. That’s Iosagan.
MATTHIAS. Iosagan?
COILIN. That’s the name he gives himself.
MATTHIAS. Who are his people?
COILIN. I don’t know, but he says his father’s a king.
MATTHIAS. Where does he live?
COILIN. He never told us that, but he says his house isn’t far away.
MATTHIAS. Does he be among you often?
COILIN. He does, when we do be amusing ourselves like this. But he goes
from us when grown people come near. He will go from us now as soon as
the people begin coming from Mass.
_The boys rise and go, in ones and twos, when they have finished the
game._
COILIN. O! They are going jumping.
_He runs out after the others. Iosagan and Daragh rise and go.
Matthias comes forward and calls Iosagan._
MATTHIAS. Iosagan! (_The Child turns back and comes towards him at a
run._) Come here and sit on my knee for a little while, Iosagan. (_The
Child links his hand in the old man’s hand, and they cross the road
together. Matthias sits on his chair and draws Iosagan to him._) Where
do you live, Iosagan?
IOSAGAN. Not far from this my house is. Why don’t you come to see me?
MATTHIAS. I would be afraid in a royal house. They tell me that your
father’s a king.
IOSAGAN. He is High-King of the World. But there’s no call for you to be
afraid of Him. He’s full of pity and love.
MATTHIAS. I fear I didn’t keep His law.
IOSAGAN. Ask forgiveness of Him. I and my Mother will make intercession
for you.
MATTHIAS. It’s a pity I didn’t see You before this, Iosagan. Where were
You from me?
IOSAGAN. I was here always. I do be travelling the roads and walking the
hills and ploughing the waves. I do be among the people when they gather
into My house. I do be among the children they do leave behind them
playing on the street.
MATTHIAS. I was too shy, or too proud, to go into Your house, Iosagan:
among the children, it was, I found You.
IOSAGAN. There isn’t any place or time the children do be making fun to
themselves that I’m not with them. Times they see Me; other times they
don’t see Me.
MATTHIAS. I never saw You till lately.
IOSAGAN. All the grown people do be blind.
MATTHIAS. And it has been granted me to see You, Iosagan.
IOSAGAN. My Father gave Me leave to show Myself to you because you loved
His little children. (_The voices are heard of the people returning from
Mass._) I must go now from you.
MATTHIAS. Let me kiss the hem of Your coat.
IOSAGAN. Kiss it. _He kisses the hem of His coat._
MATTHIAS. Shall I see You again, Iosagan?
IOSAGAN. You will.
MATTHIAS. When?
IOSAGAN. To-night.
_Iosagan goes. The old man stands on the door-flag looking after Him._
MATTHIAS. I will see Him to-night.
_The people pass along the road, returning from Mass._
CURTAIN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCENE II
_Old Matthias’s room. It is very dark. The old man lying on his bed.
Some one knocks outside the door. Matthias speaks in a weak voice._
MATTHIAS. Come in. (_The Priest enters. He sits down beside the bed and
hears the old man’s confession. When they have finished, Matthias
speaks._) Who told you I was wanting you, Father? I was praying God that
you’d come, but I hadn’t a messenger to send for you.
PRIEST. But, sure, you did send a messenger for me?
MATTHIAS. No.
PRIEST. You didn’t? But a little boy came and knocked at my door, and he
said you were wanting my help.
_The old man straightens himself back in the bed, and his eyes flash._
MATTHIAS. What sort of a little boy was he, Father?
PRIEST. A mannerly little boy, with a white coat on him.
MATTHIAS. Did you take notice if there was a shadow of light about his
head?
PRIEST. I did, and it put great wonder on me.
_The door opens. Iosagan stands on the threshold, and He with His two
arms stretched out towards Matthias; a miraculous light about His face
and head._
MATTHIAS. Iosagan! You’re good, Iosagan. You didn’t fail me, love. I was
too proud to go into Your house, but at the last it was granted me to
see You. “I was here always,” says He. “I do be travelling the roads and
walking the hills and ploughing the waves. I do be among the people when
they gather into My house. I do be among the children they do leave
behind playing on the street.” Among the children, it was, I found You,
Iosagan. “Shall I see You again?” “You will,” says He. “You’ll see Me
to-night.” _Sé do bheatha, a Iosagáin!_
_He falls back on the bed, and he dead. The Priest goes softly to him
and closes his eves._
CURTAIN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MOTHER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MOTHER
There was a company of women sitting up one night in the house of
Barbara of the Bridge, spinning frieze. It would be music to you to be
listening to them, and their voices making harmony with the drone of the
wheels, like the sound of the wind with the shaking of the bushes.
They heard a cry. The child, it was, talking in its sleep.
“Some evil thing that crossed the door,” says Barbara. “Rise, Maire, and
stir the cradle.”
The woman spoken-to got up. She was sitting on the floor till that,
carding. She went over to the cradle. The child was wide awake before
her, and he crying pitifully. Maire knelt down beside the cradle. As
soon as the child saw her face he ceased from crying. A long, beautiful
face she had; a brow, broad and smooth, black hair and it twisted in
clusters about her head, and two grey eyes that would look on you slow,
serious, and troubled-like. It was a gift Maire had, the way she would
quieten a cross child or put a sick child to sleep, looking on that
smooth, pleasant face and those grey, loving eyes of hers.
Maire began singing the “_Crónán na Banaltra_” (The Nurse’s Lullaby) in
a low voice. The other women ceased from their talk to listen to her. It
wasn’t long till the child was in a dead sleep. Maire rose and went back
to where she was sitting before. She fell to her carding again.
“May you have good, Maire,” says Barbara. “There’s no wonder in life but
the way you’re able to put children asleep. Though that’s my own heir, I
would be hours of the clock with him before he would go off on me.”
“Maire has magic,” says another woman.
“She’s like the harpers of Meave that would put a host of men asleep
when they would play their sleep-tunes,” says old Una ní Greelis.
“Isn’t it fine she can sing the _Crónán na Banaltra_?” says the second
woman.
“My soul, you would think it was the Virgin herself that would be saying
it,” says old Una.
“Do you think is it true, Una, that it was the Blessed Virgin (praise to
her for ever) that made that tune?” says Barbara.
“I know it’s true. Isn’t it with that tune she used put the Son of God
(a thousand glories to His name) asleep when He was a child?”
“And how is it, then, the people do have it now?” says Barbara.
“Coming down from generation to generation, I suppose, like the Fenian
tales,” says one of the women.
“No, my soul,” says old Una. “The people it was heard the tune from the
Virgin’s mouth itself, here in this countryside, not so long ago.”
“And how would they hear it?”
“Doesn’t the world know that the glorious Virgin goes round the
townlands every Christmas Eve, herself and her child?”
“I heard the people saying she does.”
“And don’t you know if the door is left ajar and a candle lighting in
the window, that the Virgin and her Child will come into the house, and
that they will sit down to rest themselves?”
“My soul, but I heard that, too.”
“A woman of the Joyce country, it was, waiting up on Christmas Eve to
see the Virgin, that heard the tune from her for the first time and
taught it to the country. It’s often I heard discourse about her, and I
a growing girl. ‘Maire of the Virgin’ was the name they gave her. It’s
said that it’s often she saw the glorious Virgin. She died in the
poor-house in Uachtar Ard a couple of years before I was married. The
blessing of God be with the souls of the dead.”
“Amen, O Lord,” say the other women.
But Maire did not speak. She and her two big grey eyes were going, as
you would say, through old Una’s forehead, and she telling the story.
She spoke after a spell.
“Are you sure, Una, that the Virgin and her Child come into the houses
on Christmas Eve?” says she.
“As sure as I’m living.”
“Did you ever see her?”
“I did not, then. But the Christmas Eve after I was married I waited up
to see her, if it would be granted me. A cloud of sleep fell on me. Some
noise woke me, and when I opened my eyes I thought I saw, as it would
be, a young woman and a child in her arms going out the door.”
No one spoke for a long time. Nothing was heard in the house but the
drone of the spinning-wheels and the crackling of the fire, and the
chirping of the crickets. Maire got up.
“I’ll be shortening the road,” says she. “May God give you good night,
women.”
“God speed you, Maire,” they answered together.
She drew-to the door on herself.
There was, as it would be, a blaze of fire in that woman’s heart, and
she going the road home in the blackness of night. The great longing of
her soul was plundering and desolating her--the longing for children.
She had been married four years, and hadn’t clann. It’s often she would
spend the hours on her knees, praying God to send her a child. It’s
often she would rise from the bed in the night-time, and go on her two
naked knees on the cold, hard stone making the same petition. It’s many
a penance she used put on herself in hopes that the torture of her body
would soften God’s heart. It’s often when her man would be from home,
that she would go to sleep without dinner and without supper. Once or
twice, when her man was asleep, she left the bed and went out and stood
a long while under the dew of the night sending her prayer to the dark,
lonesome skies. Once she drew blood from her shoulder-blades with blows
she gave herself with a switch. Another time she stuck thorns into her
flesh in memory of the crown of thorns that went on the brow of the
Saviour. The penances and the heart-scald were preying on her health.
Nobody guessed what was wrong with her. Her own husband--a decent,
kindly man--didn’t understand the story right, though it’s often he
would hear her in the night talking to herself as a mother would be
talking to a child, when she would feel its hand or its mouth at her
breast. Ah! it’s many a woman hugs her heart and whispers in the dead
time of night to the child that isn’t born, and will not be.
Maire thought long until Christmas Eve came. But as there’s a wearing on
everything, so there was a wearing on the delay of that time. The day of
Christmas Eve was tedious to her until evening came. She swept the floor
of the house, and she cleaned the chairs, and she made up a good fire
before going to sleep. She left the door on the latch, and she put a
tall, white candle in the window. When she stretched herself beside her
man it wasn’t to sleep it was, but to watch. She thought her man would
never sleep. She felt at last by the quiet breath he was drawing that he
was gone off. Then she got up. She put on her dress, and she stole out
to the kitchen. No one was there. Not even a mouse was stirring. The
crickets themselves were asleep. The fire was in red ashes. The candle
was shining brightly. She bent on her knees in the room door. It’s sweet
the calm of the house was to her in the middle of the night, though, I
tell you, it was terrible. There came a heightening of mind on her as it
used to come betimes in the chapel, and she going to receive communion
from the priest’s hands. She felt, somehow, that the Presence wasn’t far
from her, and that it wouldn’t be long until she would hear a footstep.
She listened patiently. The house itself, she thought, and what was in
it both living and dead, was listening as well. The hills were
listening, and the stones of the earth, and the starry stars of the sky.
She heard a sound. A footstep on the door-flag. She saw a young woman
coming in and a child in her arms. The young woman drew up to the fire.
She sat down on a chair. She began crooning, very low, to the child.
Maire recognised the music. The tune that was on it was the “_Crónán na
Banaltra_.”
A while to them like that. The woman hugging the child to her breast,
and crooning, very sweetly, very softly. Maire on her two knees, under
the shadow of the door. It wasn’t in her to speak nor to move. She was
barely able to draw her breath.
At last the woman rose. It’s then Maire rose. She went hither to the
woman.
“_A Mhuire_,” says she, whispering-like.
The woman turned her countenance towards her. A lovely, noble
countenance it was.
“_A Mhuire_,” says Maire again. “I have a request of you.”
“Say it,” says the other woman.
“A child drinking the milk of my breast,” says Maire. “Don’t deny me, _a
Mhuire_.”
“Come closer to me,” says the other woman.
Maire came closer to her. The other woman raised her child. The child
stretched out its two little hands, and it laid a hand softly on each
cheek of Maire’s two cheeks.
“That blessing will make you fruitful,” says the Mother.
“Its a good woman you are, _a Mhuire_,” says Maire. “It’s good your Son
is.”
“I leave a blessing in this house,” says the other woman.
She squeezed her child to her breast again and went out the door. Maire
fell on her knees.
* * * * *
It’s a year since that Christmas Eve. The last time I passed Maire’s
house there was a child in her breast. There was that look on her that
doesn’t be on living soul but a mother when she feels the mouth of her
firstborn at her nipple.
“God loves the women better than the men,” said I to myself. “It’s to
them He sends the greatest sorrows, and it’s on them He bestows the
greatest joy.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE DEARG-DAOL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE DEARG-DAOL
A walking-man, it was, come into my father’s house out of the Joyce
Country, that told us this story by the fireside one wild winter’s
night. The wind was wailing round the house, like women keening the
dead, while he spoke, and he would make his voice rise or fall according
as the wind’s voice would rise or fall. A tall man he was, with wild
eyes, and his share of clothes almost in tatters. There was a sort of
fear on me of him when he came in, and his story didn’t lessen my fear.
The three most blessed beasts in the world, says the walking-man, are
the haddock, the robin redbreast, and God’s cow. And the three most
cursed beasts in the world are the viper, the wren, and the _dearg-daol_
(“black chafer”). And it’s the _dearg-daol_ is the most cursed of them.
’Tis I that know that. Woman of the house, if a man would murder his
son, don’t call him the _dearg-daol_. If a woman would come between
yourself and the husband of your bed, don’t put her in comparison with
the _dearg-daol_.
“God save us,” says my mother.
“Amen, Lord,” says the walking-man.
He didn’t speak again for a spell. We all listened, for we knew he was
going to tell a story. It wasn’t long before he began.
When I was a lad, says the walking-man, there was a woman of our people
that everybody was afraid of. In a little, lonely cabin in a gap of a
mountain, it was, she lived. No one would go near her house. She,
herself, wouldn’t come next or near any other body’s house. Nobody would
speak to her when they met her on the road. She wouldn’t put word nor
wisdom on anybody at all. You’d think a pity to see the creature and she
going the road alone.
“Who is she,” I would say to my mother, “or why wouldn’t they speak to
her?”
“Whisht, boy,” my mother would say to me. “That’s the _Dearg-Daol_. ’Tis
a cursed woman she is.”
“What did she do, or who put the curse on her?” I would say.
“A priest of God that put the curse on her,” my mother would say. “No
one in life knew what she did.”
And that’s all the knowledge I got of her until I was a grown chap. And
indeed to you, neighbours, I never heard anything about her but that she
committed some dreadful sin at the start of her life, and that the
priest put his curse on her before the people on account of that sin.
One Sunday, when the people were gathered at Mass, the priest turned
round on them, and says he:--
“There is a woman here,” says he, “that will merit eternal damnation for
herself and for every person that makes familiar with her. And I say to
that woman,” says he, “that she is a cursed woman, and I say to you, let
you not have intercourse or neighbourliness with that woman but as much
as you’d have with a _dearg-daol_. Rise up now, _Dearg-Daol_,” says he,
“and avoid the company of decent people henceforth.”
The poor woman got up, and went out the chapel door. There was no name
on her from that out but the _Dearg-Daol_. Her own name and surname were
put out of mind. ’Twas said that she had the evil eye. If she’d look on
a calf or a sheep that wasn’t her own, the animal would die. The women
were afraid to let their children out on the street if the _Dearg-Daol_
was going the road.
I married a comely girl when I was of the age of one-and-twenty. We had
a little slip of a girl, and we had hopes of another child. One day when
I was cutting turf in the bog, my wife was feeding the fowl on the
street, when she saw--God between us and harm--the _Dearg-Daol_ making
on her up the bohereen, and she with the little, soft _pataire_ of a
child in her arms. An arm of the child was about the woman’s neck, and
her shawl covering her. Speech left my wife.
The _Dearg-Daol_ laid the little girl in her mother’s breast. My woman
took notice that her clothes were wet.
“What happened the child?” says she.
“Falling into Lochán na Luachra (the Pool of the Rushes), she did it,”
says the _Dearg-Daol_. “Looking for water-lilies she was. I was crossing
the road, and I heard her scream. In over the dyke with me. It was only
by dint of trouble I caught her.”
“May God reward you,” says my wife. The other woman went off before she
had time to say more. My wife fetched the little wee thing inside, she
dried her, and put her to sleep. When I came in from the bog she told me
the story. The two of us prayed our blessing on the _Dearg-Daol_ that
night.
The day after, the little girl began prattling about the woman that
saved her. “The water was in my mouth, and in my eyes, and in my ears,”
says she. “I saw shining sparks, and I heard a great noise; I was
slipping and slipping,” says she; “and then,” says she, “I felt a hand
about me, and she lifted me up and she kissed me. I thought it was at
home, I was, when I was in her arms and her shawl about me,” says she.
A couple of days after that my wife noticed the little thing away from
her. We sought her for the length of two hours. When she came home she
told us that she was after paying a visit to the woman that saved her.
“She made a cake for me,” says she. “She has ne’er a one in the house at
all but herself, and she said to me I should go visiting her every
evening.”
Neither I nor my wife was able to say a word against her. The
_Dearg-Daol_ was after saving our girl’s life, and it wouldn’t be
natural to hinder the child going into her house. From that day out the
little girl would go up the hill to her every day.
The neighbours said to us that it wasn’t right. There was a sort of
suspicion on ourselves that it wasn’t right, but how could we help it?
Would you believe me, people? From the day the _Dearg-Daol_ laid eyes on
the little girl, she began dwindling and dwindling, like a fire that
wouldn’t be mended. She lost her appetite and her activity. After a
quarter she was only a shadow. After another month she was in the
churchyard.
The _Dearg-Daol_ came down the mountain the day she was buried. She
wouldn’t be let into the graveyard. She went her road up the mountain
again alone. My heart bled for the creature, for I knew that our trouble
was no heavier than her trouble. I myself went up the hill the morning
of the next day. I meant to say to her that neither my wife nor myself
had any upbraiding for her. I knocked at the door. I didn’t get any
answer. I went into the house. The ashes were red on the hearth. There
was no one at all to be seen. I noticed a bed in the corner. I went over
to the bed. The _Dearg-Daol_ was lying there, and she cold dead.
There wasn’t any luck on me or on my household from that day out. My
wife died a month after that, and she in childbirth. The child didn’t
live. There fell a murrain on my cattle the winter following. The
landlord put me out of my holding. I am a walking man, and the roads of
Connacht before me, from that day to this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ROADS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ROADS
Rossnageeragh will mind till death the night the Dublin Man gave us the
feast in the schoolhouse of Turlagh Beg. We had no name or surname for
that same man ever but the “Dublin Man.” Peatin Pharaig would say to us
that he was a man who wrote for the newspapers. Peatin would read the
Gaelic paper the mistress got every week, and it’s a small thing he
hadn’t knowledge of, for there was discourse in that paper on the doings
of the Western World and on the goings-on of the Eastern World, and
there would be no bounds to the information Peatin would have to give us
every Sunday at the chapel gate. He would say to us that the Dublin Man
had a stack of money, for two hundred pounds in the year were coming to
him out of the heart of that paper he wrote for every week.
The Dublin Man would pay a fortnight’s or a month’s visit to Turlagh
every year. This very year he sent out word calling poor and naked to a
feast he was gathering for us in the schoolhouse. He announced that
there would be music and dancing and Gaelic speeches in it; that there
would be a piper there from Carrowroe; that Brigid ni Mhainin would be
there to give _Conntae Mhuigheó_; that Martin the Fisherman would tell a
Fenian story; that old Una ni Greelis would recite a poem if the
creature wouldn’t have the asthma; and that Marcuseen Mhichil Ruaidh
would do a bout of dancing unless the rheumatic pains would be too bad
on him. Nobody ever knew Marcuseen to have the rheumatics but when he’d
be asked to dance. “Bedam, but I’m dead with the pains for a week,” he’d
always say when a dance would be hinted. But no sooner would the piper
start on “Tatter Jack Walsh,” than Marcuseen would throw his old hat in
the air, “hup!” he’d say, and take the floor.
The family of Col Labhras were drinking tea the evening of the feast.
“Will we go to the schoolhouse to-night, daddy?” says Cuimin Col to his
father.
“We will. Father Ronan said he’d like all the people to go.”
“Won’t we have the spree!” says Cuimin.
“You’ll stay at home, Nora,” says the mother, “to mind the child.”
Nora put a lip on herself, but she didn’t speak.
After tea Col and his wife went into the room to ready themselves for
the road.
“My sorrow that it’s not a boy God made me,” says Nora to her brother.
“_Muise_, why?” says Cuimin.
“For one reason better than another,” says Nora. With that she gave a
little slap to the child that was half-asleep and half-awake in the
cradle. The child let a howl out of him.
“_Ara_, listen to the child,” says Cuimin. “If my mother hears him
crying, she’ll take the ear off you.”
“I don’t care if she takes the two ears off me,” says Nora.
“What’s up with you?” Cuimin was washing himself, and he stopped to look
over his shoulder at his sister, and the water streaming from his face.
“Tired of being made a little ass of by my mother and by everybody, I
am,” says Nora. “I working from morning till night, and ye at your ease.
Ye going to the spree to-night, and I sitting here nursing this child.
‘You’ll stay at home, Nora, to mind the child,’ says my mother. That’s
always the way. It’s a pity it’s not a boy God made me.”
Cuimin was drying his face meanwhile, and “s-s-s-s-s” coming out of him
like a person would be grooming a horse.
“It’s a pity, right enough,” says he, when he was able to speak.
He threw the towel from him, he put his head to one side, and looked
complacently at himself in the glass was hanging on the wall.
“A parting in my hair now,” says he, “and I’ll be first-class.”
“Are you ready, Cuimin?” says his father, coming out of the room.
“I am.”
“We’ll be stirring on then.”
The mother came out.
“If he there is crying, Nora,” says she, “give him a drink of milk out
of the bottle.”
Nora didn’t say a word. She remained sitting on the stool beside the
cradle, and her chin laid in her two hands and her two elbows stuck on
her knees. She heard her father and her mother and Cuimin going out the
door and across the street; she knew by their voices that they were
going down the bohereen. The voices died away, and she understood that
they were after taking the road.
Nora began making fancy pictures in her mind. She saw, she thought, the
fine, level road and it white under the moonlight. The people were in
groups making for the schoolhouse. The Rossnageeragh folk were coming
out the road, and the Garumna folk journeying round by the mistress’s
house, and the Kilbrickan folk crowding down the hill, and the Turlagh
Beg’s crowding likewise; there was a band from Turlagh, and an odd
sprinkling from Glencaha, and one or two out of Inver coming in the
road. She imagined her own people were at the school gate by now. They
were going up the path. They were entering in the door. The schoolhouse
was well-nigh full, and still no end to the coming of the people. There
were lamps hung on the walls, and the house as bright as it would be in
the middle of day. Father Ronan was there, and he going from person to
person and bidding welcome to everybody. The Dublin Man was there, and
he as nice and friendly-like as ever. The mistress was there, and the
master and mistress from Gortmore, and the lace-instructress. The
schoolgirls sitting together on the front benches. Weren’t they to sing
a song? She saw, she thought, Maire Sean Mor, and Maire Pheatin Johnny,
and Babeen Col Marcus, and the Boatman’s Brigid, and her red head on
her, and Brigid Caitin ni Fhiannachta, with her mouth open as usual. The
girls were looking round and nudging one another, and asking one another
where was Nora Col Labhras. The schoolhouse was packed to the door now.
Father Ronan was striking his two hands together. They were stopping
from talk and from whispering. Father Ronan was speaking to them. He was
speaking comically. Everybody was laughing. He was calling on the
schoolgirls to give their song. They were getting up and going to the
head of the room and bowing to the people.
“My sorrow, that I’m not there,” says poor Nora to herself, and she laid
her face in her palms and began crying.
She stopped crying, suddenly. She hung her head, and rubbed a palm to
her eyes.
It wasn’t right, says she in her own mind. It wasn’t right, just, or
decent. Why should she be kept at home? Why should they always keep her
at home? If she was a boy she’d be let out. Since she was only a girl
they would keep her at home. She was, as she had said to Cuimin that
evening, only a little ass of a girl. She wouldn’t put up with it any
longer. She would have her own way. She would be as free as any boy that
came or went. It’s often before that she set her mind to the deed. She
would do the deed that night.
It’s often Nora thought that it would be a fine life to be going like a
flying hawk, independent of everybody. The roads of Ireland before her,
and her face on them; the back of her head to home and hardship and the
vexation of her people. She going from village to village, and from glen
to glen. The fine, level road before her, fields on both sides of her,
little, well-sheltered houses on the slopes of the hills. If she’d get
tired she could stretch back by the side of a ditch, or she could go
into some house and ask the good woman for a drink of milk and a seat by
the fire. To make the night’s sleep in some wood under the shadow of
trees, and to rise early in the morning and stretch out again under the
lovely fresh air. If she wanted food (and it’s likely she would want
it), she would do a day’s work here and a day’s work there, and she
would be full-satisfied if she got a cup of tea and a crumb of bread in
payment for it. Wouldn’t it be a fine life that, besides being a little
ass of a girl at home, feeding the hens and minding the child!
It’s not as a girl she’d go, but as a boy. No one in life would know
that it’s not a boy was in it. When she’d cut her hair and put on
herself a suit of Cuimin’s bawneens, who would know that it’s a girl she
was?
It’s often Nora took that counsel to herself, but the fear would never
let her put it in practice. She never had right leave for it. Her mother
would always be in the house, and no sooner would she be gone than she’d
feel wanted. But she had leave now. None of them would be back in the
house for another hour of the clock, at the least. She’d have a power of
time to change her clothes, and to go off unbeknown to the world. She
would meet nobody on the road, for all the people were gathered in the
schoolhouse. She would have time to go as far as Ellery to-night and to
sleep in the wood. She would rise early on the morrow morning, and she
would take the road before anybody would be astir.
She jumped from the stool. There were scissors in the drawer of the
dresser. It wasn’t long till she had a hold of them, and snip! snap! She
cut off her back hair, and the fringe that was on her brow, and each
ringleted tress that was on her, in one attack. She looked at herself in
the glass. _A inghean O!_ isn’t it bald and bare she looked. She
gathered the curls of hair from the floor, and she hid them in an old
box. Over with her then to the place where a clean suit of bawneens
belonging to Cuimin was hanging on a nail. Down with her on her knees
searching for a shirt of Cuimin’s that was in a lower drawer of the
dresser. She threw the clothes on the floor beside the fire.
Here she is now taking off her own share of clothes in a hurry. She
threw her dress and her little blouse and her shift into a chest that
was under the table. She put Cuimin’s shirt on herself. She stuck her
legs into the breeches, and she pulled them up on herself. She minded
then that she had neither belt nor gallowses. She’d have to make a belt
out of an old piece of cord. She put the jacket on herself. She looked
in the glass, and she started. It’s how she thought Cuimin was before
her! She looked over her shoulder, but she didn’t see anybody. It’s then
she minded that it’s her own self was looking at her, and she laughed.
But if she did itself, she was a little scared. If she’d a cap now she’d
be ready for the road. Yes, she knew where there was an old cap of
Cuimin’s. She got it, and put it on her head. Farewell for ever now to
the old life, and a hundred welcomes to the new!
When she was at the door she turned back and she crept over to the
cradle. The child was sound asleep. She bent down and she gave a kiss to
the baby, a little, little, light kiss in on his forehead. She stole on
the tips of her toes to the door, opened it gently, went out on the
street, and shut the door quietly after her. Across the street with her,
and down the bohereen. It was short till she took the road to herself.
She pressed on then towards Turlagh Beg.
It was short till she saw the schoolhouse by the side of the road. There
was a fine light burning through the windows. She heard a noise, as if
they’d be laughing and clapping hands within. Over across the fence with
her, and up the school path. She went round to the back of the house.
The windows were high enough, but she raised herself up till she’d a
view of what was going on inside. Father Ronan was speaking. He stopped,
and O, Lord!--the people began getting up. It was plain that the fun was
over, and that they were about to separate to go home. What would she
do, if she’d be seen?
She threw a leap from the window. Her foot slipped from her, coming down
on the ground, and she got a drop. She very nearly screamed out, but she
minded herself in time. Her knee was a little hurt, she thought. The
people were out on the school yard by that. She must stay in hiding till
they were all gone. She moved into the wall as close as she could. She
heard the people talking and laughing, and she knew that they were
scattering after one another.
What was that? The voices of people coming towards her; the sound of a
footstep on the path beside her! It’s then she minded that there was a
short-cut across the back of the house, and that there might be some
people going the short-cut. Likely, her own people would be going that
way, for it was a little shorter than round by the high road. A little
knot came towards her; she recognized by their voices that they were
Peatin Johnny’s people. They passed. Another little knot; the Boatman’s
family. They drew that close to her that Eamonn trod on her poor, bare,
little foot. She almost let a cry out of her the second time, but she
didn’t--she only squeezed herself tighter to the wall. Another crowd was
coming: O, Great God, her own people! Cuimin was saying, “Wasn’t it
wonderful, Marcuseen’s dancing!” Her mother’s dress brushed Nora’s cheek
going by: she didn’t draw her breath all that time. A company or two
more went past. She listened for a spell. Nobody else was coming. It’s
how they were all gone, said she to herself. Out with her from her
hiding-place, and she tore across the path. Plimp! She ran against
somebody. Two big hands were about her. She heard a man’s voice. She
recognized the voice. The priest that was in it.
“Who have I?” says Father Ronan.
She told a lie. What else had she to say?
“Cuimin Col Labhras, Father,” says she.
He laid a hand on each shoulder of her, and looked down on her. She had
her head bent.
“I thought you went home with your father and mother,” says he.
“I did, Father, but I lost my cap and I came back looking for it.”
“Isn’t your cap on your head?”
“I found it on the path.”
“Aren’t your father and mother gone the short-cut?”
“They are, Father, but I am going the road so that I’ll be with the
other boys.”
“Off with you, then, or the ghosts’ll catch you!” With that Father Ronan
let her go from him.
“May God give you good-night, Father,” says she. She didn’t mind to take
off her cap, but it’s how she curtseyed to the priest after the manner
of girls! If the priest took notice of that much he hadn’t time to say a
word, for she was gone in the turning of your hand.
Her two cheeks were red-hot with shame, and she giving face on the road.
She was after telling four big lies to the priest! She was afraid that
those lies were a terrible sin on her soul. She was afraid going that
lonesome road in the darkness of the night, and that burthen on her
heart. The night was very black. There was a little brightening on her
right hand. The lake of Turlagh Beg that was in it. There rose some
bird, a curlew or a snipe, from the brink of the lake, letting mournful
cries out of it. Nora started when she heard the bird’s voice, that
suddenly, and the drumming of its wings. She hurried on, and her heart
beating against her breast. She left Turlagh Beg behind her, and faced
the long, straight road that leads to the Crosses of Kilbrickan. It’s
with trouble she recognized the shape of the houses on the hill when she
reached the Crosses. There was a light in the house of Peadar O
Neachtain, and she heard voices from the side of Snamh-Bo. She followed
on, drawing on Turlagh. When she reached the Bog Hill the moon came out,
and she saw from her the scar of the hills. There came a great cloud
across the face of the moon, and it seemed to her that it’s double dark
the night was then. Terror seized her, for she minded that
Cnoc-a’-Leachta (the Hill of the Grave) wasn’t far off, and that the
graveyard would be on her right hand then. It’s often she heard that was
an evil place in the middle of the night. She sharpened her pace; she
began running. She thought that she was being followed; that there was a
bare-footed woman treading almost on her heels; that there was a thin,
black man travelling alongside her; that there was a child, and a white
shirt on him, going the road before her. She opened her mouth to let a
screech out of her, but there didn’t come a sound from her. She was in a
cold sweat. Her legs were bending under her. She nearly fell in a heap
on the road. She was at Cnoc-a’-Leachta about that time. It seemed to
her that Cill Eoin was full of ghosts. She minded the word the priest
said “Have a care, or the ghosts’ll catch you.” They were on her! She
heard, she thought, the “plub-plab” of naked feet on the road. She
turned to her left hand and she gave a leap over the ditch. She went
near to being drowned in a deal-hole that was between her and the wood,
unbeknown to her. She twisted her foot trying to save herself, and she
felt pain. On with her, reeling. She was in the fields of Ellery then.
She saw the lamp of the lake through the branches. A tree-root took a
stumble out of her, and she fell. She lost her senses.
* * * * *
After a very long time she imagined that the place was filled with a
sort of half-light, a light that was between the light of the sun and
the light of the moon. She saw, very clearly, the feet of the trees, and
them dark against a yellowish-green sky. She never saw a sky of that
colour before, and it was beautiful to her. She heard a footstep, and
she understood that there was someone coming towards her up from the
lake. She knew in some manner that a prodigious miracle was about to be
shown her, and that someone was to suffer there some awful passion. She
hadn’t long to wait till she saw a young man struggling wearily through
the tangle of the wood. He had his head bent, and the appearance of
great sorrow on him. Nora recognised him. The Son of Mary that was in
it, and she knew that He was journeying all alone to His death.
The Man threw himself on His knees, and He began praying. Nora didn’t
hear one word from Him, but she understood in her heart what He was
saying. He was asking His Eternal Father to send someone to Him who
would side with Him against His enemies, and who would bear half of His
burthen. Nora wished to rise and to go to Him, but she couldn’t stir out
of the place she was in.
She heard a noise, and the place was filled with armed men. She saw
dark, devilish faces and grey swords and edged weapons. The gentle Man
was seized outrageously, and His share of clothes torn from Him, and He
was scourged with scourges there till His body was in a bloody mass and
in an everlasting wound from His head to the soles of His feet. A thorny
crown was put then on His gentle head, and a cross was laid on His
shoulders, and He went before Him, heavy-footed, pitifully, the
sorrowful way of His journey to Calvary. The chain that was tying Nora’s
tongue and limbs till that broke, and she cried aloud:
“Let me go with You, Jesus, and carry Your cross for You!”
* * * * *
She felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up. She saw her father’s
face.
“What’s on my little girl, or why did she go from us?” says her father’s
voice.
He lifted her in his arms and he brought her home. She lay on her bed
till the end of a month after that. She was out of her mind for half of
that time, and she thought at times that she was going the road, like a
lone, wild-goose, and asking knowledge of the way of people; and she
thought at other times that she was lying in under a tree in Ellery, and
that she was watching again the passion of that gentle Man, and she
trying to help Him, but without power to help him. That wandering went
out of her mind at long last, and she understood she was at home again.
And when she recognised her mother’s face her heart was filled with
consolation, and she asked her to put the child into the bed with her,
and when he was put into the bed she kissed him lovingly.
“Oh, mameen,” says she, “I thought I wouldn’t see you or my father or
Cuimin or the child ever again. Were ye here all that time?”
“We were, white lamb,” says her mother.
“I’ll stay in the place where ye are,” says she. “Oh, mameen, heart, the
roads were very dark.... And I’ll never strike the child again,”--and
she gave him another little kiss.
The child put his arm about her neck, and he curled himself up in the
bed at his full ease.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRIGID OF THE SONGS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRIGID OF THE SONGS
Brigid of the Songs was the most famous singer in Rossnageeragh, not
only in my time but in my father’s time. It’s said that she could wile
the song-thrush from the branch with the sweetness of the music that God
gave her; and I would believe it, for it’s often she wiled me and other
lads besides from our dinner or our supper. I’d be a rich man to-day if
I had a shilling for every time I stopped outside her door, on my way
home from school, listening to her share of songs; and my father told me
that it’s often and often he did the same thing when he was a lad going
to school. It was a tradition among the people that it was from Raftery
himself that Brigid learned “_Conntae Mhuigheó_” (The County of Mayo),
and isn’t it with the “_Conntae Mhuigheó_” that she drew the big tears
out of the eyes of John MacHale one time he was on a visit here, along
with our own Bishop, a year exactly before I was born?
A thing that’s no wonder, when we heard that there was to be a Feis in
Moykeeran, we all settled in our minds that it’s Brigid would have the
prize for the singing, if she’d enter for it. There was no other person,
neither men-singers nor women-singers, half as good as she was in the
seven parishes. She couldn’t be beaten, if right was to be done. She
would put wonderment on the people of Moykeeran and on the grand folk
would be in it out of Galway and out of Tuam. She would earn name and
fame for Rossnageeragh. She would win the prize easy, and she would be
sent to Dublin to sing a song at the Oireachtas. There was a sort of
hesitation on Brigid at first. She was too old, she said. Her voice
wasn’t as good as it used be. She hadn’t her wind. A share of her songs
were going out of her memory. She didn’t want a prize. Didn’t the men of
Ireland know that she was the best singer in Iar-Connacht? Didn’t
Raftery praise her, didn’t Colm Wallace make a song in her honour,
didn’t she draw tears out of the eyes of John MacHale? Brigid said that
much and seven times more; but it was plain, at the same time, that
there was a wish on her to go to the Feis, and we all knew that she
would go. To make a short story of it, we were at her until we took a
promise out of her that she would go.
She went. It’s well I remember the day of the Feis. The world of Ireland
was there, you’d think. The house was overflowing with poor people and
with rich people, with noble folk and with lowly folk, with strong,
active youths, and with withered, done old people. There were priests
and friars there from every art. There were doctors and lawyers there
from Tuam and from Galway and from Uachtar Ard. There were newspaper
people there from Dublin. There was a lord’s son there from England. The
full of people went up, singing songs. Brigid went up. We were at the
back of the house, listening to her. She began. There was a little
bashfulness on her at the start, and her voice was too low. But she came
to herself in time, according as she was stirring out into the song, and
she took tears out of the eyes of the gathering with the last verse.
There was great cheering when she had finished, and she coming down.
_We_ put a shout out of us you’d think would crack the roof of the
house. A young girl went up. Her voice was a long way better than
Brigid’s, but, we thought, there was not the same sadness nor sweetness
in the song as there was in Brigid’s. She came down. The people cheered
again, but I didn’t notice that anybody was crying. One of the judges
got up. He praised Brigid greatly. He praised the young girl greatly,
too. He was very tedious.
“Who won the prize?” says one of us at last, when our share of patience
was exhausted.
“Oh, the prize!” says he. “Well, in regard to the prize, we are giving
it to Nora Cassidy (the young girl), but we are considering the award of
a special prize to Brígid ní Mhainín (our Brigid). Nora Cassidy will be
sent to Dublin to sing a song at the Oireachtas.”
The Moykeeran people applauded, for it was out of Moykeeran that Nora
Cassidy was. We didn’t say anything. We looked over at Brigid. Her face
was grey-white, and she trembling in every limb.
“What did you say, sir, please?” says she in a strange voice. “Is it I
that have the prize?”
“We are considering the award of a special prize to you, my good woman,
as you shaped so excellently--you did that,--but it’s to Nora Cassidy
that the Feis prize is given.”
Brigid didn’t speak a word; but it’s how she rose up, and without
looking either to the right hand or to the left, she went out the door.
She took the road to Rossnageeragh, and she was before us when we
reached the village late in the night.
* * * * *
The Oireachtas was to be in Dublin the week after. We were a sad crowd,
remembering that Brigid of the Songs wouldn’t be there. We were full
sure that fair play wasn’t done her in Moykeeran, and we thought that if
she’d go to Dublin she’d get satisfaction. But alas! we had no money to
send her there, and if we had itself we knew that she wouldn’t take it
from us. We were arguing the question one evening at the gable of the
Boatman’s house, when who should come up but little Martin Connolly, at
a full run, and he said to us that Brigid of the Songs was gone, the
lock on the door, and no tale or tidings to be got of her.
We didn’t know what happened her until a fortnight’s time after that.
Here’s how it fell out. When she heard that the Oireachtas was to be in
Dublin on such a day, she said to herself that she would be there if she
lived. She didn’t let on to anyone, but went off with herself in the
night-time, walking. She had only a florin piece in her pocket. She
didn’t know where Dublin was, nor how far it was away. She followed her
nose, it’s like, asking the road of the people she met, tramping always,
until she’d left behind her Cashlagh, and Spiddal, and Galway, and
Oranmore, and Athenry, and Kilconnell, and Ballinasloe, and Athlone, and
Mullingar, and Maynooth, until at last she saw from her the houses of
Dublin. It’s like that her share of money was spent long before that,
and nobody will ever know how the creature lived on that long, lonesome
journey. But one evening when the Oireachtas was in full swing in the
big hall in Dublin, a countrywoman was seen coming in the door, her feet
cut and bleeding with the hard stones of the road, her share of clothes
speckled with dust and dirt, and she weary, worn-out and exhausted.
She sat down. People were singing in the old style. Brígid ní Mhainín
from Rossnageeragh was called on (for we had entered her name in hopes
that we’d be able to send her). The old woman rose, went up, and started
“_Conntae Mhuigheó_.”
When she finished the house was in one ree-raw with shouts, it was that
fine. She was told to sing another song. She began on the “_Sail Og
Ruadh_” (The Red Willow). She had only the first line of the second
verse said when there came some wandering in her head. She stopped and
she began again. The wandering came on her a second time, then a
trembling, and she fell in a faint on the stage. She was carried out of
the hall. A doctor came to examine her.
“She is dying from the hunger and the hardship,” says he.
While that was going on, great shouts were heard inside the hall. One of
the judges came out in a hurry.
“You have won the first prize!” says he. “You did”--. He stopped
suddenly.
A priest was on his knees bending over Brigid. He raised his hand and he
gave the absolution.
“She has won a greater reward than the first prize,” says he.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE THIEF
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE THIEF
One day when the boys of Gortmore were let out from school, after the
Glencaha boys and the Derrybanniv boys had gone east, the Turlagh boys
and the Inver boys stayed to have a while’s chat before separating at
the Rossnageeragh road. The master’s house is exactly at the head of the
road, its back to the hill and its face to Loch Ellery.
“I heard that the master’s bees were swarming,” says Michileen Bartly
Enda.
“In with you into the garden till we look at them,” says Daragh Barbara
of the Bridge.
“I’m afraid,” says Michileen.
“What are you afraid of?” says Daragh.
“By my word, the master and the mistress will be out presently.”
“Who’ll stay to give us word when the master will be coming?” says
Daragh.
“I will,” says little Anthony Manning.
“That’ll do,” says Daragh. “Let a whistle when you see him leaving the
school.”
In over the fence with him. In over the fence with the other boys after
him.
“Have a care that none of you will get a sting,” says Anthony.
“Little fear,” says Daragh. And off forever with them.
Anthony sat on the fence, and his back to the road. He could see the
master over his right shoulder if he’d leave the schoolhouse. What a
nice garden the master had, thought Anthony. He had rose-trees and
gooseberry-trees and apple-trees. He had little white stones round the
path. He had big white stones in a pretty rockery, and moss and
maiden-hair fern and common fern growing between them. He had....
Anthony saw a wonder greater than any wonder the master had in the
garden. He saw a little, beautiful wee house under the shade of one of
the rose-trees; it made of wood; two storys in it; white colour on the
lower story and red colour on the upper story; a little green door on
it; three windows of glass on it, one downstairs and two upstairs; house
furniture in it, between tables and chairs and beds and delf, and the
rest; and, says Anthony to himself, look at the lady of the house
sitting in the door!
Anthony never saw a doll’s house before, and it was a wonder to him, its
neatness and order, for a toy. He knew that it belonged to the master’s
little girl, little Nance. A pity that his own little sister hadn’t one
like it--Eibhlin, the creature, that was stretched on her bed for a long
three months, and she weak and sick! A pity she hadn’t the doll itself!
Anthony put the covetousness of his heart in that doll for Eibhlin. He
looked over his right shoulder--neither master nor mistress was to be
seen. He looked over his left shoulder--the other boys were out of
sight. He didn’t think the second thought. He gave his best leap from
the fence; he seized the doll; he stuck it under his jacket; he
clambered out over the ditch again, and away with him home.
“I have a present for you,” says he to Eibhlin, when he reached the
house. “Look!” and with that he showed her the doll.
There came a blush on the wasted cheeks of the little sick girl, and a
light into her eyes.
“_Ora_, Anthony, love, where did you get it?” says she.
“The master’s little Nance, that sent it to you for a present,” says
Anthony.
Their mother came in.
“Oh, mameen, treasure,” says Eibhlin, “look at the present that the
master’s little Nance sent me!”
“In earnest?” says the mother.
“Surely,” says Eibhlin. “Anthony, it was, that brought it in to me now.”
Anthony looked down at his feet, and began counting the toes that were
on them.
“My own pet,” says the mother, “isn’t it she that was good to you!
_Muise_, Nance! I’ll go bail that that present will put great
improvement on my little girl.”
And there came tears in the mother’s eyes out of gratitude to little
Nance because she remembered the sick child. Though he wasn’t able to
look his mother between the eyes, or at Eibhlin, with the dint of fear,
Anthony was glad that he committed the theft.
He was afraid to say his prayers that night, and he lay down on his bed
without as much as an “Our Father.” He couldn’t say the Act of
Contrition, for it wasn’t truthfully he’d be able to say to God that he
was sorry for that sin. It’s often he started in the night, imagining
that little Nance was coming seeking the doll from Eibhlin, that the
master was taxing him with the robbery before the school, that there was
a miraculous swarm of bees rising against him, and Daragh Barbara of the
Bridge and the other boys exciting them with shouts and with the music
of drums. But the next morning he said to himself: “I don’t care. The
doll will make Eibhlin better.”
When he went to school the boys asked him why he went off unawares the
evening before that, and he after promising them he’d keep watch.
“My mother sent for me,” says Anthony. “She’d a task for me.”
When little Nance came into the school, Anthony looked at her under his
brows. He fancied that she was after being crying; he thought that he
saw the track of the tears on her cheeks. The first time the master
called him by his name he jumped, because he thought that he was going
to tax him with the fault or to cross-question him about the doll. He
never put in as miserable a day as that day at school. But when he went
home and saw the great improvement on Eibhlin, and she sitting up in the
bed for the first time for a month, and the doll clasped in her arms,
says he to himself: “I don’t care. The doll is making Eibhlin better.”
In his bed in the night-time he had bad dreams again. He thought that
the master was after telling the police that he stole the doll, and that
they were on his track; he imagined one time that there was a policeman
hiding under the bed and that there was another hunkering behind the
window-curtain. He screamed out in his sleep.
“What’s on you?” says his father to him.
“The peeler that’s going to take me,” says Anthony.
“You’re only rambling, boy,” says his father to him. “There’s no peeler
in it. Go to sleep.”
There was the misery of the world on the poor fellow from that out. He
used think they would be pointing fingers at him, and he going the road.
He used think they would be shaking their heads and saying to each
other, “There’s a thief,” or, “Did you hear what Anthony Pharaig Manning
did? Her doll he stole from the master’s little Nance. Now what do you
say?” But he didn’t suffer rightly till he went to Mass on Sunday and
till Father Ronan started preaching a sermon on the Seventh Commandment:
“Thou shalt not steal; and if you commit a theft it will not be forgiven
you until you make restitution.” Anthony was full sure that it was a
mortal sin. He knew that he ought to go to confession and tell the sin
to the priest. But he couldn’t go to confession, for he knew that the
priest would say to him that he must give the doll back. And he wouldn’t
give the doll back. He hardened his heart and he said that he’d never
give the doll back, for that the doll was making Eibhlin better every
day.
One evening he was sitting by the bed-foot in serious talk with Eibhlin
when his mother ran in in a hurry, and says she--
“Here’s the mistress and little Nance coming up the bohereen!”
Anthony wished the earth would open and swallow him. His face was red up
to his two ears. He was in a sweat. He wasn’t able to say a word or to
think a thought. But these words were running through his head: “They’ll
take the doll from Eibhlin.” It was all the same to him what they’d say
or what they’d do to himself. The only answer he’d have would be, “The
doll’s making Eibhlin better.”
The mistress and little Nance came into the room. Anthony got up. He
couldn’t look them in the face. He began at his old clatter, counting
the toes of his feet. Five on each foot; four toes and a big toe; or
three toes, a big toe, and a little toe; that’s five; twice five are
ten; ten in all. He couldn’t add to their number or take from them. His
mother was talking, the mistress was talking, but Anthony paid no heed
to them. He was waiting till something would be said about the doll.
There was nothing for him to do till that but count his toes. One, two,
three....
What was that? Eibhlin was referring to the doll. Anthony listened now.
“Wasn’t it good of you to send me the doll?” she was saying to Nance.
“From the day Anthony brought it in to me a change began coming on me.”
“It did that,” says her mother. “We’ll be forever grateful to you for
that same doll you sent to her. May God increase your store, and may He
requite you for it a thousand times.”
Neither Nance nor the mistress spoke. Anthony looked at Nance shyly. His
two eyes were stuck in the doll, for the doll was lying cosy in the bed
beside Eibhlin. It had its mouth half open, and the wonder of the world
on it at the sayings of Eibhlin and her mother.
“It’s with trouble I believed Anthony when he brought it into me,” says
Eibhlin, “and when he told me you sent it to me as a present.”
Nance looked over at Anthony. Anthony lifted his head slowly, and their
eyes met. It will never be known what Nance read in Anthony’s eyes. What
Anthony read in Nance’s eyes was mercy, love and sweetness. Nance spoke
to Eibhlin.
“Do you like it?” says she.
“Over anything,” says Eibhlin. “I’d rather it than anything I have in
the world.”
“I have the little house it lives in,” says. Nance. “I must send it to
you. Anthony will bring it to you to-morrow.”
“_Ora!_” says Eibhlin, and she clapping her two little thin palms
together.
“You’ll miss it, love,” says Eibhlin’s mother to Nance.
“No,” said Nance. “It will put more improvement on Eibhlin. I have lots
of things.”
“Let her do it, Cait,” said the mistress to the mother.
“Ye are too good,” says the poor woman.
Anthony thought that it’s dreaming he was. Or he thought that it’s not a
person of this world little Nance was at all, but an angel come down out
of heaven. He wanted to go on his knees to her.
When the mistress and little Nance went off, Anthony ran out the back
door and tore across the garden, so that he’d be before them at the
bohereen-foot, and they going out on the road.
“Nance,” says he, “I s-stole it,--the d-doll.”
“Never mind, Anthony,” says Nance, “you did good to Eibhlin.”
Anthony stood like a stake in the road, and he couldn’t speak another
word.
Isn’t it he was proud bringing the doll’s house home to Eibhlin after
school the next day! And isn’t it they had the fun that evening settling
the house and polishing the furniture and putting the doll to sleep on
its little bed!
The Saturday following Anthony went to confession, and told his sin to
the priest. The penance the priest put on him was to clean the doll’s
house once in the week for Eibhlin, till she would be strong enough to
clean it herself. Eibhlin was strong enough for it by the end of a
month. By the end of another month she was at school again.
There wasn’t a Saturday evening from that out that they wouldn’t hear a
little, light tapping at the master’s door. On the mistress going out
Anthony would be standing at the door.
“Here’s a little present for Nance,” he’d say, stretching towards her
half-a-dozen duck’s eggs, or a bunch of heather, or, at the least, the
full of his fist of _duileasg_, and then he’d brush off with him without
giving the mistress time to say “thank you.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE KEENING WOMAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE KEENING WOMAN
I
“Coilin,” says my father to me one morning after the breakfast, and I
putting my books together to be stirring to school--“Coilin,” says he,
“I have a task for you to-day. Sean will tell the master it was myself
kept you at home to-day, or it’s the way he’ll be thinking you’re
miching, like you were last week. Let you not forget now, Sean.”
“I will not, father,” says Sean, and a lip on him. He wasn’t too
thankful it to be said that it’s not for him my father had the task.
This son was well satisfied, for my lessons were always a trouble to me,
and the master promised me a beating the day before unless I’d have them
at the tip of my mouth the next day.
“What you’ll do, Coilin,” says my father when Sean was gone off, “is to
bring the ass and the little car with you to Screeb, and draw home a
load of sedge. Michileen Maire is cutting it for me. We’ll be starting,
with God’s help, to put the new roof on the house after to-morrow, if
the weather stands.”
“Michileen took the ass and car with him this morning,” says I.
“You’ll have to leg it, then, _a mhic O_,” says my father. “As soon as
Michileen has an ass-load cut, fetch it home with you on the car, and
let Michileen tear till he’s black. We might draw the other share
to-morrow.”
It wasn’t long till I was knocking steps out of the road. I gave my back
to Kilbrickan and my face to Turlagh. I left Turlagh behind me, and I
made for Gortmore. I stood a spell looking at an oared boat that was on
Loch Ellery, and another spell playing with some Inver boys that were
late going to Gortmore school. I left them at the school gate, and I
reached Glencaha. I stood, for the third time, watching a big eagle that
was sunning himself on Carrigacapple. East with me, then, till I was in
Derrybanniv, and the hour and a half wasn’t spent when I cleared
Glashaduff bridge.
There was a house that time a couple of hundred yards east from the
bridge, near the road, on your right-hand side and you drawing towards
Screeb. It was often before that that I saw an old woman standing in the
door of that house, but I had no acquaintance on her, nor did she ever
put talk or topic on me. A tall, thin woman she was, her head as white
as the snow, and two dark eyes, as they would be two burning sods,
flaming in her head. She was a woman that would scare me if I met her in
a lonely place in the night. Times she would be knitting or carding, and
she crooning low to herself; but the thing she would be mostly doing
when I travelled, would be standing in the door, and looking from her up
and down the road, exactly as she’d be waiting for someone that would be
away from her, and she expecting him home.
She was standing there that morning as usual, her hand to her eyes, and
she staring up the road. When she saw me going past, she nodded her head
to me. I went over to her.
“Do you see a person at all coming up the road?” says she.
“I don’t,” says I.
“I thought I saw someone. It can’t be that I’m astray. See, isn’t that a
young man making up on us?” says she.
“Devil a one do I see,” says I. “There’s not a person at all between the
spot we’re on and the turning of the road.”
“I was astray, then,” says she. “My sight isn’t as good as it was. I
thought I saw him coming. I don’t know what’s keeping him.”
“Who’s away from you?” says myself.
“My son that’s away from me,” says she.
“Is he long away?”
“This morning he went to Uachtar Ard.”
“But, sure, he couldn’t be here for a while,” says I. “You’d think he’d
barely be in Uachtar Ard by now, and he doing his best, unless it was by
the morning train he went from the Burnt House.”
“What’s this I’m saying?” says she. “It’s not to-day he went, but
yesterday,--or the day ere yesterday, maybe.... I’m losing my wits.”
“If it’s on the train he’s coming,” says I, “he’ll not be here for a
couple of hours yet.”
“On the train?” says she. “What train?”
“The train that does be at the Burnt House at noon.”
“He didn’t say a word about a train,” says she. “There was no train
coming as far as the Burnt House yesterday.”
“Isn’t there a train coming to the Burnt House these years?” says I,
wondering greatly. She didn’t give me any answer, however. She was
staring up the road again. There came a sort of dread on me of her, and
I was about gathering off.
“If you see him on the road,” says she, “tell him to make hurry.”
“I’ve no acquaintance on him,” says I.
“You’d know him easy. He’s the play-boy of the people. A young, active
lad, and he well set-up. He has a white head on him, like is on
yourself, and grey eyes ... like his father had. Bawneens he’s wearing.”
“If I see him,” says I, “I’ll tell him you’re waiting for him.”
“Do, son,” says she.
With that I stirred on with me east, and left her standing in the door.
* * * * *
She was there still, and I coming home a couple of hours after that, and
the load of sedge on the car.
“He didn’t come yet?” says I to her.
“No, _a mhuirnín_. You didn’t see him?”
“No.”
“No? What can have happened him?”
There were signs of rain on the day.
“Come in till the shower’s over,” says she. “It’s seldom I do have
company.”
I left the ass and the little car on the road, and I went into the
house.
“Sit and drink a cup of milk,” says she.
I sat on the bench in the corner, and she gave me a drink of milk and a
morsel of bread. I was looking all round the house, and I eating and
drinking. There was a chair beside the fire, and a white shirt and a
suit of clothes laid on it.
“I have these ready against he will come,” says she. “I washed the
bawneens yesterday after his departing,--no, the day ere yesterday--I
don’t know right which day I washed them; but, anyhow, they’ll be clean
and dry before him when he does come.... What’s your own name?” says
she, suddenly, after a spell of silence.
I told her.
“_Muise_, my love you are!” says she. “The very name that was--that
is--on my own son. Whose are you?”
I told her.
“And do you say you’re a son of Sean Feichin’s?” says she. “Your father
was in the public-house in Uachtar Ard that night....” She stopped
suddenly with that, and there came some change on her. She put her hand
to her head. You’d think that it’s madness was struck on her. She sat
before the fire then, and she stayed for a while dreaming into the heart
of the fire. It was short till she began moving herself to and fro over
the fire, and crooning or keening in a low voice. I didn’t understand
the words right, or it would be better for me to say that it’s not on
the words I was thinking but on the music. It seemed to me that there
was the loneliness of the hills in the dead time of night, or the
loneliness of the grave when nothing stirs in it but worms, in that
music. Here are the words as I heard them from my father after that:--
Sorrow on death, it is it that blackened my heart,
That carried off my love and that left me ruined,
Without friend, without companion under the roof of my house
But this sorrow in my middle, and I lamenting.
Going the mountain one evening,
The birds spoke to me sorrowfully,
The melodious snipe and the voiceful curlew,
Telling me that my treasure was dead.
I called on you, and your voice I did not hear,
I called again, and an answer I did not get.
I kissed your mouth, and O God, wasn’t it cold!
Och, it’s cold your bed is in the lonely graveyard.
And O sod-green grave, where my child is,
O narrow, little grave, since you are his bed,
My blessing on you, and the thousand blessings
On the green sods that are over my pet.
Sorrow on death, its blessing is not possible--
It lays fresh and withered together;
And, O pleasant little son, it is it is my affliction,
Your sweet body to be making clay!
When she had that finished, she kept on moving herself to and fro, and
lamenting in a low voice. It was a lonesome place to be, in that
backward house, and you to have no company but yon solitary old woman,
mourning to herself by the fireside. There came a dread and a creeping
on me, and I rose to my feet.
“It’s time for me to be going home,” says I. “The evening’s clearing.”
“Come here,” says she to me.
I went hither to her. She laid her two hands softly on my head, and she
kissed my forehead.
“The protection of God to you, little son,” says she. “May He let the
harm of the year over you, and may He increase the good fortune and
happiness of the year to you and to your family.”
With that she freed me from her. I left the house, and pushed on home
with me.
* * * * *
“Where were you, Coilin, when the shower caught you?” says my mother to
me that night. “It didn’t do you any hurt.”
“I waited in the house of yon old woman on the east side of Glashaduff
bridge,” says I. “She was talking to me about her son. He’s in Uachtar
Ard these two days, and she doesn’t know why he hasn’t come home ere
this.”
My father looked over at my mother.
“The Keening Woman,” says he.
“Who is she?” says I.
“The Keening Woman,” says my father. “Muirne of the Keens.”
“Why was that name given to her?” says I.
“For the keens she does be making,” answered my father. “She’s the most
famous keening-woman in Connemara or in the Joyce Country. She’s always
sent for when anyone dies. She keened my father, and there’s a chance
but she’ll keen myself. But, may God comfort her, it’s her own dead she
does be keening always, it’s all the same what corpse is in the house.”
“And what’s her son doing in Uachtar Ard?” says I.
“Her son died twenty years since, Coilin,” says my mother.
“He didn’t die at all,” says my father, and a very black look on him.
“_He was murdered._”
“Who murdered him?”
It’s seldom I saw my father angry, but it’s awful his anger was when it
would rise up in him. He took a start out of me when he spoke again, he
was that angry.
“Who murdered your own grandfather? Who drew the red blood out of my
grandmother’s shoulders with a lash? Who would do it but the English? My
curse on--”
My mother rose, and she put her hand on his mouth.
“Don’t give your curse to anyone, Sean,” says she. My mother was that
kind-hearted, she wouldn’t like to throw the bad word at the devil
himself. I believe she’d have pity in her heart for Cain and for Judas,
and for Diarmaid of the Galls. “It’s time for us to be saying the
Rosary,” says she. “Your father will tell you about Coilin Muirne some
other night.”
“Father,” says I, and we going on our knees, “we should say a prayer for
Coilin’s soul this night.”
“We’ll do that, son,” says my father kindly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
Sitting up one night, in the winter that was on us, my father told us
the story of Muirne from start to finish. It’s well I mind him in the
firelight, a broad-shouldered man, a little stooped, his share of hair
going grey, lines in his forehead, a sad look in his eyes. He was
mending an old sail that night, and I was on my knees beside him in the
name of helping him. My mother and my sisters were spinning frieze.
Seaneen was stretched on his face on the floor, and he in grips of a
book. ’Twas small the heed he gave to the same book, for it’s the
pastime he had, to be tickling the soles of my feet and taking an odd
pinch out of my calves; but as my father stirred out in the story Sean
gave over his trickery, and it is short till he was listening as
interested as anyone. It would be hard not to listen to my father when
he’d tell a story like that by the hearthside. He was a sweet
storyteller. It’s often I’d think there was music in his voice; a low,
deep music like that in the bass of the organ in Tuam Cathedral.
Twenty years are gone, Coilin (says my father), since the night myself
and Coilin Muirne (may God give him grace) and three or four others of
the neighbours were in Neachtan’s public-house in Uachtar Ard. There was
a fair in the town the same day, and we were drinking a glass before
taking the road home on ourselves. There were four or five men in it
from Carrowroe and from the Joyce Country, and six or seven of the
people of the town. There came a stranger in, a thin, black man that
nobody knew. He called for a glass.
“Did ye hear, people,” says he to us, and he drinking with us, “that the
lord is to come home to-night?”
“What business has the devil here?” says someone.
“Bad work he’s up to, as usual,” says the black man. “He has settled to
put seven families out of their holdings.”
“Who’s to be put out?” says one of us.
“Old Thomas O’Drinan from the Glen,--I’m told the poor fellow’s dying,
but it’s on the roadside he’ll die, if God hasn’t him already; a man of
the O’Conaire’s that lives in a cabin on this side of Loch Shindilla;
Manning from Snamh Bo; two in Annaghmaan; a woman at the head of the
Island; and Anthony O’Greelis from Lower Camus.”
“Anthony’s wife is heavy in child,” says Cuimin O’Niadh.
“That won’t save her, the creature,” says the black man. “She’s not the
first woman out of this country that bore her child in a ditch-side of
the road.”
There wasn’t a word out of anyone of us.
“What sort of men are ye?” says the black man,--“ye are not men, at all.
I was born and raised in a countryside, and, my word to you, the men of
that place wouldn’t let the whole English army together throw out seven
families on the road without them knowing the reason why. Are ye afraid
of the man that’s coming here to-night?”
“It’s easy to talk,” said Cuimin, “but what way can we stop the bodach?”
“Murder him this night,” says a voice behind me. Everybody started. I
myself turned round. It was Coilin Muirne that spoke. His two eyes were
blazing in his head, a flame in his cheeks, and his head thrown high.
“A man that spoke that, whatever his name and surname,” says the
stranger. He went hither and gripped Coilin’s hand. “Drink a glass with
me,” says he.
Coilin drank the glass. The others wouldn’t speak.
“It’s time for us to be shortening the road,” says Cuimin, after a
little spell.
We got a move on us. We took the road home. The night was dark. There
was no wish for talk on any of us, at all. When we came to the head of
the street Cuimin stood in the middle of the road.
“Where’s Coilin Muirne?” says he.
We didn’t feel him from us till Cuimin spoke. He wasn’t in the company.
Myself went back to the public-house. Coilin wasn’t in it. I questioned
the pot-boy. He said that Coilin and the black man left the shop
together five minutes after our going. I searched the town. There wasn’t
tale or tidings of Coilin anywhere. I left the town and I followed the
other men. I hoped it might be that he’d be to find before me. He
wasn’t, nor the track of him.
It was very far in the night when we reached Glashaduff bridge. There
was a light in Muirne’s house. Muirne herself was standing in the door.
“God save you, men,” says she, coming over to us. “Is Coilin with you?”
“He isn’t, _muise_,” says I. “He stayed behind us in Uachtar Ard.”
“Did he sell?” says she.
“He did, and well,” says I. “There’s every chance that he’ll stay in the
town till morning. The night’s black and cold in itself. Wouldn’t it be
as well for you to go in and lie down?”
“It’s not worth my while,” says she. “I’ll wait up till he comes. May
God hasten you.”
We departed. There was, as it would be, a load on my heart. I was afraid
that there was something after happening to Coilin. I had ill notions of
that black man.... I lay down on my bed after coming home, but I didn’t
sleep.
The next morning myself and your mother were eating breakfast, when the
latch was lifted from the door, and in comes Cuimin O’Niadh. He could
hardly draw his breath.
“What’s the news with you, man?” says I.
“Bad news,” says he. “The lord was murdered last night. He was got on
the road a mile to the east of Uachtar Ard, and a bullet through his
heart. The soldiers were in Muirne’s house this morning on the track of
Coilin, but he wasn’t there. He hasn’t come home yet. It’s said it was
he murdered the lord. You mind the words he said last night?”
I leaped up, and out the door with me. Down the road, and east to
Muirne’s house. There was no one before me but herself. The furniture of
the house was this way and that way, where the soldiers were searching.
Muirne got up when she saw me in the door.
“Sean O’Conaire,” says she, “for God’s pitiful sake, tell me where’s my
son? You were along with him. Why isn’t he coming home to me?”
“Let you have patience, Muirne,” says I. “I’m going to Uachtar Ard after
him.”
I struck the road. Going in the street of Uachtar Ard, I saw a great
ruck of people. The bridge and the street before the chapel were black
with people. People were making on the spot from every art. But, a thing
that put terror on my heart, there wasn’t a sound out of that terrible
gathering,--only the eyes of every man stuck in a little knot that was
in the right-middle of the crowd. Soldiers that were in that little
knot, black coats and red coats on them, and guns and swords in their
hands; and among the black coats and red coats I saw a country boy, and
bawneens on him. Coilin Muirne that was in it, and he in holds of the
soldiers. The poor boy’s face was as white as my shirt, but he had the
beautiful head of him lifted proudly, and it wasn’t the head of a
coward, that head.
He was brought to the barracks, and that crowd following him. He was
taken to Galway that night. He was put on his trial the next month. It
was sworn that he was in the public-house that night. It was sworn that
the black man was discoursing on the landlords. It was sworn that he
said the lord would be coming that night to throw the people out of
their holdings the next day. It was sworn that Coilin Muirne was
listening attentively to him. It was sworn that Coilin said those words,
“Murder him this night,” when Cuimin O’Niadh said, “What way can we stop
the bodach?” It was sworn that the black man praised him for saying
those words, that he shook hands with him, that they drank a glass
together. It was sworn that Coilin remained in the shop after the going
of the Rossnageeragh people, and that himself and the black man left the
shop together five minutes after that. There came a peeler then, and he
swore he saw Coilin and the black man leaving the town, and that it
wasn’t the Rossnageeragh road they took on themselves, but the Galway
road. At eight o’clock they left the town. At half after eight a shot
was fired at the lord on the Galway road. Another peeler swore he heard
the report of the shot. He swore he ran to the place, and, closing up to
the place, he saw two men running away. A thin man one of them was, and
he dressed like a gentleman would be. A country boy the other man was.
“What kind of clothes was the country boy wearing?” says the lawyer.
“A suit of bawneens,” says the peeler.
“Is that the man you saw?” says the lawyer, stretching his finger
towards Coilin.
“I would say it was.”
“Do you swear it?”
The peeler didn’t speak for a spell.
“Do you swear it?” says the lawyer again.
“I do,” says the peeler. The peeler’s face at that moment was whiter
than the face of Coilin himself.
A share of us swore then that Coilin never fired a shot out of a gun;
that he was a decent, kindly boy that wouldn’t hurt a fly, if he had the
power for it. The parish priest swore that he knew Coilin from the day
he baptized him; that it was his opinion that he never committed a sin,
and that he wouldn’t believe from anyone at all that he would slay a
man. It was no use for us. What good was our testimony against the
testimony of the police? Judgment of death was given on Coilin.
His mother was present all that time. She didn’t speak a word from start
to finish, but her two eyes stuck in the two eyes of her son, and her
two hands knitted under her shawl.
“He won’t be hanged,” says Muirne that night. “God promised me that he
won’t be hanged.”
A couple of days after that we heard that Coilin wouldn’t be hanged,
that it’s how his soul would be spared him on account of him being so
young as he was, but that he’d be kept in gaol for the term of his life.
“He won’t be kept,” says Muirne. “O Jesus,” she would say, “don’t let
them keep my son from me.”
It’s marvellous the patience that woman had, and the trust she had in
the Son of God. It’s marvellous the faith and the hope and the patience
of women.
She went to the parish priest. She said to him that if he’d write to the
people of Dublin, asking them to let Coilin out to her, it’s certain he
would be let out.
“They won’t refuse you, Father,” says she.
The priest said that there would be no use at all in writing, that no
heed would be paid to his letter, but that he himself would go to Dublin
and that he would speak with the great people, and that, maybe, some
good might come out of it. He went. Muirne was full-sure her son would
be home to her by the end of a week or two. She readied the house before
him. She put lime on it herself, inside and outside. She set two
neighbours to put a new thatch on it. She spun the makings of a new suit
of clothes for him; she dyed the wool with her own hands; she brought it
to the weaver, and she made the suit when the frieze came home.
We thought it long while the priest was away. He wrote a couple of times
to the master, but there was nothing new in the letters. He was doing
his best, he said, but he wasn’t succeeding too well. He was going from
person to person, but it’s not much satisfaction anybody was giving him.
It was plain from the priest’s letters that he hadn’t much hope he’d be
able to do anything. None of us had much hope, either. But Muirne didn’t
lose the wonderful trust she had in God.
“The priest will bring my son home with him,” she used say.
There was nothing making her anxious but fear that she wouldn’t have the
new suit ready before Coilin’s coming. But it was finished at last; she
had everything ready, repair on the house, the new suit laid on a chair
before the fire,--and still no word of the priest.
“Isn’t it Coilin will be glad when he sees the comfort I have in the
house,” she would say. “Isn’t it he will look spruce going the road to
Mass of a Sunday, and that suit on him!”
It’s well I mind the evening the priest came home. Muirne was waiting
for him since morning, the house cleaned up, and the table laid.
“Welcome home,” she said, when the priest came in. She was watching the
door, as she would be expecting someone else to come in. But the priest
closed the door after him.
“I thought that it’s with yourself he’d come, Father,” says Muirne.
“But, sure, it’s the way he wouldn’t like to come on the priest’s car.
He was shy like that always, the creature.”
“Oh, poor Muirne,” says the priest, holding her by the two hands, “I
can’t conceal the truth from you. He’s not coming, at all. I didn’t
succeed in doing anything. They wouldn’t listen to me.”
Muirne didn’t say a word. She went over and she sat down before the
fire. The priest followed her and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“Muirne,” says he, like that.
“Let me be, Father, for a little while,” says she. “May God and His
Mother reward you for what you’ve done for me. But leave me to myself
for a while. I thought you’d bring him home to me, and it’s a great blow
on me that he hasn’t come.”
The priest left her to herself. He thought he’d be no help to her till
the pain of that blow would be blunted.
The next day Muirne wasn’t to be found. Tale or tidings no one had of
her. Word nor wisdom we never heard of her till the end of a quarter. A
share of us thought that it’s maybe out of her mind the creature went,
and a lonely death to come on her in the hollow of some mountain, or
drowning in a boghole. The neighbours searched the hills round about,
but her track wasn’t to be seen.
One evening myself was digging potatoes in the garden, when I saw a
solitary woman making on me up the road. A tall, thin woman. Her head
well-set. A great walk under her. “If Muirne ni Fhiannachta is living,”
says I to myself, “it’s she that’s in it.” ’Twas she, and none else.
Down with me to the road.
“Welcome home, Muirne,” says I to her. “Have you any news?”
“I have, then,” says she, “and good news. I went to Galway. I saw the
Governor of the gaol. He said to me that he wouldn’t be able to do a
taste, that it’s the Dublin people would be able to let him out of gaol,
if his letting-out was to be got. I went off to Dublin. O, Lord, isn’t
it many a hard, stony road I walked, isn’t it many a fine town I saw
before I came to Dublin? ‘Isn’t it a great country, Ireland is?’ I used
say to myself every evening when I’d be told I’d have so many miles to
walk before I’d see Dublin. But, great thanks to God and to the Glorious
Virgin, I walked in on the street of Dublin at last, one cold, wet
evening. I found a lodging. The morning of the next day I enquired for
the Castle. I was put on the way. I went there. They wouldn’t let me in
at first, but I was at them till I got leave of talk with some man. He
put me on to another man, a man that was higher than himself. He sent me
to another man. I said to them all I wanted was to see the Lord
Lieutenant of the Queen. I saw him at last. I told him my story. He said
to me that he couldn’t do anything. I gave my curse to the Castle of
Dublin, and out the door with me. I had a pound in my pocket. I went
aboard a ship, and the morning after I was in Liverpool of the English.
I walked the long roads of England from Liverpool to London. When I came
to London I asked knowledge of the Queen’s Castle. I was told. I went
there. They wouldn’t let me in. I went there every day, hoping that I’d
see the Queen coming out. After a week I saw her coming out. There were
soldiers and great people about her. I went over to the Queen before she
went in to her coach. There was a paper, a man in Dublin wrote for me,
in my hand. An officer seized me. The Queen spoke to him, and he freed
me from him. I spoke to the Queen. She didn’t understand me. I stretched
the paper to her. She gave the paper to the officer, and he read it. He
wrote certain words on the paper, and he gave it back to me. The Queen
spoke to another woman that was along with her. The woman drew out a
crown piece and gave it to me. I gave her back the crown piece, and I
said that it’s not silver I wanted, but my son. They laughed. It’s my
opinion they didn’t understand me. I showed them the paper again. The
officer laid his finger on the words he was after writing. I curtseyed
to the Queen and went off with me. A man read for me the words the
officer wrote. It’s what was in it, that they would write to me about
Coilin without delay. I struck the road home then, hoping that, maybe,
there would be a letter before me. Do you think, Sean,” says Muirne,
finishing her story, “has the priest any letter? There wasn’t a letter
at all in the house before me coming out the road; but I’m thinking it’s
to the priest they’d send the letter, for it’s a chance the great people
might know him.”
“I don’t know did any letter come,” says I. “I would say there didn’t,
for if there did the priest would be telling us.”
“It will be here some day yet,” says Muirne. “I’ll go in to the priest,
anyhow, and I’ll tell him my story.”
In the road with her, and up the hill to the priest’s house. I saw her
going home again that night, and the darkness falling. It’s wonderful
how she was giving it to her footsoles, considering what she suffered of
distress and hardship for a quarter.
A week went by. There didn’t come any letter. Another week passed. No
letter came. The third week, and still no letter. It would take tears
out of the grey stones to be looking at Muirne, and the anxiety that was
on her. It would break your heart to see her going in the road to the
priest every morning. We were afraid to speak to her about Coilin. We
had evil notions. The priest had evil notions. He said to us one day
that he heard from another priest in Galway that it’s not more than well
Coilin was, that it’s greatly the prison was preying on his health, that
he was going back daily. That story wasn’t told to Muirne.
One day myself had business with the priest, and I went in to him. We
were conversing in the parlour when we heard a person’s footstep on the
street outside. Never a knock on the house-door, or on the parlour-door,
but in into the room with Muirne ni Fhiannachta, and a letter in her
hand. It’s with trouble she could talk.
“A letter from the Queen, a letter from the Queen!” says she.
The priest took the letter. He opened it. I noticed that his hand was
shaking, and he opening it. There came the colour of death in his face
after reading it. Muirne was standing out opposite him, her two eyes
blazing in her head, her mouth half open.
“What does she say, Father?” says she. “Is she sending him home to me?”
“It’s not from the Queen this letter came, Muirne,” says the priest,
speaking slowly, like as there would be some impediment on him, “but
from the Governor of the gaol in Dublin.”
“And what does he say? Is he sending him home to me?”
The priest didn’t speak for a minute. It seemed to me that he was trying
to mind certain words, and the words, as you would say, going from him.
“Muirne,” says he at last, “he says that poor Coilin died yesterday.”
At the hearing of those words, Muirne burst a-laughing. The like of such
laughter I never heard. That laughter was ringing in my ears for a month
after that. She made a couple of terrible screeches of laughter, and
then she fell in a faint on the floor.
She was fetched home, and she was on her bed for a half year. She was
out of her mind all that time. She came to herself at long last, and no
person at all would think there was a thing the matter with her,--only
the delusion that her son isn’t returned home yet from the fair of
Uachtar Ard. She does be expecting him always, standing or sitting in
the door half the day, and everything ready for his home-coming. She
doesn’t understand that there’s any change on the world since that
night. “That’s the reason, Coilin,” says my father to me, “that she
didn’t know the railway was coming as far as Burnt House. Times she
remembers herself, and she starts keening like you saw her. ’Twas
herself that made yon keen you heard from her. May God comfort her,”
says my father, putting an end to his story.
“And daddy,” says I, “did any letter come from the Queen after that?”
“There didn’t, nor the colour of one.”
“Do you think, daddy, was it Coilin that killed the lord?”
“I know it wasn’t,” says my father. “If it was he’d acknowledge it. I’m
as certain as I’m living this night that it’s the black man killed the
lord. I don’t say that poor Coilin wasn’t present.”
“Was the black man ever caught?” says my sister.
“He wasn’t, _muise_,” says my father. “Little danger on him.”
“Where did he belong, the black man, do you think, daddy?” says I.
“I believe, before God,” says my father, “that it’s a peeler from Dublin
Castle was in it. Cuimin O’Niadh saw a man very like him giving evidence
against another boy in Tuam a year after that.”
“Daddy,” says Seaneen suddenly, “when I’m a man I’ll kill that black
man.”
“God save us,” says my mother.
My father laid his hand on Seaneen’s head.
“Maybe, little son,” says he, “we’ll all be taking tally-ho out of the
black soldiers before the clay will come on us.”
“It’s time for the Rosary,” says my mother.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IOSAGAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IOSAGAN
Old Matthias was sitting beside his door. Anyone going the road would
think that it was an image of stone or of marble was in it--that, or a
dead person--for he couldn’t believe that a living man could stay so
calm, so quiet as that. He had his head high and an ear on him
listening. It’s many a musical sound there was to listen to, for the
person who’d have heed on them. Old Matthias heard the roar of the waves
on the rocks, and the murmur of the stream flowing down and over the
stones. He heard the screech of the heron-crane from the high, rocky
shore, and the lowing of the cows from the pasture, and the bright
laughter of the children from the green. But it wasn’t to any of these
he was listening that attentively--though all of them were sweet to
him--but to the clear sound of the bell for Mass that was coming to him
on the wind in the morning stillness.
All the people were gathered into Mass. Old Matthias saw them going
past, in ones and twos, or in little groups. The boys were running and
leaping. The girls were chattering merrily. The women were conversing in
low tones. The men were silent. Like this, they’d travel the road every
Sunday. Like this, Old Matthias would sit on his chair watching them
till they’d go out of sight. They went past him this morning as usual.
The old man remained looking at them till there was an end to the noise
and the commotion, till the last group cleared the top of the church
hill, till there was nothing to be seen but a long, straight road
stretching out, and it white, till there were none to be found in the
village but an odd old person in his bed, or children tricking on the
green, and himself sitting beside his door.
Old Matthias would not go to the chapel. He hadn’t heard “the sweet
Mass” for over three score years. He was a strong, active youth the last
time he blessed himself before the people, and now he was a withered,
done old man, his share of hair grey-white, furrows in his brow, his
shoulders bent. He hadn’t bent his knee before God for the length of
those three score years; he hadn’t put a prayer to his Creator; he
hadn’t given thanks to his Saviour. A man apart, Old Matthias was.
Nobody knew why he wouldn’t go to Mass. People said that he didn’t
believe there was a God in it. Other people said that he committed some
terrible sin at the start of his life, and when the priest wouldn’t give
him absolution in confession, that a rage of anger came on him, and he
swore an oath that he wouldn’t touch priest or chapel while he was
living again. Other people said--but this was said only in a whisper by
the fireside when the old people would be yarning by themselves after
the children had gone asleep--these said that he sold his soul to a
certain Great Man that he met once on the top of Cnoc-a’-daimh, and that
this person wouldn’t allow him to frequent the Mass. I don’t know is it
true or lying these stories are, but I do know that old Matthias wasn’t
seen at God’s Mass in the memory of the oldest person in the village.
Cuimin O’Niadh--an old man that got death a couple of years before this
in his ninetieth year--said that he himself saw him there when he was a
lump of a lad.
It wasn’t thought that Old Matthias was a bad character. He was a man as
honest, as simple, as natural as you would meet in a day’s walking.
There wasn’t ever heard out of his mouth but the good word. He had no
delight in drink or in company, no wish for gold or for property. He was
poor, but it’s often he shared with people that were poorer than he. He
had pity for the infirm. He had mercy for the wretched. Other men had
honour and esteem for him. The women, the children, and the animals
loved him; and he had love for them and for everything that was generous
and of clean heart.
Old Matthias liked women’s talk better than men’s talk. But he liked the
talk of boys and girls still better than the talk of men or women. He
used say that the women were more discerning than the men, and that the
children were more discerning than either of them. It’s along with the
young folk he would spend the best part of his idle time. He would sit
with them in a corner of the house, telling them stories, or getting
stories out of them. They were wonderful, his share of stories. He had
the “Adventures of the Grey Horse” in grandest way in the world. He was
the one old body in the village who had the story of the “Hen-Harrier
and the Wren,” properly. Isn’t it he would put fright on the children,
and he reciting “_Fú Fá Féasóg_” (The Two-Headed Giant), and isn’t it he
would take the laughs out of them discoursing on the doings of the piper
in the Snail’s Castle! And the songs he had! He could coax an ailing
child asleep with his:
“Shoheen, sho, and sleep, my pet;
The fairies are out walking the glen!”
or he could put the full of a house of children in fits of laughter with
his:
“Hi diddle dum, the cat and his mother,
That went to Galway riding a drake!”
And isn’t it he had the funny old ranns; and the hard, difficult
questions; and the fine riddles! As for games, where was the person,
man, woman, or child could keep “_Lúrabóg, Lárabóg_,” or “_An Bhuidhean
Bhalbh_” (The Dumb Band) going with him!
In the fine time it’s on the side of the hill, or walking the bog, you’d
see Old Matthias and his little playmates, he explaining to them the way
of life of the ants and of the woodlice, or inventing stories about the
hedgehog and the red squirrel. Another time to them boating, the old man
with an oar, some little wee boy with another one, and maybe a young
girl steering. It’s often the people who’d be working near the strand
would hear the shouts of joy of the children coming to them from the
harbour-mouth, or, it might be, Old Matthias’s voice, and he saying:
“Oró! my curragheen O!
And óró! my little boat!”
or something like it.
There used come fear on a share of the mothers at times, and they’d say
to each other that they oughtn’t let their children spend that much time
with Old Matthias,--“a man that frequents neither clergy nor Mass.” Once
a woman of them laid bare these thoughts to Father Sean. It’s what the
priest said:
“Don’t meddle with the poor children,” says he. “They couldn’t be in
better company.”
“But they tell me he doesn’t believe in God, Father.”
“There’s many a saint in heaven to-day that didn’t believe in God some
time of his life. And, whisper here. If Old Matthias hasn’t love for
God--a thing that neither you nor I know--it’s wonderful the love he has
for the cleanest and most beautiful thing that God created,--the shining
soul of the child. Our Saviour Himself and the most glorious saints in
heaven had the same love for them. How do we know that it isn’t the
children that will draw Old Matthias to the knee of our Saviour yet?”
And the story was left like that.
On this Sunday morning the old man remained listening till the bell for
Mass stopped ringing. When there was an end to it he gave a sigh, as the
person would that would be weary and sorrowful, and he turned to the
group of boys that were sporting themselves on the plot of grass--the
“green” Old Matthias would call it--at the cross-roads. Old Matthias
knew every curly-headed, bare-footed child of them. He liked no pastime
at all better than to be sitting there watching them and listening to
them. He was counting them, seeing which of his friends were in it and
which of them were gone to Mass with the grown people, when he noticed
among them a child he never saw before. A little, brown boy, with a
white coat on him, like was on every other boy, and he without shoes or
cap, as is the custom with the children of the West. The face of this
boy was as bright as the sun, and it seemed to Old Matthias that there
were, as it would be, rays of light coming from his head. The sun
shining on his share of hair, maybe.
There was wonder on the old man at seeing this child, for he hadn’t
heard that there were any strangers after coming to the village. He was
on the point of going over and questioning one of the little lads about
him, when he heard the stir and chatter of the people coming home from
Mass. He didn’t feel the time slipping by him while his mind was on the
tricks of the boys. Some of the people saluted him going past, and he
saluted them. When he gave an eye on the group of boys again, the
strange boy wasn’t among them.
The Sunday after that, Old Matthias was sitting beside his door, as
usual. The people were gathered west to Mass. The young folk were
running and throwing jumps on the green. Running and throwing jumps
along with them was the strange child. Matthias looked at him for a long
time, for he gave the love of his heart to him on account of the beauty
of his person and the brightness of his countenance. At last he called
over one of the little boys:
“Who’s yon boy I see among you for a fortnight back, Coilin?” says
he--“he there with the brown head on him,--but have a care that it’s not
reddish-fair he is: I don’t know is it dark or fair he is, and the way
the sun is burning on him. Do you see him now--that one that’s running
towards us?”
“That’s Iosagan,” says the little lad.
“Iosagan?”
“That’s the name he gives himself.”
“Who are his people?”
“I don’t know, but he says his father’s a king.”
“Where does he live?”
“He never told us that, but he says that it’s not far from us his house
is.”
“Does he be along with you often?”
“Aye, when we do be spending time to ourselves like this. But he goes
from us when a grown person is present. Look! he’s gone already!”
The old man looked, and there was no one in it but the boys he knew. The
child, the little boy called Iosagan, was missing. The same moment, the
noise and bustle of the people were heard returning from Mass.
The next Sunday everything fell out exactly as it fell on the two
Sundays before that. The people gathered west as usual, and the old man
and the children were left by themselves in the village. The heart of
Old Matthias gave a leap in his middle when he saw the Holy Child among
them again.
He rose. He went over and he stood near Him. After a time, standing
without a move, he stretched his two hands towards Him, and he spoke in
a low voice:
“Iosagan!”
The Child heard him, and He came towards him, running.
“Come here and sit on my knee for a little while, Iosagan.”
The Child put His hand in the thin, knuckly hand of the old man, and
they travelled side by side across the road. Old Matthias sat on his
chair, and drew Iosagan to his breast.
“Where do You live, Iosagan?” says he, speaking low always.
“Not far from this My House is. Why don’t you come on a visit to Me?”
“I’d be afraid in a royal house. It’s told me that Your Father’s a
King.”
“He is High-King of the World. But there is no need for you to be afraid
of Him. He is full of mercy and love.”
“I fear I haven’t kept His law.”
“Ask forgiveness of Him. I and My Mother will make intercession for
you.”
“It’s a pity I didn’t see You before this, Iosagan. Where were You from
me?”
“I was here always. I do be travelling the roads, and walking the hills,
and ploughing the waves. I do be among the people when they gather into
My House. I do be among the children they do leave behind them playing
on the street.”
“I was too timid--or too proud--to go into Your House, Iosagan; but I
found You among the children.”
“There isn’t any time or place that children do be amusing themselves
that I am not along with them. Times they see Me; other times they do
not see Me.”
“I never saw You till lately.”
“The grown people do be blind.”
“And it has been granted me to see You, Iosagan?”
“My Father gave Me leave to show Myself to you, because you loved His
little children.”
The voices were heard of the people returning from Mass.
“I must go now from you.”
“Let me kiss the border of Your coat, Iosagan.”
“Kiss it.”
“Shall I see You again?”
“You will.”
“When?”
“This night.”
With that word He was gone.
“I will see Him this night!” says Old Matthias, and he going into the
house.
* * * * *
The night came wet and stormy. The great waves were heard breaking with
a booming roar against the strand. The trees round the chapel were
swaying and bending with the strength of the wind. (The chapel is on a
little hill that falls down with a slope to the sea.) Father Sean was on
the point of closing his book and saying his Rosary when he heard a
noise, as it would be somebody knocking at the door. He listened for a
spell. He heard the noise again. He rose from the fire, went to the
door, and opened it. A little boy was standing on the door-flag--a boy
the priest didn’t mind ever to have seen before. He had a white coat on
him, and he without shoes or cap. The priest thought that there were
rays of light shining from his countenance, and about his head. The moon
that was shining on his brown, comely head, it’s like.
“Who have I here?” says Father Sean.
“Put on you as quickly as you’re able, Father, and strike east to the
house of Old Matthias. He is in the mouths of death.”
The priest didn’t want the second word.
“Sit here till I’m ready,” says he. But when he came back, the little
messenger was gone.
Father Sean struck the road, and he didn’t take long to finish the
journey, though the wind was against him, and it raining heavily. There
was a light in Old Matthias’s house before him. He took the latch from
the door, and went in.
“Who is this coming to me?” says a voice from the old man’s bed.
“The priest.”
“I’d like to speak to you, Father. Sit here beside me.” The voice was
feeble, and the words came slowly from him.
The priest sat down, and heard Old Matthias’s story from beginning to
end. Whatever secret was in the old body’s heart it was laid bare to the
servant of God there in the middle of the night. When the confession was
over, Old Matthias received communion, and he was anointed.
“Who told you that I was wanting you, Father?” says he in a weak, low
voice, when everything was done. “I was praying God that you’d come, but
I hadn’t any messenger to send for you.”
“But, sure, you did send a messenger to me?” says the priest, and great
wonder on him.
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t? But a little boy came, and he knocked at my door, and he
said to me that you were wanting my help!”
The old man sat up straight in the bed. There was a flashing in his
eyes.
“What sort was the little boy was in it, Father?”
“A gentle little boy, with a white coat on him.”
“Did you take notice was there a haze of light about his head?”
“I did, and it put great wonder on me.”
Old Matthias looked up, there came a smile on his mouth, and he
stretched out his two arms:
“Iosagan!” says he.
With that word, he fell back on the bed. The priest went hither to him
softly, and closed his eyes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRIEST
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRIEST
It’s in yon little house you see in the glen below you, and you going
down the road from Gortmore to Inver, that my Priest lives. Himself and
his mother, and his little sister, and his little, small, wee
brother,--those are the family in it. The father died before Taimeen,
the youngest child of them, was born. There’s no time I do be in
Rossnageeragh but I spend an evening or two along with them, for the
Priest and Maireen (the little sister) and Taimeen are the dearest
friends I have. A soft, youngish-looking woman the Priest’s mother is;
she’s a bit headstrong, maybe, but if she is itself she’s as
kind-hearted a woman as is living, after that. ’Twas she told me this
story one evening that I was on a visit to her. She was washing the
Priest, meanwhile, before the fire: a big tub of water laid on the floor
beside her, the Priest and his share of clothes stripped from him, and
she rubbing and scrubbing every inch of his body. I have my doubts that
this work agreed too well with the Priest, for now and again he’d let a
screech out of him. With every screech his mother would give him a
little slap, and after that she’d kiss him. It’s hard for a mother to
keep her hand off a child when she has him bare; and ’twould be harder
than that for a mother, as loving as this mother, to keep her mouth from
a wee, red moutheen as sweet as Paraig’s (Paraig’s my Priest’s name, you
know). I ought to say that the Priest was only eight years old yet. He
was a lovely picture, standing there, and the firelight shining on his
well-knit body and on his curly head, and dancing in his grey, laughing
eyes. When I think on Paraig, it’s that way I see him before me,
standing on the floor in the brightening of the fire.
But in regard to the story. About a year before this it is it fell out.
Nora (the mother) was working about the house. Maireen and Taimeen were
amusing themselves on the floor. “_Fromsó Framsó_” they had going on.
Maireen was trying to teach the words to Taimeen, a thing that was
failing on her, for Taimeen hadn’t any talk yet. You know the words, I
suppose?--they’re worth learning, for there’s true poetry in them:
“_Fromsó Framsó_,--
A woman dancing,
That would make sport,
That would drink ale,
That would be in time
Here in the morning!”
Nora wanted a can of water to make tea. It was supper-time.
“Where’s Paraig, Maireen?” says she. “He’s lost this half-hour.”
“He went into the room, mameen.”
“Paraig!” says the mother, calling loudly.
Not a word from within.
“Do you hear, Paraig?”
Never a word.
“What’s wrong with the boy? Paraig, I say!” says she, as loud as it was
in her head.
“I’ll be out presently, mama,” says a voice from the room.
“Hurry with you, son. It’s tea-time, and devil a tear of water have I in
the house.”
Paraig came out of the room.
“You’re found at last. Push on down with you,--but what’s this? Where
did you get that shirt, or why is it on you? What were you doing?”
Paraig was standing in the door, like a stake. A shirt was fastened on
him over his little coat. He looked down on himself. His face was
red-burning to the ears.
“I forgot to take it off me, mama,” says he.
“Why is it on you at all?”
“Sport I was having.”
“Take it off you this minute! The rod you want, yourself and your
sport!”
Paraig took off the shirt without a word and left it back in the room.
“Brush down to the well now and get a can of water for me, like a pet.”
Nora already regretted that she spoke as harshly as that. It’s a woman’s
anger that isn’t lasting.
Paraig took the can and whipped off with it. Michileen Enda, a
neighbour’s boy, came in while he was out.
“It beats me, Michileen,” says Nora, after a spell, “to make out what
Paraig does be doing in that room the length of the evening. No sooner
has he his dinner eaten every day than he clears off in there, and he’s
lost till supper-time.”
“Some sport he does have on foot,” says Michileen.
“That’s what he says himself. But it’s not in the house a lad like him
ought to be stuck on a fine evening, but outside in the air, tearing
away.”
“‘A body’s will is his delight,’” says Michileen, reddening his pipe.
“One apart is Paraig, anyhow,” says Nora. “He’s the most contrary son
you ever saw. Times, three people wouldn’t watch him, and other times
you wouldn’t feel him in the house.”
Paraig came in at this, and no more was said on the question. He didn’t
steal away this time, but instead of that he sat down on the floor,
playing “_Fromsó Framsó_” with Maireen and Taimeen.
* * * * *
The dinner was on the table when Paraig came home from school the next
evening. He ate his share of stirabout and he drank his noggin of milk,
thankfully and with blessing. As soon as he had eaten and drunk, he took
his satchel of books and west with him into the room, as was his habit.
The mother didn’t let on that she was giving any heed to him. But, after
a couple of minutes, she opened the door of the room quietly, and stuck
the tip of her nose inside. Paraig didn’t notice her, but she had a view
of everything that was going on in the room.
It was a queer sight. Paraig was standing beside the table and he
dressed in the shirt again. Outside of this, and back over his
shoulders, he was fixing a red bodice of his mother’s, that she had
hanging on the wall. When he had this arranged properly, he took out the
biggest book he had in his satchel--the “Second Book” it was, I
believe--he opened it, and laid it before him on the table, propped
against the looking-glass.
It’s then began the antics in earnest. Paraig stood out opposite the
table, bent his knee, blessed himself, and began praying loudly. It’s
not well Nora was able to understand him, but, as she thought, he had
Latin and Gaelic mixed through other, and an odd word that wasn’t like
Latin or Gaelic. Once, it seemed to her, she heard the words “_Fromsó
Framsó_,” but she wasn’t sure. Whatever wonder was on Nora at this, it
was seven times greater the wonder was on her when she saw Paraig
genuflecting, beating his breast, kissing the table, letting on he was
reading Latin prayers out of the “Second Book,” and playing one trick
odder than another. She didn’t know rightly what he was up to, till he
turned round and said:
“_Dominus vobiscum!_”
“God save us!” says she to herself when she saw this. “He’s pretending
that he’s a priest and he reading Mass! That’s the Mass vestment he’s
wearing, and the little Gaelic book is the book of the Mass!”
It’s no exaggeration to say that Nora was scared. She came back to the
kitchen and sat before the fire. She didn’t know what she ought to do.
She was between two advices, which of them would be seemliest for
her--to put Paraig across her knee and give him a good whipping, or to
go on her two knees before him and beg his blessing!
“How do I know,” says she to herself, “that it’s not a terrible sin for
me to let him make a mimic of the priest like that? But how do I know,
after that, that it’s not a saint out of heaven I have in the house?
And, sure, it would be a dreadful sin to lay hand on a saint! May God
forgive it to me, it’s often I laid the track of my fingers on him
already! I don’t know either way. I’m in a strait, surely!” Nora didn’t
sleep a wink that night with putting this question through other.
The next morning, as soon as Paraig was cleared off to school, Nora put
the lock on the door, left the two young children under the care of
Michileen’s mother, and struck the road to Rossnageeragh. She didn’t
stop till she came to the parish priest’s house and told her story to
Father Ronan from start to finish. The priest only smiled, but Nora was
with him till she drew a promise from him that he’d take the road out to
her that evening. She whipped home then, satisfied.
The priest didn’t fail her. He struck in to her in the evening. Timely
enough, Paraig was in the room “reading Mass.”
“On your life, don’t speak, Father!” says Nora. “He’s within.”
The two stole over on their tiptoes to the room door. They looked
inside. Paraig was dressed in the shirt and bodice, exactly as he was
the day before that, and he praying piously. The priest stood a spell
looking at him.
At last my lad turned round, and setting his face towards the people, as
it would be:
“_Orate, fratres_,” says he, out loud.
While this was saying, he saw his mother and the priest in the door. He
reddened, and stood without a stir.
“Come here to me,” says Father Ronan.
Paraig came over timidly.
“What’s this you have going on?” says the priest.
“I was reading Mass, Father,” says Paraig. He said this much shyly, but
it was plain he didn’t think that he had done anything out of the
way--and, sure, it’s not much he had. But poor Nora was on a tremble
with fear.
“Don’t be too hard on him, Father,” says she. “He’s only young.”
The priest laid his hand lightly on the white head of the little lad,
and he spoke gently and kindly to him.
“You’re too young yet, Paraigeen,” says he, “to be a priest, and it’s
not granted to anyone but to God’s priest to say the Mass. But whisper
here to me. Would you like to be serving Mass on Sunday?”
Paraig’s eyes lit up and his cheek reddened again, not with shyness this
time but with sheer delight.
“_Ora_, I would, Father,” says he; “I’d like nothing at all better.”
“That will do,” says the priest. “I see you have some of the prayers
already.”
“But, Father, _a mhuirnín_”--says Nora, and stopped like that, suddenly.
“What’s on you now?” says the priest.
“Breeches nor brogues he hasn’t worn yet!” says she. “I think it early
to put breeches on him till--”
The priest burst out laughing.
“I never heard,” says he, “that there was call for breeches. We’ll put a
little cassock out over his coat, and I warrant it’ll fit him nicely. As
for shoes, we’ve a pair that Martin the Fisherman left behind him when
he went to Clifden. We’ll dress you right, Paraig, no fear,” says he.
And like that it was settled.
* * * * *
When the priest was gone, the mother stooped down and kissed her little
son.
“My love you are!” says she.
Going to sleep that night, the last words she said to herself were: “My
little son will be a priest! And how do I know,” says she, closing her
eyes, “how do I know that it’s not a bishop he might be by-and-by?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BARBARA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BARBARA
Barbara wasn’t too well-favoured, the best day she was. Anybody would
admit that much. The first cause of it,--she was purblind. You’d say, to
look at her, she was one-eyed. Brideen never gave in that she was,
however. Once when another little girl said, out of sheer spite on them
both, that Barbara had only “one blind little eye, like the tailor’s
cat,” Brideen said angrily that Barbara had her two eyes as good as
anybody, but it’s how she’d have one eye shut, for the one was enough
for her (let it be blind), to do her share of work. However it was, it
couldn’t be hidden that she was bald; and I declare a bald head isn’t a
nice thing in a young woman. Another thing, she was a dummy; or it would
be more correct for me to say, that she didn’t ever speak with anybody,
but with Brideen only. If Brideen told truth, she had a tasty tongue of
Irish, and her share of thoughts were the loveliest in the world. It’s
not well she could walk, for she was one-legged, and that one leg itself
broken. She had two legs on a time, but the dog ate one of them, and the
other was broken where she fell from the top of the dresser.
But who’s Barbara, say you, or who’s Brideen? Brideen is the little
girl, or, as she’d say herself, the little slip of a woman, that lives
in the house next the master’s,--on the left-hand side, I think, going
up the road. It’s likely you know her now? If you don’t, I can’t help
you. I never heard who her people were, and she herself said to me that
her father has ne’er a name but “Daddy.” As for Barbara,--well, it’s as
good for me to tell you her adventures and travels from start to finish.
THE ADVENTURES OF BARBARA HERE.
One day when Brideen’s mother got up, she gave their breakfasts to
Brideen and to her father, to the dog, to the little cat, to the calves,
to the hens, to the geese, to the ducks, and to the little robin
redbreast that would come to the door at breakfast-time every morning.
When she had that much done, she ate her own breakfast. Then she began
readying herself for the road.
Brideen was sitting on her own little stool without a word out of her,
but she putting the eyes through her mother. At long last she spoke:
“Is mama going from Brideen?”
“She’s not, _a stóir_. Mama will come again in the evening. She’s going
to Galway.”
“Is Brideen going there, too?”
“She’s not, _a chuid_. The road’s too long, and my little girl would be
tired. She’ll stay at home making sport for herself, like a good little
girl would. Won’t she stay?”
“She will.”
“She won’t run out on the street?”
“She won’t.”
“Daddy’ll come in at dinner-time, and ye’ll have a meal together. Give
mama a kiss, now.”
The kiss was given, and the mother was going. Brideen started up.
“Mama!”
“What is it _a rúin_?”
“Won’t you bring home a fairing to Brideen?”
“I will, _a chuid_. A pretty fairing.”
The mother went off, and Brideen remained contented at home. She sat
down on her little stool. The dog was curled before the fire, and he
snoring. Brideen woke him up, and put a whisper in his ear:
“Mama will bring home a fairing to Brideen!”
“Wuff!” says the dog, and went asleep to himself again. Brideen knew
that “Wuff!” was the same as “Good news!”
The little cat was sitting on the hearth. Brideen lifted it in her two
arms, rubbed its face to her cheeks, and put a whisper in its ear:
“Mama will bring home a fairing to Brideen!”
“Mee-ow!” says the little cat. Brideen knew that “Mee-ow!” was the same
as “Good news!”
She laid the little cat from her, and went about the house singing to
herself. She made a little song as follows:
“O little dog, and O little dog!
Sleep a while till my mama comes!
O little cat, and O little cat!
Be purring till she comes home!
O little dog, and O little cat!
At the fair O! my mama is,
But she’ll come again in the little evening O!
And she’ll bring home a fairing with her!”
She tried to teach this song to the dog, but it’s greater the wish the
dog had for sleep than for music. She tried to teach it to the little
cat, but the little cat thought its own purring sweeter. When her father
came in at midday, nothing would do her but to say this song to him, and
make him to learn it by heart.
The mother returned home before evening. The first word Brideen said
was:
“Did you bring the fairing with you, mama?”
“I did, _a chuisle_.”
“What did you bring with you?”
“Guess!” The mother was standing in the middle of the floor. She had her
bag laid on the floor, and her hands behind her.
“Sweets?”
“No!”
“A sugar cake?”
“No, _muise_! I have a sugar cake in my bag, but that’s not the
fairing.”
“A pair of stockings?” Brideen never wore shoes or stockings, and she
had been long coveting them.
“No, indeed! You’re too young for stockings a little while yet.”
“A prayer book?” There’s no need for me to say that Brideen wasn’t able
to read (for she hadn’t put in a day at school in her life), but she
thought she was. “A prayer book?” says she.
“Not at all!”
“What is it, then?”
“Look!”
The mother spread out her two hands, and what did she lay bare but a
little doll! A little wooden doll that was bald, and it purblind; but
its two cheeks were as red as a berry, and there was a smile on its
mouth. Anybody who’d have an affection for dolls, he would give
affection and love to it. Brideen’s eyes lit up with joy.
“_Ora_, isn’t it pretty! _Ara_, mama, heart, where did you get it? _Ora
ó_! I’ll have a child of my very own now,--a child of my very owneen
own! Brideen will have a child!”
She snatched the little doll, and she squeezed it to her heart. She
kissed its little bald head, and its two red cheeks. She kissed its
little mouth, and its little snub nose. Then she remembered herself,
raised her head, and says she to her mother:
“Kith!” (like that Brideen would say “Kiss.”)
The mother stooped down till the little girl kissed her. Then she must
kiss the little doll. The father came in at that moment, and he was made
do the same.
There wasn’t a thing making Brideen anxious that evening but what name
she’d christen the doll. Her mother praised “Molly” for it, and her
father thought the name “Peggy” would be apt. But none of these were
grand enough, it seemed to Brideen.
“Why was I called Brideen, daddy?” says she after supper.
“The old women said that you were like your uncle Padraic, and since we
couldn’t christen you ‘Padraic,’ you were christened ‘Brigid,’ as that,
we thought, was the thing nearest it.”
“Do you think is she here” (the doll), “like my uncle Padraic, daddy?”
“O, not like a bit. Your uncle Padraic is fair-haired,--and, I believe,
he has a beard on him now.”
“Who’s she like, then?”
“_Muise_, ’twould be hard to say, girl!--’twould be hard, that.”
Brideen meditated for a while. Her father was stripping her clothes from
her in front of the fire during this time, for it was time for her to be
going to sleep. When she was stripped, she went on her knees, put her
two little hands together, and she began like this:
“O Jesus Christ, bless us and save us! O Jesus Christ, bless daddy and
mama and Brideen, and keep us safe and well from accident, and from the
harm of the year, if it is the will of my Saviour. O God, bless my uncle
Padraic that’s now in America, and my Aunt Barbara--.” She stopped,
suddenly, and put a shout of joy out of her.
“I have it! I have it, daddy!” says she.
“What have you, love? Wait till you finish your share of prayers.”
“My Aunt Barbara! She’s like my Aunt Barbara!”
“Who’s like your Aunt Barbara?”
“The little doll! That’s the name I’ll give her! Barbara!”
The father let a great shout of laughter before he remembered that the
prayers weren’t finished. Brideen didn’t laugh, at all, but followed on
like this:
“O God, bless my Uncle Padaric that’s now in America, and my Aunt
Barbara, and (this is an addition she put to it herself), and bless my
own little Barbara, and keep her from mortal sin! Amen, O Lord!”
The father burst laughing again. Brideen looked at him, and wonder on
her.
“Brush off, now, and in into your bed with you!” says he, as soon as he
could speak for the laughing. “And don’t forget Barbara!” says he.
“Little fear!” West with her into the room, and into the bed with her
with a leap. Be sure she didn’t forget Barbara.
From that night out Brideen wouldn’t go to sleep, for gold nor for
silver, without Barbara being in the bed with her. She wouldn’t sit to
take food without Barbara sitting beside her. She wouldn’t go out making
fun to herself without Barbara being along with her. One Sunday that her
mother brought her with her to Mass, Brideen wasn’t satisfied till
Barbara was brought, too. A neighbour woman wouldn’t come in visiting,
but Barbara would be introduced to her. One day that the priest struck
in to them, Brideen asked him to give Barbara his blessing. He gave his
blessing to Brideen herself. She thought it was to the doll he gave it,
and she was full-satisfied.
Brideen settled a nice little parlour for Barbara on top of the dresser.
She heard that her Aunt Barbara had a parlour (in Uachtar Ard she was
living), and she thought that it wasn’t too much for Barbara to have a
parlour as good as anybody. My poor Barbara fell from the top of the
dresser one day, as I have told already, and one of her legs was broken.
It’s many a disaster over that happened her. Another day the dog grabbed
her, and was tearing her joint from joint till Brideen’s mother came to
help her. The one leg remained safe with the dog. She fell into the
river another time, and she had like to be drowned. It’s Brideen’s
father that came to her help this journey. Brideen herself was almost
drowned, and she trying to save her from the riverbank.
If Barbara wasn’t too well-favoured the first day she came, it stands to
nature it’s not better the appearance was on her after putting a year by
her. But ’twas all the same to Brideen whether she was well-favoured or
ill-favoured. She gave the love of her heart to her from the first
minute she laid an eye on her, and it’s increasing that love was from
day to day. Isn’t it the two of them used to have the fun when the
mother would leave the house to their care, times she’d be visiting in a
neighbour’s house! They would have the floor swept and the plates washed
before her, when she’d return. And isn’t it on the mother would be the
wonder, _mor ’eadh_!
“Is it Brideen cleaned the floor for her mama?” she’d say.
“Brideen and Barbara,” the little girl would say.
“_Muise_, I don’t know what I’d do, if it weren’t for the pair of you!”
the mother would say. And isn’t it on Brideen would be the delight and
the pride!
And the long days of summer they would put from them on the hillside,
among the fern and flowers!--Brideen gathering daisies and
fairy-thimbles and buttercups, and Barbara reckoning them for her (so
she’d say); Brideen forever talking and telling tales that a human being
(not to say a little doll) never heard the likes of before or since, and
Barbara listening to her; it must be she’d be listening attentively, for
there wouldn’t come a word out of her mouth.
It’s my opinion that there wasn’t a little girl in Connacht, or if I
might say it, in the Continent of Europe, that was more contented and
happy-like, than Brideen was those days; and, I declare, there wasn’t a
little doll under the hollow of the sun that was more contented and
happy-like than Barbara.
That’s how it stood till Niamh Goldy-Head came.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
Niamh Goldy-Head was a native of Dublin. A lady that came to Gortmore
learning Irish promised before leaving that she’d send some valuable to
Brideen. And, sure, she did. One day, about a week after her departure,
Bartly the Postman walked in into the middle of the kitchen and laid a
big box on the floor.
“For you, young woman,” says he to Brideen.
“_Ara_, what’s in it, Bartly?”
“How do I know? A fairy, maybe.”
“_O bhó!_ Where did you get it?”
“From a little green maneen, with a long blue beard on him, a red cap on
his nob, and he riding a hare.”
“_Ora_, daddy! And what did he say to you, Bartly?”
“Devil a thing did he say only, ‘Give this to Brideen, and my blessing,’
and off with him while you’d be winking.”
I am doubtful if this story of Bartly’s was all true, but Brideen
believed every word of it. She called to her mother, where she was
inside in the room tidying the place after the breakfast.
“Mama, mama, a big box for Brideen! A little green maneen, with a long
blue beard on him, that gave it to Bartly the Postman!”
The mother came out and Bartly gathered off.
“Mameen, mameen, open the box quick! Bartly thinks it’s maybe a fairy is
in it! Hurry, mameen, or how do we know he won’t be smothered inside in
the box?”
The mother cut the string. She tore the paper from the box. She lifted
the lid. What should be in it, lying nice and comfortably in the box,
like a child would be in a cradle, but the grandest and the
beautifullest doll that eye ever saw! There was yellow-golden hair on
it, and it falling in ringleted tresses over its breast and over its
shoulders. There was the blush of the rose on its cheek. It’s the
likeness I’d compare its little mouth to--two rowanberries; and ’twas
like pearls its teeth were. Its eyes were closed. There was a bright
suit of silk covering its body, and a red mantle of satin over that
outside. There was a glittering necklace of noble stones about its
throat, and, as a top on all the wonders, there was a royal crown on its
head.
“A Queen!” says Brideen in a whisper, for there was a kind of dread on
her before this glorious fairy. “A Queen from Tir-na-nOg! Look, mama,
she’s asleep. Do you think will she waken?”
“Take her in your hand,” says the mother.
The little girl stretched out her two hands timidly, laid them
reverently on the wonderful doll, and at last lifted it out of the box.
No sooner did she take it than the doll opened its eyes, and said in a
sweet, weeny voice:
“Mam--a!”
“God bless us!” says the mother, making the sign of the cross on
herself, “she can talk!”
There was a queer edge in Brideen’s eyes, and there was a queer light in
her features. But I don’t think she was half as scared as the mother
was. Children do be expecting wonders always, and when a wonderful thing
happens it doesn’t put as much astonishment on them as it does on grown
people.
“Why wouldn’t she talk?” says Brideen. “Can’t Barbara talk? But it’s
sweeter entirely this voice than Barbara’s voice.”
My grief, you are, Barbara! Where were you all this time? Lying on the
floor where you fell from Brideen’s hand when Bartly came in. I don’t
know did you hear these words from your friend’s mouth. If you did, it’s
surely they’d go like a stitch through your heart.
Brideen continued speaking. She spoke quickly, her two eyes dancing in
her head:
“A Queen this is,” says she. “A fairy Queen! Look at the fine suit she’s
wearing! Look at the mantle of satin is on her! Look at the beautiful
crown she has! She’s like yon Queen that Stephen of the Stories was
discoursing about the other night,--the Queen that came over sea from
Tir-na-nOg riding on the white steed. What’s the name that was on that
Queen, mama?”
“Niamh of the Golden Head.”
“This is Niamh Goldy-Head!” says the little girl. “I’ll show her to
Stephen the first other time he comes! Isn’t it he will be glad to see
her, mama? He was angry the other night when my daddy said there are no
fairies at all in it. I knew my daddy was only joking.”
I wouldn’t like to say that Niamh Goldy-Head was a fairy, as Brideen
thought, but I’m sure there was some magic to do with her; and I’m
full-sure that Brideen herself was under a spell from the moment she
came into the house. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t leave Barbara lying by
herself on the floor through the evening, without saying a word to her,
or even remembering her, till sleep-time; nor would she go to sleep
without bringing Barbara into the bed with her, as was her habit. It’s
with trouble you’d believe it, but it’s the young Queen that slept along
with Brideen that night, instead of the faithful little companion that
used sleep with her every night for a year.
Barbara remained lying on the floor, till Brideen’s mother found her,
and lifted and put her on top of the dresser where her own little
parlour was. Barbara spent that night on the top of the dresser. I
didn’t hear that Brideen or her mother or her father noticed any
lamenting from the kitchen in the middle of the night, and, to say
truth, I don’t think that Barbara shed a tear. But it’s certain she was
sad enough, lying up yonder by herself, without her friend’s arm about
her, without the heat of her friend’s body warming her, without man or
mortal near her, without hearing a sound but the faint, truly-lonesome
sounds that do be heard in a house in the dead time of the night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
It’s sitting or lying on the top of the dresser that Barbara spent the
greater part of the next quarter. ’Twas seldom Brideen used speak to
her; and when she would speak, she’d only say, “Be a good girl, Barbara.
You see I’m busy. I must give attention to Niamh Goldy-Head. She’s a
Queen, you know, and she must be attended well.” Brideen was getting
older now (I believe she was five years past, or, maybe, five and
a-half), and she was rising out of a share of the habits she learned at
the start of her babyhood. It’s not “Brideen” she’d call herself now,
for she knew the meaning that was in the little word “I,” and in those
little tails “am” and “am not” when they’re put after “I.” She knew,
too, that it’s great the respect and the honour due to a Queen, over
what is due to a poor, little creatureen like Barbara.
I’m afraid Barbara didn’t understand this story at all. She was only a
little wooden doll, and, sure, ’twould be hard for its likes to
understand the heart of a girl. It was plain to her that she was cast to
one side. It’s Niamh Goldy-Head would sleep along with Brideen now; it’s
Niamh Goldy-Head would sit beside her at meal-time; it’s Niamh
Goldy-Head would go out on the hill, foot to foot with her, that would
lie with her among the fern, and would go with her gathering daisies and
fairy-thimbles. It’s Niamh Goldy-Head she’d press to her breast. It’s
Niamh Goldy-Head she’d kiss. Some other body to be in the place you’d
be, some other body to be walking with the person you’d walk with, some
other body to be kissing the mouth you’d long to kiss,--that’s the
greatest pain is to be suffered in this world; and that’s the pain was
in Barbara’s heart now, torturing her from morning till night, and
tormenting her from night till morning.
I suppose it’ll be said to me that it’s not possible for these thoughts,
or any other thoughts, to be in Barbara’s heart, for wasn’t she only a
wooden toy, without feeling, without mind, without understanding,
without strength? My answer to anybody who’d speak like this to me would
be:--_How do we know?_ How do you or I know that dolls, and wooden toys,
and the tree, and the hill, and the river, and the waterfall, and the
little blossoms of the field, and the little stones of the strand
haven’t their own feeling, and mind, and understanding, and
guidance?--aye, and the hundred other things we see about us? I don’t
say they have; but ’twould be daring for me or for anybody else to say
that they haven’t. The children think they have; and it’s my opinion
that the children are more discerning in things of this sort than you or
I.
One day that Barbara was sitting up lonesomely by herself in her
parlour, Brideen and Niamh Goldy-Head were in earnest conversation by
the fireside; or, I ought to say, Brideen was in earnest conversation
with herself, and Niamh listening to her; for nobody ever heard a word
out of the Queen’s mouth but only “Mam-a.” Brideen’s mother was outside
the door washing. The father was setting potatoes in the garden. There
only remained in the house Brideen and the two dolls.
It’s like the little girl was tired, for she’d spent the morning washing
(she’d wash the Queen’s sheet and blanket every week). It was short till
sleep came on her. It was short, after that, till she dropped her head
on her breast and she was in deep slumber. I don’t rightly understand
what happened after that, but, by all accounts, Brideen was falling down
and down, till she was stretched on the hearth-flag within the nearness
of an inch to the fire. She didn’t waken, for she was sound asleep. It’s
like that Niamh Goldy-Head was asleep, too, but, however, or whatever,
the story is, she didn’t stir. There wasn’t a soul in the house to
protect the darling little child from the death that was faring on her.
Nobody knew her to be in peril, but only God and--Barbara.
The mother was working without, and she not thinking that death was that
near the child of her heart. She was turning a tune to herself, and
lifting it finely, when she heard a “plop”--a sound as if something was
falling on the floor.
“What’s that, now?” says she to herself. “Something that fell from the
wall, it’s a chance. It can’t be that Brideen meddled with it?”
In with her in a hurry. It’s barely the life didn’t drop out of her,
with the dint of fright. And what wonder? Her darling child was
stretched on the hearth, and her little coateen blazing in the fire!
The mother rushed to her across the kitchen, lifted her in her arms, and
pulled the coat from her. She only just saved her. If she’d waited
another little half-moment, she was too late.
Brideen was awake now, and her two arms about the neck of her mother.
She was trembling with the dint of fear, and, sure enough, crying,
though it isn’t too well she understood the story yet. Her mother was
“smothering her with kisses and drowning her with tears.”
“What happened me, mama? I was dreaming. I felt hot, and I thought I was
going up, up in the sky, and that the sun was burning me? What happened
me?”
“It’s the will of God that my _stóirín_ wasn’t burnt,--not with the sun,
but with the fire. O, Brideen, your mother’s little pet, what would I do
if they’d kill you on me? What would your father do? ’Twas God spoke to
me coming in that minute!--I don’t know what sort of noise I heard? If
it weren’t for that, I mightn’t have come in at all.”
She looked round her. Everything was in its own place on the table, and
on the walls, and on the dresser,--but stay! In front of the dresser she
took notice of a thing on the floor. What was it? A little body without
a head--a doll’s body.
“Barbara fallen from the dresser again,” says the mother. “My
conscience, it’s she saved your life to you, Brideen.”
“Not falling she did it at all!” says the little girl, “but it’s how she
saw I was in danger, and she threw a leap from the top of the dresser to
save me. O, poor Barbara, you gave your life for my sake!”
She went on her knees, lifted the little corpse of the doll, and kissed
it softly and fondly.
“Mama,” says she, sadly, “since Niamh Goldy-Head came, I’m afraid I
forgot poor Barbara, and it’s greater the liking I put in Niamh
Goldy-Head than in her; and see, it’s she was most true to me in the
end. And she’s dead now on me, and I won’t be able to speak with her
ever again, nor to say to her that I’d rather her a thousand
times,--aye, a hundred thousand times--than Niamh.”
“It’s not dead she is at all,” says the mother, “but hurted. Your father
will put the head on her again when he comes in.”
“If I’d fall from the top of the dresser, mama, and lose my head, would
he be able to put it on me again?”
“He wouldn’t. But you’re not the same as Barbara.”
“I am the same. She’s dead. Don’t you see she’s not moving or speaking?”
The mother had to admit this much.
Nothing would convince Brideen that Barbara wasn’t killed, and that it
wasn’t to save her she gave her life. I myself wouldn’t say she was
right, but I wouldn’t say she wasn’t. I can only say what I said before:
How do I know? How do you know?
Barbara was buried that evening on the side of the hill in the place
where she and Brideen spent those long days of summer among the fern and
the flowers. There are fairy-thimbles growing at the head of the grave,
and daisies and buttercups plentifully about it.
Before going to sleep that night, Brideen called over to her mother.
“Do you think, mama,” says she, “will I see Barbara in heaven?”
“Maybe, by the King of Glory, you might,” says the mother.
“Do you think will I, daddy?” says she to her father.
“I know well you will,” says the father.
* * * * *
Those were the Adventures and Tragic Fate of Barbara up to that time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EOINEEN OF THE BIRDS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EOINEEN OF THE BIRDS
A conversation that took place between Eoineen of the Birds and his
mother, one evening of spring, before the going under of the sun. The
song-thrush and the yellow-bunting that heard it, and (as I think) told
it to my friends the swallows. The swallows that told the story to me.
“Come on in, pet. It’s rising cold.”
“I can’t stir a while yet, little mother. I’m waiting for the swallows.”
“For what, little son?”
“The swallows. I’m thinking they’ll be here this night.”
Eoineen was high on the big rock that was close to the gable of the
house, he settled nicely on top of it, and the white back of his head
against the foot of the ash-tree that was sheltering him. He had his
head raised, and he looking from him southward. His mother looked up at
him. It seemed to her that his share of hair was yellow gold where the
sun was burning on his head.
“And where are they coming from, child?”
“From the Southern World--the place it does be summer always. I’m
expecting them for a week.”
“And how do you know that it’s this night they’ll come?”
“I don’t know, only thinking it. ’Twould be time for them to be here
some day now. I mind that it was this day surely they came last year. I
was coming up from the well when I heard their twittering--a sweet,
joyful twittering as they’d be saying: ‘We’ve come to you again,
Eoineen! News to you from the Southern World!’--and then one of them
flew past me, rubbing his wing to my cheek.”
There’s no need to say that this talk put great wonder on the mother.
Eoineen never spoke to her like that before. She knew that he put a
great wish in the birds, and that it’s many an hour he used spend in the
wood or by the strand-side, “talking to them,” as he’d say. But she
didn’t understand why there should be that great a wish on him to see
the swallows coming again. She knew by his face, as well as by the words
of his mouth, that he was forever thinking on some thing that was making
him anxious. And there came unrest on the woman over it, a thing that’s
no wonder. “Sure, it’s queer talk from a child,” says she in her own
mind. She didn’t speak a breath aloud, however, but she listening to
each word that came out of his mouth.
“I’m very lonely since they left me in the harvest,” says the little boy
again, like one that would be talking to himself. “They had that much to
say to me. They’re not the same as the song-thrush or the yellow-bunting
that do spend the best part of their lives by the ditch-side in the
garden. They do have wonderful stories to tell about the lands where it
does be summer always, and about the wild seas where the ships are
drowned, and about the lime-bright cities where the kings do be always
living. It’s long, long the road from the Southern World to this
country. They see everything coming over, and they don’t forget
anything. I think long, wanting them.”
“Come in, white love, and go to sleep. You’ll be perished with the cold
if you stay out any longer.”
“I’ll go in presently, little mother. I wouldn’t like them to come, and
I not to be here to give them welcome. They would be wondering.”
The mother saw that it was no good to be at him. She went in, troubled.
She cleaned the table and the chairs. She washed the vessels and the
dishes. She took the brush, and she brushed the floor. She scoured the
kettle and the big pot. She trimmed the lamp, and hung it on the wall.
She put more turf on the fire. She did a hundred other things that she
needn’t have done. Then she sat before the fire, thinking to herself.
The “piper of the ashes” (the cricket) came out, and started on his
heartsome tune. The mother stayed by the hearthside, pondering. The
little boy stayed on his airy seat, watching. The cows came home from
the pasture. The hen called to her her chickens. The blackbird and the
wren, and the other little people of the wood went to sleep. The buzzing
of the flies was stopped, and the bleating of the lambs. The sun sank
slowly till it was close to the bottom of the sky, till it was exactly
on the bottom of the sky, till it was under the bottom of the sky. A
cold wind blew from the east. The darkness spread on the earth. At last
Eoineen came in.
“I fear they won’t come this night,” says he. “Maybe, with God’s help,
they might come to-morrow.”
* * * * *
The morning of the next day came. Eoineen was up early, and he watching
out from the top of the rock. The middle of day came. The end of day
came. The night came. But, my grief! the swallows did not come.
“Maybe we might see them here to-morrow,” says Eoineen, and he coming in
sadly that night.
But they didn’t see them. Nor did they see them the day after that, nor
the day after that again. And it’s what Eoineen would say every night
and he coming in:
“Maybe they might be with us to-morrow.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
There came a delightful evening in the end of April. The air was clear
and cool after a shower of rain. There was a wonderful light in the
western heavens. The birds sang a strain of music in the wood. The waves
were chanting a poem on the strand. But loneliness was on the heart of
the boy and he waiting for the swallows.
There was heard, suddenly, a sound that hadn’t been heard in that place
for more than a half-year. A little, tiny sound. A faint,
truly-melodious sound. A pert, joyous twittering, and it unlike any
other twittering that comes from the mouth of a bird. With fiery
swiftness a small black body drove from the south. It flying high in the
air. Two broad, strong wings on it. The shaping of a fork on its tail.
It cutting the way before it, like an arrow shot from a bow. It swooped
suddenly, it turned, rose again, swooped and turned again. Then it made
straight for Eoineen, it speaking at the top of its voice, till it lay
and nestled in the breast of the little boy after its long journey from
the Southern World.
“O, my love, my love you are!” says Eoineen, taking it in his two hands
and kissing it on the little black head. “Welcome to me from the strange
countries! Are you tired after your lonely journey over lands and over
seas? _Ora_, my thousand, thousand loves you are, beautiful little
messenger from the country where it does be summer always! Where are
your companions from you? Or what happened you on the road, or why
didn’t ye come before this?”
While he was speaking like this with the swallow, kissing it again and
yet again, and rubbing his hand lovingly over its blue-black wings, its
little red throat and its bright, feathered breast, another little bird
sailed from the south and alighted beside them. The two birds rose in
the air then, and it is the first other place they lay, in their own
little nest that was hidden in the ivy that was growing thickly on the
walls of the house.
“They are found at last, little mother!” says Eoineen, and he running in
joyfully. “The swallows are found at last! A pair came this night--the
pair who have their nest over my window. The others will be with us
to-morrow.”
The mother stooped and drew him to her. Then she put a prayer to God in
a whisper, giving thanks to Him for sending the swallows to them. The
flame that was in the eyes of the boy, it would put delight on the heart
of any mother at all.
It was sound the sleep of Eoineen that night.
* * * * *
The swallows came one after another now--singly at first, in pairs then,
and at last in little flocks. Isn’t it they were glad when they saw the
old place again! The little wood and the brook running through it; the
white, sandy beach; the ash-trees that were close to the house; the
house itself and the old nests exactly as they left them half a year
before that. There was no change on anything but only on the little boy.
He was quieter and gentler than he used to be. He was oftener sitting
than running with himself about the fields, as was his habit before
that. He wasn’t heard laughing or singing as often as he used be heard.
If the swallows took notice of this much--and I wouldn’t say they
didn’t--it’s certain that they were sorry for him.
The summer went by. It was seldom Eoineen would stir out on the street,
but he sitting contentedly on the top of the rock, looking at the
swallows and listening to their twittering. He’d spend the hours like
this. ’Twas often he was there from early morning till there came
“_tráthnóna gréine buidhe_,”--the evening of the yellow sun; and going
within every night he’d have a great lot of stories, beautiful,
wonderful stories, to tell to his mother. When she’d question him about
these stories, he’d always say to her that it’s from the swallows he’d
get them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III.
The priest came in the evening.
“How is Eoineen of the Birds this weather, Eibhlin?” says he. (The other
boys had nicknamed him “Eoineen of the Birds” on account of the love he
had for the birds.)
“_Muise_, Father, he wasn’t as well for many a long day as he is since
the summer came. There’s a blush in his cheek I never saw in it before.”
The priest looked sharply at her. He had noticed that blush for a time,
and if he did, it didn’t deceive him. Other people had noticed it, too,
and if they did, it didn’t deceive them. But it was plain it deceived
the mother. There were tears in the priest’s eyes, but Eibhlin was
blowing the fire, and she didn’t see them. There was a stoppage in his
voice when he spoke again, but the mother didn’t notice it.
“Where’s Eoineen now, Eibhlin?”
“He’s sitting on the rock outside, ‘talking to the swallows,’ as himself
says. It’s wonderful the affection he has for those little birds. Do you
know, Father, what he said to me the other day?”
“I don’t know, Eibhlin.”
“He was saying that it’s short now till the swallows would be departing
from us again, and says he to me, suddenly, ‘What would you do, little
mother,’ says he, ‘if I’d steal away from you with the swallows?’”
“And what did you say, Eibhlin?”
“I said to him to brush out with him, and not be bothering me. But I’m
thinking ever since on the thing he said, and it’s troubling me. Wasn’t
it a queer thought for him, Father,--he going with the swallows?”
“It’s many a queer thought comes into the heart of a child,” says the
priest. And he went out the door, without saying another word.
* * * * *
“Dreaming, as usual, Eoineen?”
“No, Father. I’m talking to the swallows.”
“Talking to them?”
“Aye, Father. We do be talking together always.”
“And whisper. What do ye be saying to one another?”
“We do be talking about the countries far away, where it does be summer
always, and about the wild seas where the ships do be drowned, and about
the lime-bright cities where the kings do be always living.”
The wonder of his heart came on the priest, as it came on the mother
before that.
“It’s you do be discoursing on these things, and they listening to you,
it’s like?”
“No, Father. They, mostly, that do be talking, and I listening to them.”
“And do you understand their share of talk, Eoineen?”
“Aye, Father. Don’t you understand it?”
“Not too well I understand it. Make room for me on the rock there, and
I’ll sit a while till you explain to me what they do be saying.”
Up with the priest on the rock, and he sat beside the little boy. He put
an arm about his neck, and began taking talk out of him.
“Tell me what the swallows do be saying to you, Eoineen.”
“It’s many a thing they do be saying to me. It’s many a fine story they
do tell to me. Did you see that little bird that went past just now,
Father?”
“I did.”
“That’s the cleverest storyteller of them all. That one’s nest is under
the ivy that’s growing over the window of my room. And she has another
nest in the Southern World--herself and her mate.”
“Has she, Eoineen?”
“Aye--another beautiful little nest thousands and thousands of miles
from this. Isn’t it a queer story, Father?--to say that the little
swallow has two houses, and we having one only?”
“It’s queer, indeed. And what sort is the country she has this other
house in?”
“When I shut my eyes I see a lonely, awful country. I see it now,
Father! A lonely, terrible country. There’s neither mountain, nor hill,
nor valley in it, but it a great, level, sandy plain. There’s neither
wood, nor grass, nor growth in it, but the earth as bare as the heart of
your palm. Sand entirely. Sand under your feet. Sand on every side of
you. The sun scorching over your head. Without a cloud at all to be seen
in the sky. It very hot. Here and there there’s a little grassy spot, as
it would be a little island in the middle of the sea. A couple of high
trees growing on each spot of them. They sheltered from wind and sun. I
see on one of these islands a high cliff. A terrible big cliff. There’s
a cleft in the cliff, and in the cleft there’s a little swallow’s nest.
That’s the nest of my little swallow.”
“Who told you this, Eoineen?”
“The swallow. She spends half of her life in that country, herself and
her mate. Isn’t it the grand life they have on that lonely little island
in the middle of the desert! There does be neither cold nor wet in it,
frost nor snow, but it summer always.... And after that, Father, they
don’t forget their other little nest here in Ireland, nor the wood, nor
the brook, nor the ash-trees, nor me, nor my mother. Every year in the
spring they hear, as it would be, a whispering in their ears telling
them that the woods are in leaf in Ireland, and that the sun is shining
on the bawn-fields, and that the lambs are bleating, and I waiting for
them. And they bid farewell to their dwelling in the strange country,
and they go before them, and they make neither stop nor stay till they
see the tops of the ash-trees from them, and till they hear the voice of
the river and the bleating of the lambs.”
The priest was listening attentively.
“O!--and isn’t it wonderful the journey they do have from the Southern
World! They leave the big sandy plain behind them, and the high, bald
mountains that are on its border, and they go before them till they come
to the great sea. Out with them over the sea, flying always, always,
without weariness, without growing weak. They see below them the
mighty-swelling waves, and the ships ploughing the ocean, and the white
sails, and seagulls, and the ‘black hags of the sea’ (cormorants), and
other wonders that I couldn’t remember. And times, there rise wind and
storm, and they see the ships drowning and the waves rising on top of
each other; and themselves, the creatures, do be beaten with the wind,
and blinded with the rain and with the salt water, till they make out
the land at last. A while to them then going before them, and they
looking on grassy parks, and on green-topped woods, and on high-headed
reeks, and on broad lakes, and on beautiful rivers, and on fine cities,
as they were wonderful pictures, and they looking on them down from
them. They see people at work. They hear cattle lowing, and children
laughing, and bells ringing. But they don’t stop, but forever going till
they come to the brink of the sea again, and no rest to them then till
they strike the country of Ireland.”
Eoineen continued speaking like this for a long time, the priest
listening to every word he said. They were chatting till the darkness
fell, and till the mother called Eoineen in. The priest went home
pondering to himself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
August and September went. October was half out. As the days were
getting shorter, Eoineen was rising sadder. ’Twas seldom he’d speak to
his mother now, but every night before going to sleep he’d kiss her
fondly and tenderly, and he’d say:
“Call me early in the morning, little mother. It’s little time I have
now. They’ll be departing without much delay.”
A beautiful day brightened in the middle of the month. Early in the
morning, Eoineen took notice that the swallows were crowding together on
the top of the house. He didn’t stir from his seat the length of that
day. Coming in in the evening, says he to his mother:
“They’ll be departing to-morrow.”
“How do you know, white love?”
“They told me to-day.... Little mother,” says he again, after a spell of
silence.
“What is it, little child?”
“I can’t stay here when they’re gone. I must go along with them ... to
the country where it does be summer always. You wouldn’t be lonely if
I’d go?”
“O! treasure, my thousand treasures, don’t speak to me like that!” says
the mother, taking him and squeezing him to her heart. “You’re not to be
stolen from me! Sure, you wouldn’t leave your little mother, and go
after the swallows?”
Eoineen didn’t say a word, but to kiss her again and again.
* * * * *
Another day brightened. The little, wee boy was up early. From the start
of day hundreds of swallows were gathered together on the ridge of the
house. From time to time one or two of them would go off and they’d
return again, as if they’d be considering the weather. At last a pair
went off and they didn’t return. Another pair went off. The third pair
went. They were going one after another then, till there didn’t remain
but one little flock only on the horn of the house. The pair that came
first on yon evening of spring six months before that were in this
little flock. It’s like they were loath to leave the place.
Eoineen was watching them from the rock. His mother was standing beside
him.
The little flock of birds rose in the air, and they faced the Southern
World. Going over the top of the wood a pair turned back,--the pair
whose nest was over the window. Down with them from the sky, making on
Eoineen. Over with them then, they flying close to the ground. Their
wings rubbed a cheek of the little boy, and they sweeping past him. Up
with them in the air again, they speaking sorrowfully, and off for ever
with them after the other crowd.
“Mother,” says Eoineen, “they’re calling me. ‘Come to the country where
the sun does be shining always,--come, Eoineen, over the wild seas to
the Country of Light,--come, Eoineen of the Birds!’ I can’t deny them. A
blessing with you, little mother,--my thousand, thousand blessings to
you, little mother of my heart. I’m going from you ... over the wild
seas ... to the country where it does be summer always.”
He let his head back on his mother’s shoulder and he put a sigh out of
him. There was heard the crying of a woman in that lonely place--the
crying of a mother keening her child. Eoineen was departed along with
the swallows.
* * * * *
Autumn and winter went by and the spring was at hand again. The woods
were in leaf, and the lambs bleating, and the sun shining on the
bawn-fields. One glorious evening in April the swallows came. There was
a wonderful light at the bottom of the sky in the west, as it was a year
from that time. The birds sang a strain of music in the wood. The waves
chanted a poem on the strand. But there was no little white-haired boy,
sitting on the top of the rock under the shadow of the ash-trees. Inside
in the house there was a solitary woman, weeping by the fire.
“... And, darling little son,” says she, “I see the swallows here again,
but I’ll never, never see you here.”
The swallows heard her, and they going past the door. I don’t know did
Eoineen hear her, as he was thousands of miles away ... in the country
where it does be summer always.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEMS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LULLABY OF A WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Little gold head, my house’s candle,
You will guide all wayfarers that walk this mountain.
Little soft mouth that my breast has known,
Mary will kiss you as she passes.
Little round cheek, O smoother than satin,
Jesus will lay His hand on you.
Mary’s kiss on my baby’s mouth,
Christ’s little hand on my darling’s cheek!
House, be still, and ye little grey mice,
Lie close to-night in your hidden lairs.
Moths on the window, fold your wings,
Little black chafers, silence your humming.
Plover and curlew, fly not over my house,
Do not speak, wild barnacle, passing over this mountain.
Things of the mountain that wake in the night-time,
Do not stir to-night till the daylight whitens!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAIN KEENS HER SON
Grief on the death, it has blackened my heart:
It has snatched my love and left me desolate,
Without friend or companion under the roof of my house
But this sorrow in the midst of me, and I keening.
As I walked the mountain in the evening
The birds spoke to me sorrowfully,
The sweet snipe spoke and the voiceful curlew
Relating to me that my darling was dead.
I called to you and your voice I heard not,
I called again and I got no answer,
I kissed your mouth, and O God how cold it was!
Ah, cold is your bed in the lonely churchyard.
O green-sodded grave in which my child is,
Little narrow grave, since you are his bed,
My blessing on you, and thousands of blessings
On the green sods that are over my treasure.
Grief on the death, it cannot be denied,
It lays low, green and withered together,--
And O gentle little son, what tortures me is
That your fair body should be making clay!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
O LITTLE BIRD
(A sparrow which I found dead on my doorstep on a day of winter.)
O little bird!
Cold to me thy lying on the flag:
Bird, that never had an evil thought,
Pitiful the coming of death to thee!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHY DO YE TORTURE ME?
Why are ye torturing me, O desires of my heart?
Torturing me and paining me by day and by night?
Hunting me as a poor deer would be hunted on a hill,
A poor long-wearied deer with the hound-pack after him?
There’s no ease to my paining in the loneliness of the hills,
But the cry of the hunters terrifically to be heard,
The cry of my desires haunting me without respite,--
O ravening hounds, long is your run!
No satisfying can come to my desires while I live,
For the satisfaction I desired yesterday is no satisfaction,
And the hound-pack is the greedier of the satisfaction it has got,--
And forever I shall not sleep till I sleep in the grave.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LITTLE LAD OF THE TRICKS
Little lad of the tricks
Full well I know
That you have been in mischief:
Confess your fault truly.
I forgive you, child
Of the soft red mouth:
I will not condemn anyone
For a sin not understood.
Raise your comely head
Till I kiss your mouth:
If either of us is the better of that
I am the better of it.
There is a fragrance in your kiss
That I have not found yet
In the kisses of women
Or in the honey of their bodies.
Lad of the grey eyes,
That flush in thy cheek
Would be white with dread of me
Could you read my secrets.
He who has my secrets
Is not fit to touch you:
Is not that a pitiful thing,
Little lad of the tricks?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
O LOVELY HEAD
O lovely head of the woman that I loved,
In the middle of the night I remember thee:
But reality returns with the sun’s whitening,
Alas, that the slender worm gnaws thee to-night.
Beloved voice, that wast low and beautiful,
Is it true that I heard thee in my slumbers!
Or is the knowledge true that tortures me?
My grief, the tomb hath no sound or voice?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONG TO ME THY COMING
Long to me thy coming,
Old henchman of God,
O friend of all friends,
To free me from my pain.
O syllable on the wind,
O footfall not heavy,
O hand in the dark,
Your coming is long to me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A RANN I MADE
A rann I made within my heart
To the rider, to the high king,
A rann I made to my love,
To the king of kings, ancient death.
Brighter to me than light of day
The dark of thy house, tho’ black clay;
Sweeter to me than the music of trumpets
The quiet of thy house and its eternal silence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO A BELOVED CHILD
Laughing mouth, what tortures me is
That thou shalt be weeping;
Lovely face, it is my pity
That thy brightness shall grow grey.
Noble head, thou art proud,
But thou shalt bow with sorrow;
And it is a pitiful thing I forbode for thee
Whenever I kiss thee.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I HAVE NOT GARNERED GOLD
I have not garnered gold;
The fame I found hath perished;
In love I got but grief
That withered my life.
Of riches or of store
I shall not leave behind me
(Yet I deem it, O God, sufficient)
But my name in the heart of a child.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I AM IRELAND
I am Ireland:
I am older than the Old Woman of Beare.
Great my glory:
I that bore Cuchulainn the valiant.
Great my shame:
My own children that sold their mother.
I am Ireland:
I am lonelier than the Old Woman of Beare.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RENUNCIATION
Naked I saw thee,
O beauty of beauty,
And I blinded my eyes
For fear I should fail.
I heard thy music,
O melody of melody,
And I closed my ears
For fear I should falter.
I tasted thy mouth,
O sweetness of sweetness,
And I hardened my heart
For fear of my slaying.
I blinded my eyes,
And I closed my ears,
I hardened my heart
And I smothered my desire.
I turned my back
On the vision I had shaped,
And to this road before me
I turned my face.
I have turned my face
To this road before me,
To the deed that I see
And the death I shall die.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RANN OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE
Young Iosa plays with me every day,
_(With an óró and an iaró)_
Tig and Pookeen and Hide-in-the-Hay,
_(With an óró and an iaró)_
We race in the rivers with otters grey,
We climb the tall trees where red squirrels play,
We watch the wee lady-bird fly far away.
_(With an óró and an iaró and an úmbó éró!)_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A SONG FOR MARY MAGDALENE
O woman of the gleaming hair,
(Wild hair that won men’s gaze to thee)
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the _shuiler_ Christ is calling thee.
O woman of the snowy side,
Many a lover hath lain with thee,
Yet left thee sad at the morning tide,
But thy lover Christ shall comfort thee.
O woman with the wild thing’s heart,
Old sin hath set a snare for thee:
In the forest ways forspent thou art
But the hunter Christ shall pity thee.
O woman spendthrift of thyself,
Spendthrift of all the love in thee,
Sold unto sin for little pelf,
The captain Christ shall ransom thee.
O woman that no lover’s kiss
(Tho’ many a kiss was given thee)
Could slake thy love, is it not for this
The hero Christ shall die for thee?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHRIST’S COMING
I have made my heart clean to-night
As a woman might clean her house
Ere her lover come to visit her:
O Lover, pass not by!
I have opened the door of my heart
Like a man that would make a feast
For his son’s coming home from afar:
Lovely Thy coming, O Son!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON THE STRAND OF HOWTH
On the strand of Howth
Breaks a sounding wave;
A lone sea-gull screams
Above the bay.
In the middle of the meadow
Beside Glasnevin
The corncrake speaks
All night long.
There is minstrelsy of birds
In Glenasmole,
The blackbird and thrush
Chanting music.
There is shining of sun
On the side of Slieverua,
And the wind blowing
Down over its brow.
On the harbour of Dunleary
Are boat and ship
With sails set
Ploughing the waves.
Here in Ireland,
Am I, my brother,
And you far from me
In gallant Paris,
I beholding
Hill and harbour,
The strand of Howth
And Slieverua’s side,
And you victorious
In mighty Paris
Of the limewhite palaces
And the surging hosts;
And what I ask
Of you, beloved,
Far away
Is to think at times
Of the corncrake’s tune
Beside Glasnevin
In the middle of the meadow,
Speaking in the night;
Of the voice of the birds
In Glenasmole
Happily, with melody,
Chanting music;
Of the strand of Howth
Where a wave breaks,
And the harbour of Dunleary,
Where a ship rocks;
On the sun that shines
On the side of Slieverua,
And the wind that blows
Down over its brow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE DORD FEINNE
_’Se do bheatha_, O woman that wast sorrowful,
What grieved us was thy being in chains,
Thy beautiful country in the possession of rogues,
And thou sold to the Galls,
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
Now at summer’s coming!
Thanks to the God of miracles that we see,
Altho’ we live not a week thereafter,
Gráinne Mhaol and a thousand heroes
Proclaiming the scattering of the Galls!
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
Now at summer’s coming!
Gráinne Mhaol is coming from over the sea,
The Fenians of Fál as a guard about her,
Gaels they, and neither French nor Spaniard,
And a rout upon the Galls!
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
_Oró, ’se do bheatha a bhaile_,
Now at summer’s coming!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MOTHER
I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed;
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho’ I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow--And yet I have my joy:
My sons were faithful, and they fought.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FOOL
Since the wise men have not spoken, I speak that am only a fool;
A fool that hath loved his folly,
Yea, more than the wise men their books or their counting houses, or
their quiet homes,
Or their fame in men’s mouths;
A fool that in all his days hath done never a prudent thing,
Never hath counted the cost, nor recked if another reaped
The fruit of his mighty sowing, content to scatter the seed;
A fool that is unrepentant, and that soon at the end of all
Shall laugh in his lonely heart as the ripe ears fall to the
reaping-hooks
And the poor are filled that were empty,
Tho’ he go hungry.
I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my
youth
In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.
Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God.
I have squandered the splendid years:
Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,
Aye, fling them from me!
For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not
hoard,
Shall do the deed of to-day, nor take thought of to-morrow’s teen,
Shall not bargain or huxter with God; or was it a jest of Christ’s
And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?
The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces,
And said, “This man is a fool,” and others have said, “He
blasphemeth;”
And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life
In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things,
To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart
could hold.
O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?
What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?
Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin
On the truth of Thy dreadful word. Do not remember my failures,
But remember this my faith.
And so I speak.
Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I speak to my people and say:
Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save;
Ye shall venture your all, lest ye lose what is more than all;
Ye shall call for a miracle, taking Christ at His word.
And for this I will answer, O people, answer here and hereafter,
O people that I have loved shall we not answer together?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE REBEL
I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow,
That have no treasure but hope,
No riches laid up but a memory
Of an Ancient glory.
My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,
I am of the blood of serfs;
The children with whom I have played, the men and women with whom I
have eaten,
Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,
And, though gentle, have served churls;
The hands that have touched mine, the dear hands whose touch is
familiar to me,
Have worn shameful manacles, have been bitten at the wrist by
manacles,
Have grown hard with the manacles and the task-work of strangers,
I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly, I am bone of their bone,
I that have never submitted;
I that have a soul greater than the souls of my people’s masters,
I that have vision and prophecy and the gift of fiery speech,
I that have spoken with God on the top of His holy hill.
And because I am of the people, I understand the people,
I am sorrowful with their sorrow, I am hungry with their desire:
My heart has been heavy with the grief of mothers,
My eyes have been wet with the tears of children,
I have yearned with old wistful men,
And laughed or cursed with young men;
Their shame is my shame, and I have reddened for it,
Reddened for that they have served, they who should be free,
Reddened for that they have gone in want, while others have been full,
Reddened for that they have walked in fear of lawyers and of their
jailors
With their writs of summons and their handcuffs,
Men mean and cruel!
I could have borne stripes on my body rather than this shame of my
people.
And now I speak, being full of vision;
I speak to my people, and I speak in my people’s name to the masters
of my people.
I say to my people that they are holy, that they are august, despite
their chains,
That they are greater than those that hold them, and stronger and
purer,
That they have but need of courage, and to call on the name of their
God,
God the unforgetting, the dear God that loves the peoples
For whom He died naked, suffering shame.
And I say to my people’s masters: Beware,
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people,
Who shall take what ye would not give. Did ye think to conquer the
people,
Or that Law is stronger than life and than men’s desire to be free?
We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHRISTMAS
1915
O King that was born
To set bondsmen free,
In the coming battle,
Help the Gael!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WAYFARER
The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX
THE SINGER
The following is the version of a passage in this play, which was with
the Author’s manuscript:
COLM. Is it to die like rats you’d have us because the word is not
given?
CUIMIN. Our plans are not finished. Our orders are not here.
COLM. Our plans will never be finished. Our orders may never be here.
CUIMIN. We’ve no one to lead us.
COLM. Didn’t you elect me your captain?
CUIMIN. We did, but not to bid us rise out when the whole country is
quiet. We were to get the word from the men that are over the people.
They’ll speak when the time comes. (_The door opens again and Feichin
comes in with two or three others._) Am I speaking lie or truth, men?
Colm here wants us to rise out before the word comes. I say we must
wait for the word. What do you say, Feichin, you that’s got a wiser
head than these young fellows?
FEICHIN. God forgive me if I’m wrong, but I say we should wait for our
orders.
CUIMIN. What do you say, Diarmaid?
DIARMAID. I like you, Colm, for the way you spoke so well and bravely;
but I’m slow to give my voice to send out the boys of this
mountain--our poor little handful--to stand with their poor little
pikes against the big guns of the Gall. If we had news that they were
rising in the other countrysides; but we’ve got no news.
COLM. Master, you haven’t spoken yet. I’m afraid to ask you to speak.
MAOILSHEACHLAINN. Cuimin is right when he says that we must not rise
out until we get the word; but what do you say, neighbours, if the man
that’ll give the word is under the roof of this house?
DIARMAID. What do you mean?
MAOILSHEACHLAINN (_going to the door of the room and throwing it
open_). Let you rise out, MacDara, and reveal yourself to the men that
are waiting your word!
FEICHIN. Has MacDara come home?
_MacDara comes out of the room, Maire ni Fhiannachta and Sighle
stand behind him in the doorway._
DIARMAID (_starting up_). That is the man that stood among the people
in the fair of Uachtar Ard! (_He goes up to MacDara and kisses his
hand._) I could not get near you yesterday, MacDara, the crowds were
so great. What was on me that I didn’t know you? Sure I ought to have
known that sad, proud head. Maire, men and women yet unborn will bless
the pains of your first childing.
MAIRE (_comes forward and takes her son’s hand and kisses it_). Soft
hand that played at my breast, strong hand that will fall heavy on the
Gall, brave hand that will break the yoke! Men of the mountain, my
son, MacDara, is the Singer that has quickened the dead years and the
young blood. Let the horsemen that sleep in Aileach rise up to-day and
follow him into the war!
_They come forward, one by one, and kiss his hand, Colm and Sighle
last._
COLM. The Gall have marched from Clifden, MacDara. I wanted to rise
out to-day, but these old men think it is not yet time.
CUIMIN. We were waiting for the word.
MACDARA. And must I speak the word? Old men, you have left me no
choice. I had hoped that more would not be asked of me than to sow the
secret word of hope, and that the toil of the reaping would be for
others. But I see that one does not serve
IOSAGAN
Author’s Foreword to _Iosagán agus Sgealta eile_, which is here
translated by Mr. Joseph Campbell:
Putting these stories in order, it is no wonder that my thoughts are
on the friends that told them to me, and on the lonely place on the
edge of Ireland where they live. I see before my eyes a countryside,
hilly, crossed with glens, full of rivers, brimming with lakes; great
horns threatening their tops on the verge of the sky in the
north-west; a narrow, moaning bay stretching in from the sea on each
side of a “ross;” the “ross” rising up from the round of the bay, but
with no height compared with the nigh-hand hills or the horns far off;
a little cluster of houses in each little glen and mountain gap, and a
solitary cabin here and there on the shoulder of the hills. I think I
hear the ground-bass of the waterfalls and rivers, the sweet cry of
the golden plover and curlew, and the low voice of the people in talk
by the fireside.... My blessing with you little book, to Rossnageeragh
and to them in it, my friends!
It is from the “_patairidhe beaga_,” the “little soft young things”
that Old Matthias used see making sport to themselves on the green
that I heard the greater part of the first story. They do be there
always, every sunny evening and every fine Sunday morning, running and
throwing leaps exactly as they would be when Old Matthias would sit
looking on them. I never saw Iosagan among them, but it’s like He does
be there, for all that. Isn’t His wish to be rejoicing on the earth,
and isn’t His delight to be along with His Father’s children?... I
have told in the story itself the place and the time I heard THE
PRIEST. It’s well I remember Nora’s little house, and the kindly
little woman herself, and the three children. Paraig is serving Mass
now, and I hear Taimeen has “_Fromsó Framsó_,” by heart.... It was
from Brideen herself that I heard the adventures of Barbara. One
evening that we went in on Oilean ni Raithnighe (the Ferny Island), I
and she, it was she told it to me, and we sitting on the brink of the
lake looking over on the Big Rock. She showed me Barbara’s grave the
same evening after our coming home, and she took a promise from me
that I’d say a prayer for her friend’s soul every night of my life.
Brideen will be going to school next year, and she will be able to
read the story of Barbara out of this, I hope she will like it.... As
for EOINEEN OF THE BIRDS, I don’t know who it was I heard it from,
unless it was from the swallows themselves. Yes, I think it was they
told it to me one evening that I was stretched in the heather looking
at them flying here and there over Loch Eireamhlach. From what mouth
the swallows heard the start of the story, I don’t know. From the
song-thrush and from that yellow-bunting that have their nests in a
ditch of the garden, it’s like.
To you, sweet friends, people of the telling of my stories, both
little and big, I give and dedicate this little book.
CHRONOLOGICAL NOTE
THE SINGER was written in the late Autumn of 1915. Joseph Plunkett was
profoundly impressed when he read it. “If Pearse were dead,” he said,
“this would cause a sensation.” Mr. Pearse rather deprecated his view
that the play was entirely a personal revelation. No Irish MS. is
extant. The two poems THE REBEL and THE FOOL also belong to the same
period, and are in no sense translations. The same may be said of ON THE
STRAND OF HOWTH and THE MOTHER. With the exceptions of SONG FOR MARY
MAGDALENE, RANN OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE (both taken from THE MASTER),
CHRIST’S COMING, CHRISTMAS 1915, DORD FEINNE, and the WAYFARER (written
in Kilmainham Jail, May, 1916), the remaining Poems are translations of
_Suantraide agus Goltraide_ (1914). These twelve poems, DORD FEINNE, and
CHRIST’S COMING, are the only poems in this volume originally written in
Irish.
THE KING was first produced as an open air play upon the banks of the
river which runs through the Hermitage, Rathfarnham, by the students of
St. Enda’s College. In reference to its subsequent production at the
Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 17th May, 1913, Mr. Pearse wrote in _An Macaomh_,
Vol. II, No. 2, 1913: “The play we decided to produce along with THE
POST OFFICE, was my morality _An Rí_. We had enacted it during the
previous summer with much pageantry of horses and marchings, at a place
in our grounds where an old castellated bridge, not unlike an entrance
to a monastery, is thrown across a stream. Since that performance I had
added some speeches with the object of slightly deepening the
characterization.” William Pearse played the Abbot’s part.
THE MASTER was produced Whitsuntide, 1915, at the Irish Theatre,
Hardwicke Street, Dublin, with William Pearse as Ciaran. No Irish MS. is
extant. _Iosagán_, the dramatization of the author’s story of the same
name, was first acted in Cullenswood House, Rathmines, Dublin, in
February, 1910, by St. Enda students. Mr. Pearse writes in _An Macaomh_,
Vol. I., No. 2, 1909: “In _Iosagán_ I have religiously followed the
phraseology of the children and old men in _Iar-Connacht_ from whom I
have learned the Irish I speak. I have put no word, no speech into the
mouths of my little boys which the real little boys of the parish I have
in mind--boys whom I know as well as I know my pupils in _Sgoil
Eanna_--would not use in the same circumstances. I have given their
daily conversation, anglicism, vulgarisms and all; if I gave anything
else my picture would be a false one. _Iosagán_ is not a play for
ordinary theatres or for ordinary players. It requires a certain
atmosphere and a certain attitude of mind on the part of the actors. It
has in fact been written for performance in a particular place and by
particular players. I know that in that place and by those players it
will be treated with the reverence due to a prayer.”
The first six stories here given are translations of _An Mátair_ (1916).
The last four stories are translations of _Iosagán agus Sgéalta eile_,
some of which were published in _An Claideam Soluis_ in 1905-6,
re-published a few years later in book-form.
D. R.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
In some cases, Irish words appear to be printed with grave accents
rather than the acute síneadh fada. In this edition all Irish words use
only the modern standard fada.
The page images used to create this ebook are inconsistent as to whether
there is a fada over the “a” in “Pádraic”, and it is not always clear
whether the fadas that do appear were printed with the volume or added
in afterwards. As there is no fada the majority of the time, the fadas
appearing in the front matter of the volumes have been omitted.
On page 102, the words “Íosa” and “Ísuccán” were printed in cló Gaelach,
Irish script. They are presented here in Roman script.
The end of the Appendix section on _The Singer_, on page v, ends with no
punctuation; this has been left as is.
New original cover art included with this ebook is granted to the public
domain.
The following changes and corrections have been made:
• Table of Contents: Added question mark after title “WHY DO YE TORTURE
ME?” to match title above poem.
• p. xii: Replaced “Paraic” with “Paraig” in phrase “Paraig wearing a
surplice.”
• p. 24: Replaced period with comma in phrase “I meant this to be a
home-coming, but it seems....”
• p. 51: Added period after phrase “It is not, but mine.”
• p. 72: Removed second period before phrase “He is fond of little
Iollann.”
• p. 76: Replaced “ladybird” with “lady-bird” before phrase “We watch
the wee lady-bird fly far away.”
• p. 81: Replaced “Ciarnn” with “Ciaran” before phrase “What do you
call your rann?”
• p. 91: Added comma in phrase “Bid him to come in, Iollann.”
• p. 105: Replaced comma with period before phrase “Yon one gave me
enough.”
• p. 106: Added period before phrase “I’ll make a _lúrabóg_ of you!”
• p. 189: Added opening double quotation mark before phrase “I’d rather
it than anything I have in the world.”
• p. 221: Removed opening quotation mark before phrase “Do you think,
Sean.”
• p. 225: Added opening double quotation mark before phrase “that she
didn’t know the railway.”
• p. 225: Moved closing double quotation mark from after to before
phrase “says my father.”
• p. 266: Changed comma to period after phrase “but that’s not the
fairing.”
• p. 269: Replaced “Padaric” with “Padraic” in phrase “bless my Uncle
Padaric that’s now in America”
• p. 276: Changed single to double closing quotation mark after phrase
“Niamh of the Golden Head.”
• p. 280: Changed “its” to “it’s” and “head” to “Head” in phrase “it’s
Niamh Goldy-Head would go out on the hill.”
• Appendix p. iii: Changed “the the” to “the” in phrase “because the
word is not given.”
• Appendix p. iii: Changed “do do” to “do” in phrase “What do you say,
Feichin.”
• Appendix p. vii: Removed closing double quotation mark after phrase
“my morality _An Rí_.”
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