III


I did not speak as we drove through the deserted streets, for my mind
was curiously empty of familiar thoughts and experiences; it seemed
to have been plucked out of the definite world and cast naked upon a
shoreless sea. There were moments when the vision appeared on the
point of returning, and I would half-remember, with an ecstasy of joy
or sorrow, crimes and heroisms, fortunes and misfortunes; or begin to
contemplate, with a sudden leaping of the heart, hopes and terrors,
desires and ambitions, alien to my orderly and careful life; and then
I would awake shuddering at the thought that some great imponderable
being had swept through my mind. It was indeed days before this
feeling passed perfectly away, and even now, when I have sought
refuge in the only definite faith, I feel a great tolerance for those
people with incoherent personalities, who gather in the chapels and
meeting-places of certain obscure sects, because I also have felt
fixed habits and principles dissolving before a power, which was
_hysterica passio_ or sheer madness, if you will, but was so
powerful in its melancholy exultation that I tremble lest it wake
again and drive me from my new-found peace.

When we came in the grey light to the great half-empty terminus, it
seemed to me I was so changed that I was no more, as man is, a moment
shuddering at eternity, but eternity weeping and laughing over a
moment; and when we had started and Michael Robartes had fallen
asleep, as he soon did, his sleeping face, in which there was no sign
of all that had so shaken me and that now kept me wakeful, was to my
excited mind more like a mask than a face. The fancy possessed me
that the man behind it had dissolved away like salt in water, and
that it laughed and sighed, appealed and denounced at the bidding of
beings greater or less than man. 'This is not Michael Robartes at
all: Michael Robartes is dead; dead for ten, for twenty years
perhaps,' I kept repeating to myself. I fell at last into a feverish
sleep, waking up from time to time when we rushed past some little
town, its slated roofs shining with wet, or still lake gleaming in
the cold morning light. I had been too pre-occupied to ask where we
were going, or to notice what tickets Michael Robartes had taken, but
I knew now from the direction of the sun that we were going westward;
and presently I knew also, by the way in which the trees had grown
into the semblance of tattered beggars flying with bent heads towards
the east, that we were approaching the western coast. Then
immediately I saw the sea between the low hills upon the left, its
dull grey broken into white patches and lines.

When we left the train we had still, I found, some way to go, and set
out, buttoning our coats about us, for the wind was bitter and
violent. Michael Robartes was silent, seeming anxious to leave me to
my thoughts; and as we walked between the sea and the rocky side of a
great promontory, I realized with a new perfection what a shock had
been given to all my habits of thought and of feelings, if indeed
some mysterious change had not taken place in the substance of my
mind, for the grey waves, plumed with scudding foam, had grown part
of a teeming, fantastic inner life; and when Michael Robartes pointed
to a square ancient-looking house, with a much smaller and newer
building under its lee, set out on the very end of a dilapidated and
almost deserted pier, and said it was the Temple of the Alchemical
Rose, I was possessed with the phantasy that the sea, which kept
covering it with showers of white foam, was claiming it as part of
some indefinite and passionate life, which had begun to war upon our
orderly and careful days, and was about to plunge the world into a
night as obscure as that which followed the downfall of the classical
world. One part of my mind mocked this phantastic terror, but the
other, the part that still lay half plunged in vision, listened to
the clash of unknown armies, and shuddered at unimaginable
fanaticisms, that hung in those grey leaping waves.

We had gone but a few paces along the pier when we came upon an old
man, who was evidently a watchman, for he sat in an overset barrel,
close to a place where masons had been lately working upon a break in
the pier, and had in front of him a fire such as one sees slung under
tinkers' carts. I saw that he was also a voteen, as the peasants say,
for there was a rosary hanging from a nail on the rim of the barrel,
and I saw I shuddered, and I did not know why I shuddered. We had
passed him a few yards when I heard him cry in Gaelic, 'Idolaters,
idolaters, go down to Hell with your witches and your devils; go down
to Hell that the herrings may come again into the bay'; and for some
moments I could hear him half screaming and half muttering behind us.
'Are you not afraid,' I said, 'that these wild fishing people may do
some desperate thing against you?'

'I and mine,' he answered, 'are long past human hurt or help, being
incorporate with immortal spirits, and when we die it shall be the
consummation of the supreme work. A time will come for these people
also, and they will sacrifice a mullet to Artemis, or some other fish
to some new divinity, unless indeed their own divinities, the Dagda,
with his overflowing cauldron, Lug, with his spear dipped in poppy-
juice lest it rush forth hot for battle. Aengus, with the three birds
on his shoulder, Bodb and his red swineherd, and all the heroic
children of Dana, set up once more their temples of grey stone. Their
reign has never ceased, but only waned in power a little, for the
Sidhe still pass in every wind, and dance and play at hurley, and
fight their sudden battles in every hollow and on every hill; but
they cannot build their temples again till there have been martyrdoms
and victories, and perhaps even that long-foretold battle in the
Valley of the Black Pig.'

Keeping close to the wall that went about the pier on the seaward
side, to escape the driving foam and the wind, which threatened every
moment to lift us off our feet, we made our way in silence to the
door of the square building. Michael Robartes opened it with a key,
on which I saw the rust of many salt winds, and led me along a bare
passage and up an uncarpeted stair to a little room surrounded with
bookshelves. A meal would be brought, but only of fruit, for I must
submit to a tempered fast before the ceremony, he explained, and with
it a book on the doctrine and method of the Order, over which I was
to spend what remained of the winter daylight. He then left me,
promising to return an hour before the ceremony. I began searching
among the bookshelves, and found one of the most exhaustive
alchemical libraries I have ever seen. There were the works of
Morienus, who hid his immortal body under a shirt of hair-cloth; of
Avicenna, who was a drunkard and yet controlled numberless legions of
spirits; of Alfarabi, who put so many spirits into his lute that he
could make men laugh, or weep, or fall in deadly trance as he would;
of Lully, who transformed himself into the likeness of a red cock; of
Flamel, who with his wife Parnella achieved the elixir many hundreds
of years ago, and is fabled to live still in Arabia among the
Dervishes; and of many of less fame. There were very few mystics but
alchemical mystics, and because, I had little doubt, of the devotion
to one god of the greater number and of the limited sense of beauty,
which Robartes would hold an inevitable consequence; but I did notice
a complete set of facsimiles of the prophetical writings of William
Blake, and probably because of the multitudes that thronged his
illumination and were 'like the gay fishes on the wave when the moon
sucks up the dew.' I noted also many poets and prose writers of every
age, but only those who were a little weary of life, as indeed the
greatest have been everywhere, and who cast their imagination to us,
as a something they needed no longer now that they were going up in
their fiery chariots.

Presently I heard a tap at the door, and a woman came in and laid a
little fruit upon the table. I judged that she had once been
handsome, but her cheeks were hollowed by what I would have held, had
I seen her anywhere else, an excitement of the flesh and a thirst for
pleasure, instead of which it doubtless was an excitement of the
imagination and a thirst for beauty. I asked her some question
concerning the ceremony, but getting no answer except a shake of the
head, saw that I must await initiation in silence. When I had eaten,
she came again, and having laid a curiously wrought bronze box on the
table, lighted the candles, and took away the plates and the
remnants. So soon as I was alone, I turned to the box, and found that
the peacocks of Hera spread out their tails over the sides and lid,
against a background, on which were wrought great stars, as though to
affirm that the heavens were a part of their glory. In the box was a
book bound in vellum, and having upon the vellum and in very delicate
colours, and in gold, the alchemical rose with many spears thrusting
against it, but in vain, as was shown by the shattered points of
those nearest to the petals. The book was written upon vellum, and in
beautiful clear letters, interspersed with symbolical pictures and
illuminations, after the manner of the Splendor Soils.

The first chapter described how six students, of Celtic descent, gave
themselves separately to the study of alchemy, and solved, one the
mystery of the Pelican, another the mystery of the green Dragon,
another the mystery of the Eagle, another that of Salt and Mercury.
What seemed a succession of accidents, but was, the book declared,
the contrivance of preternatural powers, brought them together in the
garden of an inn in the South of France, and while they talked
together the thought came to them that alchemy was the gradual
distillation of the contents of the soul, until they were ready to
put off the mortal and put on the immortal. An owl passed, rustling
among the vine-leaves overhead, and then an old woman came, leaning
upon a stick, and, sitting close to them, took up the thought where
they had dropped it. Having expounded the whole principle of
spiritual alchemy, and bid them found the Order of the Alchemical
Rose, she passed from among them, and when they would have followed
she was nowhere to be seen. They formed themselves into an Order,
holding their goods and making their researches in common, and, as
they became perfect in the alchemical doctrine, apparitions came and
went among them, and taught them more and more marvellous mysteries.
The book then went on to expound so much of these as the neophyte was
permitted to know, dealing at the outset and at considerable length
with the independent reality of our thoughts, which was, it declared,
the doctrine from which all true doctrines rose. If you imagine, it
said, the semblance of a living being, it is at once possessed by a
wandering soul, and goes hither and thither working good or evil,
until the moment of its death has come; and gave many examples,
received, it said, from many gods. Eros had taught them how to
fashion forms in which a divine soul could dwell, and whisper what
they would into sleeping minds; and Ate forms from which demonic
beings could pour madness, or unquiet dreams, into sleeping blood;
and Hermes, that if you powerfully imagined a hound at your bedside
it would keep watch there until you woke, and drive away all but the
mightiest demons, but that if your imagination was weakly, the hound
would be weakly also, and the demons prevail, and the hound soon die;
and Aphrodite, that if you made, by a strong imagining, a dove
crowned with silver and had it flutter over your head, its soft
cooing would make sweet dreams of immortal love gather and brood over
mortal sleep; and all divinities alike had revealed with many
warnings and lamentations that all minds are continually giving birth
to such beings, and sending them forth to work health or disease, joy
or madness. If you would give forms to the evil powers, it went on,
you were to make them ugly, thrusting out a lip, with the thirsts of
life, or breaking the proportions of a body with the burdens of life;
but the divine powers would only appear in beautiful shapes, which
are but, as it were, shapes trembling out of existence, folding up
into a timeless ecstasy, drifting with half-shut eyes, into a sleepy
stillness. The bodiless souls who descended into these forms were
what men called the moods; and worked all great changes in the world;
for just as the magician or the artist could call them when he would,
so they could call out of the mind of the magician or the artist, or
if they were demons, out of the mind of the mad or the ignoble, what
shape they would, and through its voice and its gestures pour
themselves out upon the world. In this way all great events were
accomplished; a mood, a divinity, or a demon, first descending like a
faint sigh into men's minds and then changing their thoughts and
their actions until hair that was yellow had grown black, or hair
that was black had grown yellow, and empires moved their border, as
though they were but drifts of leaves. The rest of the book contained
symbols of form, and sound, and colour, and their attribution to
divinities and demons, so that the initiate might fashion a shape for
any divinity or any demon, and be as powerful as Avicenna among those
who live under the roots of tears and of laughter.

IV


A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told me
that I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance,
because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three
times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on
which alone the transient and accidental could be broken, and the
spirit set free. I found that the steps, which were simple enough,
resembled certain antique Greek dances, and having been a good dancer
in my youth and the master of many curious Gaelic steps, I soon had
them in my memory. He then robed me and himself in a costume which
suggested by its shape both Greece and Egypt, but by its crimson
colour a more passionate life than theirs; and having put into my
hands a little chainless censer of bronze, wrought into the likeness
of a rose, by some modern craftsman, he told me to open a small door
opposite to the door by which I had entered. I put my hand to the
handle, but the moment I did so the fumes of the incense, helped
perhaps by his mysterious glamour, made me fall again into a dream,
in which I seemed to be a mask, lying on the counter of a little
Eastern shop. Many persons, with eyes so bright and still that I knew
them for more than human, came in and tried me on their faces, but at
last flung me into a corner with a little laughter; but all this
passed in a moment, for when I awoke my hand was still upon the
handle. I opened the door, and found myself in a marvellous passage,
along whose sides were many divinities wrought in a mosaic, not less
beautiful than the mosaic in the Baptistery at Ravenna, but of a less
severe beauty; the predominant colour of each divinity, which was
surely a symbolic colour, being repeated in the lamps that hung from
the ceiling, a curiously-scented lamp before every divinity. I passed
on, marvelling exceedingly how these enthusiasts could have created
all this beauty in so remote a place, and half persuaded to believe
in a material alchemy, by the sight of so much hidden wealth; the
censer filling the air, as I passed, with smoke of ever-changing
colour.

I stopped before a door, on whose bronze panels were wrought great
waves in whose shadow were faint suggestions of terrible faces. Those
beyond it seemed to have heard our steps, for a voice cried: 'Is the
work of the Incorruptible Fire at an end?' and immediately Michael
Robartes answered: 'The perfect gold has come from the
_atbanor_.' The door swung open, and we were in a great circular
room, and among men and women who were dancing slowly in crimson
robes. Upon the ceiling was an immense rose wrought in mosaic; and
about the walls, also in mosaic, was a battle of gods and angels, the
gods glimmering like rubies and sapphires, and the angels of the one
greyness, because, as Michael Robartes whispered, they had renounced
their divinity, and turned from the unfolding of their separate
hearts, out of love for a God of humility and sorrow. Pillars
supported the roof and made a kind of circular cloister, each pillar
being a column of confused shapes, divinities, it seemed, of the
wind, who rose as in a whirling dance of more than human vehemence,
and playing upon pipes and cymbals; and from among these shapes were
thrust out hands, and in these hands were censers. I was bid place my
censer also in a hand and take my place and dance, and as I turned
from the pillars towards the dancers, I saw that the floor was of a
green stone, and that a pale Christ on a pale cross was wrought in
the midst. I asked Robartes the meaning of this, and was told that
they desired 'To trouble His unity with their multitudinous feet.'
The dance wound in and out, tracing upon the floor the shapes of
petals that copied the petals in the rose overhead, and to the sound
of hidden instruments which were perhaps of an antique pattern, for I
have never heard the like; and every moment the dance was more
passionate, until all the winds of the world seemed to have awakened
under our feet. After a little I had grown weary, and stood under a
pillar watching the coming and going of those flame-like figures;
until gradually I sank into a half-dream, from which I was awakened
by seeing the petals of the great rose, which had no longer the look
of mosaic, falling slowly through the incense-heavy air, and, as
they fell, shaping into the likeness of living beings of an
extraordinary beauty. Still faint and cloud-like, they began to
dance, and as they danced took a more and more definite shape, so
that I was able to distinguish beautiful Grecian faces and august
Egyptian faces, and now and again to name a divinity by the staff in
his hand or by a bird fluttering over his head; and soon every mortal
foot danced by the white foot of an immortal; and in the troubled
eyes that looked into untroubled shadowy eyes, I saw the brightness
of uttermost desire as though they had found at length, after
unreckonable wandering, the lost love of their youth. Sometimes, but
only for a moment, I saw a faint solitary figure with a Rosa veiled
face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a
dream within a dream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I knew by an
understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought, that it was
Eros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or woman
from the beginning of the world has ever known what love is, or
looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a
spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune
with a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love
through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if
ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable
desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought these
things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: 'Into the
dance! there is none that can be spared out of the dance; into the
dance! into the dance! that the gods may make them bodies out of the
substance of our hearts'; and before I could answer, a mysterious
wave of passion, that seemed like the soul of the dance moving within
our souls, took Alchemica. hold of me, and I was swept, neither
consenting nor refusing, into the midst. I was dancing with an immortal
august woman, who had black lilies in her hair, and her dreamy gesture
seemed laden with a wisdom more profound than the darkness that is
between star and star, and with a love like the love that breathed upon
the waters; and as we danced on and on, the incense drifted over us
and round us, covering us away as in the heart of the world, and ages
seemed to pass, and tempests to awake and perish in the folds of our
robes and in her heavy hair.

Suddenly I remembered that her eyelids had never quivered, and that
her lilies had not dropped a black petal, or shaken from their
places, and understood with a great horror that I danced with one who
was more or less than human, and who was drinking up my soul as an ox
drinks up a wayside pool; and I fell, and darkness passed over me.

I awoke suddenly as though something had awakened me, and saw that I
was lying on a roughly painted floor, and that on the ceiling, which
was at no great distance, was a roughly painted rose, and about me on
the walls half-finished paintings. The pillars and the censers had
gone; and near me a score of sleepers lay wrapped in disordered
robes, their upturned faces looking to my imagination like hollow
masks; and a chill dawn was shining down upon them from a long window
I had not noticed before; and outside the sea roared. I saw Michael
Robartes lying at a little distance and beside him an overset bowl of
wrought bronze which looked as though it had once held incense. As I
sat thus, I heard a sudden tumult of angry men and women's voices mix
with the roaring of the sea; and leaping to my feet, I went quickly
to Michael Robartes, and tried to shake him out of his sleep. I then
seized him by the shoulder and tried to lift him, but he fell
backwards, and sighed faintly; and the voices became louder and
angrier; and there was a sound of heavy blows upon the door, which
opened on to the pier. Suddenly I heard a sound of rending wood, and
I knew it had begun to give, and I ran to the door of the room. I
pushed it open and came out upon a passage whose bare boards
clattered under my feet, and found in the passage another door which
led into an empty kitchen; and as I passed through the door I heard
two crashes in quick succession, and knew by the sudden noise of feet
and the shouts that the door which opened on to the pier had fallen
inwards. I ran from the kitchen and out into a small yard, and from
this down some steps which descended the seaward and sloping side of
the pier, and from the steps clambered along the water's edge, with
the angry voices ringing in my ears. This part of the pier had been
but lately refaced with blocks of granite, so that it was almost
clear of seaweed; but when I came to the old part, I found it so
slippery with green weed that I had to climb up on to the roadway. I
looked towards the Temple of the Alchemical Rose, where the fishermen
and the women were still shouting, but somewhat more faintly, and saw
that there was no one about the door or upon the pier; but as I
looked, a little crowd hurried out of the door and began gathering
large stones from where they were heaped up in readiness for the next
time a storm shattered the pier, when they would be laid under blocks
of granite. While I stood watching the crowd, an old man, who was, I
think, the voteen, pointed to me, and screamed out something, and the
crowd whitened, for all the faces had turned towards me. I ran, and
it was well for me that pullers of the oar are poorer men with their
feet than with their arms and their bodies; and yet while I ran I
scarcely heard the following feet or the angry voices, for many
voices of exultation and lamentation, which were forgotten as a dream
is forgotten the moment they were heard, seemed to be ringing in the
air over my head.

There are moments even now when I seem to hear those voices of
exultation and lamentation, and when the indefinite world, which has
but half lost its mastery over my heart and my intellect, seems about
to claim a perfect mastery; but I carry the rosary about my neck, and
when I hear, or seem to hear them, I press it to my heart and say:
'He whose name is Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects
with subtlety and flattering our hearts with beauty, and we have no
trust but in Thee'; and then the war that rages within me at other
times is still, and I am at peace.

The Secret Rose:

   Dedication to A.E.
   To the Secret Rose
   The Crusifixion of the Outcast
   Out of the Rose
   The Wisdom of the King
   The Heart of the Spring
   The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows
   The Old Men of the Twilight
   Where There is Nothing, There is God
   Of Costello the proud, of Oona the Daughter of Dermott, and of the
   Bitter Tongue





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

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






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

W.B. Yeats

To the Secret Rose



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

The Crusifixion of the Outcast


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

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

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

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

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

'Is he cursing in rhyme?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Would you, then, confess?'

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

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

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

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

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

Out of the Rose


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Are the wood-thieves treacherous and impious?'

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

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

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

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

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

'I would ask something of you for myself.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wisdom of the King


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Heart of the Spring


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Old Men of the Twilight


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

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

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

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

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

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

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