No More Learning

'Try it on that ugly black stump of a tree,' says the giant.
'I see nothing blacker or uglier than your own head,' says Jack. And
with that he made one stroke, and cut off the giant's head that it went
into the air, and he caught it on the sword as it was coming down, and
made two halves of it. 'It is well for you I did not join the body
again,' said the head, 'or you would have never been able to strike it
off again. ' 'I did not give you the chance of that,' said Jack. And he
brought away the great suit with him.

So he brought the cows home at evening, and every one wondered at all
the milk they gave that night. And when the king was sitting at dinner
with the princess, his daughter, and the rest, he said, 'I think I only
hear two roars from beyond to-night in place of three. '

The next morning Jack went out again with the cows, and he saw another
field full of grass, and he knocked down the wall and let the cows in.
All happened the same as the day before, but the giant that came this
time had two heads, and they fought together, and the little bird came
and spoke to Jack as before. And when Jack had brought the giant down,
he said, 'Give me my life, and I'll give you the best thing I have. '
'What is that? ' says Jack. 'It's a suit that you can put on, and you
will see every one but no one can see you. ' 'Where is it? ' said Jack.
'It's inside that little red door at the side of the hill. ' So Jack
went and brought out the suit. And then he cut off the giant's two
heads, and caught them coming down and made four halves of them. And
they said it was well for him he had not given them time to join the
body.

That night when the cows came home they gave so much milk that all the
vessels that could be found were filled up.

The next morning Jack went out again, and all happened as before, and
the giant this time had four heads, and Jack made eight halves of them.
And the giant had told him to go to a little blue door in the side of
the hill, and there he got a pair of shoes that when you put them on
would go faster than the wind.

That night the cows gave so much milk that there were not vessels
enough to hold it, and it was given to tenants and to poor people
passing the road, and the rest was thrown out at the windows. I was
passing that way myself, and I got a drink of it.

That night the king said to Jack, 'Why is it the cows are giving so
much milk these days? Are you bringing them to any other grass? ' 'I am
not,' said Jack, 'but I have a good stick, and whenever they would stop
still or lie down, I give them blows of it, that they jump and leap
over walls and stones and ditches; that's the way to make cows give
plenty of milk. '

And that night at the dinner, the king said, 'I hear no roars at all. '

The next morning the king and the princess were watching at the window
to see what would Jack do when he got to the field. And Jack knew they
were there, and he got a stick, and began to batter the cows, that they
went leaping and jumping over stones, and walls, and ditches. 'There is
no lie in what Jack said,' said the king then.

Now there was a great serpent at that time used to come every seven
years, and he had to get a king's daughter to eat, unless she would
have some good man to fight for her. And it was the princess at the
place Jack was had to be given to it that time, and the king had been
feeding a bully underground for seven years, and you may believe he got
the best of everything, to be ready to fight it.

And when the time came, the princess went out, and the bully with her
down to the shore, and when they got there what did he do, but to tie
the princess to a tree, the way the serpent would be able to swallow
her easy with no delay, and he himself went and hid up in an ivy-tree.
And Jack knew what was going on, for the princess had told him about
it, and had asked would he help her, but he said he would not. But he
came out now, and he put on the suit he had taken from the first giant,
and he came by the place the princess was, but she didn't know him.
'Is that right for a princess to be tied to a tree? ' said Jack. 'It is
not, indeed,' said she, and she told him what had happened, and how the
serpent was coming to take her. 'If you will let me sleep for awhile
with my head in your lap,' said Jack, 'you could wake me when it is
coming. ' So he did that, and she awakened him when she saw the serpent
coming, and Jack got up and fought with it, and drove it back into the
sea. And then he cut the rope that fastened her, and he went away. The
bully came down then out of the tree, and he brought the princess to
where the king was, and he said, 'I got a friend of mine to come and
fight the serpent to-day, where I was a little timorous after being so
long shut up underground, but I'll do the fighting myself to-morrow. '

The next day they went out again, and the same thing happened, the
bully tied up the princess where the serpent could come at her fair
and easy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree. Then Jack put
on the suit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and
the princess did not know him, but she told him all that had happened
yesterday, and how some young gentleman she did not know had come and
saved her. So Jack asked might he lie down and take a sleep with his
head in her lap, the way she could awake him. And all happened the same
way as the day before. And the bully gave her up to the king, and said
he had brought another of his friends to fight for her that day.

The next day she was brought down to the shore as before, and a great
many people gathered to see the serpent that was coming to bring the
king's daughter away. And Jack brought out the suit of clothes he had
brought away from the third giant, and she did not know him, and they
talked as before. But when he was asleep this time, she thought she
would make sure of being able to find him again, and she took out her
scissors and cut off a piece of his hair, and made a little packet of
it and put it away. And she did another thing, she took off one of the
shoes that was on his feet.

And when she saw the serpent coming, she woke him, and he said, 'This
time I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king's
daughters. ' So he took out the sword he had got from the giant, and he
put it in at the back of the serpent's neck, the way blood and water
came spouting out that went for fifty miles inland, and made an end of
him. And then he made off, and no one saw what way he went, and the
bully brought the princess to the king, and claimed to have saved her,
and it is he who was made much of, and was the right-hand man after
that.

But when the feast was made ready for the wedding, the princess took
out the bit of hair she had, and she said she would marry no one but
the man whose hair would match that, and she showed the shoe and said
that she would marry no one whose foot would not fit that shoe as well.
And the bully tried to put on the shoe, but so much as his toe would
not go into it, and as to his hair, it didn't match at all to the bit
of hair she had cut from the man that saved her.

So then the king gave a great ball, to bring all the chief men of the
country together to try would the shoe fit any of them. And they were
all going to carpenters and joiners getting bits of their feet cut off
to try could they wear the shoe, but it was no use, not one of them
could get it on.

Then the king went to his chief adviser and asked what could he do. And
the chief adviser bade him to give another ball, and this time he said,
'Give it to poor as well as rich. '

So the ball was given, and many came flocking to it, but the shoe would
not fit any one of them. And the chief adviser said, 'Is every one here
that belongs to the house? ' 'They are all here,' said the king, 'except
the boy that minds the cows, and I would not like him to be coming up
here. '

Jack was below in the yard at the time, and he heard what the king
said, and he was very angry, and he went and got his sword and came
running up the stairs to strike off the king's head, but the man that
kept the gate met him on the stairs before he could get to the king,
and quieted him down, and when he got to the top of the stairs and the
princess saw him, she gave a cry and ran into his arms. And they tried
the shoe and it fitted him, and his hair matched to the piece that had
been cut off. So then they were married, and a great feast was given
for three days and three nights.

And at the end of that time, one morning there came a deer outside the
window, with bells on it, and they ringing. And it called out, 'Here
is the hunt, where is the huntsman and the hound? ' So when Jack heard
that he got up and took his horse and his hound and went hunting the
deer. When it was in the hollow he was on the hill, and when it was on
the hill he was in the hollow, and that went on all through the day,
and when night fell it went into a wood. And Jack went into the wood
after it, and all he could see was a mud-wall cabin, and he went in,
and there he saw an old woman, about two hundred years old, and she
sitting over the fire. 'Did you see a deer pass this way? ' says Jack.
'I did not,' says she, 'but it's too late now for you to be following a
deer, let you stop the night here. ' 'What will I do with my horse and
my hound? ' said Jack. 'Here are two ribs of hair,' says she, 'and let
you tie them up with them. ' So Jack went out and tied up the horse and
the hound, and when he came in again the old woman said, 'You killed
my three sons, and I'm going to kill you now,' and she put on a pair
of boxing-gloves, each one of them nine stone weight, and the nails
in them fifteen inches long. Then they began to fight, and Jack was
getting the worst of it. 'Help, hound! ' he cried out, then 'Squeeze,
hair,' cried out the old woman, and the rib of hair that was about the
hound's neck squeezed him to death. 'Help, horse! ' Jack called out,
then 'Squeeze, hair,' called out the old woman, and the rib of hair
that was about the horse's neck began to tighten and squeeze him to
death. Then the old woman made an end of Jack and threw him outside the
door.

To go back now to Bill. He was out in the garden one day, and he took
a look at the well, and what did he see but the water at the top was
blood, and what was underneath was honey. So he went into the house
again, and he said to his mother, 'I will never eat a second meal at
the same table, or sleep a second night in the same bed, till I know
what is happening to Jack. '

So he took the other horse and hound then, and set off, over hills
where cock never crows and horn never sounds, and the Devil never blows
his bugle. And at last he came to the weaver's house, and when he
went in, the weaver says, 'You are welcome, and I can give you better
treatment than I did the last time you came in to me,' for she thought
it was Jack who was there, they were so much like one another. 'That is
good,' said Bill to himself, 'my brother has been here. ' And he gave
the weaver the full of a basin of gold in the morning before he left.

Then he went on till he came to the king's house, and when he was at
the door the princess came running down the stairs, and said, 'Welcome
to you back again. ' And all the people said, 'It is a wonder you have
gone hunting three days after your marriage, and to stop so long away. '
So he stopped that night with the princess, and she thought it was her
own husband all the time.

And in the morning the deer came, and bells ringing on her, under the
windows, and called out, 'The hunt is here, where are the huntsmen and
the hounds? ' Then Bill got up and got his horse and his hound, and
followed her over hills and hollows till they came to the wood, and
there he saw nothing but the mud-wall cabin and the old woman sitting
by the fire, and she bade him stop the night there, and gave him two
ribs of hair to tie his horse and his hound with. But Bill was wittier
than Jack was, and before he went out, he threw the ribs of hair into
the fire secretly. When he came in the old woman said, 'Your brother
killed my three sons, and I killed him, and I'll kill you along with
him. ' And she put her gloves on, and they began the fight, and then
Bill called out, 'Help, horse. ' 'Squeeze, hair,' called the old woman;
'I can't squeeze, I'm in the fire,' said the hair. And the horse came
in and gave her a blow of his hoof. 'Help, hound,' said Bill then.
'Squeeze, hair,' said the old woman; 'I can't, I'm in the fire,' said
the second hair. Then the hound put his teeth in her, and Bill brought
her down, and she cried for mercy. 'Give me my life,' she said, 'and
I'll tell you where you'll get your brother again, and his hound and
horse. ' 'Where's that? ' said Bill. 'Do you see that rod over the fire? '
said she; 'take it down and go outside the door where you'll see three
green stones, and strike them with the rod, for they are your brother,
and his horse and hound, and they'll come to life again. ' 'I will, but
I'll make a green stone of you first,' said Bill, and he cut off her
head with his sword.

Then he went out and struck the stones, and sure enough there were
Jack, and his horse and hound, alive and well. And they began striking
other stones around, and men came from them, that had been turned to
stones, hundreds and thousands of them.

Then they set out for home, but on the way they had some dispute or
some argument together, for Jack was not well pleased to hear he had
spent the night with his wife, and Bill got angry, and he struck Jack
with the rod, and turned him to a green stone. And he went home, but
the princess saw he had something on his mind, and he said then, 'I
have killed my brother. ' And he went back then and brought him to
life, and they lived happy ever after, and they had children by the
basketful, and threw them out by the shovelful. I was passing one time
myself, and they called me in and gave me a cup of tea.

1902.




BY THE ROADSIDE


LAST night I went to a wide place on the Kiltartan road to listen to
some Irish songs. While I waited for the singers an old man sang about
that country beauty who died so many years ago, and spoke of a singer
he had known who sang so beautifully that no horse would pass him,
but must turn its head and cock its ears to listen. Presently a score
of men and boys and girls, with shawls over their heads, gathered
under the trees to listen. Somebody sang _Sa Muirnin Diles_, and then
somebody else _Jimmy Mo Milestor_, mournful songs of separation, of
death, and of exile. Then some of the men stood up and began to dance,
while another lilted the measure they danced to, and then somebody
sang _Eiblin a Ruin_, that glad song of meeting which has always
moved me more than other songs, because the lover who made it sang it
to his sweetheart under the shadow of a mountain I looked at every
day through my childhood. The voices melted into the twilight, and
were mixed into the trees, and when I thought of the words they too
melted away, and were mixed with the generations of men. Now it was a
phrase, now it was an attitude of mind, an emotional form, that had
carried my memory to older verses, or even to forgotten mythologies.
I was carried so far that it was as though I came to one of the four
rivers, and followed it under the wall of Paradise to the roots of the
trees of knowledge and of life. There is no song or story handed down
among the cottages that has not words and thoughts to carry one as
far, for though one can know but a little of their ascent, one knows
that they ascend like mediaeval genealogies through unbroken dignities
to the beginning of the world. Folk art is, indeed, the oldest of the
aristocracies of thought, and because it refuses what is passing and
trivial, the merely clever and pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and
insincere, and because it has gathered into itself the simplest and
most unforgettable thoughts of the generations, it is the soil where
all great art is rooted. Wherever it is spoken by the fireside, or sung
by the roadside, or carved upon the lintel, appreciation of the arts
that a single mind gives unity and design to, spreads quickly when its
hour is come.

In a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few
people--three or four thousand out of millions--favoured by their own
characters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour,
have understanding of imaginative things, and yet 'the imagination
is the man himself. ' The churches in the Middle Age won all the arts
into their service because men understood that when imagination is
impoverished, a principal voice--some would say the only voice--for the
awakening of wise hope and durable faith, and understanding charity,
can speak but in broken words, if it does not fall silent. And so
it has always seemed to me that we, who would reawaken imaginative
tradition by making old songs live again, or by gathering old stories
into books, take part in the quarrel of Galilee. Those who are Irish
and would spread foreign ways, which, for all but a few, are ways of
spiritual poverty, take part also. Their part is with who those who
were of Jewry, and yet cried out, 'If thou let this man go thou art not
Caesar's friend. '

1901.




_INTO THE TWILIGHT_


_Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight;
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
Thy mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight gray;
Though hope fall from thee or love decay
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill,
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of hollow wood and the hilly wood
And the changing moon work out their will.
And God stands winding his lonely horn;
And Time and the World are ever in flight,
And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn. _




STORIES OF RED HANRAHAN




RED HANRAHAN


HANRAHAN, the hedge schoolmaster, a tall, strong, red-haired young man,
came into the barn where some of the men of the village were sitting
on Samhain Eve. It had been a dwelling-house, and when the man that
owned it had built a better one, he had put the two rooms together, and
kept it for a place to store one thing or another. There was a fire on
the old hearth, and there were dip candles stuck in bottles, and there
was a black quart bottle upon some boards that had been put across two
barrels to make a table. Most of the men were sitting beside the fire,
and one of them was singing a long wandering song, about a Munster man
and a Connaught man that were quarrelling about their two provinces.

Hanrahan went to the man of the house and said, 'I got your message';
but when he had said that, he stopped, for an old mountainy man that
had a shirt and trousers of unbleached flannel, and that was sitting
by himself near the door, was looking at him, and moving an old pack of
cards about in his hands and muttering. 'Don't mind him,' said the man
of the house; 'he is only some stranger came in awhile ago, and we bade
him welcome, it being Samhain night, but I think he is not in his right
wits. Listen to him now and you will hear what he is saying. '

They listened then, and they could hear the old man muttering to
himself as he turned the cards, 'Spades and Diamonds, Courage and
Power; Clubs and Hearts, Knowledge and Pleasure. '

'That is the kind of talk he has been going on with for the last hour,'
said the man of the house, and Hanrahan turned his eyes from the old
man as if he did not like to be looking at him.

'I got your message,' Hanrahan said then; '"he is in the barn with his
three first cousins from Kilchriest," the messenger said, "and there
are some of the neighbours with them. "'

'It is my cousin over there is wanting to see you,' said the man of the
house, and he called over a young frieze-coated man, who was listening
to the song, and said, 'This is Red Hanrahan you have the message for. '

'It is a kind message, indeed,' said the young man, 'for it comes from
your sweetheart, Mary Lavelle. '

'How would you get a message from her, and what do you know of her? '

'I don't know her, indeed, but I was in Loughrea yesterday, and a
neighbour of hers that had some dealings with me was saying that she
bade him send you word, if he met any one from this side in the market,
that her mother has died from her, and if you have a mind yet to join
with herself, she is willing to keep her word to you. '

'I will go to her indeed,' said Hanrahan.

'And she bade you make no delay, for if she has not a man in the house
before the month is out, it is likely the little bit of land will be
given to another. '

When Hanrahan heard that, he rose up from the bench he had sat down
on. 'I will make no delay indeed,' he said, 'there is a full moon, and
if I get as far as Kilchriest to-night, I will reach to her before the
setting of the sun to-morrow. '

When the others heard that, they began to laugh at him for being in
such haste to go to his sweetheart, and one asked him if he would leave
his school in the old lime-kiln, where he was giving the children such
good learning. But he said the children would be glad enough in the
morning to find the place empty, and no one to keep them at their task;
and as for his school he could set it up again in any place, having as
he had his little inkpot hanging from his neck by a chain, and his big
Virgil and his primer in the skirt of his coat.

Some of them asked him to drink a glass before he went, and a young
man caught hold of his coat, and said he must not leave them without
singing the song he had made in praise of Venus and of Mary Lavelle. He
drank a glass of whiskey, but he said he would not stop but would set
out on his journey.

'There's time enough, Red Hanrahan,' said the man of the house. 'It
will be time enough for you to give up sport when you are after your
marriage, and it might be a long time before we will see you again. '

'I will not stop,' said Hanrahan; 'my mind would be on the roads all
the time, bringing me to the woman that sent for me, and she lonesome
and watching till I come. '

Some of the others came about him, pressing him that had been such a
pleasant comrade, so full of songs and every kind of trick and fun, not
to leave them till the night would be over, but he refused them all,
and shook them off, and went to the door. But as he put his foot over
the threshold, the strange old man stood up and put his hand that was
thin and withered like a bird's claw on Hanrahan's hand, and said: 'It
is not Hanrahan, the learned man and the great songmaker, that should
go out from a gathering like this, on a Samhain night. And stop here,
now,' he said, 'and play a hand with me; and here is an old pack of
cards has done its work many a night before this, and old as it is,
there has been much of the riches of the world lost and won over it. '

One of the young men said, 'It isn't much of the riches of the world
has stopped with yourself, old man,' and he looked at the old man's
bare feet, and they all laughed. But Hanrahan did not laugh, but he sat
down very quietly, without a word. Then one of them said, 'So you will
stop with us after all, Hanrahan'; and the old man said: 'He will stop
indeed, did you not hear me asking him? '

They all looked at the old man then as if wondering where he came
from. 'It is far I am come,' he said, 'through France I have come,
and through Spain, and by Lough Greine of the hidden mouth, and none
has refused me anything. ' And then he was silent and nobody liked to
question him, and they began to play. There were six men at the boards
playing, and the others were looking on behind. They played two or
three games for nothing, and then the old man took a four-penny bit,
worn very thin and smooth, out from his pocket, and he called to the
rest to put something on the game. Then they all put down something
on the boards, and little as it was it looked much, from the way it
was shoved from one to another, first one man winning it and then his
neighbour. And sometimes the luck would go against a man and he would
have nothing left, and then one or another would lend him something,
and he would pay it again out of his winnings, for neither good nor bad
luck stopped long with anyone.

And once Hanrahan said as a man would say in a dream, 'It is time for
me to be going the road'; but just then a good card came to him, and
he played it out, and all the money began to come to him. And once he
thought of Mary Lavelle, and he sighed; and that time his luck went
from him, and he forgot her again.

But at last the luck went to the old man and it stayed with him, and
all they had flowed into him, and he began to laugh little laughs to
himself, and to sing over and over to himself, 'Spades and Diamonds,
Courage and Pleasure,' and so on, as if it was a verse of a song.

And after a while anyone looking at the men, and seeing the way their
bodies were rocking to and fro, and the way they kept their eyes on the
old man's hands, would think they had drink taken, or that the whole
store they had in the world was put on the cards; but that was not so,
for the quart bottle had not been disturbed since the game began, and
was nearly full yet, and all that was on the game was a few sixpenny
bits and shillings, and maybe a handful of coppers.

'You are good men to win and good men to lose,' said the old man, 'you
have play in your hearts. ' He began then to shuffle the cards and to
mix them, very quick and fast, till at last they could not see them to
be cards at all, but you would think him to be making rings of fire in
the air, as little lads would make them with whirling a lighted stick;
and after that it seemed to them that all the room was dark, and they
could see nothing but his hands and the cards.

And all in a minute a hare made a leap out from between his hands, and
whether it was one of the cards that took that shape, or whether it was
made out of nothing in the palms of his hands, nobody knew, but there
it was running on the floor of the barn, as quick as any hare that ever
lived.

Some looked at the hare, but more kept their eyes on the old man, and
while they were looking at him a hound made a leap out between his
hands, the same way as the hare did, and after that another hound and
another, till there was a whole pack of them following the hare round
and round the barn.

The players were all standing up now, with their backs to the boards,
shrinking from the hounds, and nearly deafened with the noise of their
yelping, but as quick as the hounds were they could not overtake the
hare, but it went round, till at the last it seemed as if a blast of
wind burst open the barn door, and the hare doubled and made a leap
over the boards where the men had been playing, and went out of the
door and away through the night, and the hounds over the boards and
through the door after it.

Then the old man called out, 'Follow the hounds, follow the hounds, and
it is a great hunt you will see to-night,' and he went out after them.
But used as the men were to go hunting after hares, and ready as they
were for any sport, they were in dread to go out into the night, and it
was only Hanrahan that rose up and that said, 'I will follow, I will
follow on. '

'You had best stop here, Hanrahan,' the young man that was nearest him
said, 'for you might be going into some great danger. ' But Hanrahan
said, 'I will see fair play, I will see fair play,' and he went
stumbling out of the door like a man in a dream, and the door shut
after him as he went.

He thought he saw the old man in front of him, but it was only his own
shadow that the full moon cast on the road before him, but he could
hear the hounds crying after the hare over the wide green fields of
Granagh, and he followed them very fast for there was nothing to stop
him; and after a while he came to smaller fields that had little walls
of loose stones around them, and he threw the stones down as he crossed
them, and did not wait to put them up again; and he passed by the place
where the river goes under ground at Ballylee, and he could hear the
hounds going before him up towards the head of the river. Soon he found
it harder to run, for it was uphill he was going, and clouds came over
the moon, and it was hard for him to see his way, and once he left
the path to take a short cut, but his foot slipped into a boghole and
he had to come back to it. And how long he was going he did not know,
or what way he went, but at last he was up on the bare mountain, with
nothing but the rough heather about him, and he could neither hear the
hounds nor any other thing. But their cry began to come to him again,
at first far off and then very near, and when it came quite close to
him, it went up all of a sudden into the air, and there was the sound
of hunting over his head; then it went away northward till he could
hear nothing more at all. 'That's not fair,' he said, 'that's not
fair. ' And he could walk no longer, but sat down on the heather where
he was, in the heart of Slieve Echtge, for all the strength had gone
from him, with the dint of the long journey he had made.

And after a while he took notice that there was a door close to him,
and a light coming from it, and he wondered that being so close to
him he had not seen it before. And he rose up, and tired as he was he
went in at the door, and although it was night time outside, it was
daylight he found within. And presently he met with an old man that had
been gathering summer thyme and yellow flag-flowers, and it seemed
as if all the sweet smells of the summer were with them.
And the old
man said: 'It is a long time you have been coming to us, Hanrahan the
learned man and the great songmaker. '

And with that he brought him into a very big shining house, and every
grand thing Hanrahan had ever heard of, and every colour he had ever
seen, were in it. There was a high place at the end of the house, and
on it there was sitting in a high chair a woman, the most beautiful the
world ever saw, having a long pale face and flowers about it, but she
had the tired look of one that had been long waiting. And there was
sitting on the step below her chair four grey old women, and the one of
them was holding a great cauldron in her lap; and another a great stone
on her knees, and heavy as it was it seemed light to her; and another
of them had a very long spear that was made of pointed wood; and the
last of them had a sword that was without a scabbard.

Hanrahan stood looking at them for a long time, but none of them spoke
any word to him or looked at him at all. And he had it in his mind to
ask who that woman in the chair was, that was like a queen, and what
she was waiting for; but ready as he was with his tongue and afraid of
no person, he was in dread now to speak to so beautiful a woman, and in
so grand a place. And then he thought to ask what were the four things
the four grey old women were holding like great treasures, but he could
not think of the right words to bring out.

Then the first of the old women rose up, holding the cauldron between
her two hands, and she said 'Pleasure,' and Hanrahan said no word. Then
the second old woman rose up with the stone in her hands, and she said
'Power'; and the third old woman rose up with the spear in her hand,
and she said 'Courage'; and the last of the old women rose up having
the sword in her hands, and she said 'Knowledge. ' And everyone, after
she had spoken, waited as if for Hanrahan to question her, but he said
nothing at all. And then the four old women went out of the door,
bringing their four treasures with them, and as they went out one of
them said, 'He has no wish for us'; and another said, 'He is weak, he
is weak'; and another said, 'He is afraid'; and the last said, 'His
wits are gone from him. ' And then they all said 'Echtge, daughter of
the Silver Hand, must stay in her sleep. It is a pity, it is a great
pity. '

And then the woman that was like a queen gave a very sad sigh, and
it seemed to Hanrahan as if the sigh had the sound in it of hidden
streams; and if the place he was in had been ten times grander and more
shining than it was, he could not have hindered sleep from coming on
him; and he staggered like a drunken man and lay down there and then.

When Hanrahan awoke, the sun was shining on his face, but there was
white frost on the grass around him, and there was ice on the edge of
the stream he was lying by, and that goes running on through Daire-caol
and Druim-da-rod. He knew by the shape of the hills and by the shining
of Lough Greine in the distance that he was upon one of the hills of
Slieve Echtge, but he was not sure how he came there; for all that had
happened in the barn had gone from him, and all of his journey but the
soreness of his feet and the stiffness in his bones.

* * * * *

It was a year after that, there were men of the village of Cappaghtagle
sitting by the fire in a house on the roadside, and Red Hanrahan that
was now very thin and worn and his hair very long and wild, came to the
half-door and asked leave to come in and rest himself; and they bid him
welcome because it was Samhain night. He sat down with them, and they
gave him a glass of whiskey out of a quart bottle; and they saw the
little inkpot hanging about his neck, and knew he was a scholar, and
asked for stories about the Greeks.

He took the Virgil out of the big pocket of his coat, but the cover was
very black and swollen with the wet, and the page when he opened it was
very yellow, but that was no great matter, for he looked at it like a
man that had never learned to read. Some young man that was there began
to laugh at him then, and to ask why did he carry so heavy a book with
him when he was not able to read it.

It vexed Hanrahan to hear that, and he put the Virgil back in his
pocket and asked if they had a pack of cards among them, for cards were
better than books. When they brought out the cards he took them and
began to shuffle them, and while he was shuffling them something seemed
to come into his mind, and he put his hand to his face like one that is
trying to remember, and he said: 'Was I ever here before, or where was
I on a night like this? ' and then of a sudden he stood up and let the
cards fall to the floor, and he said, 'Who was it brought me a message
from Mary Lavelle? '

'We never saw you before now, and we never heard of Mary Lavelle,'
said the man of the house. 'And who is she,' he said, 'and what is it
you are talking about? '

'It was this night a year ago, I was in a barn, and there were men
playing cards, and there was money on the table, they were pushing
it from one to another here and there--and I got a message, and I was
going out of the door to look for my sweetheart that wanted me, Mary
Lavelle. ' And then Hanrahan called out very loud: 'Where have I been
since then? Where was I for the whole year? '

'It is hard to say where you might have been in that time,' said the
oldest of the men, 'or what part of the world you may have travelled;
and it is like enough you have the dust of many roads on your feet; for
there are many go wandering and forgetting like that,' he said, 'when
once they have been given the touch. '

'That is true,' said another of the men. 'I knew a woman went wandering
like that through the length of seven years; she came back after, and
she told her friends she had often been glad enough to eat the food
that was put in the pig's trough. And it is best for you to go to the
priest now,' he said, 'and let him take off you whatever may have been
put upon you. '

'It is to my sweetheart I will go, to Mary Lavelle,' said Hanrahan; 'it
is too long I have delayed, how do I know what might have happened her
in the length of a year? '

He was going out of the door then, but they all told him it was best
for him to stop the night, and to get strength for the journey; and
indeed he wanted that, for he was very weak, and when they gave him
food he eat it like a man that had never seen food before, and one of
them said, 'He is eating as if he had trodden on the hungry grass. ' It
was in the white light of the morning he set out, and the time seemed
long to him till he could get to Mary Lavelle's house. But when he came
to it, he found the door broken, and the thatch dropping from the roof,
and no living person to be seen. And when he asked the neighbours what
had happened her, all they could say was that she had been put out
of the house, and had married some labouring man, and they had gone
looking for work to London or Liverpool or some big place. And whether
she found a worse place or a better he never knew, but anyway he never
met with her or with news of her again.




THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE


HANRAHAN was walking the roads one time near Kinvara at the fall of
day, and he heard the sound of a fiddle from a house a little way
off the roadside. He turned up the path to it, for he never had the
habit of passing by any place where there was music or dancing or good
company, without going in. The man of the house was standing at the
door, and when Hanrahan came near he knew him and he said: 'A welcome
before you, Hanrahan, you have been lost to us this long time. ' But
the woman of the house came to the door and she said to her husband:
'I would be as well pleased for Hanrahan not to come in to-night, for
he has no good name now among the priests, or with women that mind
themselves, and I wouldn't wonder from his walk if he has a drop of
drink taken. ' But the man said, 'I will never turn away Hanrahan of the
poets from my door,' and with that he bade him enter.

There were a good many neighbours gathered in the house, and some of
them remembered Hanrahan; but some of the little lads that were in the
corners had only heard of him, and they stood up to have a view of him,
and one of them said: 'Is not that Hanrahan that had the school, and
that was brought away by Them? ' But his mother put her hand over his
mouth and bade him be quiet, and not be saying things like that. 'For
Hanrahan is apt to grow wicked,' she said, 'if he hears talk of that
story, or if anyone goes questioning him. ' One or another called out
then, asking him for a song, but the man of the house said it was no
time to ask him for a song, before he had rested himself; and he gave
him whiskey in a glass, and Hanrahan thanked him and wished him good
health and drank it off.

The fiddler was tuning his fiddle for another dance, and the man of
the house said to the young men, they would all know what dancing was
like when they saw Hanrahan dance, for the like of it had never been
seen since he was there before. Hanrahan said he would not dance, he
had better use for his feet now, travelling as he was through the
five provinces of Ireland. Just as he said that, there came in at
the half-door Oona, the daughter of the house, having a few bits of
bog deal from Connemara in her arms for the fire. She threw them on
the hearth and the flame rose up, and showed her to be very comely
and smiling, and two or three of the young men rose up and asked for
a dance. But Hanrahan crossed the floor and brushed the others away,
and said it was with him she must dance, after the long road he had
travelled before he came to her. 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.