No More Learning

And it is likely he said some soft
word in her ear, for she said nothing against it, and stood out with
him, and there were little blushes in her cheeks. Then other couples
stood up, but when the dance was going to begin, Hanrahan chanced to
look down, and he took notice of his boots that were worn and broken,
and the ragged grey socks showing through them; and he said angrily it
was a bad floor, and the music no great things, and he sat down in the
dark place beside the hearth. But if he did, the girl sat down there
with him.

The dancing went on, and when that dance was over another was called
for, and no one took much notice of Oona and Red Hanrahan for a while,
in the corner where they were. But the mother grew to be uneasy, and
she called to Oona to come and help her to set the table in the inner
room. But Oona that had never refused her before, said she would come
soon, but not yet, for she was listening to whatever he was saying
in her ear. The mother grew yet more uneasy then, and she would come
nearer them, and let on to be stirring the fire or sweeping the hearth,
and she would listen for a minute to hear what the poet was saying
to her child. And one time she heard him telling about white-handed
Deirdre, and how she brought the sons of Usnach to their death; and
how the blush in her cheeks was not so red as the blood of kings' sons
that was shed for her, and her sorrows had never gone out of mind;
and he said it was maybe the memory of her that made the cry of the
plover on the bog as sorrowful in the ear of the poets as the keening
of young men for a comrade. And there would never have been that memory
of her, he said, if it was not for the poets that had put her beauty
in their songs. And the next time she did not well understand what he
was saying, but as far as she could hear, it had the sound of poetry
though it was not rhymed, and this is what she heard him say: 'The sun
and the moon are the man and the girl, they are my life and your life,
they are travelling and ever travelling through the skies as if under
the one hood. It was God made them for one another. He made your life
and my life before the beginning of the world, he made them that they
might go through the world, up and down, like the two best dancers that
go on with the dance up and down the long floor of the barn, fresh and
laughing, when all the rest are tired out and leaning against the wall. '

The old woman went then to where her husband was playing cards, but
he would take no notice of her, and then she went to a woman of
the neighbours and said: 'Is there no way we can get them from one
another? ' and without waiting for an answer she said to some young men
that were talking together: 'What good are you when you cannot make
the best girl in the house come out and dance with you? And go now
the whole of you,' she said, 'and see can you bring her away from the
poet's talk. ' But Oona would not listen to any of them, but only moved
her hand as if to send them away. Then they called to Hanrahan and said
he had best dance with the girl himself, or let her dance with one of
them. When Hanrahan heard what they were saying he said: 'That is so, I
will dance with her; there is no man in the house must dance with her
but myself. '

He stood up with her then, and led her out by the hand, and some of the
young men were vexed, and some began mocking at his ragged coat and his
broken boots. But he took no notice, and Oona took no notice, but they
looked at one another as if all the world belonged to themselves alone.
But another couple that had been sitting together like lovers stood out
on the floor at the same time, holding one another's hands and moving
their feet to keep time with the music. But Hanrahan turned his back on
them as if angry, and in place of dancing he began to sing, and as he
sang he held her hand, and his voice grew louder, and the mocking of
the young men stopped, and the fiddle stopped, and there was nothing
heard but his voice that had in it the sound of the wind. And what he
sang was a song he had heard or had made one time in his wanderings on
Slieve Echtge, and the words of it as they can be put into English were
like this:

O Death's old bony finger
Will never find us there
In the high hollow townland
Where love's to give and to spare;
Where boughs have fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Where rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
An old man plays the bagpipes
In a gold and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.

And while he was singing it Oona moved nearer to him, and the colour
had gone from her cheek, and her eyes were not blue now, but grey with
the tears that were in them, and anyone that saw her would have thought
she was ready to follow him there and then from the west to the east of
the world.

But one of the young men called out: 'Where is that country he is
singing about? Mind yourself, Oona, it is a long way off, you might
be a long time on the road before you would reach to it. ' And another
said: 'It is not to the Country of the Young you will be going if you
go with him, but to Mayo of the bogs. ' Oona looked at him then as if
she would question him, but he raised her hand in his hand, and called
out between singing and shouting: 'It is very near us that country is,
it is on every side; it may be on the bare hill behind it is, or it may
be in the heart of the wood. ' And he said out very loud and clear: 'In
the heart of the wood; oh, death will never find us in the heart of
the wood. And will you come with me there, Oona? ' he said.

But while he was saying this the two old women had gone outside the
door, and Oona's mother was crying, and she said: 'He has put an
enchantment on Oona. Can we not get the men to put him out of the
house? '

'That is a thing you cannot do,' said the other woman, 'for he is a
poet of the Gael, and you know well if you would put a poet of the Gael
out of the house, he would put a curse on you that would wither the
corn in the fields and dry up the milk of the cows, if it had to hang
in the air seven years. '

'God help us,' said the mother, 'and why did I ever let him into the
house at all, and the wild name he has! '

'It would have been no harm at all to have kept him outside, but there
would great harm come upon you if you put him out by force. But listen
to the plan I have to get him out of the house by his own doing,
without anyone putting him from it at all. '

It was not long after that the two women came in again, each of them
having a bundle of hay in her apron. Hanrahan was not singing now, but
he was talking to Oona very fast and soft, and he was saying: 'The
house is narrow but the world is wide, and there is no true lover
that need be afraid of night or morning or sun or stars or shadows
or evening, or any earthly thing. ' 'Hanrahan,' said the mother then,
striking him on the shoulder, 'will you give me a hand here for a
minute? ' 'Do that, Hanrahan,' said the woman of the neighbours, 'and
help us to make this hay into a rope, for you are ready with your
hands, and a blast of wind has loosened the thatch on the haystack. '

'I will do that for you,' said he, and he took the little stick in his
hands, and the mother began giving out the hay, and he twisting it, but
he was hurrying to have done with it, and to be free again. The women
went on talking and giving out the hay, and encouraging him, and saying
what a good twister of a rope he was, better than their own neighbours
or than anyone they had ever seen. And Hanrahan saw that Oona was
watching him, and he began to twist very quick and with his head high,
and to boast of the readiness of his hands, and the learning he had
in his head, and the strength in his arms. And as he was boasting, he
went backward, twisting the rope always till he came to the door that
was open behind him, and without thinking he passed the threshold and
was out on the road. And no sooner was he there than the mother made
a sudden rush, and threw out the rope after him, and she shut the door
and the half-door and put a bolt upon them.

She was well pleased when she had done that, and laughed out loud, and
the neighbours laughed and praised her. But they heard him beating
at the door, and saying words of cursing outside it, and the mother
had but time to stop Oona that had her hand upon the bolt to open it.
She made a sign to the fiddler then, and he began a reel, and one of
the young men asked no leave but caught hold of Oona and brought her
into the thick of the dance. And when it was over and the fiddle had
stopped, there was no sound at all of anything outside, but the road
was as quiet as before.

As to Hanrahan, when he knew he was shut out and that there was neither
shelter nor drink nor a girl's ear for him that night, the anger and
the courage went out of him, and he went on to where the waves were
beating on the strand.

He sat down on a big stone, and he began swinging his right arm and
singing slowly to himself, the way he did always to hearten himself
when every other thing failed him. And whether it was that time or
another time he made the song that is called to this day 'The Twisting
of the Rope,' and that begins, 'What was the dead cat that put me in
this place,' is not known.

But after he had been singing awhile, mist and shadows seemed to gather
about him, sometimes coming out of the sea, and sometimes moving upon
it. It seemed to him that one of the shadows was the queen-woman he had
seen in her sleep at Slieve Echtge; not in her sleep now, but mocking,
and calling out to them that were behind her: 'He was weak, he was
weak, he had no courage. ' And he felt the strands of the rope in his
hand yet, and went on twisting it, but it seemed to him as he twisted,
that it had all the sorrows of the world in it. And then it seemed to
him as if the rope had changed in his dream into a great water-worm
that came out of the sea, and that twisted itself about him, and held
him closer and closer, and grew from big to bigger till the whole of
the earth and skies were wound up in it, and the stars themselves were
but the shining of the ridges of its skin. And then he got free of it,
and went on, shaking and unsteady, along the edge of the strand, and
the grey shapes were flying here and there around him. And this is what
they were saying, 'It is a pity for him that refuses the call of the
daughters of the Sidhe, for he will find no comfort in the love of the
women of the earth to the end of life and time, and the cold of the
grave is in his heart for ever. It is death he has chosen; let him die,
let him die, let him die. '




HANRAHAN AND CATHLEEN THE DAUGHTER OF HOOLIHAN


IT was travelling northward Hanrahan was one time, giving a hand to a
farmer now and again in the hurried time of the year, and telling his
stories and making his share of songs at wakes and at weddings.

He chanced one day to overtake on the road to Collooney one Margaret
Rooney, a woman he used to know in Munster when he was a young man. She
had no good name at that time, and it was the priest routed her out of
the place at last. He knew her by her walk and by the colour of her
eyes, and by a way she had of putting back the hair off her face with
her left hand. She had been wandering about, she said, selling herrings
and the like, and now she was going back to Sligo, to the place in the
Burrough where she was living with another woman, Mary Gillis, who
had much the same story as herself. She would be well pleased, she
said, if he would come and stop in the house with them, and be singing
his songs to the bacachs and blind men and fiddlers of the Burrough.
She remembered him well, she said, and had a wish for him; and as to
Mary Gillis, she had some of his songs off by heart, so he need not be
afraid of not getting good treatment, and all the bacachs and poor men
that heard him would give him a share of their own earnings for his
stories and his songs while he was with them, and would carry his name
into all the parishes of Ireland.

He was glad enough to go with her, and to find a woman to be listening
to the story of his troubles and to be comforting him. It was at the
moment of the fall of day when every man may pass as handsome and
every woman as comely. She put her arm about him when he told her of
the misfortune of the Twisting of the Rope, and in the half light she
looked as well as another.

They kept in talk all the way to the Burrough, and as for Mary Gillis,
when she saw him and heard who he was, she went near crying to think of
having a man with so great a name in the house.

Hanrahan was well pleased to settle down with them for a while, for he
was tired with wandering; and since the day he found the little cabin
fallen in, and Mary Lavelle gone from it, and the thatch scattered, he
had never asked to have any place of his own; and he had never stopped
long enough in any place to see the green leaves come where he had seen
the old leaves wither, or to see the wheat harvested where he had seen
it sown. It was a good change to him to have shelter from the wet, and
a fire in the evening time, and his share of food put on the table
without the asking.

He made a good many of his songs while he was living there, so well
cared for and so quiet. The most of them were love songs, but some were
songs of repentance, and some were songs about Ireland and her griefs,
under one name or another.

Every evening the bacachs and beggars and blind men and fiddlers would
gather into the house and listen to his songs and his poems, and his
stories about the old time of the Fianna, and they kept them in their
memories that were never spoiled with books; and so they brought his
name to every wake and wedding and pattern in the whole of Connaught.
He was never so well off or made so much of as he was at that time.

One evening of December he was singing a little song that he said he
had heard from the green plover of the mountain, about the fair-haired
boys that had left Limerick, and that were wandering and going astray
in all parts of the world. There were a good many people in the room
that night, and two or three little lads that had crept in, and sat
on the floor near the fire, and were too busy with the roasting of a
potato in the ashes or some such thing to take much notice of him;
but they remembered long afterwards when his name had gone up, the
sound of his voice, and what way he had moved his hand, and the look
of him as he sat on the edge of the bed, with his shadow falling on
the whitewashed wall behind him, and as he moved going up as high as
the thatch. And they knew then that they had looked upon a king of the
poets of the Gael, and a maker of the dreams of men.

Of a sudden his singing stopped, and his eyes grew misty as if he was
looking at some far thing.

Mary Gillis was pouring whiskey into a mug that stood on a table beside
him, and she left off pouring and said, 'Is it of leaving us you are
thinking? '

Margaret Rooney heard what she said, and did not know why she said it,
and she took the words too much in earnest and came over to him, and
there was dread in her heart that she was going to lose so wonderful a
poet and so good a comrade, and a man that was thought so much of, and
that brought so many to her house.

'You would not go away from us, my heart? ' she said, catching him by
the hand.

'It is not of that I am thinking,' he said, 'but of Ireland and the
weight of grief that is on her. ' And he leaned his head against his
hand, and began to sing these words, and the sound of his voice was
like the wind in a lonely place.

The old brown thorn trees break in two high over Cummen Strand
Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;
Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,
But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes
Of Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.

The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea
And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say;
Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat,
But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet
Of Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.

The yellow pool has overflowed high upon Clooth-na-Bare,
For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;
Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood,
But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood
Is Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.

While he was singing, his voice began to break, and tears came rolling
down his cheeks, and Margaret Rooney put down her face into her hands
and began to cry along with him. Then a blind beggar by the fire shook
his rags with a sob, and after that there was no one of them all but
cried tears down.




RED HANRAHAN'S CURSE


ONE fine May morning a long time after Hanrahan had left Margaret
Rooney's house, he was walking the road near Collooney, and the sound
of the birds singing in the bushes that were white with blossom set
him singing as he went. It was to his own little place he was going,
that was no more than a cabin, but that pleased him well. For he was
tired of so many years of wandering from shelter to shelter at all
times of the year, and although he was seldom refused a welcome and a
share of what was in the house, it seemed to him sometimes that his
mind was getting stiff like his joints, and it was not so easy to him
as it used to be to make fun and sport through the night, and to set
all the boys laughing with his pleasant talk, and to coax the women
with his songs. And a while ago, he had turned into a cabin that some
poor man had left to go harvesting and had never come to again. And
when he had mended the thatch and made a bed in the corner with a few
sacks and bushes, and had swept out the floor, he was well content to
have a little place for himself, where he could go in and out as he
liked, and put his head in his hands through the length of an evening
if the fret was on him, and loneliness after the old times. One by one
the neighbours began to send their children in to get some learning
from him, and with what they brought, a few eggs or an oaten cake or a
couple of sods of turf, he made out a way of living. And if he went for
a wild day and night now and again to the Burrough, no one would say a
word, knowing him to be a poet, with wandering in his heart.

It was from the Burrough he was coming that May morning, light-hearted
enough, and singing some new song that had come to him. But it was not
long till a hare ran across his path, and made away into the fields,
through the loose stones of the wall. And he knew it was no good sign a
hare to have crossed his path, and he remembered the hare that had led
him away to Slieve Echtge the time Mary Lavelle was waiting for him,
and how he had never known content for any length of time since then.
'And it is likely enough they are putting some bad thing before me
now,' he said.

And after he said that, he heard the sound of crying in the field
beside him, and he looked over the wall. And there he saw a young girl
sitting under a bush of white hawthorn, and crying as if her heart
would break. Her face was hidden in her hands, but her soft hair and
her white neck and the young look of her, put him in mind of Bridget
Purcell and Margaret Gillane and Maeve Connelan and Oona Curry and
Celia Driscoll, and the rest of the girls he had made songs for and had
coaxed the heart from with his flattering tongue.

She looked up, and he saw her to be a girl of the neighbours, a
farmer's daughter. 'What is on you, Nora? ' he said. 'Nothing you could
take from me, Red Hanrahan. ' 'If there is any sorrow on you it is I
myself should be well able to serve you,' he said then, 'for it is I
know the history of the Greeks, and I know well what sorrow is and
parting, and the hardship of the world. And if I am not able to save
you from trouble,' he said, 'there is many a one I have saved from it
with the power that is in my songs, as it was in the songs of the
poets that were before me from the beginning of the world. And it is
with the rest of the poets I myself will be sitting and talking in some
far place beyond the world, to the end of life and time,' he said. The
girl stopped her crying, and she said, 'Owen Hanrahan, I often heard
you have had sorrow and persecution, and that you know all the troubles
of the world since the time you refused your love to the queen-woman in
Slieve Echtge; and that she never left you in quiet since. But when it
is people of this earth that have harmed you, it is yourself knows well
the way to put harm on them again. And will you do now what I ask you,
Owen Hanrahan? ' she said. 'I will do that indeed,' said he.

'It is my father and my mother and my brothers,' she said, 'that are
marrying me to old Paddy Doe, because he has a farm of a hundred acres
under the mountain. And it is what you can do, Hanrahan,' she said,
'put him into a rhyme the same way you put old Peter Kilmartin in one
the time you were young, that sorrow may be over him rising up and
lying down, that will put him thinking of Collooney churchyard and
not of marriage. And let you make no delay about it, for it is for
to-morrow they have the marriage settled, and I would sooner see the
sun rise on the day of my death than on that day. '

'I will put him into a song that will bring shame and sorrow over him;
but tell me how many years has he, for I would put them in the song? '

'O, he has years upon years. He is as old as you yourself, Red
Hanrahan. ' 'As old as myself,' sang Hanrahan, and his voice was as if
broken; 'as old as myself; there are twenty years and more between
us! It is a bad day indeed for Owen Hanrahan when a young girl with
the blossom of May in her cheeks thinks him to be an old man. And my
grief! ' he said, 'you have put a thorn in my heart. '

He turned from her then and went down the road till he came to a stone,
and he sat down on it, for it seemed as if all the weight of the years
had come on him in the minute. And he remembered it was not many days
ago that a woman in some house had said: 'It is not Red Hanrahan you
are now but yellow Hanrahan, for your hair is turned to the colour of a
wisp of tow. ' And another woman he had asked for a drink had not given
him new milk but sour; and sometimes the girls would be whispering and
laughing with young ignorant men while he himself was in the middle of
giving out his poems or his talk. And he thought of the stiffness of
his joints when he first rose of a morning, and the pain of his knees
after making a journey, and it seemed to him as if he was come to be
a very old man, with cold in the shoulders and speckled shins and his
wind breaking and he himself withering away. And with those thoughts
there came on him a great anger against old age and all it brought with
it. And just then he looked up and saw a great spotted eagle sailing
slowly towards Ballygawley, and he cried out: 'You, too, eagle of
Ballygawley, are old, and your wings are full of gaps, and I will put
you and your ancient comrades, the Pike of Dargan Lake and the Yew of
the Steep Place of the Strangers into my rhyme, that there may be a
curse on you for ever. '

There was a bush beside him to the left, flowering like the rest, and
a little gust of wind blew the white blossoms over his coat. 'May
blossoms,' he said, gathering them up in the hollow of his hand, 'you
never know age because you die away in your beauty, and I will put you
into my rhyme and give you my blessing. '

He rose up then and plucked a little branch from the bush, and carried
it in his hand. But it is old and broken he looked going home that day
with the stoop in his shoulders and the darkness in his face.

When he got to his cabin there was no one there, and he went and lay
down on the bed for a while as he was used to do when he wanted to make
a poem or a praise or a curse. And it was not long he was in making it
this time, for the power of the curse-making bards was upon him. And
when he had made it he searched his mind how he could send it out over
the whole countryside.

Some of the scholars began coming in then, to see if there would be
any school that day, and Hanrahan rose up and sat on the bench by the
hearth, and they all stood around him.

They thought he would bring out the Virgil or the Mass book or the
primer, but instead of that he held up the little branch of hawthorn he
had in his hand yet. 'Children,' he said, 'this is a new lesson I have
for you to-day.

'You yourselves and the beautiful people of the world are like this
blossom, and old age is the wind that comes and blows the blossom away.
And I have made a curse upon old age and upon the old men, and listen
now while I give it out to you. ' And this is what he said--

The poet, Owen Hanrahan, under a bush of may
Calls down a curse on his own head because it withers grey;
Then on the speckled eagle cock of Ballygawley Hill,
Because it is the oldest thing that knows of cark and ill;
And on the yew that has been green from the times out of mind
By the Steep Place of the Strangers and the Gap of the Wind;
And on the great grey pike that broods in Castle Dargan Lake
Having in his long body a many a hook and ache;
Then curses he old Paddy Bruen of the Well of Bride
Because no hair is on his head and drowsiness inside.
Then Paddy's neighbour, Peter Hart, and Michael Gill, his friend,
Because their wandering histories are never at an end.
And then old Shemus Cullinan, shepherd of the Green Lands
Because he holds two crutches between his crooked hands;
Then calls a curse from the dark North upon old Paddy Doe,
Who plans to lay his withering head upon a breast of snow,
Who plans to wreck a singing voice and break a merry heart,
He bids a curse hang over him till breath and body part;
But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may,
Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.

He said it over to the children verse by verse till all of them could
say a part of it, and some that were the quickest could say the whole
of it.

'That will do for to-day,' he said then. 'And what you have to do now
is to go out and sing that song for a while, to the tune of the Green
Bunch of Rushes, to everyone you meet, and to the old men themselves. '

'I will do that,' said one of the little lads; 'I know old Paddy Doe
well. Last Saint John's Eve we dropped a mouse down his chimney, but
this is better than a mouse. '

'I will go into the town of Sligo and sing it in the street,' said
another of the boys. 'Do that,' said Hanrahan, 'and go into the
Burrough and tell it to Margaret Rooney and Mary Gillis, and bid them
sing to it, and to make the beggars and the bacachs sing it wherever
they go. ' The children ran out then, full of pride and of mischief,
calling out the song as they ran, and Hanrahan knew there was no
danger it would not be heard.

He was sitting outside the door the next morning, looking at his
scholars as they came by in twos and threes. They were nearly all come,
and he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to know
whether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was like the
buzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a hidden river
in time of flood. Then he saw a crowd coming up to the cabin from the
road, and he took notice that all the crowd was made up of old men, and
that the leaders of it were Paddy Bruen, Michael Gill and Paddy Doe,
and there was not one in the crowd but had in his hand an ash stick or
a blackthorn. As soon as they caught sight of him, the sticks began to
wave hither and thither like branches in a storm, and the old feet to
run.

He waited no longer, but made off up the hill behind the cabin till he
was out of their sight.

After a while he came back round the hill, where he was hidden by the
furze growing along a ditch. And when he came in sight of his cabin he
saw that all the old men had gathered around it, and one of them was
just at that time thrusting a rake with a wisp of lighted straw on it
into the thatch.

'My grief,' he said, 'I have set Old Age and Time and Weariness and
Sickness against me, and I must go wandering again. And, O Blessed
Queen of Heaven,' he said, 'protect me from the Eagle of Ballygawley,
the Yew Tree of the Steep Place of the Strangers, the Pike of Castle
Dargan Lake, and from the lighted wisps of their kindred, the Old Men! '




HANRAHAN'S VISION


IT was in the month of June Hanrahan was on the road near Sligo, but he
did not go into the town, but turned towards Beinn Bulben; for there
were thoughts of the old times coming upon him, and he had no mind to
meet with common men. And as he walked he was singing to himself a song
that had come to him one time in his dreams:

O Death's old bony finger
Will never find us there
In the high hollow townland
Where love's to give and to spare;
Where boughs have fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Where rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
An old man plays the bagpipes
In a gold and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.

The little fox he murmured,
'O what of the world's bane? '
The sun was laughing sweetly,
The moon plucked at my rein;
But the little red fox murmured,
'O do not pluck at his rein,
He is riding to the townland
That is the world's bane. '

When their hearts are so high
That they would come to blows,
They unhook their heavy swords
From golden and silver boughs:
But all that are killed in battle
Awaken to life again:
It is lucky that their story
Is not known among men.
For O, the strong farmers
That would let the spade lie,
Their hearts would be like a cup
That somebody had drunk dry.

Michael will unhook his trumpet
From a bough overhead,
And blow a little noise
When the supper has been spread.
Gabriel will come from the water
With a fish tail, and talk
Of wonders that have happened
On wet roads where men walk,
And lift up an old horn
Of hammered silver, and drink
Till he has fallen asleep
Upon the starry brink.

Hanrahan had begun to climb the mountain then, and he gave over
singing, for it was a long climb for him, and every now and again he
had to sit down and to rest for a while. And one time he was resting he
took notice of a wild briar bush, with blossoms on it, that was growing
beside a rath, and it brought to mind the wild roses he used to bring
to Mary Lavelle, and to no woman after her. And he tore off a little
branch of the bush, that had buds on it and open blossoms, and he went
on with his song:

The little fox he murmured,
'O what of the world's bane? '
The sun was laughing sweetly,
The moon plucked at my rein;
But the little red fox murmured,
'O do not pluck at his rein,
He is riding to the townland
That is the world's bane. '

And he went on climbing the hill, and left the rath, and there came
to his mind some of the old poems that told of lovers, good and bad,
and of some that were awakened from the sleep of the grave itself by
the strength of one another's love, and brought away to a life in some
shadowy place, where they are waiting for the judgment and banished
from the face of God.

And at last, at the fall of day, he came to the Steep Gap of the
Strangers, and there he laid himself down along a ridge of rock, and
looked into the valley, that was full of grey mist spreading from
mountain to mountain.

And it seemed to him as he looked that the mist changed to shapes of
shadowy men and women, and his heart began to beat with the fear and
the joy of the sight. And his hands, that were always restless, began
to pluck off the leaves of the roses on the little branch, and he
watched them as they went floating down into the valley in a little
fluttering troop.

Suddenly he heard a faint music, a music that had more laughter in it
and more crying than all the music of this world. And his heart rose
when he heard that, and he began to laugh out loud, for he knew that
music was made by some who had a beauty and a greatness beyond the
people of this world. And it seemed to him that the little soft rose
leaves as they went fluttering down into the valley began to change
their shape till they looked like a troop of men and women far off in
the mist, with the colour of the roses on them. And then that colour
changed to many colours, and what he saw was a long line of tall
beautiful young men, and of queen-women, that were not going from
him but coming towards him and past him, and their faces were full of
tenderness for all their proud looks, and were very pale and worn, as
if they were seeking and ever seeking for high sorrowful things. And
shadowy arms were stretched out of the mist as if to take hold of them,
but could not touch them, for the quiet that was about them could not
be broken. And before them and beyond them, but at a distance as if in
reverence, there were other shapes, sinking and rising and coming and
going, and Hanrahan knew them by their whirling flight to be the Sidhe,
the ancient defeated gods; and the shadowy arms did not rise to take
hold of them, for they were of those that can neither sin nor obey. And
they all lessened then in the distance, and they seemed to be going
towards the white door that is in the side of the mountain.

The mist spread out before him now like a deserted sea washing the
mountains with long grey waves, but while he was looking at it, it
began to fill again with a flowing broken witless life that was a part
of itself, and arms and pale heads covered with tossing hair appeared
in the greyness. It rose higher and higher till it was level with the
edge of the steep rock, and then the shapes grew to be solid, and a
new procession half lost in mist passed very slowly with uneven steps,
and in the midst of each shadow there was something shining in the
starlight. They came nearer and nearer, and Hanrahan saw that they also
were lovers, and that they had heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts,
and they were looking and ever looking on their own faces in one
another's mirrors. They passed on, sinking downward as they passed, and
other shapes rose in their place, and these did not keep side by side,
but followed after one another, holding out wild beckoning arms, and he
saw that those who were followed were women, and as to their heads they
were beyond all beauty, but as to their bodies they were but shadows
without life, and their long hair was moving and trembling about them,
as if it lived with some terrible life of its own. And then the mist
rose of a sudden and hid them, and then a light gust of wind blew them
away towards the north-east, and covered Hanrahan at the same time with
a white wing of cloud.

He stood up trembling and was going to turn away from the valley,
when he saw two dark and half-hidden forms standing as if in the air
just beyond the rock, and one of them that had the sorrowful eyes of
a beggar said to him in a woman's voice, 'Speak to me, for no one in
this world or any other world has spoken to me for seven hundred years. '

'Tell me who are those that have passed by,' said Hanrahan.

'Those that passed first,' the woman said, 'are the lovers that had the
greatest name in the old times, Blanad and Deirdre and Grania and their
dear comrades, and a great many that are not so well known but are as
well loved. And because it was not only the blossom of youth they were
looking for in one another, but the beauty that is as lasting as the
night and the stars, the night and the stars hold them for ever from
the warring and the perishing, in spite of the wars and the bitterness
their love brought into the world.
And those that came next,' she said,
'and that still breathe the sweet air and have the mirrors in their
hearts, are not put in songs by the poets, because they sought only to
triumph one over the other, and so to prove their strength and beauty,
and out of this they made a kind of love. And as to the women with
shadow-bodies, they desired neither to triumph nor to love but only
to be loved, and there is no blood in their hearts or in their bodies
until it flows through them from a kiss, and their life is but for a
moment. All these are unhappy, but I am the unhappiest of all, for
I am Dervadilla, and this is Dermot, and it was our sin brought the
Norman into Ireland. And the curses of all the generations are upon
us, and none are punished as we are punished. It was but the blossom
of the man and of the woman we loved in one another, the dying beauty
of the dust and not the everlasting beauty. When we died there was no
lasting unbreakable quiet about us, and the bitterness of the battles
we brought into Ireland turned to our own punishment. We go wandering
together for ever, but Dermot that was my lover sees me always as a
body that has been a long time in the ground, and I know that is the
way he sees me. Ask me more, ask me more, for all the years have left
their wisdom in my heart, and no one has listened to me for seven
hundred years. '

A great terror had fallen upon Hanrahan, and lifting his arms above his
head he screamed out loud three times, and the cattle in the valley
lifted their heads and lowed, and the birds in the wood at the edge
of the mountain awaked out of their sleep and fluttered through the
trembling leaves. But a little below the edge of the rock, the troop of
rose leaves still fluttered in the air, for the gateway of Eternity had
opened and shut again in one beat of the heart.




THE DEATH OF HANRAHAN


HANRAHAN, that was never long in one place, was back again among the
villages that are at the foot of Slieve Echtge, Illeton and Scalp and
Ballylee, stopping sometimes in one house and sometimes in another,
and finding a welcome in every place for the sake of the old times and
of his poetry and his learning. There was some silver and some copper
money in the little leather bag under his coat, but it was seldom he
needed to take anything from it, for it was little he used, and there
was not one of the people that would have taken payment from him. His
hand had grown heavy on the blackthorn he leaned on, and his cheeks
were hollow and worn, but so far as food went, potatoes and milk and a
bit of oaten cake, he had what he wanted of it; and it is not on the
edge of so wild and boggy a place as Echtge a mug of spirits would be
wanting, with the taste of the turf smoke on it. He would wander about
the big wood at Kinadife, or he would sit through many hours of the
day among the rushes about Lake Belshragh, listening to the streams
from the hills, or watching the shadows in the brown bog pools; sitting
so quiet as not to startle the deer that came down from the heather
to the grass and the tilled fields at the fall of night. As the days
went by it seemed as if he was beginning to belong to some world out of
sight and misty, that has for its mearing the colours that are beyond
all other colours and the silences that are beyond all silences of
this world. And sometimes he would hear coming and going in the wood
music that when it stopped went from his memory like a dream; and once
in the stillness of midday he heard a sound like the clashing of many
swords, that went on for a long time without any break. And at the fall
of night and at moonrise the lake would grow to be like a gateway of
silver and shining stones, and there would come from its silence the
faint sound of keening and of frightened laughter broken by the wind,
and many pale beckoning hands.

He was sitting looking into the water one evening in harvest time,
thinking of all the secrets that were shut into the lakes and the
mountains, when he heard a cry coming from the south, very faint at
first, but getting louder and clearer as the shadow of the rushes grew
longer, till he could hear the words, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful;
the birds in the air, the moths under the leaves, the flies over the
water look at me, for they never saw any one so beautiful as myself. I
am young; I am young: look upon me, mountains; look upon me, perishing
woods, for my body will shine like the white waters when you have been
hurried away. You and the whole race of men, and the race of the beasts
and the race of the fish and the winged race are dropping like a candle
that is nearly burned out, but I laugh out because I am in my youth. '
The voice would break off from time to time, as if tired, and then it
would begin again, calling out always the same words, 'I am beautiful,
I am beautiful. ' Presently the bushes at the edge of the little lake
trembled for a moment, and a very old woman forced her way among them,
and passed by Hanrahan, walking with very slow steps. Her face was of
the colour of earth, and more wrinkled than the face of any old hag
that was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in wisps, and the
rags she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by
all weathers. She passed by him with her eyes wide open, and her head
high, and her arms hanging straight beside her, and she went into the
shadow of the hills towards the west.

A sort of dread came over Hanrahan when he saw her, for he knew her to
be one Winny Byrne, that went begging from place to place crying always
the same cry, and he had often heard that she had once such wisdom that
all the women of the neighbours used to go looking for advice from her,
and that she had a voice so beautiful that men and women would come
from every part to hear her sing at a wake or a wedding; and that the
Others, the great Sidhe, had stolen her wits one Samhain night many
years ago, when she had fallen asleep on the edge of a rath, and had
seen in her dreams the servants of Echtge of the hills.

And as she vanished away up the hillside, it seemed as if her cry, 'I
am beautiful, I am beautiful,' was coming from among the stars in the
heavens.

There was a cold wind creeping among the rushes, and Hanrahan began to
shiver, and he rose up to go to some house where there would be a fire
on the hearth. But instead of turning down the hill as he was used, he
went on up the hill, along the little track that was maybe a road and
maybe the dry bed of a stream. It was the same way Winny had gone, and
it led to the little cabin where she stopped when she stopped in any
place at all. He walked very slowly up the hill as if he had a great
load on his back, and at last he saw a light a little to the left, and
he thought it likely it was from Winny's house it was shining, and he
turned from the path to go to it. But clouds had come over the sky,
and he could not well see his way, and after he had gone a few steps
his foot slipped and he fell into a bog drain, and though he dragged
himself out of it, holding on to the roots of the heather, the fall
had given him a great shake, and he felt better fit to lie down than
to go travelling. But he had always great courage, and he made his way
on, step by step, till at last he came to Winny's cabin, that had no
window, but the light was shining from the door. He thought to go into
it and to rest for a while, but when he came to the door he did not see
Winny inside it, but what he saw was four old grey-haired women playing
cards, but Winny herself was not among them. Hanrahan sat down on a
heap of turf beside the door, for he was tired out and out, and had no
wish for talking or for card-playing, and his bones and his joints
aching the way they were. He could hear the four women talking as they
played, and calling out their hands. And it seemed to him that they
were saying, like the strange man in the barn long ago: 'Spades and
Diamonds, Courage and Power. Clubs and Hearts, Knowledge and Pleasure. '
And he went on saying those words over and over to himself; and whether
or not he was in his dreams, the pain that was in his shoulder never
left him. And after a while the four women in the cabin began to
quarrel, and each one to say the other had not played fair, and their
voices grew from loud to louder, and their screams and their curses,
till at last the whole air was filled with the noise of them around and
above the house, and Hanrahan, hearing it between sleep and waking,
said: 'That is the sound of the fighting between the friends and the
ill-wishers of a man that is near his death. And I wonder,' he said,
'who is the man in this lonely place that is near his death. '

It seemed as if he had been asleep a long time, and he opened his eyes,
and the face he saw over him was the old wrinkled face of Winny of the
Cross Roads. She was looking hard at him, as if to make sure he was not
dead, and she wiped away the blood that had grown dry on his face with
a wet cloth, and after a while she partly helped him and partly lifted
him into the cabin, and laid him down on what served her for a bed. She
gave him a couple of potatoes from a pot on the fire, and, what served
him better, a mug of spring water. He slept a little now and again, and
sometimes he heard her singing to herself as she moved about the house,
and so the night wore away. When the sky began to brighten with the
dawn he felt for the bag where his little store of money was, and held
it out to her, and she took out a bit of copper and a bit of silver
money, but she let it drop again as if it was nothing to her, maybe
because it was not money she was used to beg for, but food and rags; or
maybe because the rising of the dawn was filling her with pride and a
new belief in her own great beauty. She went out and cut a few armfuls
of heather, and brought it in and heaped it over Hanrahan, saying
something about the cold of the morning, and while she did that he took
notice of the wrinkles in her face, and the greyness of her hair, and
the broken teeth that were black and full of gaps. And when he was well
covered with the heather she went out of the door and away down the
side of the mountain, and he could hear her cry, 'I am beautiful, I
am beautiful,' getting less and less as she went, till at last it died
away altogether.

Hanrahan lay there through the length of the day, in his pains and his
weakness, and when the shadows of the evening were falling he heard
her voice again coming up the hillside, and she came in and boiled the
potatoes and shared them with him the same way as before. And one day
after another passed like that, and the weight of his flesh was heavy
about him. But little by little as he grew weaker he knew there were
some greater than himself in the room with him, and that the house
began to be filled with them; and it seemed to him they had all power
in their hands, and that they might with one touch of the hand break
down the wall the hardness of pain had built about him, and take him
into their own world. And sometimes he could hear voices, very faint
and joyful, crying from the rafters or out of the flame on the hearth,
and other times the whole house was filled with music that went through
it like a wind. And after a while his weakness left no place for
pain, and there grew up about him a great silence like the silence in
the heart of a lake, and there came through it like the flame of a
rushlight the faint joyful voices ever and always.

One morning he heard music somewhere outside the door, and as the day
passed it grew louder and louder until it drowned the faint joyful
voices, and even Winny's cry upon the hillside at the fall of evening.
About midnight and in a moment, the walls seemed to melt away and to
leave his bed floating on a pale misty light that shone on every side
as far as the eye could see; and after the first blinding of his eyes
he saw that it was full of great shadowy figures rushing here and there.

At the same time the music came very clearly to him, and he knew that
it was but the continual clashing of swords.

'I am after my death,' he said, 'and in the very heart of the music of
Heaven. O Cherubim and Seraphim, receive my soul! '

At his cry the light where it was nearest to him filled with sparks of
yet brighter light, and he saw that these were the points of swords
turned towards his heart; and then a sudden flame, bright and burning
like God's love or God's hate, swept over the light and went out and
he was in darkness. At first he could see nothing, for all was as dark
as if there was black bog earth about him, but all of a sudden the
fire blazed up as if a wisp of straw had been thrown upon it. And as
he looked at it, the light was shining on the big pot that was hanging
from a hook, and on the flat stone where Winny used to bake a cake now
and again, and on the long rusty knife she used to be cutting the roots
of the heather with, and on the long blackthorn stick he had brought
into the house himself. And when he saw those four things, some memory
came into Hanrahan's mind, and strength came back to him, and he rose
sitting up in the bed, and he said very loud and clear: 'The Cauldron,
the Stone, the Sword, the Spear. What are they? Who do they belong to?
And I have asked the question this time,' he said.

And then he fell back again, weak, and the breath going from him.

Winny Byrne, that had been tending the fire, came over then, having her
eyes fixed on the bed; and the faint laughing voices began crying out
again, and a pale light, grey like a wave, came creeping over the room,
and he did not know from what secret world it came. He saw Winny's
withered face and her withered arms that were grey like crumbled earth,
and weak as he was he shrank back farther towards the wall. And then
there came out of the mud-stiffened rags arms as white and as shadowy
as the foam on a river, and they were put about his body, and a voice
that he could hear well but that seemed to come from a long way off
said to him in a whisper: 'You will go looking for me no more upon the
breasts of women. '

'Who are you? ' he said then.

'I am one of the lasting people, of the lasting unwearied Voices, that
make my dwelling in the broken and the dying, and those that have lost
their wits; and I came looking for you, and you are mine until the
whole world is burned out like a candle that is spent. And look up
now,' she said, 'for the wisps that are for our wedding are lighted. '

He saw then that the house was crowded with pale shadowy hands, and
that every hand was holding what was sometimes like a wisp lighted for
a marriage, and sometimes like a tall white candle for the dead.

When the sun rose on the morning of the morrow Winny of the Cross Roads
rose up from where she was sitting beside the body, and began her
begging from townland to townland, singing the same song as she walked,
'I am beautiful, I am beautiful. The birds in the air, the moths under
the leaves, the flies over the water look at me. Look at me, perishing
woods, for my body will be shining like the lake water after you have
been hurried away. You and the old race of men, and the race of the
beasts, and the race of the fish, and the winged race, are wearing away
like a candle that has been burned out. But I laugh out loud, because I
am in my youth. '

She did not come back that night or any night to the cabin, and it was
not till the end of two days that the turf cutters going to the bog
found the body of Red Owen Hanrahan, and gathered men to wake him and
women to keen him, and gave him a burying worthy of so great a poet.




_Printed by_ A. H. BULLEN, _at The Shakespeare Head Press,
Stratford-on-Avon. _

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained
such as Drumahair on page 3 and Drum-a-hair on page 96.

Page 85, repeated word "a" removed from text. Original read (I fling a
a pebble on)

Page 191, "unforgetable" changed to "unforgettable" (most unforgettable
thoughts)

Page 235, "san" changed to "sang" (sang Hanrahan, and his)





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