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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10459 ***
+
+
+THE CELTIC TWILIGHT
+
+by
+
+W. B. YEATS
+
+
+
+
+
+    Time drops in decay
+    Like a candle burnt out.
+    And the mountains and woods
+    Have their day, have their day;
+    But, kindly old rout
+    Of the fire-born moods,
+    You pass not away.
+
+
+
+
+    THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE
+
+
+    The host is riding from Knocknarea,
+    And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
+    Caolte tossing his burning hair,
+    And Niamh calling, “Away, come away;
+    Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
+    The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
+    Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
+    Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
+    Our arms are waving, our lips are apart,
+    And if any gaze on our rushing band,
+    We come between him and the deed of his hand,
+    We come between him and the hope of his heart.”
+    The host is rushing ’twixt night and day;
+    And where is there hope or deed as fair?
+    Caolte tossing his burning hair,
+    And Niamh calling, “Away, come away.”
+
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the
+beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy
+world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any
+of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore
+written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen,
+and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.
+I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those
+of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and
+faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine.
+The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull
+them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can
+weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too
+have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it,
+and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.
+
+Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has
+built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out
+their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved
+daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.
+
+
+1893.
+
+
+
+II
+
+I have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old ones, and
+would have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something
+of the lightness of one’s dreams; one begins to take life up in both
+hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no
+great loss per haps. In these new chapters, as in the old ones, I have
+invented nothing but my comments and one or two deceitful sentences
+that may keep some poor story-teller’s commerce with the devil and his
+angels, or the like, from being known among his neighbours. I shall
+publish in a little while a big book about the commonwealth of faery,
+and shall try to make it systematical and learned enough to buy pardon
+for this handful of dreams.
+
+
+1902.
+
+W. B. YEATS.
+
+
+
+
+A TELLER OF TALES
+
+
+Many of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a
+little bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin
+in the village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, “the most
+gentle”--whereby he meant faery--“place in the whole of County Sligo.”
+Others hold it, however, but second to Drumcliff and Drumahair. The
+first time I saw him he was cooking mushrooms for himself; the next
+time he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep. He was indeed
+always cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes (swift as the
+eyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled holes) a
+melancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy; the visionary
+melancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.
+
+And yet there was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple
+solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went about much
+pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever
+recommended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of
+telling how Collumcille cheered up his mother. “How are you to-day,
+mother?” said the saint. “Worse,” replied the mother. “May you be worse
+to-morrow,” said the saint. The next day Collumcille came again, and
+exactly the same conversation took place, but the third day the mother
+said, “Better, thank God.” And the saint replied, “May you be better
+to-morrow.” He was fond too of telling how the Judge smiles at the last
+day alike when he rewards the good and condemns the lost to unceasing
+flames. He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him
+sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, “Am I
+not annoyed with them?” I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. “I
+have seen it,” he said, “down there by the water, batting the river
+with its hands.”
+
+I have copied this account of Paddy Flynn, with a few verbal
+alterations, from a note-book which I almost filled with his tales and
+sayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-book
+regretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled up.
+Paddy Flynn is dead; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle of
+whiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so much
+liquor filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon it for
+some days and then died. His body, worn out with old age and hard
+times, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a great
+teller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to empty
+heaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland and earth, to people his
+stories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample
+circumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by
+his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of
+imagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the
+vehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need
+heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less
+than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find
+no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell,
+purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts
+to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of
+rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey
+the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is
+true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.
+
+
+
+
+BELIEF AND UNBELIEF
+
+
+There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told
+me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts.
+Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep
+people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go
+“trapsin about the earth” at their own free will; “but there are
+faeries,” she added, “and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and
+fallen angels.” I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed
+upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter
+what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the
+mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, “they stand to reason.” Even the
+official mind does not escape this faith.
+
+A little girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close under
+the seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one night about
+three years ago. There was at once great excitement in the
+neighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken her.
+A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but
+at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a
+broomstick. The local constable was applied to, and he at once
+instituted a house-to-house search, and at the same time advised the
+people to burn all the bucalauns (ragweed) on the field she vanished
+from, because bucalauns are sacred to the faeries. They spent the whole
+night burning them, the constable repeating spells the while. In the
+morning the little girl was found, the story goes, wandering in the
+field. She said the faeries had taken her away a great distance, riding
+on a faery horse. At last she saw a big river, and the man who had
+tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it--such are
+the topsy-turvydoms of faery glamour--in a cockleshell. On the way her
+companions had mentioned the names of several people who were about to
+die shortly in the village.
+
+Perhaps the constable was right. It is better doubtless to believe
+much unreason and a little truth than to deny for denial’s sake truth
+and unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush candle
+to guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth to dance before us on the
+marsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where
+dwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great
+evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and
+welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself,
+whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the
+dhouls themselves, “Be ye gone”? When all is said and done, how do we
+not know but that our own unreason may be better than another’s truth?
+for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready
+for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.
+Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!
+
+
+
+
+MORTAL HELP
+
+
+One hears in the old poems of men taken away to help the gods in a
+battle, and Cuchullan won the goddess Fand for a while, by helping her
+married sister and her sister’s husband to overthrow another nation of
+the Land of Promise. I have been told, too, that the people of faery
+cannot even play at hurley unless they have on either side some mortal,
+whose body, or whatever has been put in its place, as the story-teller
+would say, is asleep at home. Without mortal help they are shadowy and
+cannot even strike the balls. One day I was walking over some marshy
+land in Galway with a friend when we found an old, hard-featured man
+digging a ditch. My friend had heard that this man had seen a wonderful
+sight of some kind, and at last we got the story out of him. When he
+was a boy he was working one day with about thirty men and women and
+boys. They were beyond Tuam and not far from Knock-na-gur. Presently
+they saw, all thirty of them, and at a distance of about half-a-mile,
+some hundred and fifty of the people of faery. There were two of them,
+he said, in dark clothes like people of our own time, who stood about a
+hundred yards from one another, but the others wore clothes of all
+colours, “bracket” or chequered, and some with red waistcoats.
+
+He could not see what they were doing, but all might have been playing
+hurley, for “they looked as if it was that.” Sometimes they would
+vanish, and then he would almost swear they came back out of the bodies
+of the two men in dark clothes. These two men were of the size of
+living men, but the others were small. He saw them for about half-an-
+hour, and then the old man he and those about him were working for took
+up a whip and said, “Get on, get on, or we will have no work done!” I
+asked if he saw the faeries too, “Oh, yes, but he did not want work he
+was paying wages for to be neglected.” He made every body work so hard
+that nobody saw what happened to the faeries.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A VISIONARY
+
+
+A young man came to see me at my lodgings the other night, and began
+to talk of the making of the earth and the heavens and much else. I
+questioned him about his life and his doings. He had written many poems
+and painted many mystical designs since we met last, but latterly had
+neither written nor painted, for his whole heart was set upon making
+his mind strong, vigorous, and calm, and the emotional life of the
+artist was bad for him, he feared. He recited his poems readily,
+however. He had them all in his memory. Some indeed had never been
+written down. They, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the
+reeds,[FN#1] seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and
+of Celtic longing for infinite things the world has never seen.
+Suddenly it seemed to me that he was peering about him a little
+eagerly. “Do you see anything, X-----?” I said. “A shining, winged
+woman, covered by her long hair, is standing near the doorway,” he
+answered, or some such words. “Is it the influence of some living
+person who thinks of us, and whose thoughts appear to us in that
+symbolic form?” I said; for I am well instructed in the ways of the
+visionaries and in the fashion of their speech. “No,” he replied; “for
+if it were the thoughts of a person who is alive I should feel the
+living influence in my living body, and my heart would beat and my
+breath would fail. It is a spirit. It is some one who is dead or who
+has never lived.”
+
+
+[FN#1]  I wrote this sentence long ago. This sadness now seems to me a
+part of all peoples who preserve the moods of the ancient peoples of
+the world. I am not so pre-occupied with the mystery of Race as I used
+to be, but leave this sentence and other sentences like it unchanged.
+We once believed them, and have, it may be, not grown wiser.
+
+
+I asked what he was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His
+pleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to half-
+mad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and conscience-
+stricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles into his
+care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging, more than
+one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and sun them
+as it were in the subtle light of his mind. Sometimes visions come to
+him as he talks with them, and he is rumoured to have told divers
+people true matters of their past days and distant friends, and left
+them hushed with dread of their strange teacher, who seems scarce more
+than a boy, and is so much more subtle than the oldest among them.
+
+The poetry he recited me was full of his nature and his visions.
+Sometimes it told of other lives he believes himself to have lived in
+other centuries, sometimes of people he had talked to, revealing them
+to their own minds. I told him I would write an article upon him and
+it, and was told in turn that I might do so if I did not mention his
+name, for he wished to be always “unknown, obscure, impersonal.” Next
+day a bundle of his poems arrived, and with them a note in these words:
+“Here are copies of verses you said you liked. I do not think I could
+ever write or paint any more. I prepare myself for a cycle of other
+activities in some other life. I will make rigid my roots and branches.
+It is not now my turn to burst into leaves and flowers.”
+
+The poems were all endeavours to capture some high, impalpable mood in
+a net of obscure images. There were fine passages in all, but these
+were often embedded in thoughts which have evidently a special value to
+his mind, but are to other men the counters of an unknown coinage. To
+them they seem merely so much brass or copper or tarnished silver at
+the best. At other times the beauty of the thought was obscured by
+careless writing as though he had suddenly doubted if writing was not a
+foolish labour. He had frequently illustrated his verses with drawings,
+in which an unperfect anatomy did not altogether hide extreme beauty of
+feeling. The faeries in whom he believes have given him many subjects,
+notably Thomas of Ercildoune sitting motionless in the twilight while a
+young and beautiful creature leans softly out of the shadow and
+whispers in his ear. He had delighted above all in strong effects of
+colour: spirits who have upon their heads instead of hair the feathers
+of peacocks; a phantom reaching from a swirl of flame towards a star; a
+spirit passing with a globe of iridescent crystal-symbol of the soul-
+half shut within his hand. But always under this largess of colour lay
+some tender homily addressed to man’s fragile hopes. This spiritual
+eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for
+illumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone. One of these
+especially comes to mind. A winter or two ago he spent much of the
+night walking up and down upon the mountain talking to an old peasant
+who, dumb to most men, poured out his cares for him. Both were unhappy:
+X----- because he had then first decided that art and poetry were not
+for him, and the old peasant because his life was ebbing out with no
+achievement remaining and no hope left him. Both how Celtic! how full
+of striving after a something never to be completely expressed in word
+or deed. The peasant was wandering in his mind with prolonged sorrow.
+Once he burst out with “God possesses the heavens--God possesses the
+heavens--but He covets the world”; and once he lamented that his old
+neighbours were gone, and that all had forgotten him: they used to draw
+a chair to the fire for him in every cabin, and now they said, “Who is
+that old fellow there?” “The fret [Irish for doom] is over me,” he
+repeated, and then went on to talk once more of God and heaven. More
+than once also he said, waving his arm towards the mountain, “Only
+myself knows what happened under the thorn-tree forty years ago”; and
+as he said it the tears upon his face glistened in the moonlight.
+
+This old man always rises before me when I think of X-----. Both seek
+--one in wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle
+allegoric poetry-to express a something that lies beyond the range of
+expression; and both, if X----- will forgive me, have within them the
+vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic
+heart. The peasant visionaries that are, the landlord duelists that
+were, and the whole hurly-burly of legends--Cuchulain fighting the sea
+for two days until the waves pass over him and he dies, Caolte storming
+the palace of the gods, Oisin seeking in vain for three hundred years
+to appease his insatiable heart with all the pleasures of faeryland,
+these two mystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the
+central dreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and
+this mind that finds them so interesting--all are a portion of that
+great Celtic phantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered, nor
+any angel revealed.
+
+
+
+
+VILLAGE GHOSTS
+
+
+In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our
+minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities;
+people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce.
+Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge.
+When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your
+favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it.
+We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all
+the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on
+unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all
+our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb
+multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering
+through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers
+wrote across unexplored regions, “Here are lions.” Across the villages
+of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us,
+we can write but one line that is certain, “Here are ghosts.”
+
+My ghosts inhabit the village of H-----, in Leinster. History has in
+no manner been burdened by this ancient village, with its crooked
+lanes, its old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green
+background of small fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry
+fishing-luggers. In the annals of entomology it is well known. For a
+small bay lies westward a little, where he who watches night after
+night may see a certain rare moth fluttering along the edge of the
+tide, just at the end of evening or the beginning of dawn. A hundred
+years ago it was carried here from Italy by smugglers in a cargo of
+silks and laces. If the moth-hunter would throw down his net, and go
+hunting for ghost tales or tales of the faeries and such-like children
+of Lillith, he would have need for far less patience.
+
+To approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy.
+A man was once heard complaining, “By the cross of Jesus! how shall I
+go? If I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on
+me. If I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the
+headless one and another on the quays, and a new one under the old
+churchyard wall. If I go right round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is
+appearing at Hillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital
+Lane.”
+
+I never heard which spirit he braved, but feel sure it was not the one
+in the Hospital Lane. In cholera times a shed had been there set up to
+receive patients. When the need had gone by, it was pulled down, but
+ever since the ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and
+demons and faeries. There is a farmer at H-----, Paddy B----- by name-a
+man of great strength, and a teetotaller. His wife and sister-in-law,
+musing on his great strength, often wonder what he would do if he
+drank. One night when passing through the Hospital Lane, he saw what he
+supposed at first to be a tame rabbit; after a little he found that it
+was a white cat. When he came near, the creature slowly began to swell
+larger and larger, and as it grew he felt his own strength ebbing away,
+as though it were sucked out of him. He turned and ran.
+
+By the Hospital Lane goes the “Faeries Path.” Every evening they
+travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea
+end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived
+there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband
+was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he
+had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, “In the name of
+God, who are you?” He got up and went out, saying, “Never leave the
+door open at this hour, or evil may come to you.” She woke her husband
+and told him. “One of the good people has been with us,” said he.
+
+Probably the man braved Mrs. Stewart at Hillside Gate. When she lived
+she was the wife of the Protestant clergyman. “Her ghost was never
+known to harm any one,” say the village people; “it is only doing a
+penance upon the earth.” Not far from Hillside Gate, where she haunted,
+appeared for a short time a much more remarkable spirit. Its haunt was
+the bogeen, a green lane leading from the western end of the village. I
+quote its history at length: a typical village tragedy. In a cottage at
+the village end of the bogeen lived a house-painter, Jim Montgomery,
+and his wife. They had several children. He was a little dandy, and
+came of a higher class than his neighbours. His wife was a very big
+woman. Her husband, who had been expelled from the village choir for
+drink, gave her a beating one day. Her sister heard of it, and came and
+took down one of the window shutters--Montgomery was neat about
+everything, and had shutters on the outside of every window--and beat
+him with it, being big and strong like her sister. He threatened to
+prosecute her; she answered that she would break every bone in his body
+if he did. She never spoke to her sister again, because she had allowed
+herself to be beaten by so small a man. Jim Montgomery grew worse and
+worse: his wife soon began to have not enough to eat. She told no one,
+for she was very proud. Often, too, she would have no fire on a cold
+night. If any neighbours came in she would say she had let the fire out
+because she was just going to bed. The people about often heard her
+husband beating her, but she never told any one. She got very thin. At
+last one Saturday there was no food in the house for herself and the
+children. She could bear it no longer, and went to the priest and asked
+him for some money. He gave her thirty shillings. Her husband met her,
+and took the money, and beat her. On the following Monday she got very
+W, and sent for a Mrs. Kelly. Mrs. Kelly, as soon as she saw her, said,
+“My woman, you are dying,” and sent for the priest and the doctor. She
+died in an hour. After her death, as Montgomery neglected the children,
+the landlord had them taken to the workhouse. A few nights after they
+had gone, Mrs. Kelly was going home through the bogeen when the ghost
+of Mrs. Montgomery appeared and followed her. It did not leave her
+until she reached her own house. She told the priest, Father R, a noted
+antiquarian, and could not get him to believe her. A few nights
+afterwards Mrs. Kelly again met the spirit in the same place. She was
+in too great terror to go the whole way, but stopped at a neighbour’s
+cottage midway, and asked them to let her in. They answered they were
+going to bed. She cried out, “In the name of God let me in, or I will
+break open the door.” They opened, and so she escaped from the ghost.
+Next day she told the priest again. This time he believed, and said it
+would follow her until she spoke to it.
+
+She met the spirit a third time in the bogeen. She asked what kept it
+from its rest. The spirit said that its children must be taken from the
+workhouse, for none of its relations were ever there before, and that
+three masses were to be said for the repose of its soul. “If my husband
+does not believe you,” she said, “show him that,” and touched Mrs.
+Kelly’s wrist with three fingers. The places where they touched swelled
+up and blackened. She then vanished. For a time Montgomery would not
+believe that his wife had appeared: “she would not show herself to Mrs.
+Kelly,” he said--“she with respectable people to appear to.” He was
+convinced by the three marks, and the children were taken from the
+workhouse. The priest said the masses, and the shade must have been at
+rest, for it has not since appeared. Some time afterwards Jim
+Montgomery died in the workhouse, having come to great poverty through
+drink.
+
+I know some who believe they have seen the headless ghost upon the
+quay, and one who, when he passes the old cemetery wall at night, sees
+a woman with white borders to her cap[FN#2] creep out and follow him.
+The apparition only leaves him at his own door. The villagers imagine
+that she follows him to avenge some wrong. “I will haunt you when I
+die” is a favourite threat. His wife was once half-scared to death by
+what she considers a demon in the shape of a dog.
+
+
+[FN#2]  I wonder why she had white borders to her cap. The old Mayo
+woman, who has told me so many tales, has told me that her brother-in-
+law saw “a woman with white borders to her cap going around the stacks
+in a field, and soon after he got a hurt, and he died in six months.”
+
+
+These are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their
+tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.
+
+One night a Mrs. Nolan was watching by her dying child in Fluddy’s
+Lane. Suddenly there was a sound of knocking heard at the door. She did
+not open, fearing it was some unhuman thing that knocked. The knocking
+ceased. After a little the front-door and then the back-door were burst
+open, and closed again. Her husband went to see what was wrong. He
+found both doors bolted. The child died. The doors were again opened
+and closed as before. Then Mrs. Nolan remembered that she had forgotten
+to leave window or door open, as the custom is, for the departure of
+the soul. These strange openings and closings and knockings were
+warnings and reminders from the spirits who attend the dying.
+
+The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is
+put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live
+with it. I remember two children who slept with their mother and
+sisters and brothers in one small room. In the room was also a ghost.
+They sold herrings in the Dublin streets, and did not mind the ghost
+much, because they knew they would always sell their fish easily while
+they slept in the “ha’nted” room.
+
+I have some acquaintance among the ghost-seers of western villages.
+The Connaught tales are very different from those of Leinster. These
+H----- spirits have a gloomy, matter-of-fact way with them. They come to
+announce a death, to fulfil some obligation, to revenge a wrong, to pay
+their bills even--as did a fisherman’s daughter the other day--and then
+hasten to their rest. All things they do decently and in order. It is
+demons, and not ghosts, that transform themselves into white cats or
+black dogs. The people who tell the tales are poor, serious-minded
+fishing people, who find in the doings of the ghosts the fascination of
+fear. In the western tales is a whimsical grace, a curious extravagance.
+The people who recount them live in the most wild and beautiful scenery,
+under a sky ever loaded and fantastic with flying clouds. They are
+farmers and labourers, who do a little fishing now and then. They do not
+fear the spirits too much to feel an artistic and humorous pleasure in
+their doings. The ghosts themselves share in their quaint hilarity. In
+one western town, on whose deserted wharf the grass grows, these spirits
+have so much vigour that, when a misbeliever ventured to sleep in a
+haunted house, I have been told they flung him through the window, and
+his bed after him. In the surrounding villages the creatures use the
+most strange disguises. A dead old gentleman robs the cabbages of his
+own garden in the shape of a large rabbit. A wicked sea-captain stayed
+for years inside the plaster of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe,
+making the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was
+broken down; then out of the solid plaster the snipe rushed away whistling.
+
+
+
+
+“DUST HATH CLOSED HELEN’S EYE”
+
+
+I
+
+I have been lately to a little group of houses, not many enough to be
+called a village, in the barony of Kiltartan in County Galway, whose
+name, Ballylee, is known through all the west of Ireland. There is the
+old square castle, Ballylee, inhabited by a farmer and his wife, and a
+cottage where their daughter and their son-in-law live, and a little
+mill with an old miller, and old ash-trees throwing green shadows upon
+a little river and great stepping-stones. I went there two or three
+times last year to talk to the miller about Biddy Early, a wise woman
+that lived in Clare some years ago, and about her saying, “There is a
+cure for all evil between the two mill-wheels of Ballylee,” and to find
+out from him or another whether she meant the moss between the running
+waters or some other herb. I have been there this summer, and I shall
+be there again before it is autumn, because Mary Hynes, a beautiful
+woman whose name is still a wonder by turf fires, died there sixty
+years ago; for our feet would linger where beauty has lived its life of
+sorrow to make us understand that it is not of the world. An old man
+brought me a little way from the mill and the castle, and down a long,
+narrow boreen that was nearly lost in brambles and sloe bushes, and he
+said, “That is the little old foundation of the house, but the most of
+it is taken for building walls, and the goats have ate those bushes
+that are growing over it till they’ve got cranky, and they won’t grow
+any more. They say she was the handsomest girl in Ireland, her skin was
+like dribbled snow”--he meant driven snow, perhaps,--“and she had
+blushes in her cheeks. She had five handsome brothers, but all are gone
+now!” I talked to him about a poem in Irish, Raftery, a famous poet,
+made about her, and how it said, “there is a strong cellar in
+Ballylee.” He said the strong cellar was the great hole where the river
+sank underground, and he brought me to a deep pool, where an otter
+hurried away under a grey boulder, and told me that many fish came up
+out of the dark water at early morning “to taste the fresh water coming
+down from the hills.”
+
+I first heard of the poem from an old woman who fives about two miles
+further up the river, and who remembers Raftery and Mary Hynes. She
+says, “I never saw anybody so handsome as she was, and I never will
+till I die,” and that he was nearly blind, and had “no way of living
+but to go round and to mark some house to go to, and then all the
+neighbours would gather to hear. If you treated him well he’d praise
+you, but if you did not, he’d fault you in Irish. He was the greatest
+poet in Ireland, and he’d make a song about that bush if he chanced to
+stand under it. There was a bush he stood under from the rain, and he
+made verses praising it, and then when the water came through he made
+verses dispraising it.” She sang the poem to a friend and to myself in
+Irish, and every word was audible and expressive, as the words in a
+song were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the
+garment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing of
+their energies. The poem is not as natural as the best Irish poetry of
+the last century, for the thoughts are arranged in a too obviously
+traditional form, so the old poor half-blind man who made it has to
+speak as if he were a rich farmer offering the best of everything to
+the woman he loves, but it has naive and tender phrases. The friend
+that was with me has made some of the translation, but some of it has
+been made by the country people themselves. I think it has more of the
+simplicity of the Irish verses than one finds in most translations.
+
+
+    Going to Mass by the will of God,
+    The day came wet and the wind rose;
+    I met Mary Hynes at the cross of Kiltartan,
+    And I fell in love with her then and there.
+
+    I spoke to her kind and mannerly,
+    As by report was her own way;
+    And she said, “Raftery, my mind is easy,
+    You may come to-day to Ballylee.”
+
+    When I heard her offer I did not linger,
+    When her talk went to my heart my heart rose.
+    We had only to go across the three fields,
+    We had daylight with us to Ballylee.
+
+    The table was laid with glasses and a quart measure,
+    She had fair hair, and she sitting beside me;
+    And she said, “Drink, Raftery, and a hundred welcomes,
+    There is a strong cellar in Ballylee.”
+
+    O star of light and O sun in harvest,
+    O amber hair, O my share of the world,
+    Will you come with me upon Sunday
+    Till we agree together before all the people?
+
+    I would not grudge you a song every Sunday evening,
+    Punch on the table, or wine if you would drink it,
+    But, O King of Glory, dry the roads before me,
+    Till I find the way to Ballylee.
+
+    There is sweet air on the side of the hill
+    When you are looking down upon Ballylee;
+    When you are walking in the valley picking nuts and blackberries,
+    There is music of the birds in it and music of the Sidhe.
+
+    What is the worth of greatness till you have the light
+    Of the flower of the branch that is by your side?
+    There is no god to deny it or to try and hide it,
+    She is the sun in the heavens who wounded my heart.
+
+    There was no part of Ireland I did not travel,
+    From the rivers to the tops of the mountains,
+    To the edge of Lough Greine whose mouth is hidden,
+    And I saw no beauty but was behind hers.
+
+    Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too;
+    Her face was like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet.
+    She is the pride, and I give her the branch,
+    She is the shining flower of Ballylee.
+
+    It is Mary Hynes, this calm and easy woman,
+    Has beauty in her mind and in her face.
+    If a hundred clerks were gathered together,
+    They could not write down a half of her ways.
+
+
+An old weaver, whose son is supposed to go away among the Sidhe (the
+faeries) at night, says, “Mary Hynes was the most beautiful thing ever
+made. My mother used to tell me about her, for she’d be at every
+hurling, and wherever she was she was dressed in white. As many as
+eleven men asked her in marriage in one day, but she wouldn’t have any
+of them. There was a lot of men up beyond Kilbecanty one night, sitting
+together drinking, and talking of her, and one of them got up and set
+out to go to Ballylee and see her; but Cloon Bog was open then, and
+when he came to it he fell into the water, and they found him dead
+there in the morning. She died of the fever that was before the
+famine.” Another old man says he was only a child when he saw her, but
+he remembered that “the strongest man that was among us, one John
+Madden, got his death of the head of her, cold he got crossing rivers
+in the night-time to get to Ballylee.” This is perhaps the man the
+other remembered, for tradition gives the one thing many shapes. There
+is an old woman who remembers her, at Derrybrien among the Echtge
+hills, a vast desolate place, which has changed little since the old
+poem said, “the stag upon the cold summit of Echtge hears the cry of
+the wolves,” but still mindful of many poems and of the dignity of
+ancient speech. She says, “The sun and the moon never shone on anybody
+so handsome, and her skin was so white that it looked blue, and she had
+two little blushes on her cheeks.” And an old wrinkled woman who lives
+close by Ballylee, and has told me many tales of the Sidhe, says, “I
+often saw Mary Hynes, she was handsome indeed. She had two bunches of
+curls beside her cheeks, and they were the colour of silver. I saw Mary
+Molloy that was drowned in the river beyond, and Mary Guthrie that was
+in Ardrahan, but she took the sway of them both, a very comely
+creature. I was at her wake too--she had seen too much of the world.
+She was a kind creature. One day I was coming home through that field
+beyond, and I was tired, and who should come out but the Poisin Glegeal
+(the shining flower), and she gave me a glass of new milk.” This old
+woman meant no more than some beautiful bright colour by the colour of
+silver, for though I knew an old man--he is dead now--who thought she
+might know “the cure for all the evils in the world,” that the Sidhe
+knew, she has seen too little gold to know its colour. But a man by the
+shore at Kinvara, who is too young to remember Mary Hynes, says,
+“Everybody says there is no one at all to be seen now so handsome; it
+is said she had beautiful hair, the colour of gold. She was poor, but
+her clothes every day were the same as Sunday, she had such neatness.
+And if she went to any kind of a meeting, they would all be killing one
+another for a sight of her, and there was a great many in love with
+her, but she died young. It is said that no one that has a song made
+about them will ever live long.”
+
+Those who are much admired are, it is held, taken by the Sidhe, who
+can use ungoverned feeling for their own ends, so that a father, as an
+old herb doctor told me once, may give his child into their hands, or a
+husband his wife. The admired and desired are only safe if one says
+“God bless them” when one’s eyes are upon them. The old woman that sang
+the song thinks, too, that Mary Hynes was “taken,” as the phrase is,
+“for they have taken many that are not handsome, and why would they not
+take her? And people came from all parts to look at her, and maybe
+there were some that did not say ‘God bless her.’” An old man who lives
+by the sea at Duras has as little doubt that she was taken, “for there
+are some living yet can remember her coming to the pattern[FN#3] there
+beyond, and she was said to be the handsomest girl in Ireland.” She
+died young because the gods loved her, for the Sidhe are the gods, and
+it may be that the old saying, which we forget to understand literally,
+meant her manner of death in old times. These poor countrymen and
+countrywomen in their beliefs, and in their emotions, are many years
+nearer to that old Greek world, that set beauty beside the fountain of
+things, than are our men of learning. She “had seen too much of the
+world”; but these old men and women, when they tell of her, blame
+another and not her, and though they can be hard, they grow gentle as
+the old men of Troy grew gentle when Helen passed by on the walls.
+
+
+[FN#3]  A “pattern,” or “patron,” is a festival in honour of a saint.
+
+
+The poet who helped her to so much fame has himself a great fame
+throughout the west of Ireland. Some think that Raftery was half blind,
+and say, “I saw Raftery, a dark man, but he had sight enough to see
+her,” or the like, but some think he was wholly blind, as he may have
+been at the end of his life. Fable makes all things perfect in their
+kind, and her blind people must never look on the world and the sun. I
+asked a man I met one day, when I was looking for a pool na mna Sidhe
+where women of faery have been seen, bow Raftery could have admired
+Mary Hynes so much f he had been altogether blind? He said, “I think
+Raftery was altogether blind, but those that are blind have a way of
+seeing things, and have the power to know more, and to feel more, and
+to do more, and to guess more than those that have their sight, and a
+certain wit and a certain wisdom is given to them.” Everybody, indeed,
+will tell you that he was very wise, for was he not only blind but a
+poet? The weaver whose words about Mary Hynes I have already given,
+says, “His poetry was the gift of the Almighty, for there are three
+things that are the gift of the Almighty--poetry and dancing and
+principles. That is why in the old times an ignorant man coming down
+from the hillside would be better behaved and have better learning than
+a man with education you’d meet now, for they got it from God”; and a
+man at Coole says, “When he put his finger to one part of his head,
+everything would come to him as if it was written in a book”; and an
+old pensioner at Kiltartan says, “He was standing under a bush one
+time, and he talked to it, and it answered him back in Irish. Some say
+it was the bush that spoke, but it must have been an enchanted voice in
+it, and it gave him the knowledge of all the things of the world. The
+bush withered up afterwards, and it is to be seen on the roadside now
+between this and Rahasine.” There is a poem of his about a bush, which
+I have never seen, and it may have come out of the cauldron of fable in
+this shape.
+
+A friend of mine met a man once who had been with him when he died,
+but the people say that he died alone, and one Maurteen Gillane told
+Dr. Hyde that all night long a light was seen streaming up to heaven
+from the roof of the house where he lay, and “that was the angels who
+were with him”; and all night long there was a great light in the
+hovel, “and that was the angels who were waking him. They gave that
+honour to him because he was so good a poet, and sang such religious
+songs.” It may be that in a few years Fable, who changes mortalities to
+immortalities in her cauldron, will have changed Mary Hynes and Raftery
+to perfect symbols of the sorrow of beauty and of the magnificence and
+penury of dreams.
+
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+II
+
+When I was in a northern town awhile ago, I had a long talk with a man
+who had lived in a neighbouring country district when he was a boy. He
+told me that when a very beautiful girl was born in a family that had
+not been noted for good looks, her beauty was thought to have come from
+the Sidhe, and to bring misfortune with it. He went over the names of
+several beautiful girls that he had known, and said that beauty had
+never brought happiness to anybody. It was a thing, he said, to be
+proud of and afraid of. I wish I had written out his words at the time,
+for they were more picturesque than my memory of them.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP
+
+
+Away to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope’s mountain lives “a strong
+farmer,” a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic
+days. Proud of his descent from one of the most fighting clans of the
+Middle Ages, he is a man of force alike in his words and in his deeds.
+There is but one man that swears like him, and this man lives far away
+upon the mountain. “Father in Heaven, what have I done to deserve
+this?” he says when he has lost his pipe; and no man but he who lives
+on the mountain can rival his language on a fair day over a bargain. He
+is passionate and abrupt in his movements, and when angry tosses his
+white beard about with his left hand.
+
+One day I was dining with him when the servant-maid announced a
+certain Mr. O’Donnell. A sudden silence fell upon the old man and upon
+his two daughters. At last the eldest daughter said somewhat severely
+to her father, “Go and ask him to come in and dine.” The old man went
+out, and then came in looking greatly relieved, and said, “He says he
+will not dine with us.” “Go out,” said the daughter, “and ask him into
+the back parlour, and give him some whiskey.” Her father, who had just
+finished his dinner, obeyed sullenly, and I heard the door of the back
+parlour--a little room where the daughters sat and sewed during the
+evening--shut to behind the men. The daughter then turned to me and
+said, “Mr. O’Donnell is the tax-gatherer, and last year he raised our
+taxes, and my father was very angry, and when he came, brought him into
+the dairy, and sent the dairy-woman away on a message, and then swore
+at him a great deal. ‘I will teach you, sir,’ O’Donnell replied, ‘that
+the law can protect its officers’; but my father reminded him that he
+had no witness. At last my father got tired, and sorry too, and said he
+would show him a short way home. When they were half-way to the main
+road they came on a man of my father’s who was ploughing, and this
+somehow brought back remembrance of the wrong. He sent the man away on
+a message, and began to swear at the tax-gatherer again. When I heard
+of it I was disgusted that he should have made such a fuss over a
+miserable creature like O’Donnell; and when I heard a few weeks ago
+that O’Donnell’s only son had died and left him heart-broken, I
+resolved to make my father be kind to him next time he came.”
+
+She then went out to see a neighbour, and I sauntered towards the back
+parlour. When I came to the door I heard angry voices inside. The two
+men were evidently getting on to the tax again, for I could hear them
+bandying figures to and fro. I opened the door; at sight of my face the
+farmer was reminded of his peaceful intentions, and asked me if I knew
+where the whiskey was. I had seen him put it into the cupboard, and was
+able therefore to find it and get it out, looking at the thin, grief-
+struck face of the tax-gatherer. He was rather older than my friend,
+and very much more feeble and worn, and of a very different type. He
+was not like him, a robust, successful man, but rather one of those
+whose feet find no resting-place upon the earth. I recognized one of
+the children of reverie, and said, “You are doubtless of the stock of
+the old O’Donnells. I know well the hole in the river where their
+treasure lies buried under the guard of a serpent with many heads.”
+“Yes, sur,” he replied, “I am the last of a line of princes.”
+
+We then fell to talking of many commonplace things, and my friend did
+not once toss up his beard, but was very friendly. At last the gaunt
+old tax-gatherer got up to go, and my friend said, “I hope we will have
+a glass together next year.” “No, no,” was the answer, “I shall be dead
+next year.” “I too have lost sons,” said the other in quite a gentle
+voice. “But your sons were not like my son.” And then the two men
+parted, with an angry flush and bitter hearts, and had I not cast
+between them some common words or other, might not have parted, but
+have fallen rather into an angry discussion of the value of their dead
+sons. If I had not pity for all the children of reverie I should have
+let them fight it out, and would now have many a wonderful oath to
+record.
+
+The knight of the sheep would have had the victory, for no soul that
+wears this garment of blood and clay can surpass him. He was but once
+beaten; and this is his tale of how it was. He and some farm hands were
+playing at cards in a small cabin that stood against the end of a big
+barn. A wicked woman had once lived in this cabin. Suddenly one of the
+players threw down an ace and began to swear without any cause. His
+swearing was so dreadful that the others stood up, and my friend said,
+“All is not right here; there is a spirit in him.” They ran to the door
+that led into the barn to get away as quickly as possible. The wooden
+bolt would not move, so the knight of the sheep took a saw which stood
+against the wall near at hand, and sawed through the bolt, and at once
+the door flew open with a bang, as though some one had been holding it,
+and they fled through.
+
+
+
+
+AN ENDURING HEART
+
+
+One day a friend of mine was making a sketch of my Knight of the
+Sheep. The old man’s daughter was sitting by, and, when the
+conversation drifted to love and lovemaking, she said, “Oh, father,
+tell him about your love affair.” The old man took his pipe out of his
+mouth, and said, “Nobody ever marries the woman he loves,” and then,
+with a chuckle, “There were fifteen of them I liked better than the
+woman I married,” and he repeated many women’s names. He went on to
+tell how when he was a lad he had worked for his grandfather, his
+mother’s father, and was called (my friend has forgotten why) by his
+grandfather’s name, which we will say was Doran. He had a great friend,
+whom I shall call John Byrne; and one day he and his friend went to
+Queenstown to await an emigrant ship, that was to take John Byrne to
+America. When they were walking along the quay, they saw a girl sitting
+on a seat, crying miserably, and two men standing up in front of her
+quarrelling with one another. Doran said, “I think I know what is
+wrong. That man will be her brother, and that man will be her lover,
+and the brother is sending her to America to get her away from the
+lover. How she is crying! but I think I could console her myself.”
+Presently the lover and brother went away, and Doran began to walk up
+and down before her, saying, “Mild weather, Miss,” or the like. She
+answered him in a little while, and the three began to talk together.
+The emigrant ship did not arrive for some days; and the three drove
+about on outside cars very innocently and happily, seeing everything
+that was to be seen. When at last the ship came, and Doran had to break
+it to her that he was not going to America, she cried more after him
+than after the first lover. Doran whispered to Byrne as he went aboard
+ship, “Now, Byrne, I don’t grudge her to you, but don’t marry young.”
+
+When the story got to this, the farmer’s daughter joined In mockingly
+with, “I suppose you said that for Byrne’s good, father.” But the old
+man insisted that he had said it for Byrne’s good; and went on to tell
+how, when he got a letter telling of Byrne’s engagement to the girl, he
+wrote him the same advice. Years passed by, and he heard nothing; and
+though he was now married, he could not keep from wondering what she
+was doing. At last he went to America to find out, and though he asked
+many people for tidings, he could get none. More years went by, and his
+wife was dead, and he well on in years, and a rich farmer with not a
+few great matters on his hands. He found an excuse in some vague
+business to go out to America again, and to begin his search again. One
+day he fell into talk with an Irishman in a railway carriage, and asked
+him, as his way was, about emigrants from this place and that, and at
+last, “Did you ever hear of the miller’s daughter from Innis Rath?” and
+he named the woman he was looking for. “Oh yes,” said the other, “she
+is married to a friend of mine, John MacEwing. She lives at such-and-
+such a street in Chicago.” Doran went to Chicago and knocked at her
+door. She opened the door herself, and was “not a bit changed.” He gave
+her his real name, which he had taken again after his grandfather’s
+death, and the name of the man he had met in the train. She did not
+recognize him, but asked him to stay to dinner, saying that her husband
+would be glad to meet anybody who knew that old friend of his. They
+talked of many things, but for all their talk, I do not know why, and
+perhaps he did not know why, he never told her who he was. At dinner he
+asked her about Byrne, and she put her head down on the table and began
+to cry, and she cried so he was afraid her husband might be angry. He
+was afraid to ask what had happened to Byrne, and left soon after,
+never to see her again.
+
+When the old man had finished the story, he said, “Tell that to Mr.
+Yeats, he will make a poem about it, perhaps.” But the daughter said,
+“Oh no, father. Nobody could make a poem about a woman like that.”
+Alas! I have never made the poem, perhaps because my own heart, which
+has loved Helen and all the lovely and fickle women of the world, would
+be too sore. There are things it is well not to ponder over too much,
+things that bare words are the best suited for.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE SORCERERS
+
+
+In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers,[FN#4] and come
+across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of
+the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy
+and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were
+they to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are
+of opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his
+rapacities are there too, no less than the bright beings who store
+their honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit
+hither and thither, and that they encompass him with a passionate and
+melancholy multitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or
+through accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their
+hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full
+of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth,
+moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about
+us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we
+do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic
+have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few
+persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few
+I have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those
+among whom they live. They are mainly small clerks and the like, and
+meet for the purpose of their art in a room hung with black hangings.
+They would not admit me into this room, but finding me not altogether
+ignorant of the arcane science, showed gladly elsewhere what they would
+do. “Come to us,” said their leader, a clerk in a large flour-mill,
+“and we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in
+shapes as solid and heavy as our own.”
+
+
+[FN#4]  I know better now. We have the dark powers much more than I
+thought, but not as much as the Scottish, and yet I think the
+imagination of the people does dwell chiefly upon the fantastic and
+capricious.
+
+
+I had been talking of the power of communicating in states of trance
+with the angelical and faery beings,--the children of the day and of
+the twilight--and he had been contending that we should only believe
+in what we can see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of
+mind. “Yes,” I said, “I will come to you,” or some such words; “but I
+will not permit myself to become entranced, and will therefore know
+whether these shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched and
+felt by the ordinary senses than are those I talk of.” I was not
+denying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of
+mortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as he spoke
+of, seemed unlikely to do more than cast the mind into trance, and
+thereby bring it into the presence of the powers of day, twilight, and
+darkness.
+
+“But,” he said, “we have seen them move the furniture hither and
+thither, and they go at our bidding, and help or harm people who know
+nothing of them.” I am not giving the exact words, but as accurately as
+I can the substance of our talk.
+
+On the night arranged I turned up about eight, and found the leader
+sitting alone in almost total darkness in a small back room. He was
+dressed in a black gown, like an inquisitor’s dress in an old drawing,
+that left nothing of him visible: except his eyes, which peered out
+through two small round holes. Upon the table in front of him was a
+brass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with painted
+symbols, two crossed daggers, and certain implements shaped like quern
+stones, which were used to control the elemental powers in some fashion
+I did not discover. I also put on a black gown, and remember that it
+did not fit perfectly, and that it interfered with my movements
+considerably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a basket, and
+cut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood fall into the
+large bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation, which was
+certainly not English, and had a deep guttural sound. Before he had
+finished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five, came
+in, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my left
+band. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began to find
+his eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his hood,
+affecting me in a curious way. I struggled hard against their
+influence, and my head began to ache. The invocation continued, and
+nothing happened for the first few minutes. Then the invoker got up and
+extinguished the light in the hall, so that no glimmer might come
+through the slit under the door. There was now no light except from the
+herbs on the brass dish, and no sound except from the deep guttural
+murmur of the invocation.
+
+Presently the man at my left swayed himself about, and cried out, “O
+god! O god!” I asked him what ailed him, but he did not know he had
+spoken. A moment after he said he could see a great serpent moving
+about the room, and became considerably excited. I saw nothing with any
+definite shape, but thought that black clouds were forming about me. I
+felt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and
+that the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony
+with itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the
+black clouds, and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again.
+The two sorcerers now began to see black and white columns moving about
+the room, and finally a man in a monk’s habit, and they became greatly
+puzzled because I did not see these things also, for to them they were
+as solid as the table before them. The invoker appeared to be gradually
+increasing in power, and I began to feel as if a tide of darkness was
+pouring from him and concentrating itself about me; and now too I
+noticed that the man on my left hand had passed into a death-like
+trance. With a last great effort I drove off the black clouds; but
+feeling them to be the only shapes I should see without passing into a
+trance, and having no great love for them, I asked for lights, and
+after the needful exorcism returned to the ordinary world.
+
+I said to the more powerful of the two sorcerers--“What would happen
+if one of your spirits had overpowered me?” “You would go out of this
+room,” he answered, “with his character added to your own.” I asked
+about the origin of his sorcery, but got little of importance, except
+that he had learned it from his father. He would not tell me more, for
+he had, it appeared, taken a vow of secrecy.
+
+For some days I could not get over the feeling of having a number of
+deformed and grotesque figures lingering about me. The Bright Powers
+are always beautiful and desirable, and the Dim Powers are now
+beautiful, now quaintly grotesque, but the Dark Powers express their
+unbalanced natures in shapes of ugliness and horror.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL
+
+
+My old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come
+down the road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would
+not say what it was, I knew quite well. Another day she told me of two
+friends of hers who had been made love to by one whom they believed to
+be the devil. One of them was standing by the road-side when he came by
+on horseback, and asked her to mount up behind him, and go riding. When
+she would not he vanished. The other was out on the road late at night
+waiting for her young man, when something came flapping and rolling
+along the road up to her feet. It had the likeness of a newspaper, and
+presently it flapped up into her face, and she knew by the size of it
+that it was the Irish Times. All of a sudden it changed into a young
+man, who asked her to go walking with him. She would not, and he
+vanished.
+
+I know of an old man too, on the slopes of Ben Bulben, who found the
+devil ringing a bell under his bed, and he went off and stole the
+chapel bell and rang him out. It may be that this, like the others, was
+not the devil at all, but some poor wood spirit whose cloven feet had
+got him into trouble.
+
+
+
+
+HAPPY AND UNHAPPY THEOLOGIANS
+
+
+I
+
+A mayo woman once said to me, “I knew a servant girl who hung herself
+for the love of God. She was lonely for the priest and her
+society,[FN#5] and hung herself to the banisters with a scarf. She was
+no sooner dead than she became white as a lily, and if it had been
+murder or suicide she would have become black as black. They gave her
+Christian burial, and the priest said she was no sooner dead than she
+was with the Lord. So nothing matters that you do for the love of God.”
+I do not wonder at the pleasure she has in telling this story, for she
+herself loves all holy things with an ardour that brings them quickly
+to her lips. She told me once that she never hears anything described
+in a sermon that she does not afterwards see with her eyes. She has
+described to me the gates of Purgatory as they showed themselves to her
+eyes, but I remember nothing of the description except that she could
+not see the souls in trouble but only the gates. Her mind continually
+dwells on what is pleasant and beautiful. One day she asked me what
+month and what flower were the most beautiful. When I answered that I
+did not know, she said, “the month of May, because of the Virgin, and
+the lily of the valley, because it never sinned, but came pure out of
+the rocks,” and then she asked, “what is the cause of the three cold
+months of winter?” I did not know even that, and so she said, “the sin
+of man and the vengeance of God.” Christ Himself was not only blessed,
+but perfect in all manly proportions in her eyes, so much do beauty and
+holiness go together in her thoughts. He alone of all men was exactly
+six feet high, all others are a little more or a little less.
+
+
+[FN#5]  The religious society she had belonged to.
+
+
+Her thoughts and her sights of the people of faery are pleasant and
+beautiful too, and I have never heard her call them the Fallen Angels.
+They are people like ourselves, only better-looking, and many and many
+a time she has gone to the window to watch them drive their waggons
+through the sky, waggon behind waggon in long line, or to the door to
+hear them singing and dancing in the Forth. They sing chiefly, it
+seems, a song called “The Distant Waterfall,” and though they once
+knocked her down she never thinks badly of them. She saw them most
+easily when she was in service in King’s County, and one morning a
+little while ago she said to me, “Last night I was waiting up for the
+master and it was a quarter-past eleven. I heard a bang right down on
+the table. ‘King’s County all over,’ says I, and I laughed till I was
+near dead. It was a warning I was staying too long. They wanted the
+place to themselves.” I told her once of somebody who saw a faery and
+fainted, and she said, “It could not have been a faery, but some bad
+thing, nobody could faint at a faery. It was a demon. I was not afraid
+when they near put me, and the bed under me, out through the roof. I
+wasn’t afraid either when you were at some work and I heard a thing
+coming flop-flop up the stairs like an eel, and squealing. It went to
+all the doors. It could not get in where I was. I would have sent it
+through the universe like a flash of fire. There was a man in my place,
+a tearing fellow, and he put one of them down. He went out to meet it
+on the road, but he must have been told the words. But the faeries are
+the best neighbours. If you do good to them they will do good to you,
+but they don’t like you to be on their path.” Another time she said to
+me, “They are always good to the poor.”
+
+
+II
+
+There is, however, a man in a Galway village who can see nothing but
+wickedness. Some think him very holy, and others think him a little
+crazed, but some of his talk reminds one of those old Irish visions of
+the Three Worlds, which are supposed to have given Dante the plan of
+the Divine Comedy. But I could not imagine this man seeing Paradise. He
+is especially angry with the people of faery, and describes the faun-
+like feet that are so common among them, who are indeed children of
+Pan, to prove them children of Satan. He will not grant that “they
+carry away women, though there are many that say so,” but he is certain
+that they are “as thick as the sands of the sea about us, and they
+tempt poor mortals.”
+
+He says, “There is a priest I know of was looking along the ground
+like as if he was hunting for something, and a voice said to him, ‘If
+you want to see them you’ll see enough of them,’ and his eyes were
+opened and he saw the ground thick with them. Singing they do be
+sometimes, and dancing, but all the time they have cloven feet.” Yet he
+was so scornful of unchristian things for all their dancing and singing
+that he thinks that “you have only to bid them begone and they will go.
+It was one night,” he says, “after walking back from Kinvara and down
+by the wood beyond I felt one coming beside me, and I could feel the
+horse he was riding on and the way he lifted his legs, but they do not
+make a sound like the hoofs of a horse. So I stopped and turned around
+and said, very loud, ‘Be off!’ and he went and never troubled me after.
+And I knew a man who was dying, and one came on his bed, and he cried
+out to it, ‘Get out of that, you unnatural animal!’ and it left him.
+Fallen angels they are, and after the fall God said, ‘Let there be
+Hell,’ and there it was in a moment.” An old woman who was sitting by
+the fire joined in as he said this with “God save us, it’s a pity He
+said the word, and there might have been no Hell the day,” but the seer
+did not notice her words. He went on, “And then he asked the devil what
+would he take for the souls of all the people. And the devil said
+nothing would satisfy him but the blood of a virgin’s son, so he got
+that, and then the gates of Hell were opened.” He understood the story,
+it seems, as if it were some riddling old folk tale.
+
+“I have seen Hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It
+had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway, and a
+straight walk into it, just like what ’ud be leading into a gentleman’s
+orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box, but with red-hot
+metal. And inside the wall there were cross-walks, and I’m not sure
+what there was to the right, but to the left there were five great
+furnaces, and they full of souls kept there with great chains. So I
+turned short and went away, and in turning I looked again at the wall,
+and I could see no end to it.
+
+“And another time I saw Purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place,
+and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls
+standing in it. And they suffer near as much as in Hell, only there are
+no devils with them there, and they have the hope of Heaven.
+
+“And I heard a call to me from there, ‘Help me to come out o’ this!’
+And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman,
+and from this county, and I believe him to be a descendant of King
+O’Connor of Athenry.
+
+“So I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, ‘I’d be
+burned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.’ So
+then he said, ‘Well, help me with your prayers,’ and so I do.
+
+“And Father Connellan says the same thing, to help the dead with your
+prayers, and he’s a very clever man to make a sermon, and has a great
+deal of cures made with the Holy Water he brought back from Lourdes.”
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST GLEEMAN
+
+
+Michael Moran was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of
+Dublin, in Faddle Alley. A fortnight after birth he went stone blind
+from illness, and became thereby a blessing to his parents, who were
+soon able to send him to rhyme and beg at street corners and at the
+bridges over the Liffey. They may well have wished that their quiver
+were full of such as he, for, free from the interruption of sight, his
+mind became a perfect echoing chamber, where every movement of the day
+and every change of public passion whispered itself into rhyme or
+quaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the admitted
+rector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver,
+Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M’Bride
+from heaven knows where, and that M’Grane, who in after days, when the
+true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather in
+borrowed rags, and gave out that there had never been any Moran but
+himself, and many another, did homage before him, and held him chief of
+all their tribe. Nor despite his blindness did he find any difficulty
+in getting a wife, but rather was able to pick and choose, for he was
+just that mixture of ragamuffin and of genius which is dear to the
+heart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly conventional
+herself, loves the unexpected, the crooked, the bewildering. Nor did he
+lack, despite his rags, many excellent things, for it is remembered
+that he ever loved caper sauce, going so far indeed in his honest
+indignation at its absence upon one occasion as to fling a leg of
+mutton at his wife. He was not, however, much to look at, with his
+coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy
+trousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist
+by a thong of leather: and he would have been a woeful shock to the
+gleeman MacConglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in
+prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the
+short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman,
+being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In the morning
+when he had finished his breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would
+read the newspaper to him, and read on and on until he interrupted
+with, “That’ll do--I have me meditations”; and from these meditations
+would come the day’s store of jest and rhyme. He had the whole Middle
+Ages under his frieze coat.
+
+He had not, however, MacConglinne’s hatred of the Church and clergy,
+for when the fruit of his meditations did not ripen well, or when the
+crowd called for something more solid, he would recite or sing a
+metrical tale or ballad of saint or martyr or of Biblical adventure. He
+would stand at a street comer, and when a crowd had gathered would
+begin in some such fashion as follows (I copy the record of one who
+knew him)--“Gather round me, boys, gather round me. Boys, am I standin’
+in puddle? am I standin’ in wet?” Thereon several boys would cry, “Ali,
+no! yez not! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with St. Mary; go on with
+Moses”--each calling for his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a
+suspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst
+out with “All me buzzim friends are turned backbiters”; and after a
+final “If yez don’t drop your coddin’ and diversion I’ll lave some of
+yez a case,” by way of warning to the boys, begin his recitation, or
+perhaps still delay, to ask, “Is there a crowd round me now? Any
+blackguard heretic around me?” The best-known of his religious tales
+was St. Mary of Egypt, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, condensed
+from the much longer work of a certain Bishop Coyle. It told how a fast
+woman of Egypt, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem for no
+good purpose, and then, turning penitent on finding herself withheld
+from entering the Temple by supernatural interference, fled to the
+desert and spent the remainder of her life in solitary penance. When at
+last she was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear her
+confession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a lion,
+whom He sent also, dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable cadence
+of the eighteenth century, but was so popular and so often called for
+that Moran was soon nicknamed Zozimus, and by that name is he
+remembered. He had also a poem of his own called Moses, which went a
+little nearer poetry without going very near. But he could ill brook
+solemnity, and before long parodied his own verses in the following
+ragamuffin fashion:
+
+
+    In Egypt’s land, contagious to the Nile,
+    King Pharaoh’s daughter went to bathe in style.
+    She tuk her dip, then walked unto the land,
+    To dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand.
+    A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
+    A smiling babby in a wad o’ straw.
+    She tuk it up, and said with accents mild,
+    “’Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?”
+
+
+His humorous rhymes were, however, more often quips and cranks at the
+expense of his contemporaries. It was his delight, for instance, to
+remind a certain shoemaker, noted alike for display of wealth and for
+personal uncleanness, of his inconsiderable origin in a song of which
+but the first stanza has come down to us:
+
+
+    At the dirty end of Dirty Lane,
+    Liv’d a dirty cobbler, Dick Maclane;
+    His wife was in the old king’s reign
+        A stout brave orange-woman.
+    On Essex Bridge she strained her throat,
+    And six-a-penny was her note.
+    But Dickey wore a bran-new coat,
+        He got among the yeomen.
+    He was a bigot, like his clan,
+    And in the streets he wildly sang,
+    O Roly, toly, toly raid, with his old jade.
+
+
+He had troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to face and
+put down. Once an officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was
+triumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded
+his worship of the precedent set by Homer, who was also, he declared, a
+poet, and a blind man, and a beggarman. He had to face a more serious
+difficulty as his fame grew. Various imitators started up upon all
+sides. A certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did
+shillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs and his getup upon the
+stage. One night this actor was at supper with some friends, when
+dispute arose as to whether his mimicry was overdone or not. It was
+agreed to settle it by an appeal to the mob. A forty-shilling supper at
+a famous coffeehouse was to be the wager. The actor took up his station
+at Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran’s, and soon gathered a small
+crowd. He had scarce got through “In Egypt’s land, contagious to the
+Nile,” when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The
+crowds met in great excitement and laughter. “Good Christians,” cried
+the pretender, “is it possible that any man would mock the poor dark
+man like that?”
+
+“Who’s that? It’s some imposhterer,” replied Moran.
+
+“Begone, you wretch! it’s you’ze the imposhterer. Don’t you fear the
+light of heaven being struck from your eyes for mocking the poor dark
+man?”
+
+“Saints and angels, is there no protection against this? You’re a most
+inhuman-blaguard to try to deprive me of my honest bread this way,”
+replied poor Moran.
+
+“And you, you wretch, won’t let me go on with the beautiful poem.
+Christian people, in your charity won’t you beat this man away? he’s
+taking advantage of my darkness.”
+
+The pretender, seeing that he was having the best of it, thanked the
+people for their sympathy and protection, and went on with the poem,
+Moran listening for a time in bewildered silence. After a while Moran
+protested again with:
+
+“Is it possible that none of yez can know me? Don’t yez see it’s
+myself; and that’s some one else?”
+
+“Before I can proceed any further in this lovely story,” interrupted
+the pretender, “I call on yez to contribute your charitable donations
+to help me to go on.”
+
+“Have you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven?” cried Moran, Put
+completely beside himself by this last injury--“Would you rob the poor
+as well as desave the world? O, was ever such wickedness known?”
+
+“I leave it to yourselves, my friends,” said the pretender, “to give
+to the real dark man, that you all know so well, and save me from that
+schemer,” and with that he collected some pennies and half-pence. While
+he was doing so, Moran started his Mary of Egypt, but the indignant
+crowd seizing his stick were about to belabour him, when they fell back
+bewildered anew by his close resemblance to himself. The pretender now
+called to them to “just give him a grip of that villain, and he’d soon
+let him know who the imposhterer was!” They led him over to Moran, but
+instead of closing with him he thrust a few shillings into his hand,
+and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an actor,
+and that he had just gained a wager, and so departed amid much
+enthusiasm, to eat the supper he had won.
+
+In April 1846 word was sent to the priest that Michael Moran was
+dying. He found him at 15 (now 14 1/2) Patrick Street, on a straw bed,
+in
+a room full of ragged ballad-singers come to cheer his last moments.
+After his death the ballad-singers, with many fiddles and the like,
+came again and gave him a fine wake, each adding to the merriment
+whatever he knew in the way of rann, tale, old saw, or quaint rhyme. He
+had had his day, had said his prayers and made his confession, and why
+should they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place the
+next day. A good party of his admirers and friends got into the hearse
+with the coffin, for the day was wet and nasty. They had not gone far
+when one of them burst out with “It’s cruel cowld, isn’t it?” “Garra’,”
+replied another, “we’ll all be as stiff as the corpse when we get to
+the berrin-ground.” “Bad cess to him,” said a third; “I wish he’d held
+out another month until the weather got dacent.” A man called Carroll
+thereupon produced a half-pint of whiskey, and they all drank to the
+soul of the departed. Unhappily, however, the hearse was over-weighted,
+and they had not reached the cemetery before the spring broke, and the
+bottle with it.
+
+Moran must have felt strange and out of place in that other kingdom he
+was entering, perhaps while his friends were drinking in his honour.
+Let us hope that some kindly middle region was found for him, where he
+can call dishevelled angels about him with some new and more rhythmical
+form of his old
+
+
+    Gather round me, boys, will yez
+    Gather round me?
+    And hear what I have to say
+    Before ould Salley brings me
+    My bread and jug of tay;
+
+
+and fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim.
+Perhaps he may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the
+Lily of High Truth, the Rose of Far-sought Beauty, for whose lack so
+many of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been
+futile as the blown froth upon the shore.
+
+
+
+
+REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI
+
+
+One night a middle-aged man, who had lived all his life far from the
+noise of cab-wheels, a young girl, a relation of his, who was reported
+to be enough of a seer to catch a glimpse of unaccountable lights
+moving over the fields among the cattle, and myself, were walking along
+a far western sandy shore. We talked of the Forgetful People as the
+faery people are sometimes called, and came in the midst of our talk to
+a notable haunt of theirs, a shallow cave amidst black rocks, with its
+reflection under it in the wet sea sand. I asked the young girl if she
+could see anything, for I had quite a number of things to ask the
+Forgetful People. She stood still for a few minutes, and I saw that she
+was passing into a kind of waking trance, in which the cold sea breeze
+no longer troubled her, nor the dull boom of the sea distracted her
+attention. I then called aloud the names of the great faeries, and in a
+moment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the rocks,
+and then a sound of confused talking, and of people stamping their feet
+as if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other friend had
+been walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed close to us,
+and as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be interrupted,
+for he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond the rocks. We
+were, however, quite alone. The spirits of the place had begun to cast
+their influence over him also. In a moment he was corroborated by the
+girl, who said that bursts of laughter had begun to mingle with the
+music, the confused talking, and the noise of feet. She next saw a
+bright light streaming out of the cave, which seemed to have grown much
+deeper, and a quantity of little people,[FN#6] in various coloured
+dresses, red predominating, dancing to a tune which she did not
+recognize.
+
+
+[FN#6]  The people and faeries in Ireland are sometimes as big as we
+are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three
+feet high. The Old Mayo woman I so often quote, thinks that it is
+something in our eyes that makes them seem big or little.
+
+
+I then bade her call out to the queen of the little people to come and
+talk with us. There was, however, no answer to her command. I therefore
+repeated the words aloud myself, and in a moment a very beautiful tall
+woman came out of the cave. I too had by this time fallen into a kind
+of trance, in which what we call the unreal had begun to take upon
+itself a masterful reality, and was able to see the faint gleam of
+golden ornaments, the shadowy blossom of dim hair. I then bade the girl
+tell this tall queen to marshal her followers according to their
+natural divisions, that we might see them. I found as before that I had
+to repeat the command myself. The creatures then came out of the cave,
+and drew themselves up, if I remember rightly, in four bands. One of
+these bands carried quicken boughs in their hands, and another had
+necklaces made apparently of serpents’ scales, but their dress I cannot
+remember, for I was quite absorbed in that gleaming woman. I asked her
+to tell the seer whether these caves were the greatest faery haunts in
+the neighbourhood. Her lips moved, but the answer was inaudible. I bade
+the seer lay her hand upon the breast of the queen, and after that she
+heard every word quite distinctly. No, this was not the greatest faery
+haunt, for there was a greater one a little further ahead. I then asked
+her whether it was true that she and her people carried away mortals,
+and if so, whether they put another soul in the place of the one they
+had taken? “We change the bodies,” was her answer. “Are any of you ever
+born into mortal life?” “Yes.” “Do I know any who were among your
+people before birth?” “You do.” “Who are they?” “It would not be lawful
+for you to know.” I then asked whether she and her people were not
+“dramatizations of our moods”? “She does not understand,” said my
+friend, “but says that her people are much like human beings, and do
+most of the things human beings do.” I asked her other questions, as to
+her nature, and her purpose in the universe, but only seemed to puzzle
+her. At last she appeared to lose patience, for she wrote this message
+for me upon the sands--the sands of vision, not the grating sands under
+our feet--“Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us.”
+Seeing that I had offended her, I thanked her for what she had shown
+and told, and let her depart again into her cave. In a little while the
+young girl awoke out of her trance, and felt again the cold wind of the
+world, and began to shiver.
+
+I tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to
+blur the history. Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of
+mine have perished long ago. I love better than any theory the sound of
+the Gate of Ivory, turning upon its hinges, and hold that he alone who
+has passed the rose-strewn threshold can catch the far glimmer of the
+Gate of Horn. It were perhaps well for us all if we would but raise the
+cry Lilly the astrologer raised in Windsor Forest, “Regina, Regina
+Pigmeorum, Veni,” and remember with him, that God visiteth His children
+in dreams. Tall, glimmering queen, come near, and let me see again the
+shadowy blossom of thy dim hair.
+
+
+
+
+“AND FAIR, FIERCE WOMEN”
+
+
+One day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic beauty, that
+highest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a
+beauty which has been fading out of the arts, since that decadence we
+call progress, set voluptuous beauty in its place. She was standing at
+the window, looking over to Knocknarea where Queen Maive is thought to
+be buried, when she saw, as she has told me, “the finest woman you ever
+saw travelling right across from the mountain and straight to her.” The
+woman had a sword by her side and a dagger lifted up in her hand, and
+was dressed in white, with bare arms and feet. She looked “very strong,
+but not wicked,” that is, not cruel. The old woman had seen the Irish
+giant, and “though he was a fine man,” he was nothing to this woman,
+“for he was round, and could not have stepped out so soldierly”; “she
+was like Mrs.-----” a stately lady of the neighbourhood, “but she had
+no stomach on her, and was slight and broad in the shoulders, and was
+handsomer than any one you ever saw; she looked about thirty.” The old
+woman covered her eyes with her hands, and when she uncovered them the
+apparition had vanished. The neighbours were “wild with her,” she told
+me, because she did not wait to find out if there was a message, for
+they were sure it was Queen Maive, who often shows herself to the
+pilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen Maive,
+and she said, “Some of them have their hair down, but they look quite
+different, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the papers. Those
+with their hair up are like this one. The others have long white
+dresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you
+can see their legs right up to the calf.” After some careful
+questioning I found that they wore what might very well be a kind of
+buskin; she went on, “They are fine and dashing looking, like the men
+one sees riding their horses in twos and threes on the slopes of the
+mountains with their swords swinging.” She repeated over and over,
+“There is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned,” or the
+like, and then said, “The present Queen[FN#7] is a nice, pleasant-
+looking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me think so little
+of the ladies is that I see none as they be,” meaning as the spirits.
+“When I think of her and of the ladies now, they are like little
+children running about without knowing how to put their clothes on
+right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women at all.” The
+other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway
+workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that “Queen Maive was
+handsome, and overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel
+is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk the
+world with it,” but she grew “very disagreeable in the end--oh very
+disagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between
+the book and the hearer.” My friend thought the old woman had got some
+scandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head.
+
+
+[FN#7]  Queen Victoria.
+
+
+And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who
+remembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he
+was young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said
+she was a queen “among them,” and asked him if he would have money or
+pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for
+a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful.
+The young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he
+made, but could only remember that it was “very mournful,” and that he
+called her “beauty of all beauties.”
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ENCHANTED WOODS
+
+
+I
+
+Last summer, whenever I had finished my day’s work, I used to go
+wandering in certain roomy woods, and there I would often meet an old
+countryman, and talk to him about his work and about the woods, and
+once or twice a friend came with me to whom he would open his heart
+more readily than to me, He had spent all his life lopping away the
+witch elm and the hazel and the privet and the hornbeam from the paths,
+and had thought much about the natural and supernatural creatures of
+the wood. He has heard the hedgehog--“grainne oge,” he calls him--
+“grunting like a Christian,” and is certain that he steals apples by
+rolling about under an apple tree until there is an apple sticking to
+every quill. He is certain too that the cats, of whom there are many in
+the woods, have a language of their own--some kind of old Irish. He
+says, “Cats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time of
+some great change in the world. That is why they are hard to kill, and
+why it is dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it might
+claw or bite you in a way that would put poison in you, and that would
+be the serpent’s tooth.” Sometimes he thinks they change into wild
+cats, and then a nail grows on the end of their tails; but these wild
+cats are not the same as the marten cats, who have been always in the
+woods. The foxes were once tame, as the cats are now, but they ran away
+and became wild. He talks of all wild creatures except squirrels--whom
+he hates--with what seems an affectionate interest, though at times his
+eyes will twinkle with pleasure as he remembers how he made hedgehogs
+unroll themselves when he was a boy, by putting a wisp of burning straw
+under them.
+
+I am not certain that he distinguishes between the natural and
+supernatural very clearly. He told me the other day that foxes and cats
+like, above all, to be in the “forths” and lisses after nightfall; and
+he will certainly pass from some story about a fox to a story about a
+spirit with less change of voice than when he is going to speak about a
+marten cat--a rare beast now-a-days. Many years ago he used to work in
+the garden, and once they put him to sleep in a garden-house where
+there was a loft full of apples, and all night he could hear people
+rattling plates and knives and forks over his head in the loft. Once,
+at any rate, be has seen an unearthly sight in the woods. He says, “One
+time I was out cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight o’clock
+one morning when I got there I saw a girl picking nuts, with her hair
+hanging down over her shoulders, brown hair, and she had a good, clean
+face, and she was tall and nothing on her head, and her dress no way
+gaudy but simple, and when she felt me coming she gathered herself up
+and was gone as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I followed her
+and looked for her, but I never could see her again from that day to
+this, never again.” He used the word clean as we would use words like
+fresh or comely.
+
+Others too have seen spirits in the Enchanted Woods. A labourer told
+us of what a friend of his had seen in a part of the woods that is
+called Shanwalla, from some old village that was before the weed. He
+said, “One evening I parted from Lawrence Mangan in the yard, and he
+went away through the path in Shanwalla, an’ bid me goodnight. And two
+hours after, there he was back again in the yard, an’ bid me light a
+candle that was in the stable. An’ he told me that when he got into
+Shanwalla, a little fellow about as high as his knee, but having a head
+as big as a man’s body, came beside him and led him out of the path an’
+round about, and at last it brought him to the lime-kiln, and then it
+vanished and left him.”
+
+A woman told me of a sight that she and others had seen by a certain
+deep pool in the river. She said, “I came over the stile from the
+chapel, and others along with me; and a great blast of wind came and
+two trees were bent and broken and fell into the river, and the splash
+of water out of it went up to the skies. And those that were with me
+saw many figures, but myself I only saw one, sitting there by the bank
+where the trees fell. Dark clothes he had on, and he was headless.”
+
+A man told me that one day, when he was a boy, he and another boy went
+to catch a horse in a certain field, full of boulders and bushes of
+hazel and creeping juniper and rock-roses, that is where the lake side
+is for a little clear of the woods. He said to the boy that was with
+him, “I bet a button that if I fling a pebble on to that bush it will
+stay on it,” meaning that the bush was so matted the pebble would not
+be able to go through it. So he took up “a pebble of cow-dung, and as
+soon as it hit the bush there came out of it the most beautiful music
+that ever was heard.” They ran away, and when they had gone about two
+hundred yards they looked back and saw a woman dressed in white,
+walking round and round the bush. “First it had the form of a woman,
+and then of a man, and it was going round the bush.”
+
+
+II
+
+I often entangle myself in argument more complicated than even those
+paths of Inchy as to what is the true nature of apparitions, but at
+other times I say as Socrates said when they told him a learned opinion
+about a nymph of the Illissus, “The common opinion is enough for me.” I
+believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we
+cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some
+wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever
+seen, and that these are not far away when we are walking in pleasant
+and quiet places. Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood
+without feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or
+something I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And
+now I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with
+almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me.
+You too meet with a like imagination, doubtless, somewhere, wherever
+your ruling stars will have it, Saturn driving you to the woods, or the
+Moon, it may be, to the edges of the sea. I will not of a certainty
+believe that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers
+imagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some
+vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway
+out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be
+beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and
+fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport
+than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among
+green leaves. I say to myself, when I am well out of that thicket of
+argument, that they are surely there, the divine people, for only we
+who have neither simplicity nor wisdom have denied them, and the simple
+of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even
+spoken to them. They live out their passionate lives not far off, as I
+think, and we shall be among them when we die if we but keep our
+natures simple and passionate. May it not even be that death shall
+unite us to all romance, and that some day we shall fight dragons among
+blue hills, or come to that whereof all romance is but
+
+
+    Foreshadowings mingled with the images
+    Of man’s misdeeds in greater days than these,
+
+
+as the old men thought in The Earthly Paradise when they were in good
+spirits.
+
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+MIRACULOUS CREATURES
+
+
+There are marten cats and badgers and foxes in the Enchanted Woods,
+but there are of a certainty mightier creatures, and the lake hides
+what neither net nor fine can take. These creatures are of the race of
+the white stag that flits in and out of the tales of Arthur, and of the
+evil pig that slew Diarmuid where Ben Bulben mixes with the sea wind.
+They are the wizard creatures of hope and fear, they are of them that
+fly and of them that follow among the thickets that are about the Gates
+of Death. A man I know remembers that his father was one night in the
+wood Of Inchy, “where the lads of Gort used to be stealing rods. He was
+sitting by the wall, and the dog beside him, and he heard something
+come running from Owbawn Weir, and he could see nothing, but the sound
+of its feet on the ground was like the sound of the feet of a deer. And
+when it passed him, the dog got between him and the wall and scratched
+at it there as if it was afraid, but still he could see nothing but
+only hear the sound of hoofs. So when it was passed he turned and came
+away home. Another time,” the man says, “my father told me he was in a
+boat out on the lake with two or three men from Gort, and one of them
+had an eel-spear, and he thrust it into the water, and it hit
+something, and the man fainted and they had to carry him out of the
+boat to land, and when he came to himself he said that what he struck
+was like a calf, but whatever it was, it was not fish!” A friend of
+mine is convinced that these terrible creatures, so common in lakes,
+were set there in old times by subtle enchanters to watch over the
+gates of wisdom. He thinks that if we sent our spirits down into the
+water we would make them of one substance with strange moods Of ecstasy
+and power, and go out it may be to the conquest of the world. We would,
+however, he believes, have first to outface and perhaps overthrow
+strange images full of a more powerful life than if they were really
+alive. It may be that we shall look at them without fear when we have
+endured the last adventure, that is death.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ARISTOTLE OF THE BOOKS
+
+
+The friend who can get the wood-cutter to talk more readily than he
+will to anybody else went lately to see his old wife. She lives in a
+cottage not far from the edge of the woods, and is as full of old talk
+as her husband. This time she began to talk of Goban, the legendary
+mason, and his wisdom, but said presently, “Aristotle of the Books,
+too, was very wise, and he had a great deal of experience, but did not
+the bees get the better of him in the end? He wanted to know how they
+packed the comb, and he wasted the better part of a fortnight watching
+them, and he could not see them doing it. Then he made a hive with a
+glass cover on it and put it over them, and he thought to see. But when
+he went and put his eyes to the glass, they had it all covered with wax
+so that it was as black as the pot; and he was as blind as before. He
+said he was never rightly kilt till then. They had him that time
+surely!”
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWINE OF THE GODS
+
+
+A few years ago a friend of mine told me of something that happened to
+him when he was a. young man and out drilling with some Connaught
+Fenians. They were but a car-full, and drove along a hillside until
+they came to a quiet place. They left the car and went further up the
+hill with their rifles, and drilled for a while. As they were coming
+down again they saw a very thin, long-legged pig of the old Irish sort,
+and the pig began to follow them. One of them cried out as a joke that
+it was a fairy pig, and they all began to run to keep up the joke. The
+pig ran too, and presently, how nobody knew, this mock terror became
+real terror, and they ran as for their lives. When they got to the car
+they made the horse gallop as fast as possible, but the pig still
+followed. Then one of them put up his rifle to fire, but when he looked
+along the barrel he could see nothing. Presently they turned a corner
+and came to a village. They told the people of the village what had
+happened, and the people of the village took pitchforks and spades and
+the like, and went along the road with them to drive the pig away. When
+they turned the comer they could not find anything.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A VOICE
+
+
+One day I was walking over a bit of marshy ground close to Inchy Wood
+when I felt, all of a sudden, and only for a second, an emotion which I
+said to myself was the root of Christian mysticism. There had swept
+over me a sense of weakness, of dependence on a great personal Being
+somewhere far off yet near at hand. No thought of mine had prepared me
+for this emotion, for I had been pre-occupied with Aengus and Edain, and
+with Mannanan, son of the sea. That night I awoke lying upon my back
+and hearing a voice speaking above me and saying, “No human soul is
+like any other human soul, and therefore the love of God for any human
+soul is infinite, for no other soul can satisfy the same need in God.”
+A few nights after this I awoke to see the loveliest people I have ever
+seen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green raiment, cut
+like old Greek raiment, were standing at my bedside. I looked at the
+girl and noticed that her dress was gathered about her neck into a kind
+of chain, or perhaps into some kind of stiff embroidery which
+represented ivy-leaves. But what filled me with wonder was the
+miraculous mildness of her face. There are no such faces now. It was
+beautiful, as few faces are beautiful, but it had neither, one would
+think, the light that is in desire or in hope or in fear or in
+speculation. It was peaceful like the faces of animals, or like
+mountain pools at evening, so peaceful that it was a little sad. I
+thought for a moment that she might be the beloved of Aengus, but how
+could that hunted, alluring, happy, immortal wretch have a face like
+this? Doubtless she was from among the children of the Moon, but who
+among them I shall never know.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+KIDNAPPERS
+
+
+A little north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben
+Bulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white square
+in the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand; no sheep
+or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more inaccessible
+place upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to the deep
+considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of night it
+swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out. All night the gay
+rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless
+perhaps where, in some more than commonly “gentle” place--Drumcliff or
+Drum-a-hair--the nightcapped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from
+their doors to see what mischief the “gentry” are doing. To their
+trained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and
+the air is full of shrill voices--a sound like whistling, as an ancient
+Scottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the
+angels, who “speak much in the throat, like the Irish,” as Lilly, the
+astrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed
+bride in the neighbourhood, the nightcapped “doctors” will peer with
+more than common care, for the unearthly troop do not always return
+empty-handed. Sometimes a new-wed bride or a new-born baby goes with
+them into their mountains; the door swings to behind, and the new-born
+or the new-wed moves henceforth in the bloodless land of Faery; happy
+enough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright vapour,
+for the soul cannot live without sorrow. Through this door of white
+stone, and the other doors of that land where geabheadh tu an sonas aer
+pighin (“you can buy joy for a penny”), have gone kings, queens, and
+princes, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there are
+none but peasants in these sad chronicles of mine.
+
+Somewhere about the beginning of last century appeared at the western
+corner of Market Street, Sligo, where the butcher’s shop now is, not a
+palace, as in Keats’s Lamia, but an apothecary’s shop, ruled over by a
+certain unaccountable Dr. Opendon. Where he came from, none ever knew.
+There also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name, whose
+husband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make nothing of
+him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he grew. Away
+went the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop parlour. A
+black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had just time to
+see that the side-board was covered with fruit, and to say to herself,
+“Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much,” before Dr.
+Opendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as the cat, and
+his wife walked behind him dressed in black likewise. She gave him a
+guinea, and got a little bottle in return. Her husband recovered that
+time. Meanwhile the black doctor cured many people; but one day a rich
+patient died, and cat, wife, and doctor all vanished the night after.
+In a year the man Ormsby fell sick once more. Now he was a goodlooking
+man, and his wife felt sure the “gentry” were coveting him. She went
+and called on the “faery-doctor” at Cairnsfoot. As soon as he had heard
+her tale, he went behind the back door and began muttering, muttering,
+muttering-making spells. Her husband got well this time also. But after
+a while he sickened again, the fatal third time, and away went she once
+more to Cairnsfoot, and out went the faery-doctor behind his back door
+and began muttering, but soon he came in and told her it was no use--
+her husband would die; and sure enough the man died, and ever after
+when she spoke of him Mrs. Ormsby shook her head saying she knew well
+where he was, and it wasn’t in heaven or hell or purgatory either. She
+probably believed that a log of wood was left behind in his place, but
+so bewitched that it seemed the dead body of her husband.
+
+She is dead now herself, but many still living remember her. She was,
+I believe, for a time a servant or else a kind of pensioner of some
+relations of my own.
+
+Sometimes those who are carried off are allowed after many years--
+seven usually--a final glimpse of their friends. Many years ago a woman
+vanished suddenly from a Sligo garden where she was walking with her
+husband. When her son, who was then a baby, had grown up he received
+word in some way, not handed down, that his mother was glamoured by
+faeries, and imprisoned for the time in a house in Glasgow and longing
+to see him. Glasgow in those days of sailing-ships seemed to the
+peasant mind almost over the edge of the known world, yet he, being a
+dutiful son, started away. For a long time he walked the streets of
+Glasgow; at last down in a cellar he saw his mother working. She was
+happy, she said, and had the best of good eating, and would he not eat?
+and therewith laid all kinds of food on the table; but he, knowing well
+that she was trying to cast on him the glamour by giving him faery
+food, that she might keep him with her, refused and came home to his
+people in Sligo.
+
+Some five miles southward of Sligo is a gloomy and tree-bordered pond,
+a great gathering-place of water-fowl, called, because of its form, the
+Heart Lake. It is haunted by stranger things than heron, snipe, or wild
+duck. Out of this lake, as from the white square stone in Ben Bulben,
+issues an unearthly troop. Once men began to drain it; suddenly one of
+them raised a cry that he saw his house in flames. They turned round,
+and every man there saw his own cottage burning. They hurried home to
+find it was but faery glamour. To this hour on the border of the lake
+is shown a half-dug trench--the signet of their impiety. A little way
+from this lake I heard a beautiful and mournful history of faery
+kidnapping. I heard it from a little old woman in a white cap, who
+sings to herself in Gaelic, and moves from one foot to the other as
+though she remembered the dancing of her youth.
+
+A young man going at nightfall to the house of his just married bride,
+met in the way a jolly company, and with them his bride. They were
+faeries, and had stolen her as a wife for the chief of their band. To
+him they seemed only a company of merry mortals. His bride, when she
+saw her old love, bade him welcome, but was most fearful lest be should
+eat the faery food, and so be glamoured out of the earth into that
+bloodless dim nation, wherefore she set him down to play cards with
+three of the cavalcade; and he played on, realizing nothing until he
+saw the chief of the band carrying his bride away in his arms.
+Immediately he started up, and knew that they were faeries; for slowly
+all that jolly company melted into shadow and night. He hurried to the
+house of his beloved. As he drew near came to him the cry of the
+keeners. She had died some time before he came. Some noteless Gaelic
+poet had made this into a forgotten ballad, some odd verses of which my
+white-capped friend remembered and sang for me.
+
+Sometimes one hears of stolen people acting as good genii to the
+living, as in this tale, heard also close by the haunted pond, of John
+Kirwan of Castle Hacket. The Kirwans[FN#8] are a family much rumoured
+of in peasant stories, and believed to be the descendants of a man and
+a spirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that
+the mother of the present Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe.
+
+
+[FN#8]  I have since heard that it was not the Kirwans, but their
+predecessors at Castle Hacket, the Hackets themselves, I think, who
+were descended from a man and a spirit, and were notable for beauty. I
+imagine that the mother of Lord Cloncurry was descended from the
+Hackets. It may well be that all through these stories the name of
+Kirwan has taken the place of the older name. Legend mixes everything
+together in her cauldron.
+
+
+John Kirwan was a great horse-racing man, and once landed in Liverpool
+with a fine horse, going racing somewhere in middle England. That
+evening, as he walked by the docks, a slip of a boy came up and asked
+where he was stabling his horse. In such and such a place, he answered.
+“Don’t put him there,” said the slip of a boy; “that stable will be
+burnt to-night.” He took his horse elsewhere, and sure enough the
+stable was burnt down. Next day the boy came and asked as reward to
+ride as his jockey in the coming race, and then was gone. The race-time
+came round. At the last moment the boy ran forward and mounted, saying,
+“If I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in
+my right hand bet all you are worth.” For, said Paddy Flynn, who told
+me the tale, “the left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making
+the sign of the cross with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a
+Banshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom.”
+Well, the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John
+Kirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, “What can I do
+for you now?” said he. “Nothing but this,” said the boy: “my mother has
+a cottage on your land-they stole me from the cradle. Be good to her,
+John Kirwan, and wherever your horses go I will watch that no ill
+follows them; but you will never see me more.” With that he made
+himself air, and vanished.
+
+Sometimes animals are carried off--apparently drowned animals more
+than others. In Claremorris, Galway, Paddy Flynn told me, lived a poor
+widow with one cow and its calf. The cow fell into the river, and was
+washed away. There was a man thereabouts who went to a red-haired woman
+--for such are supposed to be wise in these things--and she told him to
+take the calf down to the edge of the river, and hide himself and
+watch. He did as she had told him, and as evening came on the calf
+began to low, and after a while the cow came along the edge of the
+river and commenced suckling it. Then, as he had been told, he caught
+the cow’s tail. Away they went at a great pace across hedges and
+ditches, till they came to a royalty (a name for the little circular
+ditches, commonly called raths or forts, that Ireland is covered with
+since Pagan times). Therein he saw walking or sitting all the people
+who had died out of his village in his time. A woman was sitting on the
+edge with a child on her knees, and she called out to him to mind what
+the red-haired woman had told him, and he remembered she had said,
+Bleed the cow. So he stuck his knife into the cow and drew blood. That
+broke the spell, and he was able to turn her homeward. “Do not forget
+the spancel,” said the woman with the child on her knees; “take the
+inside one.” There were three spancels on a bush; he took one, and the
+cow was driven safely home to the widow.
+
+There is hardly a valley or mountainside where folk cannot tell you of
+some one pillaged from amongst them. Two or three miles from the Heart
+Lake lives an old woman who was stolen away in her youth. After seven
+years she was brought home again for some reason or other, but she had
+no toes left. She had danced them off. Many near the white stone door
+in Ben Bulben have been stolen away.
+
+It is far easier to be sensible in cities than in many country places
+I could tell you of. When one walks on those grey roads at evening by
+the scented elder-bushes of the white cottages, watching the faint
+mountains gathering the clouds upon their heads, one all too readily
+discovers, beyond the thin cobweb veil of the senses, those creatures,
+the goblins, hurrying from the white square stone door to the north, or
+from the Heart Lake in the south.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNTIRING ONES
+
+
+It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any
+unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like,
+and something in our sweetheart that we dislike. It is this
+entanglement of moods which makes us old, and puckers our brows and
+deepens the furrows about our eyes. If we could love and hate with as
+good heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them.
+But until that day their untiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-
+half of their fascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can
+the circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet. The Donegal
+peasants remember this when they bend over the spade, or sit full of
+the heaviness of the fields beside the griddle at nightfall, and they
+tell stories about it that it may not be forgotten. A short while ago,
+they say, two faeries, little creatures, one like a young man, one like
+a young woman, came to a farmer’s house, and spent the night sweeping
+the hearth and setting all tidy. The next night they came again, and
+while the farmer was away, brought all the furniture up-stairs into one
+room, and having arranged it round the walls, for the greater grandeur
+it seems, they began to dance. They danced on and on, and days and days
+went by, and all the country-side came to look at them, but still their
+feet never tired. The farmer did not dare to live at home the while;
+and after three months he made up his mind to stand it no more, and
+went and told them that the priest was coming. The little creatures
+when they heard this went back to their own country, and there their
+joy shall last as long as the points of the rushes are brown, the
+people say, and that is until God shall burn up the world with a kiss.
+
+But it is not merely faeries who know untiring days, for there have
+been men and women who, falling under their enchantment, have attained,
+perhaps by the right of their God-given spirits, an even more than
+faery abundance of life and feeling. It seems that when mortals have
+gone amid those poor happy leaves of the Imperishable Rose of Beauty,
+blown hither and thither by the winds that awakened the stars, the dim
+kingdom has acknowledged their birthright, perhaps a little sadly, and
+given them of its best. Such a mortal was born long ago at a village in
+the south of Ireland. She lay asleep in a cradle, and her mother sat by
+rocking her, when a woman of the Sidhe (the faeries) came in, and said
+that the child was chosen to be the bride of the prince of the dim
+kingdom, but that as it would never do for his wife to grow old and die
+while he was still in the first ardour of his love, she would be gifted
+with a faery life. The mother was to take the glowing log out of the
+fire and bury it in the garden, and her child would live as long as it
+remained unconsumed. The mother buried the log, and the child grew up,
+became a beauty, and married the prince of the faeries, who came to her
+at nightfall. After seven hundred years the prince died, and another
+prince ruled in his stead and married the beautiful peasant girl in his
+turn; and after another seven hundred years he died also, and another
+prince and another husband came in his stead, and so on until she had
+had seven husbands. At last one day the priest of the parish called
+upon her, and told her that she was a scandal to the whole
+neighbourhood with her seven husbands and her long life. She was very
+sorry, she said, but she was not to blame, and then she told him about
+the log, and he went straight out and dug until he found it, and then
+they burned it, and she died, and was buried like a Christian, and
+everybody was pleased. Such a mortal too was Clooth-na-bare,[FN#9] who
+went all over the world seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery
+life, of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to lake and lake
+to hill, and setting up a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted,
+until at last she found the deepest water in the world in little Lough
+Ia, on the top of the Birds’ Mountain at Sligo.
+
+
+[FN#9]  Doubtless Clooth-na-bare should be Cailleac Bare, which would
+mean the old Woman Bare. Bare or Bere or Verah or Dera or Dhera was a
+very famous person, perhaps the mother of the Gods herself. A friend of
+mine found her, as he thinks frequenting Lough Leath, or the Grey Lake
+on a mountain of the Fews. Perhaps Lough Ia is my mishearing, or the
+storyteller’s mispronunciation of Lough Leath, for there are many Lough
+Leaths.
+
+
+The two little creatures may well dance on, and the woman of the log
+and Clooth-na-bare sleep in peace, for they have known untrammelled
+hate and unmixed love, and have never wearied themselves with “yes” and
+“no,” or entangled their feet with the sorry net of “maybe” and
+“perhaps.” The great winds came and took them up into themselves.
+
+
+
+
+EARTH, FIRE AND WATER
+
+
+Some French writer that I read when I was a boy, said that the desert
+went into the heart of the Jews in their wanderings and made them what
+they are. I cannot remember by what argument he proved them to be even
+yet the indestructible children of earth, but it may well be that the
+elements have their children. If we knew the Fire Worshippers better we
+might find that their centuries of pious observance have been rewarded,
+and that the fire has given them a little of its nature; and I am
+certain that the water, the water of the seas and of lakes and of mist
+and rain, has all but made the Irish after its image. Images form
+themselves in our minds perpetually as if they were reflected in some
+pool. We gave ourselves up in old times to mythology, and saw the Gods
+everywhere. We talked to them face to face, and the stories of that
+communion are so many that I think they outnumber all the like stories
+of all the rest of Europe. Even to-day our country people speak with
+the dead and with some who perhaps have never died as we understand
+death; and even our educated people pass without great difficulty into
+the condition of quiet that is the condition of vision. We can make our
+minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may
+see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a
+clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. Did not
+the wise Porphyry think that all souls come to be born because of
+water, and that “even the generation of images in the mind is from
+water”?
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD TOWN
+
+
+I fell, one night some fifteen years ago, into what seemed the power
+of faery.
+
+I had gone with a young man and his sister--friends and relations of
+my own--to pick stories out of an old countryman; and we were coming
+home talking over what he had told us. It was dark, and our
+imaginations were excited by his stories of apparitions, and this may
+have brought us, unknown to us, to the threshold, between sleeping and
+waking, where Sphinxes and Chimaeras sit open-eyed and where there are
+always murmurings and whisperings. I cannot think that what we saw was
+an imagination of the waking mind. We had come under some trees that
+made the road very dark, when the girl saw a bright light moving slowly
+across the road. Her brother and myself saw nothing, and did not see
+anything until we had walked for about half-an-hour along the edge of
+the river and down a narrow lane to some fields where there was a
+ruined church covered with ivy, and the foundations of what was called
+“the Old Town,” which had been burned down, it was said, in Cromwell’s
+day. We had stood for some few minutes, so far as I can recollect,
+looking over the fields full of stones and brambles and elder-bushes,
+when I saw a small bright light on the horizon, as it seemed, mounting
+up slowly towards the sky; then we saw other faint lights for a minute
+or two, and at last a bright flame like the flame of a torch moving
+rapidly over the river. We saw it all in such a dream, and it seems all
+so unreal, that I have never written of it until now, and hardly ever
+spoken of it, and even when thinking, because of some unreasoning
+impulse, I have avoided giving it weight in the argument. Perhaps I
+have felt that my recollections of things seen when the sense of
+reality was weakened must be untrustworthy. A few months ago, however,
+I talked it over with my two friends, and compared their somewhat
+meagre recollections with my own. That sense of unreality was all the
+more wonderful because the next day I heard sounds as unaccountable as
+were those lights, and without any emotion of unreality, and I remember
+them with perfect distinctness and confidence. The girl was sitting
+reading under a large old-fashioned mirror, and I was reading and
+writing a couple of yards away, when I heard a sound as if a shower of
+peas had been thrown against the mirror, and while I was looking at it
+I heard the sound again, and presently, while I was alone in the room,
+I heard a sound as if something much bigger than a pea had struck the
+wainscoting beside my head. And after that for some days came other
+sights and sounds, not to me but to the girl, her brother, and the
+servants. Now it was a bright light, now it was letters of fire that
+vanished before they could be read, now it was a heavy foot moving
+about in the seemingly empty house. One wonders whether creatures who
+live, the country people believe, wherever men and women have lived in
+earlier times, followed us from the ruins of the old town? or did they
+come from the banks of the river by the trees where the first light
+had shone for a moment?
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN AND HIS BOOTS
+
+
+There was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of ghosts or
+sheogues, and there was a house in Donegal that had been haunted as
+long as man could remember, and this is the story of how the house got
+the better of the man. The man came into the house and lighted a fire
+in the room under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them
+On the hearth, and stretched out his feet and warmed him self. For a
+time he prospered in his unbelief; but a little while after the night
+had fallen, and everything had got very dark, one of his boots began to
+move. It got up off the floor and gave a kind of slow jump towards the
+door, and then the other boot did the same, and after that the first
+boot jumped again. And thereupon it struck the man that an invisible
+being had got into his boots, and was now going away in them. When the
+boots reached the door they went up-stairs slowly, and then the man
+heard them go tramp, tramp round the haunted room over his head. A few
+minutes passed, and he could hear them again upon the stairs, and after
+that in the passage outside, and then one of them came in at the door,
+and the other gave a jump past it and came in too. They jumped along
+towards him, and then one got up and hit him, and afterwards the other
+hit him, and then again the first hit him, and so on, until they drove
+him out of the room, and finally out of the house. In this way he was
+kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter.
+It is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of
+the Sidhe, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work
+of the Sidhe who live in the heart of fantasy.
+
+
+
+
+A COWARD
+
+
+One day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who lives
+beyond Ben Bulben and Cope’s mountain, and met there a young lad who
+seemed to be disliked by the two daughters. I asked why they disliked
+him, and was; told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom
+robust children of nature take to be cowards are but men and women with
+a nervous system too finely made for their life and work. I looked at
+the lad; but no, that pink-and-white face and strong body had nothing
+of undue sensibility. After a little he told me his story. He had lived
+a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he was
+coming home late at night, and suddenly fell himself sinking in, as it
+were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a dead
+brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not stop
+till he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung himself
+against the door with so much of violence that he broke the thick
+wooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his wild
+life, but was a hopeless coward. Nothing could ever bring him to look,
+either by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face, and
+he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, “the
+prettiest girl in the country” persuade him to see her home after a
+party if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had looked at the
+face no man can see unchanged-the imponderable face of a spirit.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE O’BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES
+
+
+In the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things.
+There is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing
+there than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon
+the earth. In the beginning the earth was perhaps made to fulfil the
+desire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What
+wonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom!
+
+A friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was
+straying about a rath called “Cashel Nore.” A man with a haggard face
+and unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and
+began digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was working near and
+asked who the man was. “That is the third O’Byrne,” was the answer. A
+few days after he learned this story: A great quantity of treasure had
+been buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries
+set to guard it; but some day it was to be found and belong to the
+family of the O’Byrnes. Before that day three O’Byrnes must find it and
+die. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last
+he had got a glimpse of the stone coffin that contained it, but
+immediately a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and
+tore him to pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished
+deep into the earth. The second O’Byrne came and dug and dug until he
+found the coffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within.
+He saw some horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and
+soon died. The treasure again sank out of sight. The third O’Byrne is
+now digging. He believes that he will die in some terrible way the
+moment he finds the treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and
+the O’Byrne family made rich for ever, as they were of old.
+
+A peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the
+shin-bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up; there was a hole
+in it; he looked through the hole, and saw the gold heaped up under the
+ground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath
+again he could not find the spot where he had seen it.
+
+
+
+
+DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES
+
+
+Drumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven!
+places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time
+after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore.
+Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the
+mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall
+to loose the faery riders on the world. The great St. Columba himself,
+the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed the
+mountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his prayers.
+Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,
+like a green tablecloth, and lying in the foam midway between the round
+cairn-headed Knocknarea and “Ben Bulben, famous for hawks”:
+
+
+    But for Benbulben and Knocknarea
+    Many a poor sailor’d be cast away,
+
+
+as the rhyme goes.
+
+At the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and
+rocks and grass: a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall
+asleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake “silly,”
+the “good people” having carried off his soul. There is no more ready
+shortcut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered
+and smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes
+thither “full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and
+drawing-rooms.” Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and
+was heard yelping helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland.
+These forts or raths, made before modern history had begun, cover all
+Rosses and all Columkille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most
+others, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I was
+poking about there, an unusually intelligent and “reading” peasant who
+had come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and
+whispered in a timid voice, “Are you all right, sir?” I had been some
+little while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the
+dog.
+
+No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by ill-
+boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose northern
+slope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer’s young son came
+from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards it, but
+the “glamour” fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence, cross-legged,
+and commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined the fence was a
+horse, and that all night long he went on the most wonderful ride
+through the country. In the morning he was still beating his fence, and
+they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for three years
+before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer tried to level
+the fort. His cows and horses died, and an manner of trouble overtook
+him, and finally he himself was led home, and left useless with “his
+head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death.”
+
+A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is
+another angle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with
+sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or
+four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the
+darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave’s mouth
+two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A
+great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers,
+but the creatures had gone.
+
+To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of
+never-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door in
+the evening, and, in her own words, “looks at the mountains and thinks
+of the goodness of God,” God is all the nearer, because the pagan
+powers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for hawks,
+the white square door swings open at sundown, and those wild
+unchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the
+White Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself, wanders under the broad
+cloud nightcap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these things, even
+though the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no long
+while since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of
+her dress touched him. “He fell down, and was dead three days.” But
+this is merely the small gossip of faerydom--the little stitches that
+join this world and the other.
+
+One night as I sat eating Mrs. H-----’s soda-bread, her husband told
+me a longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor
+man from Fin M’Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell
+of, for those creatures, the “good people,” love to repeat themselves.
+At any rate the story-tellers do. “In the times when we used to travel
+by the canal,” he said, “I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to
+Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued
+I was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then
+we walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls
+milking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked
+them for a drink of milk. ‘We have nothing to put it in here,’ they
+said, ‘but come to the house with us.’ We went home with them, and sat
+round the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me,
+loath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to
+eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it
+on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head.
+When I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It
+grew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave
+the good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them
+a corpse. When I saw them, coming I hid behind the door. Says one to
+the other, putting the corpse on the spit, ‘Who’ll turn the spit? Says
+the other, ‘Michael H-----, come out of that and turn the meat.’ I came
+out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. ‘Michael H------,’
+says the one who spoke first, ‘if you let it burn we’ll have to put you
+on the spit instead’; and on that they went out. I sat there trembling
+and turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and
+the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But
+having fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that
+time; and, sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: ‘Michael H-----,
+can you tell me a story?’ ‘Divil a one,’ said I. On which he caught me
+by the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing
+night. Never in all my born days did I see such a night-the darkest
+night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for
+the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on
+the shoulder, with a ‘Michael H----, can you tell a story now?’ ‘I
+can,’ says I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says:
+‘Begin.’ ‘I have no story but the one,’ says I, ‘that I was sitting
+here, and you two men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and
+set me turning it.’ ‘That will do,’ says he; ‘ye may go in there and
+lie down on the bed.’ And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning
+where was I but in the middle of a green field!”
+
+“Drumcliff” is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing
+season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a
+place called Columkille’s Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient
+boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a
+moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread
+portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon,
+renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or
+care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest
+boscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchullin and his heroes. A
+vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.
+
+Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath,
+hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men in
+armour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on.
+A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there is a
+very ancient graveyard. The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse
+about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: “A pious soldier of
+the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff.” Not very long
+ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray,
+saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was
+going. It was the “pious soldier of the race of Con,” says local
+wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the
+graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling
+the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young
+child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from
+the too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut
+your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.
+
+There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the snipe-
+ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well:
+for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on
+the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea. There
+is a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived there
+who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred
+pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea captain. This my man
+knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain,
+not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean. Shortly
+afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange
+sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered
+since the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive
+out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade
+of the dead man appeared there at times. The bush remains to this day:
+once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put
+spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices,
+they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a
+snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say
+the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.
+
+My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these
+many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find
+nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
+as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of
+the few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:
+“They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine”: for it is
+dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or
+knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
+friend, “the sweet Harp-String” (I give no more than his Irish name for
+fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart,
+but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields.
+Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the
+“dhoul” in Great Eliza’s century, and he has a kind of prescriptive
+right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are
+almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of
+magicians be true.
+
+
+
+
+THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE
+
+
+I
+
+Once a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the
+cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made them
+feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil
+himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows
+with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break, and
+they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet, and
+worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the
+Icelanders, or “Danes” as we call them and all other dwellers in the
+Scandinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places,
+and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same
+way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the
+custom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people
+of Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland
+which once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses
+itself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as
+Roughley, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red
+beards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a
+boat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike
+each other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint of
+hitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing, only
+to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a man
+from Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row, and
+made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so thin
+you cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of
+passionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and
+cried, “that little fellow’s skull if ye were to hit it would go like
+an egg-shell,” he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,
+“but a man might wallop away at your lordship’s for a fortnight.”
+
+
+II
+
+I wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories.
+I was in Roughley the other day, and found it much like other desolate
+places. I may have been thinking of Moughorow, a much wilder place, for
+the memories of one’s childhood are brittle things to lean upon.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR
+
+
+A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his
+deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the
+valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all
+things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow
+under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must
+needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper
+with a Captain Moran on board the S.S. Margaret, that had put into a
+western river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions
+all flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He
+talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all
+his words broke the hard energy of his calling.
+
+“Sur,” said he, “did you ever hear tell of the sea captain’s prayer?”
+
+“No,” said I; “what is it?”
+
+“It is,” he replied, “‘O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip.’”
+
+“And what does that mean?”
+
+“It means,” he said, “that when they come to me some night and wake me
+up, and say, ‘Captain, we’re going down,’ that I won’t make a fool o’
+meself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I standin’ on the bridge,
+when the third mate comes up to me looking mortial bad. Says he,
+‘Captain, all’s up with us.’ Says I, ‘Didn’t you know when you joined
+that a certain percentage go down every year?’ ‘Yes, sur,’ says he; and
+says I, ‘Arn’t you paid to go down?’ ‘Yes, sur,’ says he; and says I,
+‘Then go down like a man, and be damned to you!”’
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY
+
+
+In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far
+apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many
+years in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, “There is
+a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there are
+two souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way the
+one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has the
+shelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for
+shelter. I don’t believe it, but there is many a one would not pass by
+it at night.” Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near
+together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than the
+shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child
+running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the
+creature why she did not have it cut short. “It was my grandmother’s,”
+said the child; “would you have her going about yonder with her
+petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days?” I have read a
+story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had made
+her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her
+knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like
+their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never grow leaky, nor
+the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time
+empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent
+or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the
+righteous from the unrighteous.
+
+
+1892 and 1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES
+
+
+Sometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
+for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
+and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
+under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the
+power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will, and
+sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands. One day
+I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went a circular
+parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating precious
+stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered green and
+crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable hunger. I knew
+that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell of the artist,
+and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful things with too
+avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I
+have seen into other people’s hells also, and saw in one an infernal
+Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who weighed on a
+curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed, but the good
+deeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could see the scales
+go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were, I knew,
+crowding about him. I saw on another occasion a quantity of demons of
+all kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and dog-like
+--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and looking at
+a moon--like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from the depths
+of the pit.
+
+
+
+
+OUR LADY OF THE HILLS
+
+
+When we were children we did not say at such a distance from the post-
+office, or so far from the butcher’s or the grocer’s, but measured
+things by the covered well in the wood, or by the burrow of the fox in
+the hill. We belonged then to God and to His works, and to things come
+down from the ancient days. We would not have been greatly surprised
+had we met the shining feet of an angel among the white mushrooms upon
+the mountains, for we knew in those days immense despair, unfathomed
+love--every eternal mood,--but now the draw-net is about our feet. A
+few miles eastward of Lough Gill, a young Protestant girl, who was both
+pretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white, wandered up
+among those mountain mushrooms, and I have a letter of hers telling how
+she met a troop of children, and became a portion of their dream. When
+they first saw her they threw themselves face down in a bed of rushes,
+as if in a great fear; but after a little other children came about
+them, and they got up and followed her almost bravely. She noticed
+their fear, and presently stood still and held out her arms. A little
+girl threw herself into them with the cry, “Ah, you are the Virgin out
+o’ the picture!” “No,” said another, coming near also, “she is a sky
+faery, for she has the colour of the sky.” “No,” said a third, “she is
+the faery out of the foxglove grown big.” The other children, however,
+would have it that she was indeed the Virgin, for she wore the Virgin’s
+colours. Her good Protestant heart was greatly troubled, and she got
+the children to sit down about her, and tried to explain who she was,
+but they would have none of her explanation. Finding explanation of no
+avail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ? “Yes,” said one; “but
+we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the
+Virgin.” “Tell Him to be good to me,” whispered another into her ear.
+“We would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil,” burst out a
+third.
+
+She talked to them a long time about Christ and the apostles, but was
+finally interrupted by an elderly woman with a stick, who, taking her
+to be some adventurous hunter for converts, drove the children away,
+despite their explanation that here was the great Queen of Heaven come
+to walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had
+gone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the
+child who was called “a divil” jumped down from the high ditch by the
+lane, and said she would believe her “an ordinary lady” if she had “two
+skirts,” for “ladies always had two skirts.” The “two skirts” were
+shown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later
+jumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, “Dad’s a divil,
+mum’s a divil, and I’m a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady,” and
+having flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When my
+pretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had
+dropped the tassels of her parasol. A year later she was by chance upon
+the mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child
+who had first called her the Virgin out o’ the picture, and saw the
+tassels hanging about the child’s neck, and said, “I am the lady you
+met last year, who told you about Christ.” “No, you are not! no, you
+are not! no, you are not!” was the passionate reply. And after all, it
+was not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking
+in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who
+cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that
+man pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and
+the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and
+evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+
+A while ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time
+I had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a
+message from those beings or bodiless moods, or whatever they be, who
+inhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw
+with blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel, half dog,
+moving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal
+vanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his
+pink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light;
+and I remembered a pleasant belief about two faery dogs who go about
+representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the
+excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and
+chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage
+and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box,
+and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest
+emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden
+Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a
+beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and
+flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and
+kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried
+like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the
+more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our
+fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song
+of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the
+fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the
+clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred
+by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and
+that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only
+they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the
+sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must
+weep until the Eternal gates swing open.
+
+We were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the
+fiddler put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a
+copper, and then opened the door and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF
+THEIR GHOSTS AND FAERIES
+
+
+Not only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the
+other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in
+front of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it,
+and dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It
+would have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An
+Irish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature.
+For in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and
+spirits. They only ill-treat each other in reason. Each admits the
+other side to have feelings. There are points beyond which neither will
+go. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man
+Campbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his
+horse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a
+needle into her. They came to a river, and she grew very restless,
+fearing to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her.
+She cried out, “Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-
+like slave (the needle) out of me.” They came to an inn. He turned the
+light of a lantern on her; immediately she dropped down like a falling
+star, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they
+treat the faeries as one is treated in an old Highland poem. A faery
+loved a little child who used to cut turf at the side of a faery hill.
+Every day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted
+knife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take
+long, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done
+so quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped
+her. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little
+child take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her
+make three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out
+of the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off
+with a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm
+into the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand
+through the treachery of the child.
+
+In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even
+the Devil religious. “Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the
+minister?” he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it
+came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we
+have left them alone. To be sure, the “loyal minority” knocked out the
+eye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town
+of Carrickfergus. But then the “loyal minority” is half Scottish. You
+have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like to
+have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have
+gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn
+have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear
+their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes
+ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland
+you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been
+permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls.
+Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they
+will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but more in
+sadness than in anger they have said it. The Catholic religion likes to
+keep on good terms with its neighbours.
+
+These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each
+country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and
+graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror to
+Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of make-
+believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is made to
+turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not feel
+anxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the dew on
+his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have soured
+the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The piper
+M’Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched into a
+sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a long time
+the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a mile, when
+they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased suddenly.
+Some time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern completely
+flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of the
+cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake where
+treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close to the
+coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came. He rose
+to the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen the
+treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while his
+heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw the
+rest of his body.
+
+These water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish folk-
+lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our tales
+turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly
+humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one of
+these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does not
+prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding it with
+conscious fantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day for
+congers in the monster hole. Returning home, a great eel on my
+shoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail sweeping the ground
+behind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an
+immense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had
+broken my line and escaped. “That was him,” said the fisherman. “Did
+you ever hear how he made my brother emigrate? My brother was a diver,
+you know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast
+comes up to him, and says, ‘What are you after?’ ‘Stones, sur,’ says
+he. ‘Don’t you think you had better be going?’ ‘Yes, sur,’ says he. And
+that’s why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got
+poor, but that’s not true.”
+
+You--you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and air
+and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We--we exchange
+civilities with the world beyond.
+
+
+
+
+WAR
+
+
+When there was a rumour of war with France a while ago, I met a poor
+Sligo woman, a soldier’s widow, that I know, and I read her a sentence
+out of a letter I had just had from London: “The people here are mad
+for war, but France seems inclined to take things peacefully,” or some
+like sentence. Her mind ran a good deal on war, which she imagined
+partly from what she had heard from soldiers, and partly from tradition
+of the rebellion of ’98, but the word London doubled her interest, for
+she knew there were a great many people in London, and she herself had
+once lived in “a congested district.” “There are too many over one
+another in London. They are getting tired of the world. It is killed
+they want to be. It will be no matter; but sure the French want nothing
+but peace and quietness. The people here don’t mind the war coming.
+They could not be worse than they are. They may as well die soldierly
+before God. Sure they will get quarters in heaven.” Then she began to
+say that it would be a hard thing to see children tossed about on
+bayonets, and I knew her mind was running on traditions of the great
+rebellion. She said presently, “I never knew a man that was in a battle
+that liked to speak of it after. They’d sooner be throwing hay down
+from a hayrick.” She told me how she and her neighbours used to be
+sitting over the fire when she was a girl, talking of the war that was
+coming, and now she was afraid it was coming again, for she had dreamed
+that all the bay was “stranded and covered with seaweed.” I asked her
+if it was in the Fenian times that she had been so much afraid of war
+coming. But she cried out, “Never had I such fun and pleasure as in the
+Fenian times. I was in a house where some of the officers used to be
+staying, and in the daytime I would be walking after the soldiers’
+band, and at night I’d be going down to the end of the garden watching
+a soldier, with his red coat on him, drilling the Fenians in the field
+behind the house. One night the boys tied the liver of an old horse,
+that had been dead three weeks, to the knocker, and I found it when I
+opened the door in the morning.” And presently our talk of war shifted,
+as it had a way of doing, to the battle of the Black Pig, which seems
+to her a battle between Ireland and England, but to me an Armageddon
+which shall quench all things in the Ancestral Darkness again, and from
+this to sayings about war and vengeance. “Do you know,” she said, “what
+the curse of the Four Fathers is? They put the man-child on the spear,
+and somebody said to them, ‘You will be cursed in the fourth generation
+after you,’ and that is why disease or anything always comes in the
+fourth generation.”
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL
+
+
+I have heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of Clare
+and Galway, say that in “every household” of faery “there is a queen
+and a fool,” and that if you are “touched” by either you never recover,
+though you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said of the
+fool that he was “maybe the wisest of all,” and spoke of him as dressed
+like one of the “mummers that used to be going about the country.”
+Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him, and I have
+heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember seeing a
+long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of an old
+miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was
+a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he
+is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes an
+Amadan-na-Breena, a fool of the forth, and is attached to a household
+there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know well, and who has
+been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said, “There are fools
+amongst them, and the fools we see, like that Amadan of Ballylee, go
+away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that we call
+Oinseachs (apes).” A woman who is related to the witch-doctor on the
+border of Clare, and who can Cure people and cattle by spells, said,
+“There are some cures I can’t do. I can’t help any one that has got a
+stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a woman that
+saw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian. I never
+heard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking near
+Gort, and she called out, ‘There’s the fool of the forth coming after
+me.’ So her friends that were with her called out, though they could
+see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no harm.
+He was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that is all
+she said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a cousin of
+Hearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years.” The wife of the old
+miller said, “It is said they are mostly good neighbours, but the
+stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets that
+is gone. The Amadan-na-Breena we call him!” And an old woman who lives
+in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, “It is true enough,
+there is no cure for the stroke of the Amadan-na-Breena. There was an
+old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell what diseases
+you had with measuring you; and he knew many things. And he said to me
+one time, ‘What month of the year is the worst?’ and I said, ‘The month
+of May, of course.’ ‘It is not,’ he said; ‘but the month of June, for
+that’s the month that the Amadan gives his stroke!’ They say he looks
+like any other man, but he’s leathan (wide), and not smart. I knew a
+boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb looked over the wall at him
+with a beard on it, and he knew it was the Amadan, for it was the month
+of June. And they brought him to that man I was telling about, that had
+the tape, and when he saw him he said, ‘Send for the priest, and get a
+Mass said over him.’ And so they did, and what would you say but he’s
+living yet and has a family! A certain Regan said, ‘They, the other
+sort of people, might be passing you close here and they might touch
+you. But any that gets the touch of the Amadan-na-Breena is done for.’
+It’s true enough that it’s in the month of June he’s most likely to
+give the touch. I knew one that got it, and he told me about it
+himself. He was a boy I knew well, and he told me that one night a
+gentleman came to him, that had been his land-lord, and that was dead.
+And he told him to come along with him, for he wanted him to fight
+another man. And when he went he found two great troops of them, and
+the other troop had a living man with them too, and he was put to fight
+him. And they had a great fight, and he got the better of the other
+man, and then the troop on his side gave a great shout, and he was left
+home again. But about three years after that he was cutting bushes in a
+wood and he saw the Amadan coming at him. He had a big vessel in his
+arms, and it was shining, so that the boy could see nothing else; but
+he put it behind his back then and came running, and the boy said he
+looked wild and wide, like the side of the hill. And the boy ran, and
+he threw the vessel after him, and it broke with a great noise, and
+whatever came out of it, his head was gone there and then. He lived for
+a while after, and used to tell us many things, but his wits were gone.
+He thought they mightn’t have liked him to beat the other man, and he
+used to be afraid something would come on him.” And an old woman in a
+Galway workhouse, who had some little knowledge of Queen Maive, said
+the other day, “The Amadan-na-Breena changes his shape every two days.
+Sometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he’ll come like the worst
+of beasts, trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of
+late he was shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him.”
+
+I knew a man who was trying to bring before his mind’s eye an image of
+Aengus, the old Irish god of love and poetry and ecstasy, who changed
+four of his kisses into birds, and suddenly the image of a man with a
+cap and bells rushed before his mind’s eye, and grew vivid and spoke
+and called itself “Aengus’ messenger.” And I knew another man, a truly
+great seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there was
+a tree with peacocks’ feathers instead of leaves, and flowers that
+opened to show little human faces when the white fool had touched them
+with his coxcomb, and he saw at another time a white fool sitting by a
+pool and smiling and watching the images of many fair women floating up
+from the pool.
+
+What else can death be but the beginning of wisdom and power and
+beauty? and foolishness may be a kind of death. I cannot think it
+wonderful that many should see a fool with a shining vessel of some
+enchantment or wisdom or dream too powerful for mortal brains in “every
+household of them.” It is natural, too, that there should be a queen to
+every household of them, and that one should hear little of their
+kings, for women come more easily than men to that wisdom which ancient
+peoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom. The
+self, which is the foundation of our knowledge, is broken in pieces by
+foolishness, and is forgotten in the sudden emotions of women, and
+therefore fools may get, and women do get of a certainty, glimpses of
+much that sanctity finds at the end of its painful journey. The man who
+saw the white fool said of a certain woman, not a peasant woman, “If I
+had her power of vision I would know all the wisdom of the gods, and
+her visions do not interest her.” And I know of another woman, also not
+a peasant woman, who would pass in sleep into countries of an unearthly
+beauty, and who never cared for anything but to be busy about her house
+and her children; and presently an herb doctor cured her, as he called
+it. Wisdom and beauty and power may sometimes, as I think, come to
+those who die every day they live, though their dying may not be like
+the dying Shakespeare spoke of. There is a war between the living and
+the dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it. They will have it
+that when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of the
+earth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their wisdom
+when the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make the trees
+wither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery in
+November, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes. Because the
+soul always believes in these, or in like things, the cell and the
+wilderness shall never be long empty, or lovers come into the world who
+will not understand the verse--
+
+
+    Heardst thou not sweet words among
+    That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
+    Heardst thou not that those who die
+    Awake in a world of ecstasy?
+    How love, when limbs are interwoven,
+    And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
+    And thought to the world’s dim boundaries clinging,
+    And music when one’s beloved is singing,
+    Is death?
+
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE OF FAERY
+
+
+Those that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of
+their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to
+have a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has
+passed the threshold of trance, to those sweet waters where Maeldun saw
+the dishevelled eagles bathe and become young again.
+
+There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of
+Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the
+end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told
+me a few months before his death that “they” would not let him sleep at
+night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their pipes.
+He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend had told
+him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or to play
+on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and he did,
+and they always went out into the field when he began to play. He
+showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he did
+not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his
+chimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the
+pipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for
+she heard that “three of them” had told him he was to die. He said they
+had gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they
+had “taken,” I suppose) who used to come with them, and play about the
+house with them, had “gone to some other place,” because “they found
+the house too cold for them, maybe”; and he died a week after he had
+said these things.
+
+His neighbours were not certain that he really saw anything in his old
+age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young
+man. His brother said, “Old he is, and it’s all in his brain the things
+he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him.” But he was
+improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, “The
+poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a
+fine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two
+lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they
+took away Fallon’s little girl.” And she told how Fallon’s little girl
+had met a woman “with red hair that was as bright as silver,” who took
+her away. Another neighbour, who was herself “clouted over the ear” by
+one of them for going into a fort where they were, said, “I believe
+it’s mostly in his head they are; and when he stood in the door last
+night I said, ‘The wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it
+never stops,’ to make him think it was the same with him; but he says,
+‘I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them is
+after bringing out a little flute, and it’s on it he’s playing to
+them.’ And this I know, that when he pulled down the chimney where he
+said the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones, and
+he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and
+strong.”
+
+A friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms of
+true friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down
+accurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman’s story some
+time before I heard of it, got her to tell it over again, and wrote it
+out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not like
+being in the house alone because of the ghosts and fairies; and the old
+woman said, “There’s nothing to be frightened about in faeries, miss.
+Many’s the time I talked to a woman myself that was a faery, or
+something of the sort, and no less and more than mortal anyhow. She
+used to come about your grandfather’s house--your mother’s grandfather,
+that is--in my young days. But you’ll have heard all about her.” My
+friend said that she had heard about her, but a long time before, and
+she wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went on, “Well
+dear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming about was
+when your uncle--that is, your mother’s uncle--Joseph married, and
+building a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his
+father’s, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living
+nigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men
+at their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all
+there into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked
+out, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come
+yet; and one day I was standing with my mother foment the house, when
+we sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I
+was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
+I mind her as well as if I saw her there now!” My friend asked how the
+woman was dressed, and the old woman said, “It was a gray cloak she had
+on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied round
+her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times.” My
+friend asked, “How wee was she?” And the old woman said, “Well now, she
+wasn’t wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the Wee
+Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you would
+say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round in the
+face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother’s sister, and Betty was
+like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of them. She
+was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married, and she
+never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee Woman--her
+being like Betty--was, maybe, one of their own people that had been
+took off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was
+always following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks
+straight over to where my mother was standing. ‘Go over to the Lough
+this minute!’--ordering her like that--‘Go over to the Lough, and tell
+Joseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I’ll
+show you fornent the thornbush. That is where it is to be built, if he
+is to have luck and prosperity, so do what I’m telling ye this minute.’
+The house was being built on ‘the path’ I suppose--the path used by the
+people of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down and
+shows him, and he changes the foundations, the way he was bid, but
+didn’t bring it exactly to where was pointed, and the end of that was,
+when he come to the house, his own wife lost her life with an accident
+that come to a horse that hadn’t room to turn right with a harrow
+between the bush and the wall. The Wee Woman was queer and angry when
+next she come, and says to us, ‘He didn’t do as I bid him, but he’ll
+see what he’ll see.”’ My friend asked where the woman came from this
+time, and if she was dressed as before, and the woman said, “Always the
+same way, up the field beyant the burn. It was a thin sort of shawl she
+had about her in summer, and a cloak about her in winter; and many and
+many a time she came, and always it was good advice she was giving to
+my mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck.
+There was none of the other children of us ever seen her unless me; but
+I used to be glad when I seen her coming up the bum, and would run out
+and catch her by the hand and the cloak, and call to my mother, ‘Here’s
+the Wee Woman!’ No man body ever seen her. My father used to be wanting
+to, and was angry with my mother and me, thinking we were telling lies
+and talking foolish like. And so one day when she had come, and was
+sitting by the fireside talking to my mother, I slips out to the field
+where he was digging. ‘Come up,’ says I, ‘if ye want to see her. She’s
+sitting at the fireside now, talking to mother.’ So in he comes with me
+and looks round angry like and sees nothing, and he up with a broom
+that was near hand and hits me a crig with it. ‘Take that now!’ says
+he, ‘for making a fool of me!’ and away with him as fast as he could,
+and queer and angry with me. The Wee Woman says to me then, ‘Ye got
+that now for bringing people to see me. No man body ever seen me, and
+none ever will.’
+
+“There was one day, though, she gave him a queer fright anyway,
+whether he had seen her or not. He was in among the cattle when it
+happened, and he comes up to the house all trembling like. ‘Don’t let
+me hear you say another word of your Wee Woman. I have got enough of
+her this time.’ Another time, all the same, he was up Gortin to sell
+horses, and before he went off, in steps the Wee Woman and says she to
+my mother, holding out a sort of a weed, ‘Your man is gone up by
+Gortin, and there’s a bad fright waiting him coming home, but take this
+and sew it in his coat, and he’ll get no harm by it.’ My mother takes
+the herb, but thinks to herself, ‘Sure there’s nothing in it,’ and
+throws it on the floor, and lo and behold, and sure enough! coming home
+from Gortin, my father got as bad a fright as ever he got in his life.
+What it was I don’t right mind, but anyway he was badly damaged by it.
+My mother was in a queer way, frightened of the Wee Woman, after what
+she done, and sure enough the next time she was angry. ‘Ye didn’t
+believe me,’ she said, ‘and ye threw the herb I gave ye in the fire,
+and I went far enough for it.’ There was another time she came and told
+how William Hearne was dead in America. ‘Go over,’ she says, ‘to the
+Lough, and say that William is dead, and he died happy, and this was
+the last Bible chapter ever he read,’ and with that she gave the verse
+and chapter. ‘Go,’ she says, ‘and tell them to read them at the next
+class meeting, and that I held his head while he died.’ And sure enough
+word came after that how William had died on the day she named. And,
+doing as she did about the chapter and hymn, they never had such a
+prayer-meeting as that. One day she and me and my mother was standing
+talking, and she was warning her about something, when she says of a
+sudden, ‘Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery, and it’s time for me
+to be off.’ And with that she gave a swirl round on her feet, and
+raises up in the air, and round and round she goes, and up and up, as
+if it was a winding stairs she went up, only far swifter. She went up
+and up, till she was no bigger than a bird up against the clouds,
+singing and singing the whole time the loveliest music I ever heard in
+my life from that day to this. It wasn’t a hymn she was singing, but
+poetry, lovely poetry, and me and my mother stands gaping up, and all
+of a tremble. ‘What is she at all, mother?’ says I. ‘Is it an angel she
+is, or a faery woman, or what?’ With that up come Miss Letty, that was
+your grandmother, dear, but Miss Letty she was then, and no word of her
+being anything else, and she wondered to see us gaping up that way,
+till me and my mother told her of it. She went on gay-dressed then, and
+was lovely looking. She was up the lane where none of us could see her
+coming forward when the Wee Woman rose up in that queer way, saying,
+‘Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery.’ Who knows to what far
+country she went, or to see whom dying?
+
+“It was never after dark she came, but daylight always, as far as I
+mind, but wanst, and that was on a Hallow Eve night. My mother was by
+the fire, making ready the supper; she had a duck down and some apples.
+In slips the Wee Woman, ‘I’m come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,’ says
+she. ‘That’s right,’ says my mother, and thinks to herself, ‘I can give
+her her supper nicely.’ Down she sits by the fire a while. ‘Now I’ll
+tell you where you’ll bring my supper,’ says she. ‘In the room beyond
+there beside the loom--set a chair in and a plate.’ ‘When ye’re
+spending the night, mayn’t ye as well sit by the table and eat with the
+rest of us?’ ‘Do what you’re bid, and set whatever you give me in the
+room beyant. I’ll eat there and nowhere else.’ So my mother sets her a
+plate of duck and some apples, whatever was going, in where she bid,
+and we got to our supper and she to hers; and when we rose I went in,
+and there, lo and behold ye, was her supper-plate a bit ate of each
+portion, and she clean gone!”
+
+
+1897.
+
+
+
+
+DREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL
+
+
+The friend who heard about Maive and the hazel-stick went to the
+workhouse another day. She found the old people cold and wretched,
+“like flies in winter,” she said; but they forgot the cold when they
+began to talk. A man had just left them who had played cards in a rath
+with the people of faery, who had played “very fair”; and one old man
+had seen an enchanted black pig one night, and there were two old
+people my friend had heard quarrelling as to whether Raftery or
+Callanan was the better poet. One had said of Raftery, “He was a big
+man, and his songs have gone through the whole world. I remember him
+well. He had a voice like the wind”; but the other was certain “that
+you would stand in the snow to listen to Callanan.” Presently an old
+man began to tell my friend a story, and all listened delightedly,
+bursting into laughter now and then. The story, which I am going to
+tell just as it was told, was one of those old rambling moralless
+tales, which are the delight of the poor and the hard driven, wherever
+life is left in its natural simplicity. They tell of a time when
+nothing had consequences, when even if you were killed, if only you had
+a good heart, somebody would bring you to life again with a touch of a
+rod, and when if you were a prince and happened to look exactly like
+your brother, you might go to bed with his queen, and have only a
+little quarrel afterwards. We too, if we were so weak and poor that
+everything threatened us with misfortune, would remember, if foolish
+people left us alone, every old dream that has been strong enough to
+fling the weight of the world from its shoulders.
+
+There was a king one time who was very much put out because he had no
+son, and he went at last to consult his chief adviser. And the chief
+adviser said, “It’s easy enough managed if you do as I tell you. Let
+you send some one,” says he, “to such a place to catch a fish. And when
+the fish is brought in, give it to the queen, your wife, to eat.”
+
+So the king sent as he was told, and the fish was caught and brought
+in, and he gave it to the cook, and bade her put it before the fire,
+but to be careful with it, and not to let any blob or blister rise on
+it. But it is impossible to cook a fish before the fire without the
+skin of it rising in some place or other, and so there came a blob on
+the skin, and the cook put her finger on it to smooth it down, and then
+she put her finger into her mouth to cool it, and so she got a taste of
+the fish. And then it was sent up to the queen, and she ate it, and
+what was left of it was thrown out into the yard, and there was a mare
+in the yard and a greyhound, and they ate the bits that were thrown out.
+
+And before a year was out, the queen had a young son, and the cook had
+a young son, and the mare had two foals, and the greyhound had two pups.
+
+And the two young sons were sent out for a while to some place to be
+cared, and when they came back they were so much like one another no
+person could know which was the queen’s son and which was the cook’s.
+And the queen was vexed at that, and she went to the chief adviser and
+said, “Tell me some way that I can know which is my own son, for I
+don’t like to be giving the same eating and drinking to the cook’s son
+as to my own.” “It is easy to know that,” said the chief adviser, “if
+you will do as I tell you. Go you outside, and stand at the door they
+will be coming in by, and when they see you, your own son will bow his
+head, but the cook’s son will only laugh.”
+
+So she did that, and when her own son bowed his head, her servants put
+a mark on him that she would know him again. And when they were all
+sitting at their dinner after that, she said to Jack, that was the
+cook’s son, “It is time for you to go away out of this, for you are not
+my son.” And her own son, that we will call Bill, said, “Do not send
+him away, are we not brothers?” But Jack said, “I would have been long
+ago out of this house if I knew it was not my own father and mother
+owned it.” And for all Bill could say to him, he would not stop. But
+before he went, they were by the well that was in the garden, and he
+said to Bill, “If harm ever happens to me, that water on the top of the
+well will be blood, and the water below will be honey.”
+
+Then he took one of the pups, and one of the two horses, that was
+foaled after the mare eating the fish, and the wind that was after him
+could not catch him, and he caught the wind that was before him. And he
+went on till he came to a weaver’s house, and he asked him for a
+lodging, and he gave it to him. And then he went on till he came to a
+king’s house, and he sent in at the door to ask, “Did he want a
+servant?” “All I want,” said the king, “is a boy that will drive out
+the cows to the field every morning, and bring them in at night to be
+milked.” “I will do that for you,” said Jack; so the king engaged him.
+
+In the morning Jack was sent out with the four-and-twenty cows, and
+the place he was told to drive them to had not a blade of grass in it
+for them, but was full of stones. So Jack looked about for some place
+where there would be better grass, and after a while he saw a field
+with good green grass in it, and it belonging to a giant. So he knocked
+down a bit of the wall and drove them in, and he went up himself into
+an apple-tree and began to eat the apples. Then the giant came into the
+field. “Fee-faw-fum,” says he, “I smell the blood of an Irishman. I see
+you where you are, up in the tree,” he said; “you are too big for one
+mouthful, and too small for two mouthfuls, and I don’t know what I’ll
+do with you if I don’t grind you up and make snuff for my nose.” “As
+you are strong, be merciful,” says Jack up in the tree. “Come down out
+of that, you little dwarf,” said the giant, “or I’ll tear you and the
+tree asunder.” So Jack came down. “Would you sooner be driving red-hot
+knives into one another’s hearts,” said the giant, “or would you sooner
+be fighting one another on red-hot flags?” “Fighting on red-hot flags
+is what I’m used to at home,” said Jack, “and your dirty feet will be
+sinking in them and my feet will be rising.” So then they began the
+fight. The ground that was hard they made soft, and the ground that was
+soft they made hard, and they made spring wells come up through the
+green flags. They were like that all through the day, no one getting
+the upper hand of the other, and at last a little bird came and sat on
+the bush and said to Jack, “If you don’t make an end of him by sunset,
+he’ll make an end of you.” Then Jack put out his strength, and he
+brought the giant down on his knees. “Give me my life,” says the giant,
+“and I’ll give you the three best gifts.” “What are those?” said Jack.
+“A sword that nothing can stand against, and a suit that when you put
+it on, you will see everybody, and nobody will see you, and a pair of
+shoes that will make you ran faster than the wind blows.” “Where are
+they to be found?” said Jack. “In that red door you see there in the
+hill.” So Jack went and got them out. “Where will I try the sword?”
+says he. “Try it on that ugly black stump of a tree,” says the giant.
+“I see nothing blacker or uglier than your own head,” says Jack. And
+with that he made one stroke, and cut off the giant’s head that it went
+into the air, and he caught it on the sword as it was coming down, and
+made two halves of it. “It is well for you I did not join the body
+again,” said the head, “or you would have never been able to strike it
+off again.” “I did not give you the chance of that,” said Jack. And he
+brought away the great suit with him.
+
+So he brought the cows home at evening, and every one wondered at all
+the milk they gave that night. And when the king was sitting at dinner
+with the princess, his daughter, and the rest, he said, “I think I only
+hear two roars from beyond to-night in place of three.”
+
+The next morning Jack went out again with the cows, and he saw another
+field full of grass, and he knocked down the wall and let the cows in.
+All happened the same as the day before, but the giant that came this
+time had two heads, and they fought together, and the little bird came
+and spoke to Jack as before. And when Jack had brought the giant down,
+he said, “Give me my life, and I’ll give you the best thing I have.”
+“What is that?” says Jack. “It’s a suit that you can put on, and you
+will see every one but no one can see you.” “Where is it?” said Jack.
+“It’s inside that little red door at the side of the hill.” So Jack
+went and brought out the suit. And then he cut off the giant’s two
+heads, and caught them coming down and made four halves of them. And
+they said it was well for him he had not given them time to join the
+body.
+
+That night when the cows came home they gave so much milk that all the
+vessels that could be found were filled up.
+
+The next morning Jack went out again, and all happened as before, and
+the giant this time had four heads, and Jack made eight halves of them.
+And the giant had told him to go to a little blue door in the side of
+the hill, and there he got a pair of shoes that when you put them on
+would go faster than the wind.
+
+That night the cows gave so much milk that there were not vessels
+enough to hold it, and it was given to tenants and to poor people
+passing the road, and the rest was thrown out at the windows. I was
+passing that way myself, and I got a drink of it.
+
+That night the king said to Jack, “Why is it the cows are giving so
+much milk these days? Are you bringing them to any other grass?” “I am
+not,” said Jack, “but I have a good stick, and whenever they would stop
+still or lie down, I give them blows of it, that they jump and leap
+over walls and stones and ditches; that’s the way to make cows give
+plenty of milk.”
+
+And that night at the dinner, the king said, “I hear no roars at all.”
+
+The next morning, the king and the princess were watching at the
+window to see what would Jack do when he got to the field. And Jack
+knew they were there, and he got a stick, and began to batter the cows,
+that they went leaping and jumping over stones, and walls, and ditches.
+“There is no lie in what Jack said,” said the king then.
+
+Now there was a great serpent at that time used to come every seven
+years, and he had to get a kines daughter to eat, unless she would have
+some good man to fight for her. And it was the princess at the place
+Jack was had to be given to it that time, and the king had been feeding
+a bully underground for seven years, and you may believe he got the
+best of everything, to be ready to fight it.
+
+And when the time came, the princess went out, and the bully with her
+down to the shore, and when they got there what did he do, but to tie
+the princess to a tree, the way the serpent would be able to swallow
+her easy with no delay, and he himself went and hid up in an ivy-tree.
+And Jack knew what was going on, for the princess had told him about
+it, and had asked would he help her, but he said he would not. But he
+came out now, and he put on the suit he had taken from the first giant,
+and he came by the place the princess was, but she didn’t know him. “Is
+that right for a princess to be tied to a tree?” said Jack. “It is not,
+indeed,” said she, and she told him what had happened, and how the
+serpent was coming to take her. “If you will let me sleep for awhile
+with my head in your lap,” said Jack, “you could wake me when it is
+coming.” So he did that, and she awakened him when she saw the serpent
+coming, and Jack got up and fought with it, and drove it back into the
+sea. And then he cut the rope that fastened her, and he went away. The
+bully came down then out of the tree, and he brought the princess to
+where the king was, and he said, “I got a friend of mine to come and
+fight the serpent to-day, where I was a little timorous after being so
+long shut up underground, but I’ll do the fighting myself to-morrow.”
+
+The next day they went out again, and the same thing happened, the
+bully tied up the princess where the serpent could come at her fair and
+easy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree. Then Jack put on the
+suit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and the
+princess did not know him, but she told him all that had happened
+yesterday, and how some young gentleman she did not know had come and
+saved her. So Jack asked might he lie down and take a sleep with his
+head in her lap, the way she could awake him. And an happened the same
+way as the day before. And the bully gave her up to the king, and said
+he had brought another of his friends to fight for her that day.
+
+The next day she was brought down to the shore as before, and a great
+many people gathered to see the serpent that was coming to bring the
+king’s daughter away. And Jack brought out the suit of clothes he had
+brought away from the third giant, and she did not know him, and they
+talked as before. But when he was asleep this time, she thought she
+would make sure of being able to find him again, and she took out her
+scissors and cut off a piece of his hair, and made a little packet of
+it and put it away. And she did another thing, she took off one of the
+shoes that was on his feet.
+
+And when she saw the serpent coming she woke him, and he said, “This
+time I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king’s
+daughters.” So he took out the sword he had got from the giant, and he
+put it in at the back of the serpent’s neck, the way blood and water
+came spouting out that went for fifty miles inland, and made an end of
+him. And then he made off, and no one saw what way he went, and the
+bully brought the princess to the king, and claimed to have saved her,
+and it is he who was made much of, and was the right-hand man after
+that.
+
+But when the feast was made ready for the wedding, the princess took
+out the bit of hair she had, and she said she would marry no one but
+the man whose hair would match that, and she showed the shoe and said
+that she would marry no one whose foot would not fit that shoe as well.
+And the bully tried to put on the shoe, but so much as his toe would
+not go into it, and as to his hair, it didn’t match at all to the bit
+of hair she had cut from the man that saved her.
+
+So then the king gave a great ball, to bring all the chief men of the
+country together to try would the shoe fit any of them. And they were
+all going to carpenters and joiners getting bits of their feet cut off
+to try could they wear the shoe, but it was no use, not one of them
+could get it on.
+
+Then the king went to his chief adviser and asked what could he do.
+And the chief adviser bade him to give another ball, and this time he
+said, “Give it to poor as well as rich.”
+
+So the ball was given, and many came flocking to it, but the shoe
+would not fit any one of them. And the chief adviser said, “Is every
+one here that belongs to the house?” “They are all here,” said the
+king, “except the boy that minds the cows, and I would not like him to
+be coming up here.”
+
+Jack was below in the yard at the time, and he heard what the king
+said, and he was very angry, and he went and got his sword and came
+running up the stairs to strike off the king’s head, but the man that
+kept the gate met him on the stairs before he could get to the king,
+and quieted him down, and when he got to the top of the stairs and the
+princess saw him, she gave a cry and ran into his arms. And they tried
+the shoe and it fitted him, and his hair matched to the piece that had
+been cut off. So then they were married, and a great feast was given
+for three days and three nights.
+
+And at the end of that time, one morning there came a deer outside the
+window, with bells on it, and they ringing. And it called out, “Here is
+the hunt, where is the huntsman and the hound?” So when Jack heard that
+he got up and took his horse and his hound and went hunting the deer.
+When it was in the hollow he was on the hill, and when it was on the
+hill he was in the hollow, and that went on all through the day, and
+when night fell it went into a wood. And Jack went into the wood after
+it, and all he could see was a mud-wall cabin, and he went in, and
+there he saw an old woman, about two hundred years old, and she sitting
+over the fire. “Did you see a deer pass this way?” says Jack. “I did
+not,” says she, “but it’s too late now for you to be following a deer,
+let you stop the night here.” “What will I do with my horse and my
+hound?” said Jack. “Here are two ribs of hair,” says she, “and let you
+tie them up with them.” So Jack went out and tied up the horse and the
+hound, and when he came in again the old woman said, “You killed my
+three sons, and I’m going to kill you now,” and she put on a pair of
+boxing-gloves, each one of them nine stone weight, and the nails in
+them fifteen inches long. Then they began to fight, and Jack was
+getting the worst of it. “Help, hound!” he cried out, then “Squeeze
+hair,” cried out the old woman, and the rib of hair that was about the
+hound’s neck squeezed him to death. “Help, horse!” Jack called out,
+then, “Squeeze hair,” called out the old woman, and the rib of hair
+that was about the horse’s neck began to tighten and squeeze him to
+death. Then the old woman made an end of Jack and threw him outside the
+door.
+
+To go back now to Bill. He was out in the garden one day, and he took
+a look at the well, and what did he see but the water at the top was
+blood, and what was underneath was honey. So he went into the house
+again, and he said to his mother, “I will never eat a second meal at
+the same table, or sleep a second night in the same bed, till I know
+what is happening to Jack.”
+
+So he took the other horse and hound then, and set off, over the hills
+where cock never crows and horn never sounds, and the devil never blows
+his bugle. And at last he came to the weaver’s house, and when he went
+in, the weaver says, “You are welcome, and I can give you better
+treatment than I did the last time you came in to me,” for she thought
+it was Jack who was there, they were so much like one another. “That is
+good,” said Bill to himself, “my brother has been here.” And he gave
+the weaver the full of a basin of gold in the morning before he left.
+
+Then he went on till he came to the king’s house, and when he was at
+the door the princess came running down the stairs, and said, “Welcome
+to you back again.” And all the people said, “It is a wonder you have
+gone hunting three days after your marriage, and to stop so long away.”
+So he stopped that night with the princess, and she thought it was her
+own husband all the time.
+
+And in the morning the deer came, and bells ringing on her, under the
+windows, and called out, “The hunt is here, where are the huntsmen and
+the hounds?” Then Bill got up and got his horse and his hound, and
+followed her over hills and hollows till they came to the wood, and
+there he saw nothing but the mud-wall cabin and the old woman sitting
+by the fire, and she bade him stop the night there, and gave him two
+ribs of hair to tie his horse and his hound with. But Bill was wittier
+than Jack was, and before he went out, he threw the ribs of hair into
+the fire secretly. When he came in the old woman said, “Your brother
+killed my three sons, and I killed him, and I’ll kill you along with
+him.” And she put her gloves on, and they began the fight, and then
+Bill called out, “Help, horse.” “Squeeze hair,” called the old woman;
+“I can’t squeeze, I’m in the fire,” said the hair. And the horse came
+in and gave her a blow of his hoof. “Help, hound,” said Bill then.
+“Squeeze, hair,” said the old woman; “I can’t, I’m in the fire,” said
+the second hair. Then the bound put his teeth in her, and Bill brought
+her down, and she cried for mercy. “Give me my life,” she said, “and
+I’ll tell you where you’ll get your brother again, and his hound and
+horse.” “Where’s that?” said Bill. “Do you see that rod over the fire?”
+said she; “take it down and go outside the door where you’ll see three
+green stones, and strike them with the rod, for they are your brother,
+and his horse and hound, and they’ll come to life again.” “I will, but
+I’ll make a green stone of you first,” said Bill, and he cut off her
+head with his sword.
+
+Then he went out and struck the stones, and sure enough there were
+Jack, and his horse and hound, alive and well. And they began striking
+other stones around, and men came from them, that had been turned to
+stones, hundreds and thousands of them.
+
+Then they set out for home, but on the way they had some dispute or
+some argument together, for Jack was not well pleased to hear he had
+spent the night with his wife, and Bill got angry, and he struck Jack
+with the rod, and turned him to a green stone. And he went home, but
+the princess saw he had something on his mind, and he said then, “I
+have killed my brother.” And he went back then and brought him to life,
+and they lived happy ever after, and they had children by the
+basketful, and threw them out by the shovelful. I was passing one time
+myself, and they called me in and gave me a cup of tea.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+BY THE ROADSIDE
+
+
+Last night I went to a wide place on the Kiltartan road to listen to
+some Irish songs. While I waited for the singers an old man sang about
+that country beauty who died so many years ago, and spoke of a singer
+he had known who sang so beautifully that no horse would pass him, but
+must turn its head and cock its ears to listen. Presently a score of
+men and boys and girls, with shawls over their beads, gathered under
+the trees to listen. Somebody sang Sa Muirnin Diles, and then somebody
+else Jimmy Mo Milestor, mournful songs of separation, of death, and of
+exile. Then some of the men stood up and began to dance, while another
+lilted the measure they danced to, and then somebody sang Eiblin a
+Ruin, that glad song of meeting which has always moved me more than
+other songs, because the lover who made it sang it to his sweetheart
+under the shadow of a mountain I looked at every day through my
+childhood. The voices melted into the twilight and were mixed into the
+trees, and when I thought of the words they too melted away, and were
+mixed with the generations of men. Now it was a phrase, now it was an
+attitude of mind, an emotional form, that had carried my memory to
+older verses, or even to forgotten mythologies. I was carried so far
+that it was as though I came to one of the four rivers, and followed it
+under the wall of Paradise to the roots of the trees of knowledge and
+of life. There is no song or story handed down among the cottages that
+has not words and thoughts to carry one as far, for though one can know
+but a little of their ascent, one knows that they ascend like medieval
+genealogies through unbroken dignities to the beginning of the world.
+Folk art is, indeed, the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and
+because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and
+pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has
+gathered into itself the simplest and most unforgetable thoughts of the
+generations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted. Wherever it
+is spoken by the fireside, or sung by the roadside, or carved upon the
+lintel, appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and
+design to, spreads quickly when its hour is come.
+
+In a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few
+people--three or four thousand out of millions--favoured by their own
+characters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour,
+have understanding of imaginative things, and yet “the imagination is
+the man himself.” The churches in the Middle Age won all the arts into
+their service because men understood that when imagination is
+impoverished, a principal voice--some would say the only voice--for the
+awakening of wise hope and durable faith, and understanding charity,
+can speak but in broken words, if it does not fall silent. And so it
+has always seemed to me that we, who would re-awaken imaginative
+tradition by making old songs live again, or by gathering old stories
+into books, take part in the quarrel of Galilee. Those who are Irish
+and would spread foreign ways, which, for all but a few, are ways of
+spiritual poverty, take part also. Their part is with those who were of
+Jewry, and yet cried out, “If thou let this man go thou art not
+Caesar’s friend.”
+
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+INTO THE TWILIGHT
+
+
+    Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
+    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
+    Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight;
+    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
+    Thy mother Eire is always young,
+    Dew ever shining and twilight gray,
+    Though hope fall from thee or love decay
+    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
+    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill,
+    For there the mystical brotherhood
+    Of hollow wood and the hilly wood
+    And the changing moon work out their will.
+    And God stands winding his lonely horn;
+    And Time and World are ever in flight,
+    And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
+    And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10459 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10459 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10459)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celtic Twilight, by W. B. Yeats
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Celtic Twilight
+
+Author: W. B. Yeats
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2003 [EBook #10459]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELTIC TWILIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Carrie Lorenz. Special thanks to John B. Hare, redactor
+for this  text and significant contributor to its preparation for PG.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CELTIC TWILIGHT
+
+by
+
+W. B. YEATS
+
+
+
+
+
+    Time drops in decay
+    Like a candle burnt out.
+    And the mountains and woods
+    Have their day, have their day;
+    But, kindly old rout
+    Of the fire-born moods,
+    You pass not away.
+
+
+
+
+    THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE
+
+
+    The host is riding from Knocknarea,
+    And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
+    Caolte tossing his burning hair,
+    And Niamh calling, "Away, come away;
+    Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
+    The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
+    Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
+    Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
+    Our arms are waving, our lips are apart,
+    And if any gaze on our rushing band,
+    We come between him and the deed of his hand,
+    We come between him and the hope of his heart."
+    The host is rushing 'twixt night and day;
+    And where is there hope or deed as fair?
+    Caolte tossing his burning hair,
+    And Niamh calling, "Away, come away."
+
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the
+beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy
+world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any
+of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore
+written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen,
+and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.
+I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those
+of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and
+faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine.
+The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull
+them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can
+weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too
+have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it,
+and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.
+
+Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has
+built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out
+their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved
+daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.
+
+
+1893.
+
+
+
+II
+
+I have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old ones, and
+would have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something
+of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both
+hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no
+great loss per haps. In these new chapters, as in the old ones, I have
+invented nothing but my comments and one or two deceitful sentences
+that may keep some poor story-teller's commerce with the devil and his
+angels, or the like, from being known among his neighbours. I shall
+publish in a little while a big book about the commonwealth of faery,
+and shall try to make it systematical and learned enough to buy pardon
+for this handful of dreams.
+
+
+1902.
+
+W. B. YEATS.
+
+
+
+
+A TELLER OF TALES
+
+
+Many of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a
+little bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin
+in the village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, "the most
+gentle"--whereby he meant faery--"place in the whole of County Sligo."
+Others hold it, however, but second to Drumcliff and Drumahair. The
+first time I saw him he was cooking mushrooms for himself; the next
+time he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep. He was indeed
+always cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes (swift as the
+eyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled holes) a
+melancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy; the visionary
+melancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.
+
+And yet there was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple
+solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went about much
+pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever
+recommended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of
+telling how Collumcille cheered up his mother. "How are you to-day,
+mother?" said the saint. "Worse," replied the mother. "May you be worse
+to-morrow," said the saint. The next day Collumcille came again, and
+exactly the same conversation took place, but the third day the mother
+said, "Better, thank God." And the saint replied, "May you be better
+to-morrow." He was fond too of telling how the Judge smiles at the last
+day alike when he rewards the good and condemns the lost to unceasing
+flames. He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him
+sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, "Am I
+not annoyed with them?" I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. "I
+have seen it," he said, "down there by the water, batting the river
+with its hands."
+
+I have copied this account of Paddy Flynn, with a few verbal
+alterations, from a note-book which I almost filled with his tales and
+sayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-book
+regretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled up.
+Paddy Flynn is dead; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle of
+whiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so much
+liquor filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon it for
+some days and then died. His body, worn out with old age and hard
+times, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a great
+teller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to empty
+heaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland and earth, to people his
+stories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample
+circumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by
+his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of
+imagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the
+vehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need
+heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less
+than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find
+no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell,
+purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts
+to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of
+rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey
+the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is
+true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.
+
+
+
+
+BELIEF AND UNBELIEF
+
+
+There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told
+me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts.
+Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep
+people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go
+"trapsin about the earth" at their own free will; "but there are
+faeries," she added, "and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and
+fallen angels." I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed
+upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter
+what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the
+mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, "they stand to reason." Even the
+official mind does not escape this faith.
+
+A little girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close under
+the seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one night about
+three years ago. There was at once great excitement in the
+neighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken her.
+A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but
+at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a
+broomstick. The local constable was applied to, and he at once
+instituted a house-to-house search, and at the same time advised the
+people to burn all the bucalauns (ragweed) on the field she vanished
+from, because bucalauns are sacred to the faeries. They spent the whole
+night burning them, the constable repeating spells the while. In the
+morning the little girl was found, the story goes, wandering in the
+field. She said the faeries had taken her away a great distance, riding
+on a faery horse. At last she saw a big river, and the man who had
+tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it--such are
+the topsy-turvydoms of faery glamour--in a cockleshell. On the way her
+companions had mentioned the names of several people who were about to
+die shortly in the village.
+
+Perhaps the constable was right. It is better doubtless to believe
+much unreason and a little truth than to deny for denial's sake truth
+and unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush candle
+to guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth to dance before us on the
+marsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where
+dwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great
+evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and
+welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself,
+whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the
+dhouls themselves, "Be ye gone"? When all is said and done, how do we
+not know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth?
+for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready
+for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.
+Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!
+
+
+
+
+MORTAL HELP
+
+
+One hears in the old poems of men taken away to help the gods in a
+battle, and Cuchullan won the goddess Fand for a while, by helping her
+married sister and her sister's husband to overthrow another nation of
+the Land of Promise. I have been told, too, that the people of faery
+cannot even play at hurley unless they have on either side some mortal,
+whose body, or whatever has been put in its place, as the story-teller
+would say, is asleep at home. Without mortal help they are shadowy and
+cannot even strike the balls. One day I was walking over some marshy
+land in Galway with a friend when we found an old, hard-featured man
+digging a ditch. My friend had heard that this man had seen a wonderful
+sight of some kind, and at last we got the story out of him. When he
+was a boy he was working one day with about thirty men and women and
+boys. They were beyond Tuam and not far from Knock-na-gur. Presently
+they saw, all thirty of them, and at a distance of about half-a-mile,
+some hundred and fifty of the people of faery. There were two of them,
+he said, in dark clothes like people of our own time, who stood about a
+hundred yards from one another, but the others wore clothes of all
+colours, "bracket" or chequered, and some with red waistcoats.
+
+He could not see what they were doing, but all might have been playing
+hurley, for "they looked as if it was that." Sometimes they would
+vanish, and then he would almost swear they came back out of the bodies
+of the two men in dark clothes. These two men were of the size of
+living men, but the others were small. He saw them for about half-an-
+hour, and then the old man he and those about him were working for took
+up a whip and said, "Get on, get on, or we will have no work done!" I
+asked if he saw the faeries too, "Oh, yes, but he did not want work he
+was paying wages for to be neglected." He made every body work so hard
+that nobody saw what happened to the faeries.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A VISIONARY
+
+
+A young man came to see me at my lodgings the other night, and began
+to talk of the making of the earth and the heavens and much else. I
+questioned him about his life and his doings. He had written many poems
+and painted many mystical designs since we met last, but latterly had
+neither written nor painted, for his whole heart was set upon making
+his mind strong, vigorous, and calm, and the emotional life of the
+artist was bad for him, he feared. He recited his poems readily,
+however. He had them all in his memory. Some indeed had never been
+written down. They, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the
+reeds,[FN#1] seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and
+of Celtic longing for infinite things the world has never seen.
+Suddenly it seemed to me that he was peering about him a little
+eagerly. "Do you see anything, X-----?" I said. "A shining, winged
+woman, covered by her long hair, is standing near the doorway," he
+answered, or some such words. "Is it the influence of some living
+person who thinks of us, and whose thoughts appear to us in that
+symbolic form?" I said; for I am well instructed in the ways of the
+visionaries and in the fashion of their speech. "No," he replied; "for
+if it were the thoughts of a person who is alive I should feel the
+living influence in my living body, and my heart would beat and my
+breath would fail. It is a spirit. It is some one who is dead or who
+has never lived."
+
+
+[FN#1]  I wrote this sentence long ago. This sadness now seems to me a
+part of all peoples who preserve the moods of the ancient peoples of
+the world. I am not so pre-occupied with the mystery of Race as I used
+to be, but leave this sentence and other sentences like it unchanged.
+We once believed them, and have, it may be, not grown wiser.
+
+
+I asked what he was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His
+pleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to half-
+mad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and conscience-
+stricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles into his
+care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging, more than
+one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and sun them
+as it were in the subtle light of his mind. Sometimes visions come to
+him as he talks with them, and he is rumoured to have told divers
+people true matters of their past days and distant friends, and left
+them hushed with dread of their strange teacher, who seems scarce more
+than a boy, and is so much more subtle than the oldest among them.
+
+The poetry he recited me was full of his nature and his visions.
+Sometimes it told of other lives he believes himself to have lived in
+other centuries, sometimes of people he had talked to, revealing them
+to their own minds. I told him I would write an article upon him and
+it, and was told in turn that I might do so if I did not mention his
+name, for he wished to be always "unknown, obscure, impersonal." Next
+day a bundle of his poems arrived, and with them a note in these words:
+"Here are copies of verses you said you liked. I do not think I could
+ever write or paint any more. I prepare myself for a cycle of other
+activities in some other life. I will make rigid my roots and branches.
+It is not now my turn to burst into leaves and flowers."
+
+The poems were all endeavours to capture some high, impalpable mood in
+a net of obscure images. There were fine passages in all, but these
+were often embedded in thoughts which have evidently a special value to
+his mind, but are to other men the counters of an unknown coinage. To
+them they seem merely so much brass or copper or tarnished silver at
+the best. At other times the beauty of the thought was obscured by
+careless writing as though he had suddenly doubted if writing was not a
+foolish labour. He had frequently illustrated his verses with drawings,
+in which an unperfect anatomy did not altogether hide extreme beauty of
+feeling. The faeries in whom he believes have given him many subjects,
+notably Thomas of Ercildoune sitting motionless in the twilight while a
+young and beautiful creature leans softly out of the shadow and
+whispers in his ear. He had delighted above all in strong effects of
+colour: spirits who have upon their heads instead of hair the feathers
+of peacocks; a phantom reaching from a swirl of flame towards a star; a
+spirit passing with a globe of iridescent crystal-symbol of the soul-
+half shut within his hand. But always under this largess of colour lay
+some tender homily addressed to man's fragile hopes. This spiritual
+eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for
+illumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone. One of these
+especially comes to mind. A winter or two ago he spent much of the
+night walking up and down upon the mountain talking to an old peasant
+who, dumb to most men, poured out his cares for him. Both were unhappy:
+X----- because he had then first decided that art and poetry were not
+for him, and the old peasant because his life was ebbing out with no
+achievement remaining and no hope left him. Both how Celtic! how full
+of striving after a something never to be completely expressed in word
+or deed. The peasant was wandering in his mind with prolonged sorrow.
+Once he burst out with "God possesses the heavens--God possesses the
+heavens--but He covets the world"; and once he lamented that his old
+neighbours were gone, and that all had forgotten him: they used to draw
+a chair to the fire for him in every cabin, and now they said, "Who is
+that old fellow there?" "The fret [Irish for doom] is over me," he
+repeated, and then went on to talk once more of God and heaven. More
+than once also he said, waving his arm towards the mountain, "Only
+myself knows what happened under the thorn-tree forty years ago"; and
+as he said it the tears upon his face glistened in the moonlight.
+
+This old man always rises before me when I think of X-----. Both seek
+--one in wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle
+allegoric poetry-to express a something that lies beyond the range of
+expression; and both, if X----- will forgive me, have within them the
+vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic
+heart. The peasant visionaries that are, the landlord duelists that
+were, and the whole hurly-burly of legends--Cuchulain fighting the sea
+for two days until the waves pass over him and he dies, Caolte storming
+the palace of the gods, Oisin seeking in vain for three hundred years
+to appease his insatiable heart with all the pleasures of faeryland,
+these two mystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the
+central dreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and
+this mind that finds them so interesting--all are a portion of that
+great Celtic phantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered, nor
+any angel revealed.
+
+
+
+
+VILLAGE GHOSTS
+
+
+In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our
+minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities;
+people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce.
+Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge.
+When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your
+favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it.
+We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all
+the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on
+unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all
+our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb
+multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering
+through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers
+wrote across unexplored regions, "Here are lions." Across the villages
+of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us,
+we can write but one line that is certain, "Here are ghosts."
+
+My ghosts inhabit the village of H-----, in Leinster. History has in
+no manner been burdened by this ancient village, with its crooked
+lanes, its old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green
+background of small fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry
+fishing-luggers. In the annals of entomology it is well known. For a
+small bay lies westward a little, where he who watches night after
+night may see a certain rare moth fluttering along the edge of the
+tide, just at the end of evening or the beginning of dawn. A hundred
+years ago it was carried here from Italy by smugglers in a cargo of
+silks and laces. If the moth-hunter would throw down his net, and go
+hunting for ghost tales or tales of the faeries and such-like children
+of Lillith, he would have need for far less patience.
+
+To approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy.
+A man was once heard complaining, "By the cross of Jesus! how shall I
+go? If I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on
+me. If I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the
+headless one and another on the quays, and a new one under the old
+churchyard wall. If I go right round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is
+appearing at Hillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital
+Lane."
+
+I never heard which spirit he braved, but feel sure it was not the one
+in the Hospital Lane. In cholera times a shed had been there set up to
+receive patients. When the need had gone by, it was pulled down, but
+ever since the ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and
+demons and faeries. There is a farmer at H-----, Paddy B----- by name-a
+man of great strength, and a teetotaller. His wife and sister-in-law,
+musing on his great strength, often wonder what he would do if he
+drank. One night when passing through the Hospital Lane, he saw what he
+supposed at first to be a tame rabbit; after a little he found that it
+was a white cat. When he came near, the creature slowly began to swell
+larger and larger, and as it grew he felt his own strength ebbing away,
+as though it were sucked out of him. He turned and ran.
+
+By the Hospital Lane goes the "Faeries Path." Every evening they
+travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea
+end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived
+there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband
+was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he
+had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, "In the name of
+God, who are you?" He got up and went out, saying, "Never leave the
+door open at this hour, or evil may come to you." She woke her husband
+and told him. "One of the good people has been with us," said he.
+
+Probably the man braved Mrs. Stewart at Hillside Gate. When she lived
+she was the wife of the Protestant clergyman. "Her ghost was never
+known to harm any one," say the village people; "it is only doing a
+penance upon the earth." Not far from Hillside Gate, where she haunted,
+appeared for a short time a much more remarkable spirit. Its haunt was
+the bogeen, a green lane leading from the western end of the village. I
+quote its history at length: a typical village tragedy. In a cottage at
+the village end of the bogeen lived a house-painter, Jim Montgomery,
+and his wife. They had several children. He was a little dandy, and
+came of a higher class than his neighbours. His wife was a very big
+woman. Her husband, who had been expelled from the village choir for
+drink, gave her a beating one day. Her sister heard of it, and came and
+took down one of the window shutters--Montgomery was neat about
+everything, and had shutters on the outside of every window--and beat
+him with it, being big and strong like her sister. He threatened to
+prosecute her; she answered that she would break every bone in his body
+if he did. She never spoke to her sister again, because she had allowed
+herself to be beaten by so small a man. Jim Montgomery grew worse and
+worse: his wife soon began to have not enough to eat. She told no one,
+for she was very proud. Often, too, she would have no fire on a cold
+night. If any neighbours came in she would say she had let the fire out
+because she was just going to bed. The people about often heard her
+husband beating her, but she never told any one. She got very thin. At
+last one Saturday there was no food in the house for herself and the
+children. She could bear it no longer, and went to the priest and asked
+him for some money. He gave her thirty shillings. Her husband met her,
+and took the money, and beat her. On the following Monday she got very
+W, and sent for a Mrs. Kelly. Mrs. Kelly, as soon as she saw her, said,
+"My woman, you are dying," and sent for the priest and the doctor. She
+died in an hour. After her death, as Montgomery neglected the children,
+the landlord had them taken to the workhouse. A few nights after they
+had gone, Mrs. Kelly was going home through the bogeen when the ghost
+of Mrs. Montgomery appeared and followed her. It did not leave her
+until she reached her own house. She told the priest, Father R, a noted
+antiquarian, and could not get him to believe her. A few nights
+afterwards Mrs. Kelly again met the spirit in the same place. She was
+in too great terror to go the whole way, but stopped at a neighbour's
+cottage midway, and asked them to let her in. They answered they were
+going to bed. She cried out, "In the name of God let me in, or I will
+break open the door." They opened, and so she escaped from the ghost.
+Next day she told the priest again. This time he believed, and said it
+would follow her until she spoke to it.
+
+She met the spirit a third time in the bogeen. She asked what kept it
+from its rest. The spirit said that its children must be taken from the
+workhouse, for none of its relations were ever there before, and that
+three masses were to be said for the repose of its soul. "If my husband
+does not believe you," she said, "show him that," and touched Mrs.
+Kelly's wrist with three fingers. The places where they touched swelled
+up and blackened. She then vanished. For a time Montgomery would not
+believe that his wife had appeared: "she would not show herself to Mrs.
+Kelly," he said--"she with respectable people to appear to." He was
+convinced by the three marks, and the children were taken from the
+workhouse. The priest said the masses, and the shade must have been at
+rest, for it has not since appeared. Some time afterwards Jim
+Montgomery died in the workhouse, having come to great poverty through
+drink.
+
+I know some who believe they have seen the headless ghost upon the
+quay, and one who, when he passes the old cemetery wall at night, sees
+a woman with white borders to her cap[FN#2] creep out and follow him.
+The apparition only leaves him at his own door. The villagers imagine
+that she follows him to avenge some wrong. "I will haunt you when I
+die" is a favourite threat. His wife was once half-scared to death by
+what she considers a demon in the shape of a dog.
+
+
+[FN#2]  I wonder why she had white borders to her cap. The old Mayo
+woman, who has told me so many tales, has told me that her brother-in-
+law saw "a woman with white borders to her cap going around the stacks
+in a field, and soon after he got a hurt, and he died in six months."
+
+
+These are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their
+tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.
+
+One night a Mrs. Nolan was watching by her dying child in Fluddy's
+Lane. Suddenly there was a sound of knocking heard at the door. She did
+not open, fearing it was some unhuman thing that knocked. The knocking
+ceased. After a little the front-door and then the back-door were burst
+open, and closed again. Her husband went to see what was wrong. He
+found both doors bolted. The child died. The doors were again opened
+and closed as before. Then Mrs. Nolan remembered that she had forgotten
+to leave window or door open, as the custom is, for the departure of
+the soul. These strange openings and closings and knockings were
+warnings and reminders from the spirits who attend the dying.
+
+The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is
+put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live
+with it. I remember two children who slept with their mother and
+sisters and brothers in one small room. In the room was also a ghost.
+They sold herrings in the Dublin streets, and did not mind the ghost
+much, because they knew they would always sell their fish easily while
+they slept in the "ha'nted" room.
+
+I have some acquaintance among the ghost-seers of western villages.
+The Connaught tales are very different from those of Leinster. These
+H----- spirits have a gloomy, matter-of-fact way with them. They come to
+announce a death, to fulfil some obligation, to revenge a wrong, to pay
+their bills even--as did a fisherman's daughter the other day--and then
+hasten to their rest. All things they do decently and in order. It is
+demons, and not ghosts, that transform themselves into white cats or
+black dogs. The people who tell the tales are poor, serious-minded
+fishing people, who find in the doings of the ghosts the fascination of
+fear. In the western tales is a whimsical grace, a curious extravagance.
+The people who recount them live in the most wild and beautiful scenery,
+under a sky ever loaded and fantastic with flying clouds. They are
+farmers and labourers, who do a little fishing now and then. They do not
+fear the spirits too much to feel an artistic and humorous pleasure in
+their doings. The ghosts themselves share in their quaint hilarity. In
+one western town, on whose deserted wharf the grass grows, these spirits
+have so much vigour that, when a misbeliever ventured to sleep in a
+haunted house, I have been told they flung him through the window, and
+his bed after him. In the surrounding villages the creatures use the
+most strange disguises. A dead old gentleman robs the cabbages of his
+own garden in the shape of a large rabbit. A wicked sea-captain stayed
+for years inside the plaster of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe,
+making the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was
+broken down; then out of the solid plaster the snipe rushed away whistling.
+
+
+
+
+"DUST HATH CLOSED HELEN'S EYE"
+
+
+I
+
+I have been lately to a little group of houses, not many enough to be
+called a village, in the barony of Kiltartan in County Galway, whose
+name, Ballylee, is known through all the west of Ireland. There is the
+old square castle, Ballylee, inhabited by a farmer and his wife, and a
+cottage where their daughter and their son-in-law live, and a little
+mill with an old miller, and old ash-trees throwing green shadows upon
+a little river and great stepping-stones. I went there two or three
+times last year to talk to the miller about Biddy Early, a wise woman
+that lived in Clare some years ago, and about her saying, "There is a
+cure for all evil between the two mill-wheels of Ballylee," and to find
+out from him or another whether she meant the moss between the running
+waters or some other herb. I have been there this summer, and I shall
+be there again before it is autumn, because Mary Hynes, a beautiful
+woman whose name is still a wonder by turf fires, died there sixty
+years ago; for our feet would linger where beauty has lived its life of
+sorrow to make us understand that it is not of the world. An old man
+brought me a little way from the mill and the castle, and down a long,
+narrow boreen that was nearly lost in brambles and sloe bushes, and he
+said, "That is the little old foundation of the house, but the most of
+it is taken for building walls, and the goats have ate those bushes
+that are growing over it till they've got cranky, and they won't grow
+any more. They say she was the handsomest girl in Ireland, her skin was
+like dribbled snow"--he meant driven snow, perhaps,--"and she had
+blushes in her cheeks. She had five handsome brothers, but all are gone
+now!" I talked to him about a poem in Irish, Raftery, a famous poet,
+made about her, and how it said, "there is a strong cellar in
+Ballylee." He said the strong cellar was the great hole where the river
+sank underground, and he brought me to a deep pool, where an otter
+hurried away under a grey boulder, and told me that many fish came up
+out of the dark water at early morning "to taste the fresh water coming
+down from the hills."
+
+I first heard of the poem from an old woman who fives about two miles
+further up the river, and who remembers Raftery and Mary Hynes. She
+says, "I never saw anybody so handsome as she was, and I never will
+till I die," and that he was nearly blind, and had "no way of living
+but to go round and to mark some house to go to, and then all the
+neighbours would gather to hear. If you treated him well he'd praise
+you, but if you did not, he'd fault you in Irish. He was the greatest
+poet in Ireland, and he'd make a song about that bush if he chanced to
+stand under it. There was a bush he stood under from the rain, and he
+made verses praising it, and then when the water came through he made
+verses dispraising it." She sang the poem to a friend and to myself in
+Irish, and every word was audible and expressive, as the words in a
+song were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the
+garment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing of
+their energies. The poem is not as natural as the best Irish poetry of
+the last century, for the thoughts are arranged in a too obviously
+traditional form, so the old poor half-blind man who made it has to
+speak as if he were a rich farmer offering the best of everything to
+the woman he loves, but it has naive and tender phrases. The friend
+that was with me has made some of the translation, but some of it has
+been made by the country people themselves. I think it has more of the
+simplicity of the Irish verses than one finds in most translations.
+
+
+    Going to Mass by the will of God,
+    The day came wet and the wind rose;
+    I met Mary Hynes at the cross of Kiltartan,
+    And I fell in love with her then and there.
+
+    I spoke to her kind and mannerly,
+    As by report was her own way;
+    And she said, "Raftery, my mind is easy,
+    You may come to-day to Ballylee."
+
+    When I heard her offer I did not linger,
+    When her talk went to my heart my heart rose.
+    We had only to go across the three fields,
+    We had daylight with us to Ballylee.
+
+    The table was laid with glasses and a quart measure,
+    She had fair hair, and she sitting beside me;
+    And she said, "Drink, Raftery, and a hundred welcomes,
+    There is a strong cellar in Ballylee."
+
+    O star of light and O sun in harvest,
+    O amber hair, O my share of the world,
+    Will you come with me upon Sunday
+    Till we agree together before all the people?
+
+    I would not grudge you a song every Sunday evening,
+    Punch on the table, or wine if you would drink it,
+    But, O King of Glory, dry the roads before me,
+    Till I find the way to Ballylee.
+
+    There is sweet air on the side of the hill
+    When you are looking down upon Ballylee;
+    When you are walking in the valley picking nuts and blackberries,
+    There is music of the birds in it and music of the Sidhe.
+
+    What is the worth of greatness till you have the light
+    Of the flower of the branch that is by your side?
+    There is no god to deny it or to try and hide it,
+    She is the sun in the heavens who wounded my heart.
+
+    There was no part of Ireland I did not travel,
+    From the rivers to the tops of the mountains,
+    To the edge of Lough Greine whose mouth is hidden,
+    And I saw no beauty but was behind hers.
+
+    Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too;
+    Her face was like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet.
+    She is the pride, and I give her the branch,
+    She is the shining flower of Ballylee.
+
+    It is Mary Hynes, this calm and easy woman,
+    Has beauty in her mind and in her face.
+    If a hundred clerks were gathered together,
+    They could not write down a half of her ways.
+
+
+An old weaver, whose son is supposed to go away among the Sidhe (the
+faeries) at night, says, "Mary Hynes was the most beautiful thing ever
+made. My mother used to tell me about her, for she'd be at every
+hurling, and wherever she was she was dressed in white. As many as
+eleven men asked her in marriage in one day, but she wouldn't have any
+of them. There was a lot of men up beyond Kilbecanty one night, sitting
+together drinking, and talking of her, and one of them got up and set
+out to go to Ballylee and see her; but Cloon Bog was open then, and
+when he came to it he fell into the water, and they found him dead
+there in the morning. She died of the fever that was before the
+famine." Another old man says he was only a child when he saw her, but
+he remembered that "the strongest man that was among us, one John
+Madden, got his death of the head of her, cold he got crossing rivers
+in the night-time to get to Ballylee." This is perhaps the man the
+other remembered, for tradition gives the one thing many shapes. There
+is an old woman who remembers her, at Derrybrien among the Echtge
+hills, a vast desolate place, which has changed little since the old
+poem said, "the stag upon the cold summit of Echtge hears the cry of
+the wolves," but still mindful of many poems and of the dignity of
+ancient speech. She says, "The sun and the moon never shone on anybody
+so handsome, and her skin was so white that it looked blue, and she had
+two little blushes on her cheeks." And an old wrinkled woman who lives
+close by Ballylee, and has told me many tales of the Sidhe, says, "I
+often saw Mary Hynes, she was handsome indeed. She had two bunches of
+curls beside her cheeks, and they were the colour of silver. I saw Mary
+Molloy that was drowned in the river beyond, and Mary Guthrie that was
+in Ardrahan, but she took the sway of them both, a very comely
+creature. I was at her wake too--she had seen too much of the world.
+She was a kind creature. One day I was coming home through that field
+beyond, and I was tired, and who should come out but the Poisin Glegeal
+(the shining flower), and she gave me a glass of new milk." This old
+woman meant no more than some beautiful bright colour by the colour of
+silver, for though I knew an old man--he is dead now--who thought she
+might know "the cure for all the evils in the world," that the Sidhe
+knew, she has seen too little gold to know its colour. But a man by the
+shore at Kinvara, who is too young to remember Mary Hynes, says,
+"Everybody says there is no one at all to be seen now so handsome; it
+is said she had beautiful hair, the colour of gold. She was poor, but
+her clothes every day were the same as Sunday, she had such neatness.
+And if she went to any kind of a meeting, they would all be killing one
+another for a sight of her, and there was a great many in love with
+her, but she died young. It is said that no one that has a song made
+about them will ever live long."
+
+Those who are much admired are, it is held, taken by the Sidhe, who
+can use ungoverned feeling for their own ends, so that a father, as an
+old herb doctor told me once, may give his child into their hands, or a
+husband his wife. The admired and desired are only safe if one says
+"God bless them" when one's eyes are upon them. The old woman that sang
+the song thinks, too, that Mary Hynes was "taken," as the phrase is,
+"for they have taken many that are not handsome, and why would they not
+take her? And people came from all parts to look at her, and maybe
+there were some that did not say 'God bless her.'" An old man who lives
+by the sea at Duras has as little doubt that she was taken, "for there
+are some living yet can remember her coming to the pattern[FN#3] there
+beyond, and she was said to be the handsomest girl in Ireland." She
+died young because the gods loved her, for the Sidhe are the gods, and
+it may be that the old saying, which we forget to understand literally,
+meant her manner of death in old times. These poor countrymen and
+countrywomen in their beliefs, and in their emotions, are many years
+nearer to that old Greek world, that set beauty beside the fountain of
+things, than are our men of learning. She "had seen too much of the
+world"; but these old men and women, when they tell of her, blame
+another and not her, and though they can be hard, they grow gentle as
+the old men of Troy grew gentle when Helen passed by on the walls.
+
+
+[FN#3]  A "pattern," or "patron," is a festival in honour of a saint.
+
+
+The poet who helped her to so much fame has himself a great fame
+throughout the west of Ireland. Some think that Raftery was half blind,
+and say, "I saw Raftery, a dark man, but he had sight enough to see
+her," or the like, but some think he was wholly blind, as he may have
+been at the end of his life. Fable makes all things perfect in their
+kind, and her blind people must never look on the world and the sun. I
+asked a man I met one day, when I was looking for a pool na mna Sidhe
+where women of faery have been seen, bow Raftery could have admired
+Mary Hynes so much f he had been altogether blind? He said, "I think
+Raftery was altogether blind, but those that are blind have a way of
+seeing things, and have the power to know more, and to feel more, and
+to do more, and to guess more than those that have their sight, and a
+certain wit and a certain wisdom is given to them." Everybody, indeed,
+will tell you that he was very wise, for was he not only blind but a
+poet? The weaver whose words about Mary Hynes I have already given,
+says, "His poetry was the gift of the Almighty, for there are three
+things that are the gift of the Almighty--poetry and dancing and
+principles. That is why in the old times an ignorant man coming down
+from the hillside would be better behaved and have better learning than
+a man with education you'd meet now, for they got it from God"; and a
+man at Coole says, "When he put his finger to one part of his head,
+everything would come to him as if it was written in a book"; and an
+old pensioner at Kiltartan says, "He was standing under a bush one
+time, and he talked to it, and it answered him back in Irish. Some say
+it was the bush that spoke, but it must have been an enchanted voice in
+it, and it gave him the knowledge of all the things of the world. The
+bush withered up afterwards, and it is to be seen on the roadside now
+between this and Rahasine." There is a poem of his about a bush, which
+I have never seen, and it may have come out of the cauldron of fable in
+this shape.
+
+A friend of mine met a man once who had been with him when he died,
+but the people say that he died alone, and one Maurteen Gillane told
+Dr. Hyde that all night long a light was seen streaming up to heaven
+from the roof of the house where he lay, and "that was the angels who
+were with him"; and all night long there was a great light in the
+hovel, "and that was the angels who were waking him. They gave that
+honour to him because he was so good a poet, and sang such religious
+songs." It may be that in a few years Fable, who changes mortalities to
+immortalities in her cauldron, will have changed Mary Hynes and Raftery
+to perfect symbols of the sorrow of beauty and of the magnificence and
+penury of dreams.
+
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+II
+
+When I was in a northern town awhile ago, I had a long talk with a man
+who had lived in a neighbouring country district when he was a boy. He
+told me that when a very beautiful girl was born in a family that had
+not been noted for good looks, her beauty was thought to have come from
+the Sidhe, and to bring misfortune with it. He went over the names of
+several beautiful girls that he had known, and said that beauty had
+never brought happiness to anybody. It was a thing, he said, to be
+proud of and afraid of. I wish I had written out his words at the time,
+for they were more picturesque than my memory of them.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP
+
+
+Away to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain lives "a strong
+farmer," a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic
+days. Proud of his descent from one of the most fighting clans of the
+Middle Ages, he is a man of force alike in his words and in his deeds.
+There is but one man that swears like him, and this man lives far away
+upon the mountain. "Father in Heaven, what have I done to deserve
+this?" he says when he has lost his pipe; and no man but he who lives
+on the mountain can rival his language on a fair day over a bargain. He
+is passionate and abrupt in his movements, and when angry tosses his
+white beard about with his left hand.
+
+One day I was dining with him when the servant-maid announced a
+certain Mr. O'Donnell. A sudden silence fell upon the old man and upon
+his two daughters. At last the eldest daughter said somewhat severely
+to her father, "Go and ask him to come in and dine." The old man went
+out, and then came in looking greatly relieved, and said, "He says he
+will not dine with us." "Go out," said the daughter, "and ask him into
+the back parlour, and give him some whiskey." Her father, who had just
+finished his dinner, obeyed sullenly, and I heard the door of the back
+parlour--a little room where the daughters sat and sewed during the
+evening--shut to behind the men. The daughter then turned to me and
+said, "Mr. O'Donnell is the tax-gatherer, and last year he raised our
+taxes, and my father was very angry, and when he came, brought him into
+the dairy, and sent the dairy-woman away on a message, and then swore
+at him a great deal. 'I will teach you, sir,' O'Donnell replied, 'that
+the law can protect its officers'; but my father reminded him that he
+had no witness. At last my father got tired, and sorry too, and said he
+would show him a short way home. When they were half-way to the main
+road they came on a man of my father's who was ploughing, and this
+somehow brought back remembrance of the wrong. He sent the man away on
+a message, and began to swear at the tax-gatherer again. When I heard
+of it I was disgusted that he should have made such a fuss over a
+miserable creature like O'Donnell; and when I heard a few weeks ago
+that O'Donnell's only son had died and left him heart-broken, I
+resolved to make my father be kind to him next time he came."
+
+She then went out to see a neighbour, and I sauntered towards the back
+parlour. When I came to the door I heard angry voices inside. The two
+men were evidently getting on to the tax again, for I could hear them
+bandying figures to and fro. I opened the door; at sight of my face the
+farmer was reminded of his peaceful intentions, and asked me if I knew
+where the whiskey was. I had seen him put it into the cupboard, and was
+able therefore to find it and get it out, looking at the thin, grief-
+struck face of the tax-gatherer. He was rather older than my friend,
+and very much more feeble and worn, and of a very different type. He
+was not like him, a robust, successful man, but rather one of those
+whose feet find no resting-place upon the earth. I recognized one of
+the children of reverie, and said, "You are doubtless of the stock of
+the old O'Donnells. I know well the hole in the river where their
+treasure lies buried under the guard of a serpent with many heads."
+"Yes, sur," he replied, "I am the last of a line of princes."
+
+We then fell to talking of many commonplace things, and my friend did
+not once toss up his beard, but was very friendly. At last the gaunt
+old tax-gatherer got up to go, and my friend said, "I hope we will have
+a glass together next year." "No, no," was the answer, "I shall be dead
+next year." "I too have lost sons," said the other in quite a gentle
+voice. "But your sons were not like my son." And then the two men
+parted, with an angry flush and bitter hearts, and had I not cast
+between them some common words or other, might not have parted, but
+have fallen rather into an angry discussion of the value of their dead
+sons. If I had not pity for all the children of reverie I should have
+let them fight it out, and would now have many a wonderful oath to
+record.
+
+The knight of the sheep would have had the victory, for no soul that
+wears this garment of blood and clay can surpass him. He was but once
+beaten; and this is his tale of how it was. He and some farm hands were
+playing at cards in a small cabin that stood against the end of a big
+barn. A wicked woman had once lived in this cabin. Suddenly one of the
+players threw down an ace and began to swear without any cause. His
+swearing was so dreadful that the others stood up, and my friend said,
+"All is not right here; there is a spirit in him." They ran to the door
+that led into the barn to get away as quickly as possible. The wooden
+bolt would not move, so the knight of the sheep took a saw which stood
+against the wall near at hand, and sawed through the bolt, and at once
+the door flew open with a bang, as though some one had been holding it,
+and they fled through.
+
+
+
+
+AN ENDURING HEART
+
+
+One day a friend of mine was making a sketch of my Knight of the
+Sheep. The old man's daughter was sitting by, and, when the
+conversation drifted to love and lovemaking, she said, "Oh, father,
+tell him about your love affair." The old man took his pipe out of his
+mouth, and said, "Nobody ever marries the woman he loves," and then,
+with a chuckle, "There were fifteen of them I liked better than the
+woman I married," and he repeated many women's names. He went on to
+tell how when he was a lad he had worked for his grandfather, his
+mother's father, and was called (my friend has forgotten why) by his
+grandfather's name, which we will say was Doran. He had a great friend,
+whom I shall call John Byrne; and one day he and his friend went to
+Queenstown to await an emigrant ship, that was to take John Byrne to
+America. When they were walking along the quay, they saw a girl sitting
+on a seat, crying miserably, and two men standing up in front of her
+quarrelling with one another. Doran said, "I think I know what is
+wrong. That man will be her brother, and that man will be her lover,
+and the brother is sending her to America to get her away from the
+lover. How she is crying! but I think I could console her myself."
+Presently the lover and brother went away, and Doran began to walk up
+and down before her, saying, "Mild weather, Miss," or the like. She
+answered him in a little while, and the three began to talk together.
+The emigrant ship did not arrive for some days; and the three drove
+about on outside cars very innocently and happily, seeing everything
+that was to be seen. When at last the ship came, and Doran had to break
+it to her that he was not going to America, she cried more after him
+than after the first lover. Doran whispered to Byrne as he went aboard
+ship, "Now, Byrne, I don't grudge her to you, but don't marry young."
+
+When the story got to this, the farmer's daughter joined In mockingly
+with, "I suppose you said that for Byrne's good, father." But the old
+man insisted that he had said it for Byrne's good; and went on to tell
+how, when he got a letter telling of Byrne's engagement to the girl, he
+wrote him the same advice. Years passed by, and he heard nothing; and
+though he was now married, he could not keep from wondering what she
+was doing. At last he went to America to find out, and though he asked
+many people for tidings, he could get none. More years went by, and his
+wife was dead, and he well on in years, and a rich farmer with not a
+few great matters on his hands. He found an excuse in some vague
+business to go out to America again, and to begin his search again. One
+day he fell into talk with an Irishman in a railway carriage, and asked
+him, as his way was, about emigrants from this place and that, and at
+last, "Did you ever hear of the miller's daughter from Innis Rath?" and
+he named the woman he was looking for. "Oh yes," said the other, "she
+is married to a friend of mine, John MacEwing. She lives at such-and-
+such a street in Chicago." Doran went to Chicago and knocked at her
+door. She opened the door herself, and was "not a bit changed." He gave
+her his real name, which he had taken again after his grandfather's
+death, and the name of the man he had met in the train. She did not
+recognize him, but asked him to stay to dinner, saying that her husband
+would be glad to meet anybody who knew that old friend of his. They
+talked of many things, but for all their talk, I do not know why, and
+perhaps he did not know why, he never told her who he was. At dinner he
+asked her about Byrne, and she put her head down on the table and began
+to cry, and she cried so he was afraid her husband might be angry. He
+was afraid to ask what had happened to Byrne, and left soon after,
+never to see her again.
+
+When the old man had finished the story, he said, "Tell that to Mr.
+Yeats, he will make a poem about it, perhaps." But the daughter said,
+"Oh no, father. Nobody could make a poem about a woman like that."
+Alas! I have never made the poem, perhaps because my own heart, which
+has loved Helen and all the lovely and fickle women of the world, would
+be too sore. There are things it is well not to ponder over too much,
+things that bare words are the best suited for.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE SORCERERS
+
+
+In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers,[FN#4] and come
+across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of
+the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy
+and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were
+they to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are
+of opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his
+rapacities are there too, no less than the bright beings who store
+their honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit
+hither and thither, and that they encompass him with a passionate and
+melancholy multitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or
+through accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their
+hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full
+of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth,
+moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about
+us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we
+do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic
+have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few
+persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few
+I have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those
+among whom they live. They are mainly small clerks and the like, and
+meet for the purpose of their art in a room hung with black hangings.
+They would not admit me into this room, but finding me not altogether
+ignorant of the arcane science, showed gladly elsewhere what they would
+do. "Come to us," said their leader, a clerk in a large flour-mill,
+"and we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in
+shapes as solid and heavy as our own."
+
+
+[FN#4]  I know better now. We have the dark powers much more than I
+thought, but not as much as the Scottish, and yet I think the
+imagination of the people does dwell chiefly upon the fantastic and
+capricious.
+
+
+I had been talking of the power of communicating in states of trance
+with the angelical and faery beings,--the children of the day and of
+the twilight--and he had been contending that we should only believe
+in what we can see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of
+mind. "Yes," I said, "I will come to you," or some such words; "but I
+will not permit myself to become entranced, and will therefore know
+whether these shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched and
+felt by the ordinary senses than are those I talk of." I was not
+denying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of
+mortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as he spoke
+of, seemed unlikely to do more than cast the mind into trance, and
+thereby bring it into the presence of the powers of day, twilight, and
+darkness.
+
+"But," he said, "we have seen them move the furniture hither and
+thither, and they go at our bidding, and help or harm people who know
+nothing of them." I am not giving the exact words, but as accurately as
+I can the substance of our talk.
+
+On the night arranged I turned up about eight, and found the leader
+sitting alone in almost total darkness in a small back room. He was
+dressed in a black gown, like an inquisitor's dress in an old drawing,
+that left nothing of him visible: except his eyes, which peered out
+through two small round holes. Upon the table in front of him was a
+brass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with painted
+symbols, two crossed daggers, and certain implements shaped like quern
+stones, which were used to control the elemental powers in some fashion
+I did not discover. I also put on a black gown, and remember that it
+did not fit perfectly, and that it interfered with my movements
+considerably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a basket, and
+cut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood fall into the
+large bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation, which was
+certainly not English, and had a deep guttural sound. Before he had
+finished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five, came
+in, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my left
+band. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began to find
+his eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his hood,
+affecting me in a curious way. I struggled hard against their
+influence, and my head began to ache. The invocation continued, and
+nothing happened for the first few minutes. Then the invoker got up and
+extinguished the light in the hall, so that no glimmer might come
+through the slit under the door. There was now no light except from the
+herbs on the brass dish, and no sound except from the deep guttural
+murmur of the invocation.
+
+Presently the man at my left swayed himself about, and cried out, "O
+god! O god!" I asked him what ailed him, but he did not know he had
+spoken. A moment after he said he could see a great serpent moving
+about the room, and became considerably excited. I saw nothing with any
+definite shape, but thought that black clouds were forming about me. I
+felt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and
+that the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony
+with itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the
+black clouds, and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again.
+The two sorcerers now began to see black and white columns moving about
+the room, and finally a man in a monk's habit, and they became greatly
+puzzled because I did not see these things also, for to them they were
+as solid as the table before them. The invoker appeared to be gradually
+increasing in power, and I began to feel as if a tide of darkness was
+pouring from him and concentrating itself about me; and now too I
+noticed that the man on my left hand had passed into a death-like
+trance. With a last great effort I drove off the black clouds; but
+feeling them to be the only shapes I should see without passing into a
+trance, and having no great love for them, I asked for lights, and
+after the needful exorcism returned to the ordinary world.
+
+I said to the more powerful of the two sorcerers--"What would happen
+if one of your spirits had overpowered me?" "You would go out of this
+room," he answered, "with his character added to your own." I asked
+about the origin of his sorcery, but got little of importance, except
+that he had learned it from his father. He would not tell me more, for
+he had, it appeared, taken a vow of secrecy.
+
+For some days I could not get over the feeling of having a number of
+deformed and grotesque figures lingering about me. The Bright Powers
+are always beautiful and desirable, and the Dim Powers are now
+beautiful, now quaintly grotesque, but the Dark Powers express their
+unbalanced natures in shapes of ugliness and horror.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL
+
+
+My old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come
+down the road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would
+not say what it was, I knew quite well. Another day she told me of two
+friends of hers who had been made love to by one whom they believed to
+be the devil. One of them was standing by the road-side when he came by
+on horseback, and asked her to mount up behind him, and go riding. When
+she would not he vanished. The other was out on the road late at night
+waiting for her young man, when something came flapping and rolling
+along the road up to her feet. It had the likeness of a newspaper, and
+presently it flapped up into her face, and she knew by the size of it
+that it was the Irish Times. All of a sudden it changed into a young
+man, who asked her to go walking with him. She would not, and he
+vanished.
+
+I know of an old man too, on the slopes of Ben Bulben, who found the
+devil ringing a bell under his bed, and he went off and stole the
+chapel bell and rang him out. It may be that this, like the others, was
+not the devil at all, but some poor wood spirit whose cloven feet had
+got him into trouble.
+
+
+
+
+HAPPY AND UNHAPPY THEOLOGIANS
+
+
+I
+
+A mayo woman once said to me, "I knew a servant girl who hung herself
+for the love of God. She was lonely for the priest and her
+society,[FN#5] and hung herself to the banisters with a scarf. She was
+no sooner dead than she became white as a lily, and if it had been
+murder or suicide she would have become black as black. They gave her
+Christian burial, and the priest said she was no sooner dead than she
+was with the Lord. So nothing matters that you do for the love of God."
+I do not wonder at the pleasure she has in telling this story, for she
+herself loves all holy things with an ardour that brings them quickly
+to her lips. She told me once that she never hears anything described
+in a sermon that she does not afterwards see with her eyes. She has
+described to me the gates of Purgatory as they showed themselves to her
+eyes, but I remember nothing of the description except that she could
+not see the souls in trouble but only the gates. Her mind continually
+dwells on what is pleasant and beautiful. One day she asked me what
+month and what flower were the most beautiful. When I answered that I
+did not know, she said, "the month of May, because of the Virgin, and
+the lily of the valley, because it never sinned, but came pure out of
+the rocks," and then she asked, "what is the cause of the three cold
+months of winter?" I did not know even that, and so she said, "the sin
+of man and the vengeance of God." Christ Himself was not only blessed,
+but perfect in all manly proportions in her eyes, so much do beauty and
+holiness go together in her thoughts. He alone of all men was exactly
+six feet high, all others are a little more or a little less.
+
+
+[FN#5]  The religious society she had belonged to.
+
+
+Her thoughts and her sights of the people of faery are pleasant and
+beautiful too, and I have never heard her call them the Fallen Angels.
+They are people like ourselves, only better-looking, and many and many
+a time she has gone to the window to watch them drive their waggons
+through the sky, waggon behind waggon in long line, or to the door to
+hear them singing and dancing in the Forth. They sing chiefly, it
+seems, a song called "The Distant Waterfall," and though they once
+knocked her down she never thinks badly of them. She saw them most
+easily when she was in service in King's County, and one morning a
+little while ago she said to me, "Last night I was waiting up for the
+master and it was a quarter-past eleven. I heard a bang right down on
+the table. 'King's County all over,' says I, and I laughed till I was
+near dead. It was a warning I was staying too long. They wanted the
+place to themselves." I told her once of somebody who saw a faery and
+fainted, and she said, "It could not have been a faery, but some bad
+thing, nobody could faint at a faery. It was a demon. I was not afraid
+when they near put me, and the bed under me, out through the roof. I
+wasn't afraid either when you were at some work and I heard a thing
+coming flop-flop up the stairs like an eel, and squealing. It went to
+all the doors. It could not get in where I was. I would have sent it
+through the universe like a flash of fire. There was a man in my place,
+a tearing fellow, and he put one of them down. He went out to meet it
+on the road, but he must have been told the words. But the faeries are
+the best neighbours. If you do good to them they will do good to you,
+but they don't like you to be on their path." Another time she said to
+me, "They are always good to the poor."
+
+
+II
+
+There is, however, a man in a Galway village who can see nothing but
+wickedness. Some think him very holy, and others think him a little
+crazed, but some of his talk reminds one of those old Irish visions of
+the Three Worlds, which are supposed to have given Dante the plan of
+the Divine Comedy. But I could not imagine this man seeing Paradise. He
+is especially angry with the people of faery, and describes the faun-
+like feet that are so common among them, who are indeed children of
+Pan, to prove them children of Satan. He will not grant that "they
+carry away women, though there are many that say so," but he is certain
+that they are "as thick as the sands of the sea about us, and they
+tempt poor mortals."
+
+He says, "There is a priest I know of was looking along the ground
+like as if he was hunting for something, and a voice said to him, 'If
+you want to see them you'll see enough of them,' and his eyes were
+opened and he saw the ground thick with them. Singing they do be
+sometimes, and dancing, but all the time they have cloven feet." Yet he
+was so scornful of unchristian things for all their dancing and singing
+that he thinks that "you have only to bid them begone and they will go.
+It was one night," he says, "after walking back from Kinvara and down
+by the wood beyond I felt one coming beside me, and I could feel the
+horse he was riding on and the way he lifted his legs, but they do not
+make a sound like the hoofs of a horse. So I stopped and turned around
+and said, very loud, 'Be off!' and he went and never troubled me after.
+And I knew a man who was dying, and one came on his bed, and he cried
+out to it, 'Get out of that, you unnatural animal!' and it left him.
+Fallen angels they are, and after the fall God said, 'Let there be
+Hell,' and there it was in a moment." An old woman who was sitting by
+the fire joined in as he said this with "God save us, it's a pity He
+said the word, and there might have been no Hell the day," but the seer
+did not notice her words. He went on, "And then he asked the devil what
+would he take for the souls of all the people. And the devil said
+nothing would satisfy him but the blood of a virgin's son, so he got
+that, and then the gates of Hell were opened." He understood the story,
+it seems, as if it were some riddling old folk tale.
+
+"I have seen Hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It
+had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway, and a
+straight walk into it, just like what 'ud be leading into a gentleman's
+orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box, but with red-hot
+metal. And inside the wall there were cross-walks, and I'm not sure
+what there was to the right, but to the left there were five great
+furnaces, and they full of souls kept there with great chains. So I
+turned short and went away, and in turning I looked again at the wall,
+and I could see no end to it.
+
+"And another time I saw Purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place,
+and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls
+standing in it. And they suffer near as much as in Hell, only there are
+no devils with them there, and they have the hope of Heaven.
+
+"And I heard a call to me from there, 'Help me to come out o' this!'
+And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman,
+and from this county, and I believe him to be a descendant of King
+O'Connor of Athenry.
+
+"So I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, 'I'd be
+burned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.' So
+then he said, 'Well, help me with your prayers,' and so I do.
+
+"And Father Connellan says the same thing, to help the dead with your
+prayers, and he's a very clever man to make a sermon, and has a great
+deal of cures made with the Holy Water he brought back from Lourdes."
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST GLEEMAN
+
+
+Michael Moran was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of
+Dublin, in Faddle Alley. A fortnight after birth he went stone blind
+from illness, and became thereby a blessing to his parents, who were
+soon able to send him to rhyme and beg at street corners and at the
+bridges over the Liffey. They may well have wished that their quiver
+were full of such as he, for, free from the interruption of sight, his
+mind became a perfect echoing chamber, where every movement of the day
+and every change of public passion whispered itself into rhyme or
+quaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the admitted
+rector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver,
+Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M'Bride
+from heaven knows where, and that M'Grane, who in after days, when the
+true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather in
+borrowed rags, and gave out that there had never been any Moran but
+himself, and many another, did homage before him, and held him chief of
+all their tribe. Nor despite his blindness did he find any difficulty
+in getting a wife, but rather was able to pick and choose, for he was
+just that mixture of ragamuffin and of genius which is dear to the
+heart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly conventional
+herself, loves the unexpected, the crooked, the bewildering. Nor did he
+lack, despite his rags, many excellent things, for it is remembered
+that he ever loved caper sauce, going so far indeed in his honest
+indignation at its absence upon one occasion as to fling a leg of
+mutton at his wife. He was not, however, much to look at, with his
+coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy
+trousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist
+by a thong of leather: and he would have been a woeful shock to the
+gleeman MacConglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in
+prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the
+short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman,
+being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In the morning
+when he had finished his breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would
+read the newspaper to him, and read on and on until he interrupted
+with, "That'll do--I have me meditations"; and from these meditations
+would come the day's store of jest and rhyme. He had the whole Middle
+Ages under his frieze coat.
+
+He had not, however, MacConglinne's hatred of the Church and clergy,
+for when the fruit of his meditations did not ripen well, or when the
+crowd called for something more solid, he would recite or sing a
+metrical tale or ballad of saint or martyr or of Biblical adventure. He
+would stand at a street comer, and when a crowd had gathered would
+begin in some such fashion as follows (I copy the record of one who
+knew him)--"Gather round me, boys, gather round me. Boys, am I standin'
+in puddle? am I standin' in wet?" Thereon several boys would cry, "Ali,
+no! yez not! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with St. Mary; go on with
+Moses"--each calling for his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a
+suspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst
+out with "All me buzzim friends are turned backbiters"; and after a
+final "If yez don't drop your coddin' and diversion I'll lave some of
+yez a case," by way of warning to the boys, begin his recitation, or
+perhaps still delay, to ask, "Is there a crowd round me now? Any
+blackguard heretic around me?" The best-known of his religious tales
+was St. Mary of Egypt, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, condensed
+from the much longer work of a certain Bishop Coyle. It told how a fast
+woman of Egypt, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem for no
+good purpose, and then, turning penitent on finding herself withheld
+from entering the Temple by supernatural interference, fled to the
+desert and spent the remainder of her life in solitary penance. When at
+last she was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear her
+confession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a lion,
+whom He sent also, dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable cadence
+of the eighteenth century, but was so popular and so often called for
+that Moran was soon nicknamed Zozimus, and by that name is he
+remembered. He had also a poem of his own called Moses, which went a
+little nearer poetry without going very near. But he could ill brook
+solemnity, and before long parodied his own verses in the following
+ragamuffin fashion:
+
+
+    In Egypt's land, contagious to the Nile,
+    King Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe in style.
+    She tuk her dip, then walked unto the land,
+    To dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand.
+    A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
+    A smiling babby in a wad o' straw.
+    She tuk it up, and said with accents mild,
+    "'Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?"
+
+
+His humorous rhymes were, however, more often quips and cranks at the
+expense of his contemporaries. It was his delight, for instance, to
+remind a certain shoemaker, noted alike for display of wealth and for
+personal uncleanness, of his inconsiderable origin in a song of which
+but the first stanza has come down to us:
+
+
+    At the dirty end of Dirty Lane,
+    Liv'd a dirty cobbler, Dick Maclane;
+    His wife was in the old king's reign
+        A stout brave orange-woman.
+    On Essex Bridge she strained her throat,
+    And six-a-penny was her note.
+    But Dickey wore a bran-new coat,
+        He got among the yeomen.
+    He was a bigot, like his clan,
+    And in the streets he wildly sang,
+    O Roly, toly, toly raid, with his old jade.
+
+
+He had troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to face and
+put down. Once an officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was
+triumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded
+his worship of the precedent set by Homer, who was also, he declared, a
+poet, and a blind man, and a beggarman. He had to face a more serious
+difficulty as his fame grew. Various imitators started up upon all
+sides. A certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did
+shillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs and his getup upon the
+stage. One night this actor was at supper with some friends, when
+dispute arose as to whether his mimicry was overdone or not. It was
+agreed to settle it by an appeal to the mob. A forty-shilling supper at
+a famous coffeehouse was to be the wager. The actor took up his station
+at Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran's, and soon gathered a small
+crowd. He had scarce got through "In Egypt's land, contagious to the
+Nile," when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The
+crowds met in great excitement and laughter. "Good Christians," cried
+the pretender, "is it possible that any man would mock the poor dark
+man like that?"
+
+"Who's that? It's some imposhterer," replied Moran.
+
+"Begone, you wretch! it's you'ze the imposhterer. Don't you fear the
+light of heaven being struck from your eyes for mocking the poor dark
+man?"
+
+"Saints and angels, is there no protection against this? You're a most
+inhuman-blaguard to try to deprive me of my honest bread this way,"
+replied poor Moran.
+
+"And you, you wretch, won't let me go on with the beautiful poem.
+Christian people, in your charity won't you beat this man away? he's
+taking advantage of my darkness."
+
+The pretender, seeing that he was having the best of it, thanked the
+people for their sympathy and protection, and went on with the poem,
+Moran listening for a time in bewildered silence. After a while Moran
+protested again with:
+
+"Is it possible that none of yez can know me? Don't yez see it's
+myself; and that's some one else?"
+
+"Before I can proceed any further in this lovely story," interrupted
+the pretender, "I call on yez to contribute your charitable donations
+to help me to go on."
+
+"Have you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven?" cried Moran, Put
+completely beside himself by this last injury--"Would you rob the poor
+as well as desave the world? O, was ever such wickedness known?"
+
+"I leave it to yourselves, my friends," said the pretender, "to give
+to the real dark man, that you all know so well, and save me from that
+schemer," and with that he collected some pennies and half-pence. While
+he was doing so, Moran started his Mary of Egypt, but the indignant
+crowd seizing his stick were about to belabour him, when they fell back
+bewildered anew by his close resemblance to himself. The pretender now
+called to them to "just give him a grip of that villain, and he'd soon
+let him know who the imposhterer was!" They led him over to Moran, but
+instead of closing with him he thrust a few shillings into his hand,
+and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an actor,
+and that he had just gained a wager, and so departed amid much
+enthusiasm, to eat the supper he had won.
+
+In April 1846 word was sent to the priest that Michael Moran was
+dying. He found him at 15 (now 14 1/2) Patrick Street, on a straw bed,
+in
+a room full of ragged ballad-singers come to cheer his last moments.
+After his death the ballad-singers, with many fiddles and the like,
+came again and gave him a fine wake, each adding to the merriment
+whatever he knew in the way of rann, tale, old saw, or quaint rhyme. He
+had had his day, had said his prayers and made his confession, and why
+should they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place the
+next day. A good party of his admirers and friends got into the hearse
+with the coffin, for the day was wet and nasty. They had not gone far
+when one of them burst out with "It's cruel cowld, isn't it?" "Garra',"
+replied another, "we'll all be as stiff as the corpse when we get to
+the berrin-ground." "Bad cess to him," said a third; "I wish he'd held
+out another month until the weather got dacent." A man called Carroll
+thereupon produced a half-pint of whiskey, and they all drank to the
+soul of the departed. Unhappily, however, the hearse was over-weighted,
+and they had not reached the cemetery before the spring broke, and the
+bottle with it.
+
+Moran must have felt strange and out of place in that other kingdom he
+was entering, perhaps while his friends were drinking in his honour.
+Let us hope that some kindly middle region was found for him, where he
+can call dishevelled angels about him with some new and more rhythmical
+form of his old
+
+
+    Gather round me, boys, will yez
+    Gather round me?
+    And hear what I have to say
+    Before ould Salley brings me
+    My bread and jug of tay;
+
+
+and fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim.
+Perhaps he may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the
+Lily of High Truth, the Rose of Far-sought Beauty, for whose lack so
+many of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been
+futile as the blown froth upon the shore.
+
+
+
+
+REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI
+
+
+One night a middle-aged man, who had lived all his life far from the
+noise of cab-wheels, a young girl, a relation of his, who was reported
+to be enough of a seer to catch a glimpse of unaccountable lights
+moving over the fields among the cattle, and myself, were walking along
+a far western sandy shore. We talked of the Forgetful People as the
+faery people are sometimes called, and came in the midst of our talk to
+a notable haunt of theirs, a shallow cave amidst black rocks, with its
+reflection under it in the wet sea sand. I asked the young girl if she
+could see anything, for I had quite a number of things to ask the
+Forgetful People. She stood still for a few minutes, and I saw that she
+was passing into a kind of waking trance, in which the cold sea breeze
+no longer troubled her, nor the dull boom of the sea distracted her
+attention. I then called aloud the names of the great faeries, and in a
+moment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the rocks,
+and then a sound of confused talking, and of people stamping their feet
+as if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other friend had
+been walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed close to us,
+and as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be interrupted,
+for he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond the rocks. We
+were, however, quite alone. The spirits of the place had begun to cast
+their influence over him also. In a moment he was corroborated by the
+girl, who said that bursts of laughter had begun to mingle with the
+music, the confused talking, and the noise of feet. She next saw a
+bright light streaming out of the cave, which seemed to have grown much
+deeper, and a quantity of little people,[FN#6] in various coloured
+dresses, red predominating, dancing to a tune which she did not
+recognize.
+
+
+[FN#6]  The people and faeries in Ireland are sometimes as big as we
+are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three
+feet high. The Old Mayo woman I so often quote, thinks that it is
+something in our eyes that makes them seem big or little.
+
+
+I then bade her call out to the queen of the little people to come and
+talk with us. There was, however, no answer to her command. I therefore
+repeated the words aloud myself, and in a moment a very beautiful tall
+woman came out of the cave. I too had by this time fallen into a kind
+of trance, in which what we call the unreal had begun to take upon
+itself a masterful reality, and was able to see the faint gleam of
+golden ornaments, the shadowy blossom of dim hair. I then bade the girl
+tell this tall queen to marshal her followers according to their
+natural divisions, that we might see them. I found as before that I had
+to repeat the command myself. The creatures then came out of the cave,
+and drew themselves up, if I remember rightly, in four bands. One of
+these bands carried quicken boughs in their hands, and another had
+necklaces made apparently of serpents' scales, but their dress I cannot
+remember, for I was quite absorbed in that gleaming woman. I asked her
+to tell the seer whether these caves were the greatest faery haunts in
+the neighbourhood. Her lips moved, but the answer was inaudible. I bade
+the seer lay her hand upon the breast of the queen, and after that she
+heard every word quite distinctly. No, this was not the greatest faery
+haunt, for there was a greater one a little further ahead. I then asked
+her whether it was true that she and her people carried away mortals,
+and if so, whether they put another soul in the place of the one they
+had taken? "We change the bodies," was her answer. "Are any of you ever
+born into mortal life?" "Yes." "Do I know any who were among your
+people before birth?" "You do." "Who are they?" "It would not be lawful
+for you to know." I then asked whether she and her people were not
+"dramatizations of our moods"? "She does not understand," said my
+friend, "but says that her people are much like human beings, and do
+most of the things human beings do." I asked her other questions, as to
+her nature, and her purpose in the universe, but only seemed to puzzle
+her. At last she appeared to lose patience, for she wrote this message
+for me upon the sands--the sands of vision, not the grating sands under
+our feet--"Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us."
+Seeing that I had offended her, I thanked her for what she had shown
+and told, and let her depart again into her cave. In a little while the
+young girl awoke out of her trance, and felt again the cold wind of the
+world, and began to shiver.
+
+I tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to
+blur the history. Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of
+mine have perished long ago. I love better than any theory the sound of
+the Gate of Ivory, turning upon its hinges, and hold that he alone who
+has passed the rose-strewn threshold can catch the far glimmer of the
+Gate of Horn. It were perhaps well for us all if we would but raise the
+cry Lilly the astrologer raised in Windsor Forest, "Regina, Regina
+Pigmeorum, Veni," and remember with him, that God visiteth His children
+in dreams. Tall, glimmering queen, come near, and let me see again the
+shadowy blossom of thy dim hair.
+
+
+
+
+"AND FAIR, FIERCE WOMEN"
+
+
+One day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic beauty, that
+highest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a
+beauty which has been fading out of the arts, since that decadence we
+call progress, set voluptuous beauty in its place. She was standing at
+the window, looking over to Knocknarea where Queen Maive is thought to
+be buried, when she saw, as she has told me, "the finest woman you ever
+saw travelling right across from the mountain and straight to her." The
+woman had a sword by her side and a dagger lifted up in her hand, and
+was dressed in white, with bare arms and feet. She looked "very strong,
+but not wicked," that is, not cruel. The old woman had seen the Irish
+giant, and "though he was a fine man," he was nothing to this woman,
+"for he was round, and could not have stepped out so soldierly"; "she
+was like Mrs.-----" a stately lady of the neighbourhood, "but she had
+no stomach on her, and was slight and broad in the shoulders, and was
+handsomer than any one you ever saw; she looked about thirty." The old
+woman covered her eyes with her hands, and when she uncovered them the
+apparition had vanished. The neighbours were "wild with her," she told
+me, because she did not wait to find out if there was a message, for
+they were sure it was Queen Maive, who often shows herself to the
+pilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen Maive,
+and she said, "Some of them have their hair down, but they look quite
+different, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the papers. Those
+with their hair up are like this one. The others have long white
+dresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you
+can see their legs right up to the calf." After some careful
+questioning I found that they wore what might very well be a kind of
+buskin; she went on, "They are fine and dashing looking, like the men
+one sees riding their horses in twos and threes on the slopes of the
+mountains with their swords swinging." She repeated over and over,
+"There is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned," or the
+like, and then said, "The present Queen[FN#7] is a nice, pleasant-
+looking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me think so little
+of the ladies is that I see none as they be," meaning as the spirits.
+"When I think of her and of the ladies now, they are like little
+children running about without knowing how to put their clothes on
+right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women at all." The
+other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway
+workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that "Queen Maive was
+handsome, and overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel
+is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk the
+world with it," but she grew "very disagreeable in the end--oh very
+disagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between
+the book and the hearer." My friend thought the old woman had got some
+scandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head.
+
+
+[FN#7]  Queen Victoria.
+
+
+And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who
+remembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he
+was young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said
+she was a queen "among them," and asked him if he would have money or
+pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for
+a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful.
+The young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he
+made, but could only remember that it was "very mournful," and that he
+called her "beauty of all beauties."
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ENCHANTED WOODS
+
+
+I
+
+Last summer, whenever I had finished my day's work, I used to go
+wandering in certain roomy woods, and there I would often meet an old
+countryman, and talk to him about his work and about the woods, and
+once or twice a friend came with me to whom he would open his heart
+more readily than to me, He had spent all his life lopping away the
+witch elm and the hazel and the privet and the hornbeam from the paths,
+and had thought much about the natural and supernatural creatures of
+the wood. He has heard the hedgehog--"grainne oge," he calls him--
+"grunting like a Christian," and is certain that he steals apples by
+rolling about under an apple tree until there is an apple sticking to
+every quill. He is certain too that the cats, of whom there are many in
+the woods, have a language of their own--some kind of old Irish. He
+says, "Cats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time of
+some great change in the world. That is why they are hard to kill, and
+why it is dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it might
+claw or bite you in a way that would put poison in you, and that would
+be the serpent's tooth." Sometimes he thinks they change into wild
+cats, and then a nail grows on the end of their tails; but these wild
+cats are not the same as the marten cats, who have been always in the
+woods. The foxes were once tame, as the cats are now, but they ran away
+and became wild. He talks of all wild creatures except squirrels--whom
+he hates--with what seems an affectionate interest, though at times his
+eyes will twinkle with pleasure as he remembers how he made hedgehogs
+unroll themselves when he was a boy, by putting a wisp of burning straw
+under them.
+
+I am not certain that he distinguishes between the natural and
+supernatural very clearly. He told me the other day that foxes and cats
+like, above all, to be in the "forths" and lisses after nightfall; and
+he will certainly pass from some story about a fox to a story about a
+spirit with less change of voice than when he is going to speak about a
+marten cat--a rare beast now-a-days. Many years ago he used to work in
+the garden, and once they put him to sleep in a garden-house where
+there was a loft full of apples, and all night he could hear people
+rattling plates and knives and forks over his head in the loft. Once,
+at any rate, be has seen an unearthly sight in the woods. He says, "One
+time I was out cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight o'clock
+one morning when I got there I saw a girl picking nuts, with her hair
+hanging down over her shoulders, brown hair, and she had a good, clean
+face, and she was tall and nothing on her head, and her dress no way
+gaudy but simple, and when she felt me coming she gathered herself up
+and was gone as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I followed her
+and looked for her, but I never could see her again from that day to
+this, never again." He used the word clean as we would use words like
+fresh or comely.
+
+Others too have seen spirits in the Enchanted Woods. A labourer told
+us of what a friend of his had seen in a part of the woods that is
+called Shanwalla, from some old village that was before the weed. He
+said, "One evening I parted from Lawrence Mangan in the yard, and he
+went away through the path in Shanwalla, an' bid me goodnight. And two
+hours after, there he was back again in the yard, an' bid me light a
+candle that was in the stable. An' he told me that when he got into
+Shanwalla, a little fellow about as high as his knee, but having a head
+as big as a man's body, came beside him and led him out of the path an'
+round about, and at last it brought him to the lime-kiln, and then it
+vanished and left him."
+
+A woman told me of a sight that she and others had seen by a certain
+deep pool in the river. She said, "I came over the stile from the
+chapel, and others along with me; and a great blast of wind came and
+two trees were bent and broken and fell into the river, and the splash
+of water out of it went up to the skies. And those that were with me
+saw many figures, but myself I only saw one, sitting there by the bank
+where the trees fell. Dark clothes he had on, and he was headless."
+
+A man told me that one day, when he was a boy, he and another boy went
+to catch a horse in a certain field, full of boulders and bushes of
+hazel and creeping juniper and rock-roses, that is where the lake side
+is for a little clear of the woods. He said to the boy that was with
+him, "I bet a button that if I fling a pebble on to that bush it will
+stay on it," meaning that the bush was so matted the pebble would not
+be able to go through it. So he took up "a pebble of cow-dung, and as
+soon as it hit the bush there came out of it the most beautiful music
+that ever was heard." They ran away, and when they had gone about two
+hundred yards they looked back and saw a woman dressed in white,
+walking round and round the bush. "First it had the form of a woman,
+and then of a man, and it was going round the bush."
+
+
+II
+
+I often entangle myself in argument more complicated than even those
+paths of Inchy as to what is the true nature of apparitions, but at
+other times I say as Socrates said when they told him a learned opinion
+about a nymph of the Illissus, "The common opinion is enough for me." I
+believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we
+cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some
+wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever
+seen, and that these are not far away when we are walking in pleasant
+and quiet places. Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood
+without feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or
+something I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And
+now I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with
+almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me.
+You too meet with a like imagination, doubtless, somewhere, wherever
+your ruling stars will have it, Saturn driving you to the woods, or the
+Moon, it may be, to the edges of the sea. I will not of a certainty
+believe that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers
+imagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some
+vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway
+out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be
+beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and
+fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport
+than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among
+green leaves. I say to myself, when I am well out of that thicket of
+argument, that they are surely there, the divine people, for only we
+who have neither simplicity nor wisdom have denied them, and the simple
+of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even
+spoken to them. They live out their passionate lives not far off, as I
+think, and we shall be among them when we die if we but keep our
+natures simple and passionate. May it not even be that death shall
+unite us to all romance, and that some day we shall fight dragons among
+blue hills, or come to that whereof all romance is but
+
+
+    Foreshadowings mingled with the images
+    Of man's misdeeds in greater days than these,
+
+
+as the old men thought in The Earthly Paradise when they were in good
+spirits.
+
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+MIRACULOUS CREATURES
+
+
+There are marten cats and badgers and foxes in the Enchanted Woods,
+but there are of a certainty mightier creatures, and the lake hides
+what neither net nor fine can take. These creatures are of the race of
+the white stag that flits in and out of the tales of Arthur, and of the
+evil pig that slew Diarmuid where Ben Bulben mixes with the sea wind.
+They are the wizard creatures of hope and fear, they are of them that
+fly and of them that follow among the thickets that are about the Gates
+of Death. A man I know remembers that his father was one night in the
+wood Of Inchy, "where the lads of Gort used to be stealing rods. He was
+sitting by the wall, and the dog beside him, and he heard something
+come running from Owbawn Weir, and he could see nothing, but the sound
+of its feet on the ground was like the sound of the feet of a deer. And
+when it passed him, the dog got between him and the wall and scratched
+at it there as if it was afraid, but still he could see nothing but
+only hear the sound of hoofs. So when it was passed he turned and came
+away home. Another time," the man says, "my father told me he was in a
+boat out on the lake with two or three men from Gort, and one of them
+had an eel-spear, and he thrust it into the water, and it hit
+something, and the man fainted and they had to carry him out of the
+boat to land, and when he came to himself he said that what he struck
+was like a calf, but whatever it was, it was not fish!" A friend of
+mine is convinced that these terrible creatures, so common in lakes,
+were set there in old times by subtle enchanters to watch over the
+gates of wisdom. He thinks that if we sent our spirits down into the
+water we would make them of one substance with strange moods Of ecstasy
+and power, and go out it may be to the conquest of the world. We would,
+however, he believes, have first to outface and perhaps overthrow
+strange images full of a more powerful life than if they were really
+alive. It may be that we shall look at them without fear when we have
+endured the last adventure, that is death.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ARISTOTLE OF THE BOOKS
+
+
+The friend who can get the wood-cutter to talk more readily than he
+will to anybody else went lately to see his old wife. She lives in a
+cottage not far from the edge of the woods, and is as full of old talk
+as her husband. This time she began to talk of Goban, the legendary
+mason, and his wisdom, but said presently, "Aristotle of the Books,
+too, was very wise, and he had a great deal of experience, but did not
+the bees get the better of him in the end? He wanted to know how they
+packed the comb, and he wasted the better part of a fortnight watching
+them, and he could not see them doing it. Then he made a hive with a
+glass cover on it and put it over them, and he thought to see. But when
+he went and put his eyes to the glass, they had it all covered with wax
+so that it was as black as the pot; and he was as blind as before. He
+said he was never rightly kilt till then. They had him that time
+surely!"
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWINE OF THE GODS
+
+
+A few years ago a friend of mine told me of something that happened to
+him when he was a. young man and out drilling with some Connaught
+Fenians. They were but a car-full, and drove along a hillside until
+they came to a quiet place. They left the car and went further up the
+hill with their rifles, and drilled for a while. As they were coming
+down again they saw a very thin, long-legged pig of the old Irish sort,
+and the pig began to follow them. One of them cried out as a joke that
+it was a fairy pig, and they all began to run to keep up the joke. The
+pig ran too, and presently, how nobody knew, this mock terror became
+real terror, and they ran as for their lives. When they got to the car
+they made the horse gallop as fast as possible, but the pig still
+followed. Then one of them put up his rifle to fire, but when he looked
+along the barrel he could see nothing. Presently they turned a corner
+and came to a village. They told the people of the village what had
+happened, and the people of the village took pitchforks and spades and
+the like, and went along the road with them to drive the pig away. When
+they turned the comer they could not find anything.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A VOICE
+
+
+One day I was walking over a bit of marshy ground close to Inchy Wood
+when I felt, all of a sudden, and only for a second, an emotion which I
+said to myself was the root of Christian mysticism. There had swept
+over me a sense of weakness, of dependence on a great personal Being
+somewhere far off yet near at hand. No thought of mine had prepared me
+for this emotion, for I had been pre-occupied with Aengus and Edain, and
+with Mannanan, son of the sea. That night I awoke lying upon my back
+and hearing a voice speaking above me and saying, "No human soul is
+like any other human soul, and therefore the love of God for any human
+soul is infinite, for no other soul can satisfy the same need in God."
+A few nights after this I awoke to see the loveliest people I have ever
+seen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green raiment, cut
+like old Greek raiment, were standing at my bedside. I looked at the
+girl and noticed that her dress was gathered about her neck into a kind
+of chain, or perhaps into some kind of stiff embroidery which
+represented ivy-leaves. But what filled me with wonder was the
+miraculous mildness of her face. There are no such faces now. It was
+beautiful, as few faces are beautiful, but it had neither, one would
+think, the light that is in desire or in hope or in fear or in
+speculation. It was peaceful like the faces of animals, or like
+mountain pools at evening, so peaceful that it was a little sad. I
+thought for a moment that she might be the beloved of Aengus, but how
+could that hunted, alluring, happy, immortal wretch have a face like
+this? Doubtless she was from among the children of the Moon, but who
+among them I shall never know.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+KIDNAPPERS
+
+
+A little north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben
+Bulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white square
+in the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand; no sheep
+or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more inaccessible
+place upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to the deep
+considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of night it
+swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out. All night the gay
+rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless
+perhaps where, in some more than commonly "gentle" place--Drumcliff or
+Drum-a-hair--the nightcapped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from
+their doors to see what mischief the "gentry" are doing. To their
+trained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and
+the air is full of shrill voices--a sound like whistling, as an ancient
+Scottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the
+angels, who "speak much in the throat, like the Irish," as Lilly, the
+astrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed
+bride in the neighbourhood, the nightcapped "doctors" will peer with
+more than common care, for the unearthly troop do not always return
+empty-handed. Sometimes a new-wed bride or a new-born baby goes with
+them into their mountains; the door swings to behind, and the new-born
+or the new-wed moves henceforth in the bloodless land of Faery; happy
+enough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright vapour,
+for the soul cannot live without sorrow. Through this door of white
+stone, and the other doors of that land where geabheadh tu an sonas aer
+pighin ("you can buy joy for a penny"), have gone kings, queens, and
+princes, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there are
+none but peasants in these sad chronicles of mine.
+
+Somewhere about the beginning of last century appeared at the western
+corner of Market Street, Sligo, where the butcher's shop now is, not a
+palace, as in Keats's Lamia, but an apothecary's shop, ruled over by a
+certain unaccountable Dr. Opendon. Where he came from, none ever knew.
+There also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name, whose
+husband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make nothing of
+him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he grew. Away
+went the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop parlour. A
+black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had just time to
+see that the side-board was covered with fruit, and to say to herself,
+"Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much," before Dr.
+Opendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as the cat, and
+his wife walked behind him dressed in black likewise. She gave him a
+guinea, and got a little bottle in return. Her husband recovered that
+time. Meanwhile the black doctor cured many people; but one day a rich
+patient died, and cat, wife, and doctor all vanished the night after.
+In a year the man Ormsby fell sick once more. Now he was a goodlooking
+man, and his wife felt sure the "gentry" were coveting him. She went
+and called on the "faery-doctor" at Cairnsfoot. As soon as he had heard
+her tale, he went behind the back door and began muttering, muttering,
+muttering-making spells. Her husband got well this time also. But after
+a while he sickened again, the fatal third time, and away went she once
+more to Cairnsfoot, and out went the faery-doctor behind his back door
+and began muttering, but soon he came in and told her it was no use--
+her husband would die; and sure enough the man died, and ever after
+when she spoke of him Mrs. Ormsby shook her head saying she knew well
+where he was, and it wasn't in heaven or hell or purgatory either. She
+probably believed that a log of wood was left behind in his place, but
+so bewitched that it seemed the dead body of her husband.
+
+She is dead now herself, but many still living remember her. She was,
+I believe, for a time a servant or else a kind of pensioner of some
+relations of my own.
+
+Sometimes those who are carried off are allowed after many years--
+seven usually--a final glimpse of their friends. Many years ago a woman
+vanished suddenly from a Sligo garden where she was walking with her
+husband. When her son, who was then a baby, had grown up he received
+word in some way, not handed down, that his mother was glamoured by
+faeries, and imprisoned for the time in a house in Glasgow and longing
+to see him. Glasgow in those days of sailing-ships seemed to the
+peasant mind almost over the edge of the known world, yet he, being a
+dutiful son, started away. For a long time he walked the streets of
+Glasgow; at last down in a cellar he saw his mother working. She was
+happy, she said, and had the best of good eating, and would he not eat?
+and therewith laid all kinds of food on the table; but he, knowing well
+that she was trying to cast on him the glamour by giving him faery
+food, that she might keep him with her, refused and came home to his
+people in Sligo.
+
+Some five miles southward of Sligo is a gloomy and tree-bordered pond,
+a great gathering-place of water-fowl, called, because of its form, the
+Heart Lake. It is haunted by stranger things than heron, snipe, or wild
+duck. Out of this lake, as from the white square stone in Ben Bulben,
+issues an unearthly troop. Once men began to drain it; suddenly one of
+them raised a cry that he saw his house in flames. They turned round,
+and every man there saw his own cottage burning. They hurried home to
+find it was but faery glamour. To this hour on the border of the lake
+is shown a half-dug trench--the signet of their impiety. A little way
+from this lake I heard a beautiful and mournful history of faery
+kidnapping. I heard it from a little old woman in a white cap, who
+sings to herself in Gaelic, and moves from one foot to the other as
+though she remembered the dancing of her youth.
+
+A young man going at nightfall to the house of his just married bride,
+met in the way a jolly company, and with them his bride. They were
+faeries, and had stolen her as a wife for the chief of their band. To
+him they seemed only a company of merry mortals. His bride, when she
+saw her old love, bade him welcome, but was most fearful lest be should
+eat the faery food, and so be glamoured out of the earth into that
+bloodless dim nation, wherefore she set him down to play cards with
+three of the cavalcade; and he played on, realizing nothing until he
+saw the chief of the band carrying his bride away in his arms.
+Immediately he started up, and knew that they were faeries; for slowly
+all that jolly company melted into shadow and night. He hurried to the
+house of his beloved. As he drew near came to him the cry of the
+keeners. She had died some time before he came. Some noteless Gaelic
+poet had made this into a forgotten ballad, some odd verses of which my
+white-capped friend remembered and sang for me.
+
+Sometimes one hears of stolen people acting as good genii to the
+living, as in this tale, heard also close by the haunted pond, of John
+Kirwan of Castle Hacket. The Kirwans[FN#8] are a family much rumoured
+of in peasant stories, and believed to be the descendants of a man and
+a spirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that
+the mother of the present Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe.
+
+
+[FN#8]  I have since heard that it was not the Kirwans, but their
+predecessors at Castle Hacket, the Hackets themselves, I think, who
+were descended from a man and a spirit, and were notable for beauty. I
+imagine that the mother of Lord Cloncurry was descended from the
+Hackets. It may well be that all through these stories the name of
+Kirwan has taken the place of the older name. Legend mixes everything
+together in her cauldron.
+
+
+John Kirwan was a great horse-racing man, and once landed in Liverpool
+with a fine horse, going racing somewhere in middle England. That
+evening, as he walked by the docks, a slip of a boy came up and asked
+where he was stabling his horse. In such and such a place, he answered.
+"Don't put him there," said the slip of a boy; "that stable will be
+burnt to-night." He took his horse elsewhere, and sure enough the
+stable was burnt down. Next day the boy came and asked as reward to
+ride as his jockey in the coming race, and then was gone. The race-time
+came round. At the last moment the boy ran forward and mounted, saying,
+"If I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in
+my right hand bet all you are worth." For, said Paddy Flynn, who told
+me the tale, "the left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making
+the sign of the cross with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a
+Banshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom."
+Well, the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John
+Kirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, "What can I do
+for you now?" said he. "Nothing but this," said the boy: "my mother has
+a cottage on your land-they stole me from the cradle. Be good to her,
+John Kirwan, and wherever your horses go I will watch that no ill
+follows them; but you will never see me more." With that he made
+himself air, and vanished.
+
+Sometimes animals are carried off--apparently drowned animals more
+than others. In Claremorris, Galway, Paddy Flynn told me, lived a poor
+widow with one cow and its calf. The cow fell into the river, and was
+washed away. There was a man thereabouts who went to a red-haired woman
+--for such are supposed to be wise in these things--and she told him to
+take the calf down to the edge of the river, and hide himself and
+watch. He did as she had told him, and as evening came on the calf
+began to low, and after a while the cow came along the edge of the
+river and commenced suckling it. Then, as he had been told, he caught
+the cow's tail. Away they went at a great pace across hedges and
+ditches, till they came to a royalty (a name for the little circular
+ditches, commonly called raths or forts, that Ireland is covered with
+since Pagan times). Therein he saw walking or sitting all the people
+who had died out of his village in his time. A woman was sitting on the
+edge with a child on her knees, and she called out to him to mind what
+the red-haired woman had told him, and he remembered she had said,
+Bleed the cow. So he stuck his knife into the cow and drew blood. That
+broke the spell, and he was able to turn her homeward. "Do not forget
+the spancel," said the woman with the child on her knees; "take the
+inside one." There were three spancels on a bush; he took one, and the
+cow was driven safely home to the widow.
+
+There is hardly a valley or mountainside where folk cannot tell you of
+some one pillaged from amongst them. Two or three miles from the Heart
+Lake lives an old woman who was stolen away in her youth. After seven
+years she was brought home again for some reason or other, but she had
+no toes left. She had danced them off. Many near the white stone door
+in Ben Bulben have been stolen away.
+
+It is far easier to be sensible in cities than in many country places
+I could tell you of. When one walks on those grey roads at evening by
+the scented elder-bushes of the white cottages, watching the faint
+mountains gathering the clouds upon their heads, one all too readily
+discovers, beyond the thin cobweb veil of the senses, those creatures,
+the goblins, hurrying from the white square stone door to the north, or
+from the Heart Lake in the south.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNTIRING ONES
+
+
+It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any
+unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like,
+and something in our sweetheart that we dislike. It is this
+entanglement of moods which makes us old, and puckers our brows and
+deepens the furrows about our eyes. If we could love and hate with as
+good heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them.
+But until that day their untiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-
+half of their fascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can
+the circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet. The Donegal
+peasants remember this when they bend over the spade, or sit full of
+the heaviness of the fields beside the griddle at nightfall, and they
+tell stories about it that it may not be forgotten. A short while ago,
+they say, two faeries, little creatures, one like a young man, one like
+a young woman, came to a farmer's house, and spent the night sweeping
+the hearth and setting all tidy. The next night they came again, and
+while the farmer was away, brought all the furniture up-stairs into one
+room, and having arranged it round the walls, for the greater grandeur
+it seems, they began to dance. They danced on and on, and days and days
+went by, and all the country-side came to look at them, but still their
+feet never tired. The farmer did not dare to live at home the while;
+and after three months he made up his mind to stand it no more, and
+went and told them that the priest was coming. The little creatures
+when they heard this went back to their own country, and there their
+joy shall last as long as the points of the rushes are brown, the
+people say, and that is until God shall burn up the world with a kiss.
+
+But it is not merely faeries who know untiring days, for there have
+been men and women who, falling under their enchantment, have attained,
+perhaps by the right of their God-given spirits, an even more than
+faery abundance of life and feeling. It seems that when mortals have
+gone amid those poor happy leaves of the Imperishable Rose of Beauty,
+blown hither and thither by the winds that awakened the stars, the dim
+kingdom has acknowledged their birthright, perhaps a little sadly, and
+given them of its best. Such a mortal was born long ago at a village in
+the south of Ireland. She lay asleep in a cradle, and her mother sat by
+rocking her, when a woman of the Sidhe (the faeries) came in, and said
+that the child was chosen to be the bride of the prince of the dim
+kingdom, but that as it would never do for his wife to grow old and die
+while he was still in the first ardour of his love, she would be gifted
+with a faery life. The mother was to take the glowing log out of the
+fire and bury it in the garden, and her child would live as long as it
+remained unconsumed. The mother buried the log, and the child grew up,
+became a beauty, and married the prince of the faeries, who came to her
+at nightfall. After seven hundred years the prince died, and another
+prince ruled in his stead and married the beautiful peasant girl in his
+turn; and after another seven hundred years he died also, and another
+prince and another husband came in his stead, and so on until she had
+had seven husbands. At last one day the priest of the parish called
+upon her, and told her that she was a scandal to the whole
+neighbourhood with her seven husbands and her long life. She was very
+sorry, she said, but she was not to blame, and then she told him about
+the log, and he went straight out and dug until he found it, and then
+they burned it, and she died, and was buried like a Christian, and
+everybody was pleased. Such a mortal too was Clooth-na-bare,[FN#9] who
+went all over the world seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery
+life, of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to lake and lake
+to hill, and setting up a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted,
+until at last she found the deepest water in the world in little Lough
+Ia, on the top of the Birds' Mountain at Sligo.
+
+
+[FN#9]  Doubtless Clooth-na-bare should be Cailleac Bare, which would
+mean the old Woman Bare. Bare or Bere or Verah or Dera or Dhera was a
+very famous person, perhaps the mother of the Gods herself. A friend of
+mine found her, as he thinks frequenting Lough Leath, or the Grey Lake
+on a mountain of the Fews. Perhaps Lough Ia is my mishearing, or the
+storyteller's mispronunciation of Lough Leath, for there are many Lough
+Leaths.
+
+
+The two little creatures may well dance on, and the woman of the log
+and Clooth-na-bare sleep in peace, for they have known untrammelled
+hate and unmixed love, and have never wearied themselves with "yes" and
+"no," or entangled their feet with the sorry net of "maybe" and
+"perhaps." The great winds came and took them up into themselves.
+
+
+
+
+EARTH, FIRE AND WATER
+
+
+Some French writer that I read when I was a boy, said that the desert
+went into the heart of the Jews in their wanderings and made them what
+they are. I cannot remember by what argument he proved them to be even
+yet the indestructible children of earth, but it may well be that the
+elements have their children. If we knew the Fire Worshippers better we
+might find that their centuries of pious observance have been rewarded,
+and that the fire has given them a little of its nature; and I am
+certain that the water, the water of the seas and of lakes and of mist
+and rain, has all but made the Irish after its image. Images form
+themselves in our minds perpetually as if they were reflected in some
+pool. We gave ourselves up in old times to mythology, and saw the Gods
+everywhere. We talked to them face to face, and the stories of that
+communion are so many that I think they outnumber all the like stories
+of all the rest of Europe. Even to-day our country people speak with
+the dead and with some who perhaps have never died as we understand
+death; and even our educated people pass without great difficulty into
+the condition of quiet that is the condition of vision. We can make our
+minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may
+see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a
+clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. Did not
+the wise Porphyry think that all souls come to be born because of
+water, and that "even the generation of images in the mind is from
+water"?
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD TOWN
+
+
+I fell, one night some fifteen years ago, into what seemed the power
+of faery.
+
+I had gone with a young man and his sister--friends and relations of
+my own--to pick stories out of an old countryman; and we were coming
+home talking over what he had told us. It was dark, and our
+imaginations were excited by his stories of apparitions, and this may
+have brought us, unknown to us, to the threshold, between sleeping and
+waking, where Sphinxes and Chimaeras sit open-eyed and where there are
+always murmurings and whisperings. I cannot think that what we saw was
+an imagination of the waking mind. We had come under some trees that
+made the road very dark, when the girl saw a bright light moving slowly
+across the road. Her brother and myself saw nothing, and did not see
+anything until we had walked for about half-an-hour along the edge of
+the river and down a narrow lane to some fields where there was a
+ruined church covered with ivy, and the foundations of what was called
+"the Old Town," which had been burned down, it was said, in Cromwell's
+day. We had stood for some few minutes, so far as I can recollect,
+looking over the fields full of stones and brambles and elder-bushes,
+when I saw a small bright light on the horizon, as it seemed, mounting
+up slowly towards the sky; then we saw other faint lights for a minute
+or two, and at last a bright flame like the flame of a torch moving
+rapidly over the river. We saw it all in such a dream, and it seems all
+so unreal, that I have never written of it until now, and hardly ever
+spoken of it, and even when thinking, because of some unreasoning
+impulse, I have avoided giving it weight in the argument. Perhaps I
+have felt that my recollections of things seen when the sense of
+reality was weakened must be untrustworthy. A few months ago, however,
+I talked it over with my two friends, and compared their somewhat
+meagre recollections with my own. That sense of unreality was all the
+more wonderful because the next day I heard sounds as unaccountable as
+were those lights, and without any emotion of unreality, and I remember
+them with perfect distinctness and confidence. The girl was sitting
+reading under a large old-fashioned mirror, and I was reading and
+writing a couple of yards away, when I heard a sound as if a shower of
+peas had been thrown against the mirror, and while I was looking at it
+I heard the sound again, and presently, while I was alone in the room,
+I heard a sound as if something much bigger than a pea had struck the
+wainscoting beside my head. And after that for some days came other
+sights and sounds, not to me but to the girl, her brother, and the
+servants. Now it was a bright light, now it was letters of fire that
+vanished before they could be read, now it was a heavy foot moving
+about in the seemingly empty house. One wonders whether creatures who
+live, the country people believe, wherever men and women have lived in
+earlier times, followed us from the ruins of the old town? or did they
+come from the banks of the river by the trees where the first light
+had shone for a moment?
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN AND HIS BOOTS
+
+
+There was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of ghosts or
+sheogues, and there was a house in Donegal that had been haunted as
+long as man could remember, and this is the story of how the house got
+the better of the man. The man came into the house and lighted a fire
+in the room under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them
+On the hearth, and stretched out his feet and warmed him self. For a
+time he prospered in his unbelief; but a little while after the night
+had fallen, and everything had got very dark, one of his boots began to
+move. It got up off the floor and gave a kind of slow jump towards the
+door, and then the other boot did the same, and after that the first
+boot jumped again. And thereupon it struck the man that an invisible
+being had got into his boots, and was now going away in them. When the
+boots reached the door they went up-stairs slowly, and then the man
+heard them go tramp, tramp round the haunted room over his head. A few
+minutes passed, and he could hear them again upon the stairs, and after
+that in the passage outside, and then one of them came in at the door,
+and the other gave a jump past it and came in too. They jumped along
+towards him, and then one got up and hit him, and afterwards the other
+hit him, and then again the first hit him, and so on, until they drove
+him out of the room, and finally out of the house. In this way he was
+kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter.
+It is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of
+the Sidhe, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work
+of the Sidhe who live in the heart of fantasy.
+
+
+
+
+A COWARD
+
+
+One day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who lives
+beyond Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain, and met there a young lad who
+seemed to be disliked by the two daughters. I asked why they disliked
+him, and was; told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom
+robust children of nature take to be cowards are but men and women with
+a nervous system too finely made for their life and work. I looked at
+the lad; but no, that pink-and-white face and strong body had nothing
+of undue sensibility. After a little he told me his story. He had lived
+a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he was
+coming home late at night, and suddenly fell himself sinking in, as it
+were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a dead
+brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not stop
+till he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung himself
+against the door with so much of violence that he broke the thick
+wooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his wild
+life, but was a hopeless coward. Nothing could ever bring him to look,
+either by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face, and
+he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, "the
+prettiest girl in the country" persuade him to see her home after a
+party if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had looked at the
+face no man can see unchanged-the imponderable face of a spirit.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE O'BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES
+
+
+In the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things.
+There is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing
+there than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon
+the earth. In the beginning the earth was perhaps made to fulfil the
+desire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What
+wonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom!
+
+A friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was
+straying about a rath called "Cashel Nore." A man with a haggard face
+and unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and
+began digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was working near and
+asked who the man was. "That is the third O'Byrne," was the answer. A
+few days after he learned this story: A great quantity of treasure had
+been buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries
+set to guard it; but some day it was to be found and belong to the
+family of the O'Byrnes. Before that day three O'Byrnes must find it and
+die. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last
+he had got a glimpse of the stone coffin that contained it, but
+immediately a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and
+tore him to pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished
+deep into the earth. The second O'Byrne came and dug and dug until he
+found the coffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within.
+He saw some horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and
+soon died. The treasure again sank out of sight. The third O'Byrne is
+now digging. He believes that he will die in some terrible way the
+moment he finds the treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and
+the O'Byrne family made rich for ever, as they were of old.
+
+A peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the
+shin-bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up; there was a hole
+in it; he looked through the hole, and saw the gold heaped up under the
+ground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath
+again he could not find the spot where he had seen it.
+
+
+
+
+DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES
+
+
+Drumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven!
+places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time
+after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore.
+Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the
+mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall
+to loose the faery riders on the world. The great St. Columba himself,
+the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed the
+mountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his prayers.
+Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,
+like a green tablecloth, and lying in the foam midway between the round
+cairn-headed Knocknarea and "Ben Bulben, famous for hawks":
+
+
+    But for Benbulben and Knocknarea
+    Many a poor sailor'd be cast away,
+
+
+as the rhyme goes.
+
+At the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and
+rocks and grass: a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall
+asleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake "silly,"
+the "good people" having carried off his soul. There is no more ready
+shortcut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered
+and smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes
+thither "full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and
+drawing-rooms." Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and
+was heard yelping helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland.
+These forts or raths, made before modern history had begun, cover all
+Rosses and all Columkille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most
+others, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I was
+poking about there, an unusually intelligent and "reading" peasant who
+had come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and
+whispered in a timid voice, "Are you all right, sir?" I had been some
+little while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the
+dog.
+
+No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by ill-
+boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose northern
+slope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer's young son came
+from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards it, but
+the "glamour" fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence, cross-legged,
+and commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined the fence was a
+horse, and that all night long he went on the most wonderful ride
+through the country. In the morning he was still beating his fence, and
+they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for three years
+before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer tried to level
+the fort. His cows and horses died, and an manner of trouble overtook
+him, and finally he himself was led home, and left useless with "his
+head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death."
+
+A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is
+another angle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with
+sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or
+four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the
+darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave's mouth
+two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A
+great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers,
+but the creatures had gone.
+
+To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of
+never-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door in
+the evening, and, in her own words, "looks at the mountains and thinks
+of the goodness of God," God is all the nearer, because the pagan
+powers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for hawks,
+the white square door swings open at sundown, and those wild
+unchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the
+White Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself, wanders under the broad
+cloud nightcap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these things, even
+though the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no long
+while since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of
+her dress touched him. "He fell down, and was dead three days." But
+this is merely the small gossip of faerydom--the little stitches that
+join this world and the other.
+
+One night as I sat eating Mrs. H-----'s soda-bread, her husband told
+me a longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor
+man from Fin M'Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell
+of, for those creatures, the "good people," love to repeat themselves.
+At any rate the story-tellers do. "In the times when we used to travel
+by the canal," he said, "I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to
+Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued
+I was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then
+we walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls
+milking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked
+them for a drink of milk. 'We have nothing to put it in here,' they
+said, 'but come to the house with us.' We went home with them, and sat
+round the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me,
+loath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to
+eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it
+on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head.
+When I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It
+grew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave
+the good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them
+a corpse. When I saw them, coming I hid behind the door. Says one to
+the other, putting the corpse on the spit, 'Who'll turn the spit? Says
+the other, 'Michael H-----, come out of that and turn the meat.' I came
+out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. 'Michael H------,'
+says the one who spoke first, 'if you let it burn we'll have to put you
+on the spit instead'; and on that they went out. I sat there trembling
+and turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and
+the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But
+having fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that
+time; and, sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: 'Michael H-----,
+can you tell me a story?' 'Divil a one,' said I. On which he caught me
+by the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing
+night. Never in all my born days did I see such a night-the darkest
+night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for
+the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on
+the shoulder, with a 'Michael H----, can you tell a story now?' 'I
+can,' says I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says:
+'Begin.' 'I have no story but the one,' says I, 'that I was sitting
+here, and you two men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and
+set me turning it.' 'That will do,' says he; 'ye may go in there and
+lie down on the bed.' And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning
+where was I but in the middle of a green field!"
+
+"Drumcliff" is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing
+season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a
+place called Columkille's Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient
+boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a
+moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread
+portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon,
+renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or
+care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest
+boscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchullin and his heroes. A
+vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.
+
+Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath,
+hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men in
+armour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on.
+A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there is a
+very ancient graveyard. The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse
+about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: "A pious soldier of
+the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff." Not very long
+ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray,
+saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was
+going. It was the "pious soldier of the race of Con," says local
+wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the
+graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling
+the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young
+child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from
+the too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut
+your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.
+
+There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the snipe-
+ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well:
+for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on
+the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea. There
+is a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived there
+who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred
+pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea captain. This my man
+knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain,
+not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean. Shortly
+afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange
+sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered
+since the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive
+out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade
+of the dead man appeared there at times. The bush remains to this day:
+once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put
+spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices,
+they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a
+snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say
+the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.
+
+My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these
+many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find
+nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
+as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of
+the few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:
+"They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine": for it is
+dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or
+knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
+friend, "the sweet Harp-String" (I give no more than his Irish name for
+fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart,
+but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields.
+Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the
+"dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of prescriptive
+right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are
+almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of
+magicians be true.
+
+
+
+
+THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE
+
+
+I
+
+Once a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the
+cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made them
+feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil
+himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows
+with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break, and
+they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet, and
+worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the
+Icelanders, or "Danes" as we call them and all other dwellers in the
+Scandinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places,
+and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same
+way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the
+custom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people
+of Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland
+which once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses
+itself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as
+Roughley, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red
+beards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a
+boat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike
+each other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint of
+hitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing, only
+to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a man
+from Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row, and
+made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so thin
+you cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of
+passionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and
+cried, "that little fellow's skull if ye were to hit it would go like
+an egg-shell," he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,
+"but a man might wallop away at your lordship's for a fortnight."
+
+
+II
+
+I wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories.
+I was in Roughley the other day, and found it much like other desolate
+places. I may have been thinking of Moughorow, a much wilder place, for
+the memories of one's childhood are brittle things to lean upon.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR
+
+
+A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his
+deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the
+valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all
+things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow
+under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must
+needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper
+with a Captain Moran on board the S.S. Margaret, that had put into a
+western river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions
+all flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He
+talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all
+his words broke the hard energy of his calling.
+
+"Sur," said he, "did you ever hear tell of the sea captain's prayer?"
+
+"No," said I; "what is it?"
+
+"It is," he replied, "'O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip.'"
+
+"And what does that mean?"
+
+"It means," he said, "that when they come to me some night and wake me
+up, and say, 'Captain, we're going down,' that I won't make a fool o'
+meself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I standin' on the bridge,
+when the third mate comes up to me looking mortial bad. Says he,
+'Captain, all's up with us.' Says I, 'Didn't you know when you joined
+that a certain percentage go down every year?' 'Yes, sur,' says he; and
+says I, 'Arn't you paid to go down?' 'Yes, sur,' says he; and says I,
+'Then go down like a man, and be damned to you!"'
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY
+
+
+In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far
+apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many
+years in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, "There is
+a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there are
+two souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way the
+one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has the
+shelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for
+shelter. I don't believe it, but there is many a one would not pass by
+it at night." Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near
+together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than the
+shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child
+running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the
+creature why she did not have it cut short. "It was my grandmother's,"
+said the child; "would you have her going about yonder with her
+petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days?" I have read a
+story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had made
+her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her
+knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like
+their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never grow leaky, nor
+the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time
+empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent
+or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the
+righteous from the unrighteous.
+
+
+1892 and 1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES
+
+
+Sometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
+for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
+and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
+under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the
+power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will, and
+sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands. One day
+I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went a circular
+parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating precious
+stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered green and
+crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable hunger. I knew
+that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell of the artist,
+and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful things with too
+avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I
+have seen into other people's hells also, and saw in one an infernal
+Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who weighed on a
+curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed, but the good
+deeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could see the scales
+go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were, I knew,
+crowding about him. I saw on another occasion a quantity of demons of
+all kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and dog-like
+--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and looking at
+a moon--like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from the depths
+of the pit.
+
+
+
+
+OUR LADY OF THE HILLS
+
+
+When we were children we did not say at such a distance from the post-
+office, or so far from the butcher's or the grocer's, but measured
+things by the covered well in the wood, or by the burrow of the fox in
+the hill. We belonged then to God and to His works, and to things come
+down from the ancient days. We would not have been greatly surprised
+had we met the shining feet of an angel among the white mushrooms upon
+the mountains, for we knew in those days immense despair, unfathomed
+love--every eternal mood,--but now the draw-net is about our feet. A
+few miles eastward of Lough Gill, a young Protestant girl, who was both
+pretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white, wandered up
+among those mountain mushrooms, and I have a letter of hers telling how
+she met a troop of children, and became a portion of their dream. When
+they first saw her they threw themselves face down in a bed of rushes,
+as if in a great fear; but after a little other children came about
+them, and they got up and followed her almost bravely. She noticed
+their fear, and presently stood still and held out her arms. A little
+girl threw herself into them with the cry, "Ah, you are the Virgin out
+o' the picture!" "No," said another, coming near also, "she is a sky
+faery, for she has the colour of the sky." "No," said a third, "she is
+the faery out of the foxglove grown big." The other children, however,
+would have it that she was indeed the Virgin, for she wore the Virgin's
+colours. Her good Protestant heart was greatly troubled, and she got
+the children to sit down about her, and tried to explain who she was,
+but they would have none of her explanation. Finding explanation of no
+avail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ? "Yes," said one; "but
+we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the
+Virgin." "Tell Him to be good to me," whispered another into her ear.
+"We would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil," burst out a
+third.
+
+She talked to them a long time about Christ and the apostles, but was
+finally interrupted by an elderly woman with a stick, who, taking her
+to be some adventurous hunter for converts, drove the children away,
+despite their explanation that here was the great Queen of Heaven come
+to walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had
+gone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the
+child who was called "a divil" jumped down from the high ditch by the
+lane, and said she would believe her "an ordinary lady" if she had "two
+skirts," for "ladies always had two skirts." The "two skirts" were
+shown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later
+jumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, "Dad's a divil,
+mum's a divil, and I'm a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady," and
+having flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When my
+pretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had
+dropped the tassels of her parasol. A year later she was by chance upon
+the mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child
+who had first called her the Virgin out o' the picture, and saw the
+tassels hanging about the child's neck, and said, "I am the lady you
+met last year, who told you about Christ." "No, you are not! no, you
+are not! no, you are not!" was the passionate reply. And after all, it
+was not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking
+in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who
+cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that
+man pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and
+the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and
+evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+
+A while ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time
+I had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a
+message from those beings or bodiless moods, or whatever they be, who
+inhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw
+with blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel, half dog,
+moving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal
+vanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his
+pink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light;
+and I remembered a pleasant belief about two faery dogs who go about
+representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the
+excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and
+chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage
+and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box,
+and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest
+emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden
+Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a
+beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and
+flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and
+kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried
+like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the
+more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our
+fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song
+of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the
+fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the
+clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred
+by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and
+that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only
+they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the
+sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must
+weep until the Eternal gates swing open.
+
+We were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the
+fiddler put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a
+copper, and then opened the door and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF
+THEIR GHOSTS AND FAERIES
+
+
+Not only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the
+other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in
+front of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it,
+and dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It
+would have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An
+Irish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature.
+For in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and
+spirits. They only ill-treat each other in reason. Each admits the
+other side to have feelings. There are points beyond which neither will
+go. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man
+Campbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his
+horse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a
+needle into her. They came to a river, and she grew very restless,
+fearing to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her.
+She cried out, "Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-
+like slave (the needle) out of me." They came to an inn. He turned the
+light of a lantern on her; immediately she dropped down like a falling
+star, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they
+treat the faeries as one is treated in an old Highland poem. A faery
+loved a little child who used to cut turf at the side of a faery hill.
+Every day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted
+knife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take
+long, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done
+so quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped
+her. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little
+child take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her
+make three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out
+of the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off
+with a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm
+into the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand
+through the treachery of the child.
+
+In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even
+the Devil religious. "Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the
+minister?" he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it
+came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we
+have left them alone. To be sure, the "loyal minority" knocked out the
+eye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town
+of Carrickfergus. But then the "loyal minority" is half Scottish. You
+have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like to
+have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have
+gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn
+have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear
+their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes
+ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland
+you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been
+permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls.
+Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they
+will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but more in
+sadness than in anger they have said it. The Catholic religion likes to
+keep on good terms with its neighbours.
+
+These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each
+country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and
+graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror to
+Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of make-
+believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is made to
+turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not feel
+anxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the dew on
+his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have soured
+the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The piper
+M'Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched into a
+sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a long time
+the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a mile, when
+they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased suddenly.
+Some time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern completely
+flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of the
+cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake where
+treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close to the
+coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came. He rose
+to the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen the
+treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while his
+heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw the
+rest of his body.
+
+These water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish folk-
+lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our tales
+turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly
+humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one of
+these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does not
+prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding it with
+conscious fantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day for
+congers in the monster hole. Returning home, a great eel on my
+shoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail sweeping the ground
+behind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an
+immense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had
+broken my line and escaped. "That was him," said the fisherman. "Did
+you ever hear how he made my brother emigrate? My brother was a diver,
+you know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast
+comes up to him, and says, 'What are you after?' 'Stones, sur,' says
+he. 'Don't you think you had better be going?' 'Yes, sur,' says he. And
+that's why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got
+poor, but that's not true."
+
+You--you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and air
+and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We--we exchange
+civilities with the world beyond.
+
+
+
+
+WAR
+
+
+When there was a rumour of war with France a while ago, I met a poor
+Sligo woman, a soldier's widow, that I know, and I read her a sentence
+out of a letter I had just had from London: "The people here are mad
+for war, but France seems inclined to take things peacefully," or some
+like sentence. Her mind ran a good deal on war, which she imagined
+partly from what she had heard from soldiers, and partly from tradition
+of the rebellion of '98, but the word London doubled her interest, for
+she knew there were a great many people in London, and she herself had
+once lived in "a congested district." "There are too many over one
+another in London. They are getting tired of the world. It is killed
+they want to be. It will be no matter; but sure the French want nothing
+but peace and quietness. The people here don't mind the war coming.
+They could not be worse than they are. They may as well die soldierly
+before God. Sure they will get quarters in heaven." Then she began to
+say that it would be a hard thing to see children tossed about on
+bayonets, and I knew her mind was running on traditions of the great
+rebellion. She said presently, "I never knew a man that was in a battle
+that liked to speak of it after. They'd sooner be throwing hay down
+from a hayrick." She told me how she and her neighbours used to be
+sitting over the fire when she was a girl, talking of the war that was
+coming, and now she was afraid it was coming again, for she had dreamed
+that all the bay was "stranded and covered with seaweed." I asked her
+if it was in the Fenian times that she had been so much afraid of war
+coming. But she cried out, "Never had I such fun and pleasure as in the
+Fenian times. I was in a house where some of the officers used to be
+staying, and in the daytime I would be walking after the soldiers'
+band, and at night I'd be going down to the end of the garden watching
+a soldier, with his red coat on him, drilling the Fenians in the field
+behind the house. One night the boys tied the liver of an old horse,
+that had been dead three weeks, to the knocker, and I found it when I
+opened the door in the morning." And presently our talk of war shifted,
+as it had a way of doing, to the battle of the Black Pig, which seems
+to her a battle between Ireland and England, but to me an Armageddon
+which shall quench all things in the Ancestral Darkness again, and from
+this to sayings about war and vengeance. "Do you know," she said, "what
+the curse of the Four Fathers is? They put the man-child on the spear,
+and somebody said to them, 'You will be cursed in the fourth generation
+after you,' and that is why disease or anything always comes in the
+fourth generation."
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL
+
+
+I have heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of Clare
+and Galway, say that in "every household" of faery "there is a queen
+and a fool," and that if you are "touched" by either you never recover,
+though you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said of the
+fool that he was "maybe the wisest of all," and spoke of him as dressed
+like one of the "mummers that used to be going about the country."
+Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him, and I have
+heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember seeing a
+long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of an old
+miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was
+a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he
+is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes an
+Amadan-na-Breena, a fool of the forth, and is attached to a household
+there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know well, and who has
+been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said, "There are fools
+amongst them, and the fools we see, like that Amadan of Ballylee, go
+away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that we call
+Oinseachs (apes)." A woman who is related to the witch-doctor on the
+border of Clare, and who can Cure people and cattle by spells, said,
+"There are some cures I can't do. I can't help any one that has got a
+stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a woman that
+saw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian. I never
+heard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking near
+Gort, and she called out, 'There's the fool of the forth coming after
+me.' So her friends that were with her called out, though they could
+see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no harm.
+He was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that is all
+she said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a cousin of
+Hearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years." The wife of the old
+miller said, "It is said they are mostly good neighbours, but the
+stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets that
+is gone. The Amadan-na-Breena we call him!" And an old woman who lives
+in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, "It is true enough,
+there is no cure for the stroke of the Amadan-na-Breena. There was an
+old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell what diseases
+you had with measuring you; and he knew many things. And he said to me
+one time, 'What month of the year is the worst?' and I said, 'The month
+of May, of course.' 'It is not,' he said; 'but the month of June, for
+that's the month that the Amadan gives his stroke!' They say he looks
+like any other man, but he's leathan (wide), and not smart. I knew a
+boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb looked over the wall at him
+with a beard on it, and he knew it was the Amadan, for it was the month
+of June. And they brought him to that man I was telling about, that had
+the tape, and when he saw him he said, 'Send for the priest, and get a
+Mass said over him.' And so they did, and what would you say but he's
+living yet and has a family! A certain Regan said, 'They, the other
+sort of people, might be passing you close here and they might touch
+you. But any that gets the touch of the Amadan-na-Breena is done for.'
+It's true enough that it's in the month of June he's most likely to
+give the touch. I knew one that got it, and he told me about it
+himself. He was a boy I knew well, and he told me that one night a
+gentleman came to him, that had been his land-lord, and that was dead.
+And he told him to come along with him, for he wanted him to fight
+another man. And when he went he found two great troops of them, and
+the other troop had a living man with them too, and he was put to fight
+him. And they had a great fight, and he got the better of the other
+man, and then the troop on his side gave a great shout, and he was left
+home again. But about three years after that he was cutting bushes in a
+wood and he saw the Amadan coming at him. He had a big vessel in his
+arms, and it was shining, so that the boy could see nothing else; but
+he put it behind his back then and came running, and the boy said he
+looked wild and wide, like the side of the hill. And the boy ran, and
+he threw the vessel after him, and it broke with a great noise, and
+whatever came out of it, his head was gone there and then. He lived for
+a while after, and used to tell us many things, but his wits were gone.
+He thought they mightn't have liked him to beat the other man, and he
+used to be afraid something would come on him." And an old woman in a
+Galway workhouse, who had some little knowledge of Queen Maive, said
+the other day, "The Amadan-na-Breena changes his shape every two days.
+Sometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he'll come like the worst
+of beasts, trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of
+late he was shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him."
+
+I knew a man who was trying to bring before his mind's eye an image of
+Aengus, the old Irish god of love and poetry and ecstasy, who changed
+four of his kisses into birds, and suddenly the image of a man with a
+cap and bells rushed before his mind's eye, and grew vivid and spoke
+and called itself "Aengus' messenger." And I knew another man, a truly
+great seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there was
+a tree with peacocks' feathers instead of leaves, and flowers that
+opened to show little human faces when the white fool had touched them
+with his coxcomb, and he saw at another time a white fool sitting by a
+pool and smiling and watching the images of many fair women floating up
+from the pool.
+
+What else can death be but the beginning of wisdom and power and
+beauty? and foolishness may be a kind of death. I cannot think it
+wonderful that many should see a fool with a shining vessel of some
+enchantment or wisdom or dream too powerful for mortal brains in "every
+household of them." It is natural, too, that there should be a queen to
+every household of them, and that one should hear little of their
+kings, for women come more easily than men to that wisdom which ancient
+peoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom. The
+self, which is the foundation of our knowledge, is broken in pieces by
+foolishness, and is forgotten in the sudden emotions of women, and
+therefore fools may get, and women do get of a certainty, glimpses of
+much that sanctity finds at the end of its painful journey. The man who
+saw the white fool said of a certain woman, not a peasant woman, "If I
+had her power of vision I would know all the wisdom of the gods, and
+her visions do not interest her." And I know of another woman, also not
+a peasant woman, who would pass in sleep into countries of an unearthly
+beauty, and who never cared for anything but to be busy about her house
+and her children; and presently an herb doctor cured her, as he called
+it. Wisdom and beauty and power may sometimes, as I think, come to
+those who die every day they live, though their dying may not be like
+the dying Shakespeare spoke of. There is a war between the living and
+the dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it. They will have it
+that when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of the
+earth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their wisdom
+when the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make the trees
+wither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery in
+November, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes. Because the
+soul always believes in these, or in like things, the cell and the
+wilderness shall never be long empty, or lovers come into the world who
+will not understand the verse--
+
+
+    Heardst thou not sweet words among
+    That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
+    Heardst thou not that those who die
+    Awake in a world of ecstasy?
+    How love, when limbs are interwoven,
+    And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
+    And thought to the world's dim boundaries clinging,
+    And music when one's beloved is singing,
+    Is death?
+
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE OF FAERY
+
+
+Those that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of
+their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to
+have a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has
+passed the threshold of trance, to those sweet waters where Maeldun saw
+the dishevelled eagles bathe and become young again.
+
+There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of
+Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the
+end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told
+me a few months before his death that "they" would not let him sleep at
+night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their pipes.
+He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend had told
+him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or to play
+on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and he did,
+and they always went out into the field when he began to play. He
+showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he did
+not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his
+chimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the
+pipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for
+she heard that "three of them" had told him he was to die. He said they
+had gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they
+had "taken," I suppose) who used to come with them, and play about the
+house with them, had "gone to some other place," because "they found
+the house too cold for them, maybe"; and he died a week after he had
+said these things.
+
+His neighbours were not certain that he really saw anything in his old
+age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young
+man. His brother said, "Old he is, and it's all in his brain the things
+he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him." But he was
+improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, "The
+poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a
+fine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two
+lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they
+took away Fallon's little girl." And she told how Fallon's little girl
+had met a woman "with red hair that was as bright as silver," who took
+her away. Another neighbour, who was herself "clouted over the ear" by
+one of them for going into a fort where they were, said, "I believe
+it's mostly in his head they are; and when he stood in the door last
+night I said, 'The wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it
+never stops,' to make him think it was the same with him; but he says,
+'I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them is
+after bringing out a little flute, and it's on it he's playing to
+them.' And this I know, that when he pulled down the chimney where he
+said the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones, and
+he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and
+strong."
+
+A friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms of
+true friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down
+accurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman's story some
+time before I heard of it, got her to tell it over again, and wrote it
+out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not like
+being in the house alone because of the ghosts and fairies; and the old
+woman said, "There's nothing to be frightened about in faeries, miss.
+Many's the time I talked to a woman myself that was a faery, or
+something of the sort, and no less and more than mortal anyhow. She
+used to come about your grandfather's house--your mother's grandfather,
+that is--in my young days. But you'll have heard all about her." My
+friend said that she had heard about her, but a long time before, and
+she wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went on, "Well
+dear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming about was
+when your uncle--that is, your mother's uncle--Joseph married, and
+building a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his
+father's, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living
+nigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men
+at their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all
+there into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked
+out, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come
+yet; and one day I was standing with my mother foment the house, when
+we sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I
+was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
+I mind her as well as if I saw her there now!" My friend asked how the
+woman was dressed, and the old woman said, "It was a gray cloak she had
+on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied round
+her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times." My
+friend asked, "How wee was she?" And the old woman said, "Well now, she
+wasn't wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the Wee
+Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you would
+say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round in the
+face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother's sister, and Betty was
+like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of them. She
+was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married, and she
+never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee Woman--her
+being like Betty--was, maybe, one of their own people that had been
+took off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was
+always following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks
+straight over to where my mother was standing. 'Go over to the Lough
+this minute!'--ordering her like that--'Go over to the Lough, and tell
+Joseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I'll
+show you fornent the thornbush. That is where it is to be built, if he
+is to have luck and prosperity, so do what I'm telling ye this minute.'
+The house was being built on 'the path' I suppose--the path used by the
+people of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down and
+shows him, and he changes the foundations, the way he was bid, but
+didn't bring it exactly to where was pointed, and the end of that was,
+when he come to the house, his own wife lost her life with an accident
+that come to a horse that hadn't room to turn right with a harrow
+between the bush and the wall. The Wee Woman was queer and angry when
+next she come, and says to us, 'He didn't do as I bid him, but he'll
+see what he'll see."' My friend asked where the woman came from this
+time, and if she was dressed as before, and the woman said, "Always the
+same way, up the field beyant the burn. It was a thin sort of shawl she
+had about her in summer, and a cloak about her in winter; and many and
+many a time she came, and always it was good advice she was giving to
+my mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck.
+There was none of the other children of us ever seen her unless me; but
+I used to be glad when I seen her coming up the bum, and would run out
+and catch her by the hand and the cloak, and call to my mother, 'Here's
+the Wee Woman!' No man body ever seen her. My father used to be wanting
+to, and was angry with my mother and me, thinking we were telling lies
+and talking foolish like. And so one day when she had come, and was
+sitting by the fireside talking to my mother, I slips out to the field
+where he was digging. 'Come up,' says I, 'if ye want to see her. She's
+sitting at the fireside now, talking to mother.' So in he comes with me
+and looks round angry like and sees nothing, and he up with a broom
+that was near hand and hits me a crig with it. 'Take that now!' says
+he, 'for making a fool of me!' and away with him as fast as he could,
+and queer and angry with me. The Wee Woman says to me then, 'Ye got
+that now for bringing people to see me. No man body ever seen me, and
+none ever will.'
+
+"There was one day, though, she gave him a queer fright anyway,
+whether he had seen her or not. He was in among the cattle when it
+happened, and he comes up to the house all trembling like. 'Don't let
+me hear you say another word of your Wee Woman. I have got enough of
+her this time.' Another time, all the same, he was up Gortin to sell
+horses, and before he went off, in steps the Wee Woman and says she to
+my mother, holding out a sort of a weed, 'Your man is gone up by
+Gortin, and there's a bad fright waiting him coming home, but take this
+and sew it in his coat, and he'll get no harm by it.' My mother takes
+the herb, but thinks to herself, 'Sure there's nothing in it,' and
+throws it on the floor, and lo and behold, and sure enough! coming home
+from Gortin, my father got as bad a fright as ever he got in his life.
+What it was I don't right mind, but anyway he was badly damaged by it.
+My mother was in a queer way, frightened of the Wee Woman, after what
+she done, and sure enough the next time she was angry. 'Ye didn't
+believe me,' she said, 'and ye threw the herb I gave ye in the fire,
+and I went far enough for it.' There was another time she came and told
+how William Hearne was dead in America. 'Go over,' she says, 'to the
+Lough, and say that William is dead, and he died happy, and this was
+the last Bible chapter ever he read,' and with that she gave the verse
+and chapter. 'Go,' she says, 'and tell them to read them at the next
+class meeting, and that I held his head while he died.' And sure enough
+word came after that how William had died on the day she named. And,
+doing as she did about the chapter and hymn, they never had such a
+prayer-meeting as that. One day she and me and my mother was standing
+talking, and she was warning her about something, when she says of a
+sudden, 'Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery, and it's time for me
+to be off.' And with that she gave a swirl round on her feet, and
+raises up in the air, and round and round she goes, and up and up, as
+if it was a winding stairs she went up, only far swifter. She went up
+and up, till she was no bigger than a bird up against the clouds,
+singing and singing the whole time the loveliest music I ever heard in
+my life from that day to this. It wasn't a hymn she was singing, but
+poetry, lovely poetry, and me and my mother stands gaping up, and all
+of a tremble. 'What is she at all, mother?' says I. 'Is it an angel she
+is, or a faery woman, or what?' With that up come Miss Letty, that was
+your grandmother, dear, but Miss Letty she was then, and no word of her
+being anything else, and she wondered to see us gaping up that way,
+till me and my mother told her of it. She went on gay-dressed then, and
+was lovely looking. She was up the lane where none of us could see her
+coming forward when the Wee Woman rose up in that queer way, saying,
+'Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery.' Who knows to what far
+country she went, or to see whom dying?
+
+"It was never after dark she came, but daylight always, as far as I
+mind, but wanst, and that was on a Hallow Eve night. My mother was by
+the fire, making ready the supper; she had a duck down and some apples.
+In slips the Wee Woman, 'I'm come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,' says
+she. 'That's right,' says my mother, and thinks to herself, 'I can give
+her her supper nicely.' Down she sits by the fire a while. 'Now I'll
+tell you where you'll bring my supper,' says she. 'In the room beyond
+there beside the loom--set a chair in and a plate.' 'When ye're
+spending the night, mayn't ye as well sit by the table and eat with the
+rest of us?' 'Do what you're bid, and set whatever you give me in the
+room beyant. I'll eat there and nowhere else.' So my mother sets her a
+plate of duck and some apples, whatever was going, in where she bid,
+and we got to our supper and she to hers; and when we rose I went in,
+and there, lo and behold ye, was her supper-plate a bit ate of each
+portion, and she clean gone!"
+
+
+1897.
+
+
+
+
+DREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL
+
+
+The friend who heard about Maive and the hazel-stick went to the
+workhouse another day. She found the old people cold and wretched,
+"like flies in winter," she said; but they forgot the cold when they
+began to talk. A man had just left them who had played cards in a rath
+with the people of faery, who had played "very fair"; and one old man
+had seen an enchanted black pig one night, and there were two old
+people my friend had heard quarrelling as to whether Raftery or
+Callanan was the better poet. One had said of Raftery, "He was a big
+man, and his songs have gone through the whole world. I remember him
+well. He had a voice like the wind"; but the other was certain "that
+you would stand in the snow to listen to Callanan." Presently an old
+man began to tell my friend a story, and all listened delightedly,
+bursting into laughter now and then. The story, which I am going to
+tell just as it was told, was one of those old rambling moralless
+tales, which are the delight of the poor and the hard driven, wherever
+life is left in its natural simplicity. They tell of a time when
+nothing had consequences, when even if you were killed, if only you had
+a good heart, somebody would bring you to life again with a touch of a
+rod, and when if you were a prince and happened to look exactly like
+your brother, you might go to bed with his queen, and have only a
+little quarrel afterwards. We too, if we were so weak and poor that
+everything threatened us with misfortune, would remember, if foolish
+people left us alone, every old dream that has been strong enough to
+fling the weight of the world from its shoulders.
+
+There was a king one time who was very much put out because he had no
+son, and he went at last to consult his chief adviser. And the chief
+adviser said, "It's easy enough managed if you do as I tell you. Let
+you send some one," says he, "to such a place to catch a fish. And when
+the fish is brought in, give it to the queen, your wife, to eat."
+
+So the king sent as he was told, and the fish was caught and brought
+in, and he gave it to the cook, and bade her put it before the fire,
+but to be careful with it, and not to let any blob or blister rise on
+it. But it is impossible to cook a fish before the fire without the
+skin of it rising in some place or other, and so there came a blob on
+the skin, and the cook put her finger on it to smooth it down, and then
+she put her finger into her mouth to cool it, and so she got a taste of
+the fish. And then it was sent up to the queen, and she ate it, and
+what was left of it was thrown out into the yard, and there was a mare
+in the yard and a greyhound, and they ate the bits that were thrown out.
+
+And before a year was out, the queen had a young son, and the cook had
+a young son, and the mare had two foals, and the greyhound had two pups.
+
+And the two young sons were sent out for a while to some place to be
+cared, and when they came back they adviser and said, "Tell me some way
+that I can know were so much like one another no person could know
+which was the queen's son and which was the cook's. And the queen was
+vexed at that, and she went to the chief which is my own son, for I
+don't like to be giving the same eating and drinking to the cook's son
+as to my own." "It is easy to know that," said the chief adviser, "if
+you will do as I tell you. Go you outside, and stand at the door they
+will be coming in by, and when they see you, your own son will bow his
+head, but the cook's son will only laugh."
+
+So she did that, and when her own son bowed his head, her servants put
+a mark on him that she would know him again. And when they were all
+sitting at their dinner after that, she said to Jack, that was the
+cook's son, "It is time for you to go away out of this, for you are not
+my son." And her own son, that we will call Bill, said, "Do not send
+him away, are we not brothers?" But Jack said, "I would have been long
+ago out of this house if I knew it was not my own father and mother
+owned it." And for all Bill could say to him, he would not stop. But
+before he went, they were by the well that was in the garden, and he
+said to Bill, "If harm ever happens to me, that water on the top of the
+well will be blood, and the water below will be honey."
+
+Then he took one of the pups, and one of the two horses, that was
+foaled after the mare eating the fish, and the wind that was after him
+could not catch him, and he caught the wind that was before him. And he
+went on till he came to a weaver's house, and he asked him for a
+lodging, and he gave it to him. And then he went on till he came to a
+king's house, and he sent in at the door to ask, "Did he want a
+servant?" "All I want," said the king, "is a boy that will drive out
+the cows to the field every morning, and bring them in at night to be
+milked." "I will do that for you," said Jack; so the king engaged him.
+
+In the morning Jack was sent out with the four-and-twenty cows, and
+the place he was told to drive them to had not a blade of grass in it
+for them, but was full of stones. So Jack looked about for some place
+where there would be better grass, and after a while he saw a field
+with good green grass in it, and it belonging to a giant. So he knocked
+down a bit of the wall and drove them in, and he went up himself into
+an apple-tree and began to eat the apples. Then the giant came into the
+field. "Fee-faw-fum," says he, "I smell the blood of an Irishman. I see
+you where you are, up in the tree," he said; "you are too big for one
+mouthful, and too small for two mouthfuls, and I don't know what I'll
+do with you if I don't grind you up and make snuff for my nose." "As
+you are strong, be merciful," says Jack up in the tree. "Come down out
+of that, you little dwarf," said the giant, "or I'll tear you and the
+tree asunder." So Jack came down. "Would you sooner be driving red-hot
+knives into one another's hearts," said the giant, "or would you sooner
+be fighting one another on red-hot flags?" "Fighting on red-hot flags
+is what I'm used to at home," said Jack, "and your dirty feet will be
+sinking in them and my feet will be rising." So then they began the
+fight. The ground that was hard they made soft, and the ground that was
+soft they made hard, and they made spring wells come up through the
+green flags. They were like that all through the day, no one getting
+the upper hand of the other, and at last a little bird came and sat on
+the bush and said to Jack, "If you don't make an end of him by sunset,
+he'll make an end of you." Then Jack put out his strength, and he
+brought the giant down on his knees. "Give me my life," says the giant,
+"and I'll give you the three best gifts." "What are those?" said Jack.
+"A sword that nothing can stand against, and a suit that when you put
+it on, you will see everybody, and nobody will see you, and a pair of
+shoes that will make you ran faster than the wind blows." "Where are
+they to be found?" said Jack. "In that red door you see there in the
+hill." So Jack went and got them out. "Where will I try the sword?"
+says he. "Try it on that ugly black stump of a tree," says the giant.
+"I see nothing blacker or uglier than your own head," says Jack. And
+with that he made one stroke, and cut off the giant's head that it went
+into the air, and he caught it on the sword as it was coming down, and
+made two halves of it. "It is well for you I did not join the body
+again," said the head, "or you would have never been able to strike it
+off again." "I did not give you the chance of that," said Jack. And he
+brought away the great suit with him.
+
+So he brought the cows home at evening, and every one wondered at all
+the milk they gave that night. And when the king was sitting at dinner
+with the princess, his daughter, and the rest, he said, "I think I only
+hear two roars from beyond to-night in place of three."
+
+The next morning Jack went out again with the cows, and he saw another
+field full of grass, and he knocked down the wall and let the cows in.
+All happened the same as the day before, but the giant that came this
+time had two heads, and they fought together, and the little bird came
+and spoke to Jack as before. And when Jack had brought the giant down,
+he said, "Give me my life, and I'll give you the best thing I have."
+"What is that?" says Jack. "It's a suit that you can put on, and you
+will see every one but no one can see you." "Where is it?" said Jack.
+"It's inside that little red door at the side of the hill." So Jack
+went and brought out the suit. And then he cut off the giant's two
+heads, and caught them coming down and made four halves of them. And
+they said it was well for him he had not given them time to join the
+body.
+
+That night when the cows came home they gave so much milk that all the
+vessels that could be found were filled up.
+
+The next morning Jack went out again, and all happened as before, and
+the giant this time had four heads, and Jack made eight halves of them.
+And the giant had told him to go to a little blue door in the side of
+the hill, and there he got a pair of shoes that when you put them on
+would go faster than the wind.
+
+That night the cows gave so much milk that there were not vessels
+enough to hold it, and it was given to tenants and to poor people
+passing the road, and the rest was thrown out at the windows. I was
+passing that way myself, and I got a drink of it.
+
+That night the king said to Jack, "Why is it the cows are giving so
+much milk these days? Are you bringing them to any other grass?" "I am
+not," said Jack, "but I have a good stick, and whenever they would stop
+still or lie down, I give them blows of it, that they jump and leap
+over walls and stones and ditches; that's the way to make cows give
+plenty of milk."
+
+And that night at the dinner, the king said, "I hear no roars at all."
+
+The next morning, the king and the princess were watching at the
+window to see what would Jack do when he got to the field. And Jack
+knew they were there, and he got a stick, and began to batter the cows,
+that they went leaping and jumping over stones, and walls, and ditches.
+"There is no lie in what Jack said," said the king then.
+
+Now there was a great serpent at that time used to come every seven
+years, and he had to get a kines daughter to eat, unless she would have
+some good man to fight for her. And it was the princess at the place
+Jack was had to be given to it that time, and the king had been feeding
+a bully underground for seven years, and you may believe he got the
+best of everything, to be ready to fight it.
+
+And when the time came, the princess went out, and the bully with her
+down to the shore, and when they got there what did he do, but to tie
+the princess to a tree, the way the serpent would be able to swallow
+her easy with no delay, and he himself went and hid up in an ivy-tree.
+And Jack knew what was going on, for the princess had told him about
+it, and had asked would he help her, but he said he would not. But he
+came out now, and he put on the suit he had taken from the first giant,
+and he came by the place the princess was, but she didn't know him. "Is
+that right for a princess to be tied to a tree?" said Jack. "It is not,
+indeed," said she, and she told him what had happened, and how the
+serpent was coming to take her. "If you will let me sleep for awhile
+with my head in your lap," said Jack, "you could wake me when it is
+coming." So he did that, and she awakened him when she saw the serpent
+coming, and Jack got up and fought with it, and drove it back into the
+sea. And then he cut the rope that fastened her, and he went away. The
+bully came down then out of the tree, and he brought the princess to
+where the king was, and he said, "I got a friend of mine to come and
+fight the serpent to-day, where I was a little timorous after being so
+long shut up underground, but I'll do the fighting myself to-morrow."
+
+The next day they went out again, and the same thing happened, the
+bully tied up the princess where the serpent could come at her fair and
+easy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree. Then Jack put on the
+suit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and the
+princess did not know him, but she told him all that had happened
+yesterday, and how some young gentleman she did not know had come and
+saved her. So Jack asked might he lie down and take a sleep with his
+head in her lap, the way she could awake him. And an happened the same
+way as the day before. And the bully gave her up to the king, and said
+he had brought another of his friends to fight for her that day.
+
+The next day she was brought down to the shore as before, and a great
+many people gathered to see the serpent that was coming to bring the
+king's daughter away. And Jack brought out the suit of clothes he had
+brought away from the third giant, and she did not know him, and they
+talked as before. But when he was asleep this time, she thought she
+would make sure of being able to find him again, and she took out her
+scissors and cut off a piece of his hair, and made a little packet of
+it and put it away. And she did another thing, she took off one of the
+shoes that was on his feet.
+
+And when she saw the serpent coming she woke him, and he said, "This
+time I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king's
+daughters." So he took out the sword he had got from the giant, and he
+put it in at the back of the serpent's neck, the way blood and water
+came spouting out that went for fifty miles inland, and made an end of
+him. And then he made off, and no one saw what way he went, and the
+bully brought the princess to the king, and claimed to have saved her,
+and it is he who was made much of, and was the right-hand man after
+that.
+
+But when the feast was made ready for the wedding, the princess took
+out the bit of hair she had, and she said she would marry no one but
+the man whose hair would match that, and she showed the shoe and said
+that she would marry no one whose foot would not fit that shoe as well.
+And the bully tried to put on the shoe, but so much as his toe would
+not go into it, and as to his hair, it didn't match at all to the bit
+of hair she had cut from the man that saved her.
+
+So then the king gave a great ball, to bring all the chief men of the
+country together to try would the shoe fit any of them. And they were
+all going to carpenters and joiners getting bits of their feet cut off
+to try could they wear the shoe, but it was no use, not one of them
+could get it on.
+
+Then the king went to his chief adviser and asked what could he do.
+And the chief adviser bade him to give another ball, and this time he
+said, "Give it to poor as well as rich."
+
+So the ball was given, and many came flocking to it, but the shoe
+would not fit any one of them. And the chief adviser said, "Is every
+one here that belongs to the house?" "They are all here," said the
+king, "except the boy that minds the cows, and I would not like him to
+be coming up here."
+
+Jack was below in the yard at the time, and he heard what the king
+said, and he was very angry, and he went and got his sword and came
+running up the stairs to strike off the king's head, but the man that
+kept the gate met him on the stairs before he could get to the king,
+and quieted him down, and when he got to the top of the stairs and the
+princess saw him, she gave a cry and ran into his arms. And they tried
+the shoe and it fitted him, and his hair matched to the piece that had
+been cut off. So then they were married, and a great feast was given
+for three days and three nights.
+
+And at the end of that time, one morning there came a deer outside the
+window, with bells on it, and they ringing. And it called out, "Here is
+the hunt, where is the huntsman and the hound?" So when Jack heard that
+he got up and took his horse and his hound and went hunting the deer.
+When it was in the hollow he was on the hill, and when it was on the
+hill he was in the hollow, and that went on all through the day, and
+when night fell it went into a wood. And Jack went into the wood after
+it, and all he could see was a mud-wall cabin, and he went in, and
+there he saw an old woman, about two hundred years old, and she sitting
+over the fire. "Did you see a deer pass this way?" says Jack. "I did
+not," says she, "but it's too late now for you to be following a deer,
+let you stop the night here." "What will I do with my horse and my
+hound?" said Jack. "Here are two ribs of hair," says she, "and let you
+tie them up with them." So Jack went out and tied up the horse and the
+hound, and when he came in again the old woman said, "You killed my
+three sons, and I'm going to kill you now," and she put on a pair of
+boxing-gloves, each one of them nine stone weight, and the nails in
+them fifteen inches long. Then they began to fight, and Jack was
+getting the worst of it. "Help, hound!" he cried out, then "Squeeze
+hair," cried out the old woman, and the rib of hair that was about the
+hound's neck squeezed him to death. "Help, horse!" Jack called out,
+then, "Squeeze hair," called out the old woman, and the rib of hair
+that was about the horse's neck began to tighten and squeeze him to
+death. Then the old woman made an end of Jack and threw him outside the
+door.
+
+To go back now to Bill. He was out in the garden one day, and he took
+a look at the well, and what did he see but the water at the top was
+blood, and what was underneath was honey. So he went into the house
+again, and he said to his mother, "I will never eat a second meal at
+the same table, or sleep a second night in the same bed, till I know
+what is happening to Jack."
+
+So he took the other horse and hound then, and set off, over the hills
+where cock never crows and horn never sounds, and the devil never blows
+his bugle. And at last he came to the weaver's house, and when he went
+in, the weaver says, "You are welcome, and I can give you better
+treatment than I did the last time you came in to me," for she thought
+it was Jack who was there, they were so much like one another. "That is
+good," said Bill to himself, "my brother has been here." And he gave
+the weaver the full of a basin of gold in the morning before he left.
+
+Then he went on till he came to the king's house, and when he was at
+the door the princess came running down the stairs, and said, "Welcome
+to you back again." And all the people said, "It is a wonder you have
+gone hunting three days after your marriage, and to stop so long away."
+So he stopped that night with the princess, and she thought it was her
+own husband all the time.
+
+And in the morning the deer came, and bells ringing on her, under the
+windows, and called out, "The hunt is here, where are the huntsmen and
+the hounds?" Then Bill got up and got his horse and his hound, and
+followed her over hills and hollows till they came to the wood, and
+there he saw nothing but the mud-wall cabin and the old woman sitting
+by the fire, and she bade him stop the night there, and gave him two
+ribs of hair to tie his horse and his hound with. But Bill was wittier
+than Jack was, and before he went out, he threw the ribs of hair into
+the fire secretly. When he came in the old woman said, "Your brother
+killed my three sons, and I killed him, and I'll kill you along with
+him." And she put her gloves on, and they began the fight, and then
+Bill called out, "Help, horse." "Squeeze hair," called the old woman;
+"I can't squeeze, I'm in the fire," said the hair. And the horse came
+in and gave her a blow of his hoof. "Help, hound," said Bill then.
+"Squeeze, hair," said the old woman; "I can't, I'm in the fire," said
+the second hair. Then the bound put his teeth in her, and Bill brought
+her down, and she cried for mercy. "Give me my life," she said, "and
+I'll tell you where you'll get your brother again, and his hound and
+horse." "Where's that?" said Bill. "Do you see that rod over the fire?"
+said she; "take it down and go outside the door where you'll see three
+green stones, and strike them with the rod, for they are your brother,
+and his horse and hound, and they'll come to life again." "I will, but
+I'll make a green stone of you first," said Bill, and he cut off her
+head with his sword.
+
+Then he went out and struck the stones, and sure enough there were
+Jack, and his horse and hound, alive and well. And they began striking
+other stones around, and men came from them, that had been turned to
+stones, hundreds and thousands of them.
+
+Then they set out for home, but on the way they had some dispute or
+some argument together, for Jack was not well pleased to hear he had
+spent the night with his wife, and Bill got angry, and he struck Jack
+with the rod, and turned him to a green stone. And he went home, but
+the princess saw he had something on his mind, and he said then, "I
+have killed my brother." And he went back then and brought him to life,
+and they lived happy ever after, and they had children by the
+basketful, and threw them out by the shovelful. I was passing one time
+myself, and they called me in and gave me a cup of tea.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+BY THE ROADSIDE
+
+
+Last night I went to a wide place on the Kiltartan road to listen to
+some Irish songs. While I waited for the singers an old man sang about
+that country beauty who died so many years ago, and spoke of a singer
+he had known who sang so beautifully that no horse would pass him, but
+must turn its head and cock its ears to listen. Presently a score of
+men and boys and girls, with shawls over their beads, gathered under
+the trees to listen. Somebody sang Sa Muirnin Diles, and then somebody
+else Jimmy Mo Milestor, mournful songs of separation, of death, and of
+exile. Then some of the men stood up and began to dance, while another
+lilted the measure they danced to, and then somebody sang Eiblin a
+Ruin, that glad song of meeting which has always moved me more than
+other songs, because the lover who made it sang it to his sweetheart
+under the shadow of a mountain I looked at every day through my
+childhood. The voices melted into the twilight and were mixed into the
+trees, and when I thought of the words they too melted away, and were
+mixed with the generations of men. Now it was a phrase, now it was an
+attitude of mind, an emotional form, that had carried my memory to
+older verses, or even to forgotten mythologies. I was carried so far
+that it was as though I came to one of the four rivers, and followed it
+under the wall of Paradise to the roots of the trees of knowledge and
+of life. There is no song or story handed down among the cottages that
+has not words and thoughts to carry one as far, for though one can know
+but a little of their ascent, one knows that they ascend like medieval
+genealogies through unbroken dignities to the beginning of the world.
+Folk art is, indeed, the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and
+because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and
+pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has
+gathered into itself the simplest and most unforgetable thoughts of the
+generations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted. Wherever it
+is spoken by the fireside, or sung by the roadside, or carved upon the
+lintel, appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and
+design to, spreads quickly when its hour is come.
+
+In a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few
+people--three or four thousand out of millions--favoured by their own
+characters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour,
+have understanding of imaginative things, and yet "the imagination is
+the man himself." The churches in the Middle Age won all the arts into
+their service because men understood that when imagination is
+impoverished, a principal voice--some would say the only voice--for the
+awakening of wise hope and durable faith, and understanding charity,
+can speak but in broken words, if it does not fall silent. And so it
+has always seemed to me that we, who would re-awaken imaginative
+tradition by making old songs live again, or by gathering old stories
+into books, take part in the quarrel of Galilee. Those who are Irish
+and would spread foreign ways, which, for all but a few, are ways of
+spiritual poverty, take part also. Their part is with those who were of
+Jewry, and yet cried out, "If thou let this man go thou art not
+Caesar's friend."
+
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+INTO THE TWILIGHT
+
+
+    Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
+    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
+    Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight;
+    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
+    Thy mother Eire is always young,
+    Dew ever shining and twilight gray,
+    Though hope fall from thee or love decay
+    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
+    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill,
+    For there the mystical brotherhood
+    Of hollow wood and the hilly wood
+    And the changing moon work out their will.
+    And God stands winding his lonely horn;
+    And Time and World are ever in flight,
+    And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
+    And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celtic Twilight, by W. B. Yeats
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELTIC TWILIGHT ***
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10459 ***
+
+THE CELTIC TWILIGHT
+
+by
+
+W. B. YEATS
+
+
+
+
+
+    Time drops in decay
+    Like a candle burnt out.
+    And the mountains and woods
+    Have their day, have their day;
+    But, kindly old rout
+    Of the fire-born moods,
+    You pass not away.
+
+
+
+
+    THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE
+
+
+    The host is riding from Knocknarea,
+    And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
+    Caolte tossing his burning hair,
+    And Niamh calling, "Away, come away;
+    Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
+    The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
+    Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
+    Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
+    Our arms are waving, our lips are apart,
+    And if any gaze on our rushing band,
+    We come between him and the deed of his hand,
+    We come between him and the hope of his heart."
+    The host is rushing 'twixt night and day;
+    And where is there hope or deed as fair?
+    Caolte tossing his burning hair,
+    And Niamh calling, "Away, come away."
+
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the
+beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy
+world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any
+of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore
+written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen,
+and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.
+I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those
+of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and
+faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine.
+The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull
+them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can
+weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too
+have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it,
+and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.
+
+Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has
+built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out
+their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved
+daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.
+
+
+1893.
+
+
+
+II
+
+I have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old ones, and
+would have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something
+of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both
+hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no
+great loss per haps. In these new chapters, as in the old ones, I have
+invented nothing but my comments and one or two deceitful sentences
+that may keep some poor story-teller's commerce with the devil and his
+angels, or the like, from being known among his neighbours. I shall
+publish in a little while a big book about the commonwealth of faery,
+and shall try to make it systematical and learned enough to buy pardon
+for this handful of dreams.
+
+
+1902.
+
+W. B. YEATS.
+
+
+
+
+A TELLER OF TALES
+
+
+Many of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a
+little bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin
+in the village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, "the most
+gentle"--whereby he meant faery--"place in the whole of County Sligo."
+Others hold it, however, but second to Drumcliff and Drumahair. The
+first time I saw him he was cooking mushrooms for himself; the next
+time he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep. He was indeed
+always cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes (swift as the
+eyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled holes) a
+melancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy; the visionary
+melancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.
+
+And yet there was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple
+solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went about much
+pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever
+recommended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of
+telling how Collumcille cheered up his mother. "How are you to-day,
+mother?" said the saint. "Worse," replied the mother. "May you be worse
+to-morrow," said the saint. The next day Collumcille came again, and
+exactly the same conversation took place, but the third day the mother
+said, "Better, thank God." And the saint replied, "May you be better
+to-morrow." He was fond too of telling how the Judge smiles at the last
+day alike when he rewards the good and condemns the lost to unceasing
+flames. He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him
+sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, "Am I
+not annoyed with them?" I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. "I
+have seen it," he said, "down there by the water, batting the river
+with its hands."
+
+I have copied this account of Paddy Flynn, with a few verbal
+alterations, from a note-book which I almost filled with his tales and
+sayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-book
+regretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled up.
+Paddy Flynn is dead; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle of
+whiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so much
+liquor filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon it for
+some days and then died. His body, worn out with old age and hard
+times, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a great
+teller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to empty
+heaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland and earth, to people his
+stories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample
+circumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by
+his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of
+imagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the
+vehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need
+heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less
+than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find
+no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell,
+purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts
+to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of
+rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey
+the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is
+true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.
+
+
+
+
+BELIEF AND UNBELIEF
+
+
+There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told
+me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts.
+Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep
+people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go
+"trapsin about the earth" at their own free will; "but there are
+faeries," she added, "and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and
+fallen angels." I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed
+upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter
+what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the
+mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, "they stand to reason." Even the
+official mind does not escape this faith.
+
+A little girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close under
+the seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one night about
+three years ago. There was at once great excitement in the
+neighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken her.
+A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but
+at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a
+broomstick. The local constable was applied to, and he at once
+instituted a house-to-house search, and at the same time advised the
+people to burn all the bucalauns (ragweed) on the field she vanished
+from, because bucalauns are sacred to the faeries. They spent the whole
+night burning them, the constable repeating spells the while. In the
+morning the little girl was found, the story goes, wandering in the
+field. She said the faeries had taken her away a great distance, riding
+on a faery horse. At last she saw a big river, and the man who had
+tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it--such are
+the topsy-turvydoms of faery glamour--in a cockleshell. On the way her
+companions had mentioned the names of several people who were about to
+die shortly in the village.
+
+Perhaps the constable was right. It is better doubtless to believe
+much unreason and a little truth than to deny for denial's sake truth
+and unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush candle
+to guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth to dance before us on the
+marsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where
+dwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great
+evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and
+welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself,
+whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the
+dhouls themselves, "Be ye gone"? When all is said and done, how do we
+not know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth?
+for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready
+for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.
+Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!
+
+
+
+
+MORTAL HELP
+
+
+One hears in the old poems of men taken away to help the gods in a
+battle, and Cuchullan won the goddess Fand for a while, by helping her
+married sister and her sister's husband to overthrow another nation of
+the Land of Promise. I have been told, too, that the people of faery
+cannot even play at hurley unless they have on either side some mortal,
+whose body, or whatever has been put in its place, as the story-teller
+would say, is asleep at home. Without mortal help they are shadowy and
+cannot even strike the balls. One day I was walking over some marshy
+land in Galway with a friend when we found an old, hard-featured man
+digging a ditch. My friend had heard that this man had seen a wonderful
+sight of some kind, and at last we got the story out of him. When he
+was a boy he was working one day with about thirty men and women and
+boys. They were beyond Tuam and not far from Knock-na-gur. Presently
+they saw, all thirty of them, and at a distance of about half-a-mile,
+some hundred and fifty of the people of faery. There were two of them,
+he said, in dark clothes like people of our own time, who stood about a
+hundred yards from one another, but the others wore clothes of all
+colours, "bracket" or chequered, and some with red waistcoats.
+
+He could not see what they were doing, but all might have been playing
+hurley, for "they looked as if it was that." Sometimes they would
+vanish, and then he would almost swear they came back out of the bodies
+of the two men in dark clothes. These two men were of the size of
+living men, but the others were small. He saw them for about half-an-
+hour, and then the old man he and those about him were working for took
+up a whip and said, "Get on, get on, or we will have no work done!" I
+asked if he saw the faeries too, "Oh, yes, but he did not want work he
+was paying wages for to be neglected." He made every body work so hard
+that nobody saw what happened to the faeries.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A VISIONARY
+
+
+A young man came to see me at my lodgings the other night, and began
+to talk of the making of the earth and the heavens and much else. I
+questioned him about his life and his doings. He had written many poems
+and painted many mystical designs since we met last, but latterly had
+neither written nor painted, for his whole heart was set upon making
+his mind strong, vigorous, and calm, and the emotional life of the
+artist was bad for him, he feared. He recited his poems readily,
+however. He had them all in his memory. Some indeed had never been
+written down. They, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the
+reeds,[FN#1] seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and
+of Celtic longing for infinite things the world has never seen.
+Suddenly it seemed to me that he was peering about him a little
+eagerly. "Do you see anything, X-----?" I said. "A shining, winged
+woman, covered by her long hair, is standing near the doorway," he
+answered, or some such words. "Is it the influence of some living
+person who thinks of us, and whose thoughts appear to us in that
+symbolic form?" I said; for I am well instructed in the ways of the
+visionaries and in the fashion of their speech. "No," he replied; "for
+if it were the thoughts of a person who is alive I should feel the
+living influence in my living body, and my heart would beat and my
+breath would fail. It is a spirit. It is some one who is dead or who
+has never lived."
+
+
+[FN#1]  I wrote this sentence long ago. This sadness now seems to me a
+part of all peoples who preserve the moods of the ancient peoples of
+the world. I am not so pre-occupied with the mystery of Race as I used
+to be, but leave this sentence and other sentences like it unchanged.
+We once believed them, and have, it may be, not grown wiser.
+
+
+I asked what he was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His
+pleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to half-
+mad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and conscience-
+stricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles into his
+care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging, more than
+one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and sun them
+as it were in the subtle light of his mind. Sometimes visions come to
+him as he talks with them, and he is rumoured to have told divers
+people true matters of their past days and distant friends, and left
+them hushed with dread of their strange teacher, who seems scarce more
+than a boy, and is so much more subtle than the oldest among them.
+
+The poetry he recited me was full of his nature and his visions.
+Sometimes it told of other lives he believes himself to have lived in
+other centuries, sometimes of people he had talked to, revealing them
+to their own minds. I told him I would write an article upon him and
+it, and was told in turn that I might do so if I did not mention his
+name, for he wished to be always "unknown, obscure, impersonal." Next
+day a bundle of his poems arrived, and with them a note in these words:
+"Here are copies of verses you said you liked. I do not think I could
+ever write or paint any more. I prepare myself for a cycle of other
+activities in some other life. I will make rigid my roots and branches.
+It is not now my turn to burst into leaves and flowers."
+
+The poems were all endeavours to capture some high, impalpable mood in
+a net of obscure images. There were fine passages in all, but these
+were often embedded in thoughts which have evidently a special value to
+his mind, but are to other men the counters of an unknown coinage. To
+them they seem merely so much brass or copper or tarnished silver at
+the best. At other times the beauty of the thought was obscured by
+careless writing as though he had suddenly doubted if writing was not a
+foolish labour. He had frequently illustrated his verses with drawings,
+in which an unperfect anatomy did not altogether hide extreme beauty of
+feeling. The faeries in whom he believes have given him many subjects,
+notably Thomas of Ercildoune sitting motionless in the twilight while a
+young and beautiful creature leans softly out of the shadow and
+whispers in his ear. He had delighted above all in strong effects of
+colour: spirits who have upon their heads instead of hair the feathers
+of peacocks; a phantom reaching from a swirl of flame towards a star; a
+spirit passing with a globe of iridescent crystal-symbol of the soul-
+half shut within his hand. But always under this largess of colour lay
+some tender homily addressed to man's fragile hopes. This spiritual
+eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for
+illumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone. One of these
+especially comes to mind. A winter or two ago he spent much of the
+night walking up and down upon the mountain talking to an old peasant
+who, dumb to most men, poured out his cares for him. Both were unhappy:
+X----- because he had then first decided that art and poetry were not
+for him, and the old peasant because his life was ebbing out with no
+achievement remaining and no hope left him. Both how Celtic! how full
+of striving after a something never to be completely expressed in word
+or deed. The peasant was wandering in his mind with prolonged sorrow.
+Once he burst out with "God possesses the heavens--God possesses the
+heavens--but He covets the world"; and once he lamented that his old
+neighbours were gone, and that all had forgotten him: they used to draw
+a chair to the fire for him in every cabin, and now they said, "Who is
+that old fellow there?" "The fret [Irish for doom] is over me," he
+repeated, and then went on to talk once more of God and heaven. More
+than once also he said, waving his arm towards the mountain, "Only
+myself knows what happened under the thorn-tree forty years ago"; and
+as he said it the tears upon his face glistened in the moonlight.
+
+This old man always rises before me when I think of X-----. Both seek
+--one in wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle
+allegoric poetry-to express a something that lies beyond the range of
+expression; and both, if X----- will forgive me, have within them the
+vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic
+heart. The peasant visionaries that are, the landlord duelists that
+were, and the whole hurly-burly of legends--Cuchulain fighting the sea
+for two days until the waves pass over him and he dies, Caolte storming
+the palace of the gods, Oisin seeking in vain for three hundred years
+to appease his insatiable heart with all the pleasures of faeryland,
+these two mystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the
+central dreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and
+this mind that finds them so interesting--all are a portion of that
+great Celtic phantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered, nor
+any angel revealed.
+
+
+
+
+VILLAGE GHOSTS
+
+
+In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our
+minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities;
+people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce.
+Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge.
+When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your
+favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it.
+We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all
+the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on
+unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all
+our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb
+multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering
+through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers
+wrote across unexplored regions, "Here are lions." Across the villages
+of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us,
+we can write but one line that is certain, "Here are ghosts."
+
+My ghosts inhabit the village of H-----, in Leinster. History has in
+no manner been burdened by this ancient village, with its crooked
+lanes, its old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green
+background of small fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry
+fishing-luggers. In the annals of entomology it is well known. For a
+small bay lies westward a little, where he who watches night after
+night may see a certain rare moth fluttering along the edge of the
+tide, just at the end of evening or the beginning of dawn. A hundred
+years ago it was carried here from Italy by smugglers in a cargo of
+silks and laces. If the moth-hunter would throw down his net, and go
+hunting for ghost tales or tales of the faeries and such-like children
+of Lillith, he would have need for far less patience.
+
+To approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy.
+A man was once heard complaining, "By the cross of Jesus! how shall I
+go? If I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on
+me. If I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the
+headless one and another on the quays, and a new one under the old
+churchyard wall. If I go right round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is
+appearing at Hillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital
+Lane."
+
+I never heard which spirit he braved, but feel sure it was not the one
+in the Hospital Lane. In cholera times a shed had been there set up to
+receive patients. When the need had gone by, it was pulled down, but
+ever since the ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and
+demons and faeries. There is a farmer at H-----, Paddy B----- by name-a
+man of great strength, and a teetotaller. His wife and sister-in-law,
+musing on his great strength, often wonder what he would do if he
+drank. One night when passing through the Hospital Lane, he saw what he
+supposed at first to be a tame rabbit; after a little he found that it
+was a white cat. When he came near, the creature slowly began to swell
+larger and larger, and as it grew he felt his own strength ebbing away,
+as though it were sucked out of him. He turned and ran.
+
+By the Hospital Lane goes the "Faeries Path." Every evening they
+travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea
+end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived
+there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband
+was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he
+had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, "In the name of
+God, who are you?" He got up and went out, saying, "Never leave the
+door open at this hour, or evil may come to you." She woke her husband
+and told him. "One of the good people has been with us," said he.
+
+Probably the man braved Mrs. Stewart at Hillside Gate. When she lived
+she was the wife of the Protestant clergyman. "Her ghost was never
+known to harm any one," say the village people; "it is only doing a
+penance upon the earth." Not far from Hillside Gate, where she haunted,
+appeared for a short time a much more remarkable spirit. Its haunt was
+the bogeen, a green lane leading from the western end of the village. I
+quote its history at length: a typical village tragedy. In a cottage at
+the village end of the bogeen lived a house-painter, Jim Montgomery,
+and his wife. They had several children. He was a little dandy, and
+came of a higher class than his neighbours. His wife was a very big
+woman. Her husband, who had been expelled from the village choir for
+drink, gave her a beating one day. Her sister heard of it, and came and
+took down one of the window shutters--Montgomery was neat about
+everything, and had shutters on the outside of every window--and beat
+him with it, being big and strong like her sister. He threatened to
+prosecute her; she answered that she would break every bone in his body
+if he did. She never spoke to her sister again, because she had allowed
+herself to be beaten by so small a man. Jim Montgomery grew worse and
+worse: his wife soon began to have not enough to eat. She told no one,
+for she was very proud. Often, too, she would have no fire on a cold
+night. If any neighbours came in she would say she had let the fire out
+because she was just going to bed. The people about often heard her
+husband beating her, but she never told any one. She got very thin. At
+last one Saturday there was no food in the house for herself and the
+children. She could bear it no longer, and went to the priest and asked
+him for some money. He gave her thirty shillings. Her husband met her,
+and took the money, and beat her. On the following Monday she got very
+W, and sent for a Mrs. Kelly. Mrs. Kelly, as soon as she saw her, said,
+"My woman, you are dying," and sent for the priest and the doctor. She
+died in an hour. After her death, as Montgomery neglected the children,
+the landlord had them taken to the workhouse. A few nights after they
+had gone, Mrs. Kelly was going home through the bogeen when the ghost
+of Mrs. Montgomery appeared and followed her. It did not leave her
+until she reached her own house. She told the priest, Father R, a noted
+antiquarian, and could not get him to believe her. A few nights
+afterwards Mrs. Kelly again met the spirit in the same place. She was
+in too great terror to go the whole way, but stopped at a neighbour's
+cottage midway, and asked them to let her in. They answered they were
+going to bed. She cried out, "In the name of God let me in, or I will
+break open the door." They opened, and so she escaped from the ghost.
+Next day she told the priest again. This time he believed, and said it
+would follow her until she spoke to it.
+
+She met the spirit a third time in the bogeen. She asked what kept it
+from its rest. The spirit said that its children must be taken from the
+workhouse, for none of its relations were ever there before, and that
+three masses were to be said for the repose of its soul. "If my husband
+does not believe you," she said, "show him that," and touched Mrs.
+Kelly's wrist with three fingers. The places where they touched swelled
+up and blackened. She then vanished. For a time Montgomery would not
+believe that his wife had appeared: "she would not show herself to Mrs.
+Kelly," he said--"she with respectable people to appear to." He was
+convinced by the three marks, and the children were taken from the
+workhouse. The priest said the masses, and the shade must have been at
+rest, for it has not since appeared. Some time afterwards Jim
+Montgomery died in the workhouse, having come to great poverty through
+drink.
+
+I know some who believe they have seen the headless ghost upon the
+quay, and one who, when he passes the old cemetery wall at night, sees
+a woman with white borders to her cap[FN#2] creep out and follow him.
+The apparition only leaves him at his own door. The villagers imagine
+that she follows him to avenge some wrong. "I will haunt you when I
+die" is a favourite threat. His wife was once half-scared to death by
+what she considers a demon in the shape of a dog.
+
+
+[FN#2]  I wonder why she had white borders to her cap. The old Mayo
+woman, who has told me so many tales, has told me that her brother-in-
+law saw "a woman with white borders to her cap going around the stacks
+in a field, and soon after he got a hurt, and he died in six months."
+
+
+These are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their
+tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.
+
+One night a Mrs. Nolan was watching by her dying child in Fluddy's
+Lane. Suddenly there was a sound of knocking heard at the door. She did
+not open, fearing it was some unhuman thing that knocked. The knocking
+ceased. After a little the front-door and then the back-door were burst
+open, and closed again. Her husband went to see what was wrong. He
+found both doors bolted. The child died. The doors were again opened
+and closed as before. Then Mrs. Nolan remembered that she had forgotten
+to leave window or door open, as the custom is, for the departure of
+the soul. These strange openings and closings and knockings were
+warnings and reminders from the spirits who attend the dying.
+
+The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is
+put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live
+with it. I remember two children who slept with their mother and
+sisters and brothers in one small room. In the room was also a ghost.
+They sold herrings in the Dublin streets, and did not mind the ghost
+much, because they knew they would always sell their fish easily while
+they slept in the "ha'nted" room.
+
+I have some acquaintance among the ghost-seers of western villages.
+The Connaught tales are very different from those of Leinster. These
+H----- spirits have a gloomy, matter-of-fact way with them. They come to
+announce a death, to fulfil some obligation, to revenge a wrong, to pay
+their bills even--as did a fisherman's daughter the other day--and then
+hasten to their rest. All things they do decently and in order. It is
+demons, and not ghosts, that transform themselves into white cats or
+black dogs. The people who tell the tales are poor, serious-minded
+fishing people, who find in the doings of the ghosts the fascination of
+fear. In the western tales is a whimsical grace, a curious extravagance.
+The people who recount them live in the most wild and beautiful scenery,
+under a sky ever loaded and fantastic with flying clouds. They are
+farmers and labourers, who do a little fishing now and then. They do not
+fear the spirits too much to feel an artistic and humorous pleasure in
+their doings. The ghosts themselves share in their quaint hilarity. In
+one western town, on whose deserted wharf the grass grows, these spirits
+have so much vigour that, when a misbeliever ventured to sleep in a
+haunted house, I have been told they flung him through the window, and
+his bed after him. In the surrounding villages the creatures use the
+most strange disguises. A dead old gentleman robs the cabbages of his
+own garden in the shape of a large rabbit. A wicked sea-captain stayed
+for years inside the plaster of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe,
+making the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was
+broken down; then out of the solid plaster the snipe rushed away whistling.
+
+
+
+
+"DUST HATH CLOSED HELEN'S EYE"
+
+
+I
+
+I have been lately to a little group of houses, not many enough to be
+called a village, in the barony of Kiltartan in County Galway, whose
+name, Ballylee, is known through all the west of Ireland. There is the
+old square castle, Ballylee, inhabited by a farmer and his wife, and a
+cottage where their daughter and their son-in-law live, and a little
+mill with an old miller, and old ash-trees throwing green shadows upon
+a little river and great stepping-stones. I went there two or three
+times last year to talk to the miller about Biddy Early, a wise woman
+that lived in Clare some years ago, and about her saying, "There is a
+cure for all evil between the two mill-wheels of Ballylee," and to find
+out from him or another whether she meant the moss between the running
+waters or some other herb. I have been there this summer, and I shall
+be there again before it is autumn, because Mary Hynes, a beautiful
+woman whose name is still a wonder by turf fires, died there sixty
+years ago; for our feet would linger where beauty has lived its life of
+sorrow to make us understand that it is not of the world. An old man
+brought me a little way from the mill and the castle, and down a long,
+narrow boreen that was nearly lost in brambles and sloe bushes, and he
+said, "That is the little old foundation of the house, but the most of
+it is taken for building walls, and the goats have ate those bushes
+that are growing over it till they've got cranky, and they won't grow
+any more. They say she was the handsomest girl in Ireland, her skin was
+like dribbled snow"--he meant driven snow, perhaps,--"and she had
+blushes in her cheeks. She had five handsome brothers, but all are gone
+now!" I talked to him about a poem in Irish, Raftery, a famous poet,
+made about her, and how it said, "there is a strong cellar in
+Ballylee." He said the strong cellar was the great hole where the river
+sank underground, and he brought me to a deep pool, where an otter
+hurried away under a grey boulder, and told me that many fish came up
+out of the dark water at early morning "to taste the fresh water coming
+down from the hills."
+
+I first heard of the poem from an old woman who fives about two miles
+further up the river, and who remembers Raftery and Mary Hynes. She
+says, "I never saw anybody so handsome as she was, and I never will
+till I die," and that he was nearly blind, and had "no way of living
+but to go round and to mark some house to go to, and then all the
+neighbours would gather to hear. If you treated him well he'd praise
+you, but if you did not, he'd fault you in Irish. He was the greatest
+poet in Ireland, and he'd make a song about that bush if he chanced to
+stand under it. There was a bush he stood under from the rain, and he
+made verses praising it, and then when the water came through he made
+verses dispraising it." She sang the poem to a friend and to myself in
+Irish, and every word was audible and expressive, as the words in a
+song were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the
+garment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing of
+their energies. The poem is not as natural as the best Irish poetry of
+the last century, for the thoughts are arranged in a too obviously
+traditional form, so the old poor half-blind man who made it has to
+speak as if he were a rich farmer offering the best of everything to
+the woman he loves, but it has naive and tender phrases. The friend
+that was with me has made some of the translation, but some of it has
+been made by the country people themselves. I think it has more of the
+simplicity of the Irish verses than one finds in most translations.
+
+
+    Going to Mass by the will of God,
+    The day came wet and the wind rose;
+    I met Mary Hynes at the cross of Kiltartan,
+    And I fell in love with her then and there.
+
+    I spoke to her kind and mannerly,
+    As by report was her own way;
+    And she said, "Raftery, my mind is easy,
+    You may come to-day to Ballylee."
+
+    When I heard her offer I did not linger,
+    When her talk went to my heart my heart rose.
+    We had only to go across the three fields,
+    We had daylight with us to Ballylee.
+
+    The table was laid with glasses and a quart measure,
+    She had fair hair, and she sitting beside me;
+    And she said, "Drink, Raftery, and a hundred welcomes,
+    There is a strong cellar in Ballylee."
+
+    O star of light and O sun in harvest,
+    O amber hair, O my share of the world,
+    Will you come with me upon Sunday
+    Till we agree together before all the people?
+
+    I would not grudge you a song every Sunday evening,
+    Punch on the table, or wine if you would drink it,
+    But, O King of Glory, dry the roads before me,
+    Till I find the way to Ballylee.
+
+    There is sweet air on the side of the hill
+    When you are looking down upon Ballylee;
+    When you are walking in the valley picking nuts and blackberries,
+    There is music of the birds in it and music of the Sidhe.
+
+    What is the worth of greatness till you have the light
+    Of the flower of the branch that is by your side?
+    There is no god to deny it or to try and hide it,
+    She is the sun in the heavens who wounded my heart.
+
+    There was no part of Ireland I did not travel,
+    From the rivers to the tops of the mountains,
+    To the edge of Lough Greine whose mouth is hidden,
+    And I saw no beauty but was behind hers.
+
+    Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too;
+    Her face was like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet.
+    She is the pride, and I give her the branch,
+    She is the shining flower of Ballylee.
+
+    It is Mary Hynes, this calm and easy woman,
+    Has beauty in her mind and in her face.
+    If a hundred clerks were gathered together,
+    They could not write down a half of her ways.
+
+
+An old weaver, whose son is supposed to go away among the Sidhe (the
+faeries) at night, says, "Mary Hynes was the most beautiful thing ever
+made. My mother used to tell me about her, for she'd be at every
+hurling, and wherever she was she was dressed in white. As many as
+eleven men asked her in marriage in one day, but she wouldn't have any
+of them. There was a lot of men up beyond Kilbecanty one night, sitting
+together drinking, and talking of her, and one of them got up and set
+out to go to Ballylee and see her; but Cloon Bog was open then, and
+when he came to it he fell into the water, and they found him dead
+there in the morning. She died of the fever that was before the
+famine." Another old man says he was only a child when he saw her, but
+he remembered that "the strongest man that was among us, one John
+Madden, got his death of the head of her, cold he got crossing rivers
+in the night-time to get to Ballylee." This is perhaps the man the
+other remembered, for tradition gives the one thing many shapes. There
+is an old woman who remembers her, at Derrybrien among the Echtge
+hills, a vast desolate place, which has changed little since the old
+poem said, "the stag upon the cold summit of Echtge hears the cry of
+the wolves," but still mindful of many poems and of the dignity of
+ancient speech. She says, "The sun and the moon never shone on anybody
+so handsome, and her skin was so white that it looked blue, and she had
+two little blushes on her cheeks." And an old wrinkled woman who lives
+close by Ballylee, and has told me many tales of the Sidhe, says, "I
+often saw Mary Hynes, she was handsome indeed. She had two bunches of
+curls beside her cheeks, and they were the colour of silver. I saw Mary
+Molloy that was drowned in the river beyond, and Mary Guthrie that was
+in Ardrahan, but she took the sway of them both, a very comely
+creature. I was at her wake too--she had seen too much of the world.
+She was a kind creature. One day I was coming home through that field
+beyond, and I was tired, and who should come out but the Poisin Glegeal
+(the shining flower), and she gave me a glass of new milk." This old
+woman meant no more than some beautiful bright colour by the colour of
+silver, for though I knew an old man--he is dead now--who thought she
+might know "the cure for all the evils in the world," that the Sidhe
+knew, she has seen too little gold to know its colour. But a man by the
+shore at Kinvara, who is too young to remember Mary Hynes, says,
+"Everybody says there is no one at all to be seen now so handsome; it
+is said she had beautiful hair, the colour of gold. She was poor, but
+her clothes every day were the same as Sunday, she had such neatness.
+And if she went to any kind of a meeting, they would all be killing one
+another for a sight of her, and there was a great many in love with
+her, but she died young. It is said that no one that has a song made
+about them will ever live long."
+
+Those who are much admired are, it is held, taken by the Sidhe, who
+can use ungoverned feeling for their own ends, so that a father, as an
+old herb doctor told me once, may give his child into their hands, or a
+husband his wife. The admired and desired are only safe if one says
+"God bless them" when one's eyes are upon them. The old woman that sang
+the song thinks, too, that Mary Hynes was "taken," as the phrase is,
+"for they have taken many that are not handsome, and why would they not
+take her? And people came from all parts to look at her, and maybe
+there were some that did not say 'God bless her.'" An old man who lives
+by the sea at Duras has as little doubt that she was taken, "for there
+are some living yet can remember her coming to the pattern[FN#3] there
+beyond, and she was said to be the handsomest girl in Ireland." She
+died young because the gods loved her, for the Sidhe are the gods, and
+it may be that the old saying, which we forget to understand literally,
+meant her manner of death in old times. These poor countrymen and
+countrywomen in their beliefs, and in their emotions, are many years
+nearer to that old Greek world, that set beauty beside the fountain of
+things, than are our men of learning. She "had seen too much of the
+world"; but these old men and women, when they tell of her, blame
+another and not her, and though they can be hard, they grow gentle as
+the old men of Troy grew gentle when Helen passed by on the walls.
+
+
+[FN#3]  A "pattern," or "patron," is a festival in honour of a saint.
+
+
+The poet who helped her to so much fame has himself a great fame
+throughout the west of Ireland. Some think that Raftery was half blind,
+and say, "I saw Raftery, a dark man, but he had sight enough to see
+her," or the like, but some think he was wholly blind, as he may have
+been at the end of his life. Fable makes all things perfect in their
+kind, and her blind people must never look on the world and the sun. I
+asked a man I met one day, when I was looking for a pool na mna Sidhe
+where women of faery have been seen, bow Raftery could have admired
+Mary Hynes so much f he had been altogether blind? He said, "I think
+Raftery was altogether blind, but those that are blind have a way of
+seeing things, and have the power to know more, and to feel more, and
+to do more, and to guess more than those that have their sight, and a
+certain wit and a certain wisdom is given to them." Everybody, indeed,
+will tell you that he was very wise, for was he not only blind but a
+poet? The weaver whose words about Mary Hynes I have already given,
+says, "His poetry was the gift of the Almighty, for there are three
+things that are the gift of the Almighty--poetry and dancing and
+principles. That is why in the old times an ignorant man coming down
+from the hillside would be better behaved and have better learning than
+a man with education you'd meet now, for they got it from God"; and a
+man at Coole says, "When he put his finger to one part of his head,
+everything would come to him as if it was written in a book"; and an
+old pensioner at Kiltartan says, "He was standing under a bush one
+time, and he talked to it, and it answered him back in Irish. Some say
+it was the bush that spoke, but it must have been an enchanted voice in
+it, and it gave him the knowledge of all the things of the world. The
+bush withered up afterwards, and it is to be seen on the roadside now
+between this and Rahasine." There is a poem of his about a bush, which
+I have never seen, and it may have come out of the cauldron of fable in
+this shape.
+
+A friend of mine met a man once who had been with him when he died,
+but the people say that he died alone, and one Maurteen Gillane told
+Dr. Hyde that all night long a light was seen streaming up to heaven
+from the roof of the house where he lay, and "that was the angels who
+were with him"; and all night long there was a great light in the
+hovel, "and that was the angels who were waking him. They gave that
+honour to him because he was so good a poet, and sang such religious
+songs." It may be that in a few years Fable, who changes mortalities to
+immortalities in her cauldron, will have changed Mary Hynes and Raftery
+to perfect symbols of the sorrow of beauty and of the magnificence and
+penury of dreams.
+
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+II
+
+When I was in a northern town awhile ago, I had a long talk with a man
+who had lived in a neighbouring country district when he was a boy. He
+told me that when a very beautiful girl was born in a family that had
+not been noted for good looks, her beauty was thought to have come from
+the Sidhe, and to bring misfortune with it. He went over the names of
+several beautiful girls that he had known, and said that beauty had
+never brought happiness to anybody. It was a thing, he said, to be
+proud of and afraid of. I wish I had written out his words at the time,
+for they were more picturesque than my memory of them.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP
+
+
+Away to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain lives "a strong
+farmer," a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic
+days. Proud of his descent from one of the most fighting clans of the
+Middle Ages, he is a man of force alike in his words and in his deeds.
+There is but one man that swears like him, and this man lives far away
+upon the mountain. "Father in Heaven, what have I done to deserve
+this?" he says when he has lost his pipe; and no man but he who lives
+on the mountain can rival his language on a fair day over a bargain. He
+is passionate and abrupt in his movements, and when angry tosses his
+white beard about with his left hand.
+
+One day I was dining with him when the servant-maid announced a
+certain Mr. O'Donnell. A sudden silence fell upon the old man and upon
+his two daughters. At last the eldest daughter said somewhat severely
+to her father, "Go and ask him to come in and dine." The old man went
+out, and then came in looking greatly relieved, and said, "He says he
+will not dine with us." "Go out," said the daughter, "and ask him into
+the back parlour, and give him some whiskey." Her father, who had just
+finished his dinner, obeyed sullenly, and I heard the door of the back
+parlour--a little room where the daughters sat and sewed during the
+evening--shut to behind the men. The daughter then turned to me and
+said, "Mr. O'Donnell is the tax-gatherer, and last year he raised our
+taxes, and my father was very angry, and when he came, brought him into
+the dairy, and sent the dairy-woman away on a message, and then swore
+at him a great deal. 'I will teach you, sir,' O'Donnell replied, 'that
+the law can protect its officers'; but my father reminded him that he
+had no witness. At last my father got tired, and sorry too, and said he
+would show him a short way home. When they were half-way to the main
+road they came on a man of my father's who was ploughing, and this
+somehow brought back remembrance of the wrong. He sent the man away on
+a message, and began to swear at the tax-gatherer again. When I heard
+of it I was disgusted that he should have made such a fuss over a
+miserable creature like O'Donnell; and when I heard a few weeks ago
+that O'Donnell's only son had died and left him heart-broken, I
+resolved to make my father be kind to him next time he came."
+
+She then went out to see a neighbour, and I sauntered towards the back
+parlour. When I came to the door I heard angry voices inside. The two
+men were evidently getting on to the tax again, for I could hear them
+bandying figures to and fro. I opened the door; at sight of my face the
+farmer was reminded of his peaceful intentions, and asked me if I knew
+where the whiskey was. I had seen him put it into the cupboard, and was
+able therefore to find it and get it out, looking at the thin, grief-
+struck face of the tax-gatherer. He was rather older than my friend,
+and very much more feeble and worn, and of a very different type. He
+was not like him, a robust, successful man, but rather one of those
+whose feet find no resting-place upon the earth. I recognized one of
+the children of reverie, and said, "You are doubtless of the stock of
+the old O'Donnells. I know well the hole in the river where their
+treasure lies buried under the guard of a serpent with many heads."
+"Yes, sur," he replied, "I am the last of a line of princes."
+
+We then fell to talking of many commonplace things, and my friend did
+not once toss up his beard, but was very friendly. At last the gaunt
+old tax-gatherer got up to go, and my friend said, "I hope we will have
+a glass together next year." "No, no," was the answer, "I shall be dead
+next year." "I too have lost sons," said the other in quite a gentle
+voice. "But your sons were not like my son." And then the two men
+parted, with an angry flush and bitter hearts, and had I not cast
+between them some common words or other, might not have parted, but
+have fallen rather into an angry discussion of the value of their dead
+sons. If I had not pity for all the children of reverie I should have
+let them fight it out, and would now have many a wonderful oath to
+record.
+
+The knight of the sheep would have had the victory, for no soul that
+wears this garment of blood and clay can surpass him. He was but once
+beaten; and this is his tale of how it was. He and some farm hands were
+playing at cards in a small cabin that stood against the end of a big
+barn. A wicked woman had once lived in this cabin. Suddenly one of the
+players threw down an ace and began to swear without any cause. His
+swearing was so dreadful that the others stood up, and my friend said,
+"All is not right here; there is a spirit in him." They ran to the door
+that led into the barn to get away as quickly as possible. The wooden
+bolt would not move, so the knight of the sheep took a saw which stood
+against the wall near at hand, and sawed through the bolt, and at once
+the door flew open with a bang, as though some one had been holding it,
+and they fled through.
+
+
+
+
+AN ENDURING HEART
+
+
+One day a friend of mine was making a sketch of my Knight of the
+Sheep. The old man's daughter was sitting by, and, when the
+conversation drifted to love and lovemaking, she said, "Oh, father,
+tell him about your love affair." The old man took his pipe out of his
+mouth, and said, "Nobody ever marries the woman he loves," and then,
+with a chuckle, "There were fifteen of them I liked better than the
+woman I married," and he repeated many women's names. He went on to
+tell how when he was a lad he had worked for his grandfather, his
+mother's father, and was called (my friend has forgotten why) by his
+grandfather's name, which we will say was Doran. He had a great friend,
+whom I shall call John Byrne; and one day he and his friend went to
+Queenstown to await an emigrant ship, that was to take John Byrne to
+America. When they were walking along the quay, they saw a girl sitting
+on a seat, crying miserably, and two men standing up in front of her
+quarrelling with one another. Doran said, "I think I know what is
+wrong. That man will be her brother, and that man will be her lover,
+and the brother is sending her to America to get her away from the
+lover. How she is crying! but I think I could console her myself."
+Presently the lover and brother went away, and Doran began to walk up
+and down before her, saying, "Mild weather, Miss," or the like. She
+answered him in a little while, and the three began to talk together.
+The emigrant ship did not arrive for some days; and the three drove
+about on outside cars very innocently and happily, seeing everything
+that was to be seen. When at last the ship came, and Doran had to break
+it to her that he was not going to America, she cried more after him
+than after the first lover. Doran whispered to Byrne as he went aboard
+ship, "Now, Byrne, I don't grudge her to you, but don't marry young."
+
+When the story got to this, the farmer's daughter joined In mockingly
+with, "I suppose you said that for Byrne's good, father." But the old
+man insisted that he had said it for Byrne's good; and went on to tell
+how, when he got a letter telling of Byrne's engagement to the girl, he
+wrote him the same advice. Years passed by, and he heard nothing; and
+though he was now married, he could not keep from wondering what she
+was doing. At last he went to America to find out, and though he asked
+many people for tidings, he could get none. More years went by, and his
+wife was dead, and he well on in years, and a rich farmer with not a
+few great matters on his hands. He found an excuse in some vague
+business to go out to America again, and to begin his search again. One
+day he fell into talk with an Irishman in a railway carriage, and asked
+him, as his way was, about emigrants from this place and that, and at
+last, "Did you ever hear of the miller's daughter from Innis Rath?" and
+he named the woman he was looking for. "Oh yes," said the other, "she
+is married to a friend of mine, John MacEwing. She lives at such-and-
+such a street in Chicago." Doran went to Chicago and knocked at her
+door. She opened the door herself, and was "not a bit changed." He gave
+her his real name, which he had taken again after his grandfather's
+death, and the name of the man he had met in the train. She did not
+recognize him, but asked him to stay to dinner, saying that her husband
+would be glad to meet anybody who knew that old friend of his. They
+talked of many things, but for all their talk, I do not know why, and
+perhaps he did not know why, he never told her who he was. At dinner he
+asked her about Byrne, and she put her head down on the table and began
+to cry, and she cried so he was afraid her husband might be angry. He
+was afraid to ask what had happened to Byrne, and left soon after,
+never to see her again.
+
+When the old man had finished the story, he said, "Tell that to Mr.
+Yeats, he will make a poem about it, perhaps." But the daughter said,
+"Oh no, father. Nobody could make a poem about a woman like that."
+Alas! I have never made the poem, perhaps because my own heart, which
+has loved Helen and all the lovely and fickle women of the world, would
+be too sore. There are things it is well not to ponder over too much,
+things that bare words are the best suited for.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE SORCERERS
+
+
+In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers,[FN#4] and come
+across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of
+the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy
+and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were
+they to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are
+of opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his
+rapacities are there too, no less than the bright beings who store
+their honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit
+hither and thither, and that they encompass him with a passionate and
+melancholy multitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or
+through accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their
+hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full
+of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth,
+moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about
+us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we
+do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic
+have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few
+persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few
+I have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those
+among whom they live. They are mainly small clerks and the like, and
+meet for the purpose of their art in a room hung with black hangings.
+They would not admit me into this room, but finding me not altogether
+ignorant of the arcane science, showed gladly elsewhere what they would
+do. "Come to us," said their leader, a clerk in a large flour-mill,
+"and we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in
+shapes as solid and heavy as our own."
+
+
+[FN#4]  I know better now. We have the dark powers much more than I
+thought, but not as much as the Scottish, and yet I think the
+imagination of the people does dwell chiefly upon the fantastic and
+capricious.
+
+
+I had been talking of the power of communicating in states of trance
+with the angelical and faery beings,--the children of the day and of
+the twilight--and he had been contending that we should only believe
+in what we can see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of
+mind. "Yes," I said, "I will come to you," or some such words; "but I
+will not permit myself to become entranced, and will therefore know
+whether these shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched and
+felt by the ordinary senses than are those I talk of." I was not
+denying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of
+mortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as he spoke
+of, seemed unlikely to do more than cast the mind into trance, and
+thereby bring it into the presence of the powers of day, twilight, and
+darkness.
+
+"But," he said, "we have seen them move the furniture hither and
+thither, and they go at our bidding, and help or harm people who know
+nothing of them." I am not giving the exact words, but as accurately as
+I can the substance of our talk.
+
+On the night arranged I turned up about eight, and found the leader
+sitting alone in almost total darkness in a small back room. He was
+dressed in a black gown, like an inquisitor's dress in an old drawing,
+that left nothing of him visible: except his eyes, which peered out
+through two small round holes. Upon the table in front of him was a
+brass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with painted
+symbols, two crossed daggers, and certain implements shaped like quern
+stones, which were used to control the elemental powers in some fashion
+I did not discover. I also put on a black gown, and remember that it
+did not fit perfectly, and that it interfered with my movements
+considerably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a basket, and
+cut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood fall into the
+large bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation, which was
+certainly not English, and had a deep guttural sound. Before he had
+finished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five, came
+in, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my left
+band. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began to find
+his eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his hood,
+affecting me in a curious way. I struggled hard against their
+influence, and my head began to ache. The invocation continued, and
+nothing happened for the first few minutes. Then the invoker got up and
+extinguished the light in the hall, so that no glimmer might come
+through the slit under the door. There was now no light except from the
+herbs on the brass dish, and no sound except from the deep guttural
+murmur of the invocation.
+
+Presently the man at my left swayed himself about, and cried out, "O
+god! O god!" I asked him what ailed him, but he did not know he had
+spoken. A moment after he said he could see a great serpent moving
+about the room, and became considerably excited. I saw nothing with any
+definite shape, but thought that black clouds were forming about me. I
+felt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and
+that the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony
+with itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the
+black clouds, and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again.
+The two sorcerers now began to see black and white columns moving about
+the room, and finally a man in a monk's habit, and they became greatly
+puzzled because I did not see these things also, for to them they were
+as solid as the table before them. The invoker appeared to be gradually
+increasing in power, and I began to feel as if a tide of darkness was
+pouring from him and concentrating itself about me; and now too I
+noticed that the man on my left hand had passed into a death-like
+trance. With a last great effort I drove off the black clouds; but
+feeling them to be the only shapes I should see without passing into a
+trance, and having no great love for them, I asked for lights, and
+after the needful exorcism returned to the ordinary world.
+
+I said to the more powerful of the two sorcerers--"What would happen
+if one of your spirits had overpowered me?" "You would go out of this
+room," he answered, "with his character added to your own." I asked
+about the origin of his sorcery, but got little of importance, except
+that he had learned it from his father. He would not tell me more, for
+he had, it appeared, taken a vow of secrecy.
+
+For some days I could not get over the feeling of having a number of
+deformed and grotesque figures lingering about me. The Bright Powers
+are always beautiful and desirable, and the Dim Powers are now
+beautiful, now quaintly grotesque, but the Dark Powers express their
+unbalanced natures in shapes of ugliness and horror.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL
+
+
+My old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come
+down the road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would
+not say what it was, I knew quite well. Another day she told me of two
+friends of hers who had been made love to by one whom they believed to
+be the devil. One of them was standing by the road-side when he came by
+on horseback, and asked her to mount up behind him, and go riding. When
+she would not he vanished. The other was out on the road late at night
+waiting for her young man, when something came flapping and rolling
+along the road up to her feet. It had the likeness of a newspaper, and
+presently it flapped up into her face, and she knew by the size of it
+that it was the Irish Times. All of a sudden it changed into a young
+man, who asked her to go walking with him. She would not, and he
+vanished.
+
+I know of an old man too, on the slopes of Ben Bulben, who found the
+devil ringing a bell under his bed, and he went off and stole the
+chapel bell and rang him out. It may be that this, like the others, was
+not the devil at all, but some poor wood spirit whose cloven feet had
+got him into trouble.
+
+
+
+
+HAPPY AND UNHAPPY THEOLOGIANS
+
+
+I
+
+A mayo woman once said to me, "I knew a servant girl who hung herself
+for the love of God. She was lonely for the priest and her
+society,[FN#5] and hung herself to the banisters with a scarf. She was
+no sooner dead than she became white as a lily, and if it had been
+murder or suicide she would have become black as black. They gave her
+Christian burial, and the priest said she was no sooner dead than she
+was with the Lord. So nothing matters that you do for the love of God."
+I do not wonder at the pleasure she has in telling this story, for she
+herself loves all holy things with an ardour that brings them quickly
+to her lips. She told me once that she never hears anything described
+in a sermon that she does not afterwards see with her eyes. She has
+described to me the gates of Purgatory as they showed themselves to her
+eyes, but I remember nothing of the description except that she could
+not see the souls in trouble but only the gates. Her mind continually
+dwells on what is pleasant and beautiful. One day she asked me what
+month and what flower were the most beautiful. When I answered that I
+did not know, she said, "the month of May, because of the Virgin, and
+the lily of the valley, because it never sinned, but came pure out of
+the rocks," and then she asked, "what is the cause of the three cold
+months of winter?" I did not know even that, and so she said, "the sin
+of man and the vengeance of God." Christ Himself was not only blessed,
+but perfect in all manly proportions in her eyes, so much do beauty and
+holiness go together in her thoughts. He alone of all men was exactly
+six feet high, all others are a little more or a little less.
+
+
+[FN#5]  The religious society she had belonged to.
+
+
+Her thoughts and her sights of the people of faery are pleasant and
+beautiful too, and I have never heard her call them the Fallen Angels.
+They are people like ourselves, only better-looking, and many and many
+a time she has gone to the window to watch them drive their waggons
+through the sky, waggon behind waggon in long line, or to the door to
+hear them singing and dancing in the Forth. They sing chiefly, it
+seems, a song called "The Distant Waterfall," and though they once
+knocked her down she never thinks badly of them. She saw them most
+easily when she was in service in King's County, and one morning a
+little while ago she said to me, "Last night I was waiting up for the
+master and it was a quarter-past eleven. I heard a bang right down on
+the table. 'King's County all over,' says I, and I laughed till I was
+near dead. It was a warning I was staying too long. They wanted the
+place to themselves." I told her once of somebody who saw a faery and
+fainted, and she said, "It could not have been a faery, but some bad
+thing, nobody could faint at a faery. It was a demon. I was not afraid
+when they near put me, and the bed under me, out through the roof. I
+wasn't afraid either when you were at some work and I heard a thing
+coming flop-flop up the stairs like an eel, and squealing. It went to
+all the doors. It could not get in where I was. I would have sent it
+through the universe like a flash of fire. There was a man in my place,
+a tearing fellow, and he put one of them down. He went out to meet it
+on the road, but he must have been told the words. But the faeries are
+the best neighbours. If you do good to them they will do good to you,
+but they don't like you to be on their path." Another time she said to
+me, "They are always good to the poor."
+
+
+II
+
+There is, however, a man in a Galway village who can see nothing but
+wickedness. Some think him very holy, and others think him a little
+crazed, but some of his talk reminds one of those old Irish visions of
+the Three Worlds, which are supposed to have given Dante the plan of
+the Divine Comedy. But I could not imagine this man seeing Paradise. He
+is especially angry with the people of faery, and describes the faun-
+like feet that are so common among them, who are indeed children of
+Pan, to prove them children of Satan. He will not grant that "they
+carry away women, though there are many that say so," but he is certain
+that they are "as thick as the sands of the sea about us, and they
+tempt poor mortals."
+
+He says, "There is a priest I know of was looking along the ground
+like as if he was hunting for something, and a voice said to him, 'If
+you want to see them you'll see enough of them,' and his eyes were
+opened and he saw the ground thick with them. Singing they do be
+sometimes, and dancing, but all the time they have cloven feet." Yet he
+was so scornful of unchristian things for all their dancing and singing
+that he thinks that "you have only to bid them begone and they will go.
+It was one night," he says, "after walking back from Kinvara and down
+by the wood beyond I felt one coming beside me, and I could feel the
+horse he was riding on and the way he lifted his legs, but they do not
+make a sound like the hoofs of a horse. So I stopped and turned around
+and said, very loud, 'Be off!' and he went and never troubled me after.
+And I knew a man who was dying, and one came on his bed, and he cried
+out to it, 'Get out of that, you unnatural animal!' and it left him.
+Fallen angels they are, and after the fall God said, 'Let there be
+Hell,' and there it was in a moment." An old woman who was sitting by
+the fire joined in as he said this with "God save us, it's a pity He
+said the word, and there might have been no Hell the day," but the seer
+did not notice her words. He went on, "And then he asked the devil what
+would he take for the souls of all the people. And the devil said
+nothing would satisfy him but the blood of a virgin's son, so he got
+that, and then the gates of Hell were opened." He understood the story,
+it seems, as if it were some riddling old folk tale.
+
+"I have seen Hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It
+had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway, and a
+straight walk into it, just like what 'ud be leading into a gentleman's
+orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box, but with red-hot
+metal. And inside the wall there were cross-walks, and I'm not sure
+what there was to the right, but to the left there were five great
+furnaces, and they full of souls kept there with great chains. So I
+turned short and went away, and in turning I looked again at the wall,
+and I could see no end to it.
+
+"And another time I saw Purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place,
+and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls
+standing in it. And they suffer near as much as in Hell, only there are
+no devils with them there, and they have the hope of Heaven.
+
+"And I heard a call to me from there, 'Help me to come out o' this!'
+And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman,
+and from this county, and I believe him to be a descendant of King
+O'Connor of Athenry.
+
+"So I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, 'I'd be
+burned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.' So
+then he said, 'Well, help me with your prayers,' and so I do.
+
+"And Father Connellan says the same thing, to help the dead with your
+prayers, and he's a very clever man to make a sermon, and has a great
+deal of cures made with the Holy Water he brought back from Lourdes."
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST GLEEMAN
+
+
+Michael Moran was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of
+Dublin, in Faddle Alley. A fortnight after birth he went stone blind
+from illness, and became thereby a blessing to his parents, who were
+soon able to send him to rhyme and beg at street corners and at the
+bridges over the Liffey. They may well have wished that their quiver
+were full of such as he, for, free from the interruption of sight, his
+mind became a perfect echoing chamber, where every movement of the day
+and every change of public passion whispered itself into rhyme or
+quaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the admitted
+rector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver,
+Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M'Bride
+from heaven knows where, and that M'Grane, who in after days, when the
+true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather in
+borrowed rags, and gave out that there had never been any Moran but
+himself, and many another, did homage before him, and held him chief of
+all their tribe. Nor despite his blindness did he find any difficulty
+in getting a wife, but rather was able to pick and choose, for he was
+just that mixture of ragamuffin and of genius which is dear to the
+heart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly conventional
+herself, loves the unexpected, the crooked, the bewildering. Nor did he
+lack, despite his rags, many excellent things, for it is remembered
+that he ever loved caper sauce, going so far indeed in his honest
+indignation at its absence upon one occasion as to fling a leg of
+mutton at his wife. He was not, however, much to look at, with his
+coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy
+trousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist
+by a thong of leather: and he would have been a woeful shock to the
+gleeman MacConglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in
+prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the
+short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman,
+being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In the morning
+when he had finished his breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would
+read the newspaper to him, and read on and on until he interrupted
+with, "That'll do--I have me meditations"; and from these meditations
+would come the day's store of jest and rhyme. He had the whole Middle
+Ages under his frieze coat.
+
+He had not, however, MacConglinne's hatred of the Church and clergy,
+for when the fruit of his meditations did not ripen well, or when the
+crowd called for something more solid, he would recite or sing a
+metrical tale or ballad of saint or martyr or of Biblical adventure. He
+would stand at a street comer, and when a crowd had gathered would
+begin in some such fashion as follows (I copy the record of one who
+knew him)--"Gather round me, boys, gather round me. Boys, am I standin'
+in puddle? am I standin' in wet?" Thereon several boys would cry, "Ali,
+no! yez not! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with St. Mary; go on with
+Moses"--each calling for his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a
+suspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst
+out with "All me buzzim friends are turned backbiters"; and after a
+final "If yez don't drop your coddin' and diversion I'll lave some of
+yez a case," by way of warning to the boys, begin his recitation, or
+perhaps still delay, to ask, "Is there a crowd round me now? Any
+blackguard heretic around me?" The best-known of his religious tales
+was St. Mary of Egypt, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, condensed
+from the much longer work of a certain Bishop Coyle. It told how a fast
+woman of Egypt, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem for no
+good purpose, and then, turning penitent on finding herself withheld
+from entering the Temple by supernatural interference, fled to the
+desert and spent the remainder of her life in solitary penance. When at
+last she was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear her
+confession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a lion,
+whom He sent also, dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable cadence
+of the eighteenth century, but was so popular and so often called for
+that Moran was soon nicknamed Zozimus, and by that name is he
+remembered. He had also a poem of his own called Moses, which went a
+little nearer poetry without going very near. But he could ill brook
+solemnity, and before long parodied his own verses in the following
+ragamuffin fashion:
+
+
+    In Egypt's land, contagious to the Nile,
+    King Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe in style.
+    She tuk her dip, then walked unto the land,
+    To dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand.
+    A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
+    A smiling babby in a wad o' straw.
+    She tuk it up, and said with accents mild,
+    "'Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?"
+
+
+His humorous rhymes were, however, more often quips and cranks at the
+expense of his contemporaries. It was his delight, for instance, to
+remind a certain shoemaker, noted alike for display of wealth and for
+personal uncleanness, of his inconsiderable origin in a song of which
+but the first stanza has come down to us:
+
+
+    At the dirty end of Dirty Lane,
+    Liv'd a dirty cobbler, Dick Maclane;
+    His wife was in the old king's reign
+        A stout brave orange-woman.
+    On Essex Bridge she strained her throat,
+    And six-a-penny was her note.
+    But Dickey wore a bran-new coat,
+        He got among the yeomen.
+    He was a bigot, like his clan,
+    And in the streets he wildly sang,
+    O Roly, toly, toly raid, with his old jade.
+
+
+He had troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to face and
+put down. Once an officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was
+triumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded
+his worship of the precedent set by Homer, who was also, he declared, a
+poet, and a blind man, and a beggarman. He had to face a more serious
+difficulty as his fame grew. Various imitators started up upon all
+sides. A certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did
+shillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs and his getup upon the
+stage. One night this actor was at supper with some friends, when
+dispute arose as to whether his mimicry was overdone or not. It was
+agreed to settle it by an appeal to the mob. A forty-shilling supper at
+a famous coffeehouse was to be the wager. The actor took up his station
+at Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran's, and soon gathered a small
+crowd. He had scarce got through "In Egypt's land, contagious to the
+Nile," when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The
+crowds met in great excitement and laughter. "Good Christians," cried
+the pretender, "is it possible that any man would mock the poor dark
+man like that?"
+
+"Who's that? It's some imposhterer," replied Moran.
+
+"Begone, you wretch! it's you'ze the imposhterer. Don't you fear the
+light of heaven being struck from your eyes for mocking the poor dark
+man?"
+
+"Saints and angels, is there no protection against this? You're a most
+inhuman-blaguard to try to deprive me of my honest bread this way,"
+replied poor Moran.
+
+"And you, you wretch, won't let me go on with the beautiful poem.
+Christian people, in your charity won't you beat this man away? he's
+taking advantage of my darkness."
+
+The pretender, seeing that he was having the best of it, thanked the
+people for their sympathy and protection, and went on with the poem,
+Moran listening for a time in bewildered silence. After a while Moran
+protested again with:
+
+"Is it possible that none of yez can know me? Don't yez see it's
+myself; and that's some one else?"
+
+"Before I can proceed any further in this lovely story," interrupted
+the pretender, "I call on yez to contribute your charitable donations
+to help me to go on."
+
+"Have you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven?" cried Moran, Put
+completely beside himself by this last injury--"Would you rob the poor
+as well as desave the world? O, was ever such wickedness known?"
+
+"I leave it to yourselves, my friends," said the pretender, "to give
+to the real dark man, that you all know so well, and save me from that
+schemer," and with that he collected some pennies and half-pence. While
+he was doing so, Moran started his Mary of Egypt, but the indignant
+crowd seizing his stick were about to belabour him, when they fell back
+bewildered anew by his close resemblance to himself. The pretender now
+called to them to "just give him a grip of that villain, and he'd soon
+let him know who the imposhterer was!" They led him over to Moran, but
+instead of closing with him he thrust a few shillings into his hand,
+and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an actor,
+and that he had just gained a wager, and so departed amid much
+enthusiasm, to eat the supper he had won.
+
+In April 1846 word was sent to the priest that Michael Moran was
+dying. He found him at 15 (now 14 1/2) Patrick Street, on a straw bed,
+in
+a room full of ragged ballad-singers come to cheer his last moments.
+After his death the ballad-singers, with many fiddles and the like,
+came again and gave him a fine wake, each adding to the merriment
+whatever he knew in the way of rann, tale, old saw, or quaint rhyme. He
+had had his day, had said his prayers and made his confession, and why
+should they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place the
+next day. A good party of his admirers and friends got into the hearse
+with the coffin, for the day was wet and nasty. They had not gone far
+when one of them burst out with "It's cruel cowld, isn't it?" "Garra',"
+replied another, "we'll all be as stiff as the corpse when we get to
+the berrin-ground." "Bad cess to him," said a third; "I wish he'd held
+out another month until the weather got dacent." A man called Carroll
+thereupon produced a half-pint of whiskey, and they all drank to the
+soul of the departed. Unhappily, however, the hearse was over-weighted,
+and they had not reached the cemetery before the spring broke, and the
+bottle with it.
+
+Moran must have felt strange and out of place in that other kingdom he
+was entering, perhaps while his friends were drinking in his honour.
+Let us hope that some kindly middle region was found for him, where he
+can call dishevelled angels about him with some new and more rhythmical
+form of his old
+
+
+    Gather round me, boys, will yez
+    Gather round me?
+    And hear what I have to say
+    Before ould Salley brings me
+    My bread and jug of tay;
+
+
+and fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim.
+Perhaps he may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the
+Lily of High Truth, the Rose of Far-sought Beauty, for whose lack so
+many of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been
+futile as the blown froth upon the shore.
+
+
+
+
+REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI
+
+
+One night a middle-aged man, who had lived all his life far from the
+noise of cab-wheels, a young girl, a relation of his, who was reported
+to be enough of a seer to catch a glimpse of unaccountable lights
+moving over the fields among the cattle, and myself, were walking along
+a far western sandy shore. We talked of the Forgetful People as the
+faery people are sometimes called, and came in the midst of our talk to
+a notable haunt of theirs, a shallow cave amidst black rocks, with its
+reflection under it in the wet sea sand. I asked the young girl if she
+could see anything, for I had quite a number of things to ask the
+Forgetful People. She stood still for a few minutes, and I saw that she
+was passing into a kind of waking trance, in which the cold sea breeze
+no longer troubled her, nor the dull boom of the sea distracted her
+attention. I then called aloud the names of the great faeries, and in a
+moment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the rocks,
+and then a sound of confused talking, and of people stamping their feet
+as if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other friend had
+been walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed close to us,
+and as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be interrupted,
+for he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond the rocks. We
+were, however, quite alone. The spirits of the place had begun to cast
+their influence over him also. In a moment he was corroborated by the
+girl, who said that bursts of laughter had begun to mingle with the
+music, the confused talking, and the noise of feet. She next saw a
+bright light streaming out of the cave, which seemed to have grown much
+deeper, and a quantity of little people,[FN#6] in various coloured
+dresses, red predominating, dancing to a tune which she did not
+recognize.
+
+
+[FN#6]  The people and faeries in Ireland are sometimes as big as we
+are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three
+feet high. The Old Mayo woman I so often quote, thinks that it is
+something in our eyes that makes them seem big or little.
+
+
+I then bade her call out to the queen of the little people to come and
+talk with us. There was, however, no answer to her command. I therefore
+repeated the words aloud myself, and in a moment a very beautiful tall
+woman came out of the cave. I too had by this time fallen into a kind
+of trance, in which what we call the unreal had begun to take upon
+itself a masterful reality, and was able to see the faint gleam of
+golden ornaments, the shadowy blossom of dim hair. I then bade the girl
+tell this tall queen to marshal her followers according to their
+natural divisions, that we might see them. I found as before that I had
+to repeat the command myself. The creatures then came out of the cave,
+and drew themselves up, if I remember rightly, in four bands. One of
+these bands carried quicken boughs in their hands, and another had
+necklaces made apparently of serpents' scales, but their dress I cannot
+remember, for I was quite absorbed in that gleaming woman. I asked her
+to tell the seer whether these caves were the greatest faery haunts in
+the neighbourhood. Her lips moved, but the answer was inaudible. I bade
+the seer lay her hand upon the breast of the queen, and after that she
+heard every word quite distinctly. No, this was not the greatest faery
+haunt, for there was a greater one a little further ahead. I then asked
+her whether it was true that she and her people carried away mortals,
+and if so, whether they put another soul in the place of the one they
+had taken? "We change the bodies," was her answer. "Are any of you ever
+born into mortal life?" "Yes." "Do I know any who were among your
+people before birth?" "You do." "Who are they?" "It would not be lawful
+for you to know." I then asked whether she and her people were not
+"dramatizations of our moods"? "She does not understand," said my
+friend, "but says that her people are much like human beings, and do
+most of the things human beings do." I asked her other questions, as to
+her nature, and her purpose in the universe, but only seemed to puzzle
+her. At last she appeared to lose patience, for she wrote this message
+for me upon the sands--the sands of vision, not the grating sands under
+our feet--"Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us."
+Seeing that I had offended her, I thanked her for what she had shown
+and told, and let her depart again into her cave. In a little while the
+young girl awoke out of her trance, and felt again the cold wind of the
+world, and began to shiver.
+
+I tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to
+blur the history. Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of
+mine have perished long ago. I love better than any theory the sound of
+the Gate of Ivory, turning upon its hinges, and hold that he alone who
+has passed the rose-strewn threshold can catch the far glimmer of the
+Gate of Horn. It were perhaps well for us all if we would but raise the
+cry Lilly the astrologer raised in Windsor Forest, "Regina, Regina
+Pigmeorum, Veni," and remember with him, that God visiteth His children
+in dreams. Tall, glimmering queen, come near, and let me see again the
+shadowy blossom of thy dim hair.
+
+
+
+
+"AND FAIR, FIERCE WOMEN"
+
+
+One day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic beauty, that
+highest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a
+beauty which has been fading out of the arts, since that decadence we
+call progress, set voluptuous beauty in its place. She was standing at
+the window, looking over to Knocknarea where Queen Maive is thought to
+be buried, when she saw, as she has told me, "the finest woman you ever
+saw travelling right across from the mountain and straight to her." The
+woman had a sword by her side and a dagger lifted up in her hand, and
+was dressed in white, with bare arms and feet. She looked "very strong,
+but not wicked," that is, not cruel. The old woman had seen the Irish
+giant, and "though he was a fine man," he was nothing to this woman,
+"for he was round, and could not have stepped out so soldierly"; "she
+was like Mrs.-----" a stately lady of the neighbourhood, "but she had
+no stomach on her, and was slight and broad in the shoulders, and was
+handsomer than any one you ever saw; she looked about thirty." The old
+woman covered her eyes with her hands, and when she uncovered them the
+apparition had vanished. The neighbours were "wild with her," she told
+me, because she did not wait to find out if there was a message, for
+they were sure it was Queen Maive, who often shows herself to the
+pilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen Maive,
+and she said, "Some of them have their hair down, but they look quite
+different, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the papers. Those
+with their hair up are like this one. The others have long white
+dresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you
+can see their legs right up to the calf." After some careful
+questioning I found that they wore what might very well be a kind of
+buskin; she went on, "They are fine and dashing looking, like the men
+one sees riding their horses in twos and threes on the slopes of the
+mountains with their swords swinging." She repeated over and over,
+"There is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned," or the
+like, and then said, "The present Queen[FN#7] is a nice, pleasant-
+looking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me think so little
+of the ladies is that I see none as they be," meaning as the spirits.
+"When I think of her and of the ladies now, they are like little
+children running about without knowing how to put their clothes on
+right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women at all." The
+other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway
+workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that "Queen Maive was
+handsome, and overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel
+is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk the
+world with it," but she grew "very disagreeable in the end--oh very
+disagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between
+the book and the hearer." My friend thought the old woman had got some
+scandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head.
+
+
+[FN#7]  Queen Victoria.
+
+
+And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who
+remembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he
+was young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said
+she was a queen "among them," and asked him if he would have money or
+pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for
+a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful.
+The young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he
+made, but could only remember that it was "very mournful," and that he
+called her "beauty of all beauties."
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ENCHANTED WOODS
+
+
+I
+
+Last summer, whenever I had finished my day's work, I used to go
+wandering in certain roomy woods, and there I would often meet an old
+countryman, and talk to him about his work and about the woods, and
+once or twice a friend came with me to whom he would open his heart
+more readily than to me, He had spent all his life lopping away the
+witch elm and the hazel and the privet and the hornbeam from the paths,
+and had thought much about the natural and supernatural creatures of
+the wood. He has heard the hedgehog--"grainne oge," he calls him--
+"grunting like a Christian," and is certain that he steals apples by
+rolling about under an apple tree until there is an apple sticking to
+every quill. He is certain too that the cats, of whom there are many in
+the woods, have a language of their own--some kind of old Irish. He
+says, "Cats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time of
+some great change in the world. That is why they are hard to kill, and
+why it is dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it might
+claw or bite you in a way that would put poison in you, and that would
+be the serpent's tooth." Sometimes he thinks they change into wild
+cats, and then a nail grows on the end of their tails; but these wild
+cats are not the same as the marten cats, who have been always in the
+woods. The foxes were once tame, as the cats are now, but they ran away
+and became wild. He talks of all wild creatures except squirrels--whom
+he hates--with what seems an affectionate interest, though at times his
+eyes will twinkle with pleasure as he remembers how he made hedgehogs
+unroll themselves when he was a boy, by putting a wisp of burning straw
+under them.
+
+I am not certain that he distinguishes between the natural and
+supernatural very clearly. He told me the other day that foxes and cats
+like, above all, to be in the "forths" and lisses after nightfall; and
+he will certainly pass from some story about a fox to a story about a
+spirit with less change of voice than when he is going to speak about a
+marten cat--a rare beast now-a-days. Many years ago he used to work in
+the garden, and once they put him to sleep in a garden-house where
+there was a loft full of apples, and all night he could hear people
+rattling plates and knives and forks over his head in the loft. Once,
+at any rate, be has seen an unearthly sight in the woods. He says, "One
+time I was out cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight o'clock
+one morning when I got there I saw a girl picking nuts, with her hair
+hanging down over her shoulders, brown hair, and she had a good, clean
+face, and she was tall and nothing on her head, and her dress no way
+gaudy but simple, and when she felt me coming she gathered herself up
+and was gone as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I followed her
+and looked for her, but I never could see her again from that day to
+this, never again." He used the word clean as we would use words like
+fresh or comely.
+
+Others too have seen spirits in the Enchanted Woods. A labourer told
+us of what a friend of his had seen in a part of the woods that is
+called Shanwalla, from some old village that was before the weed. He
+said, "One evening I parted from Lawrence Mangan in the yard, and he
+went away through the path in Shanwalla, an' bid me goodnight. And two
+hours after, there he was back again in the yard, an' bid me light a
+candle that was in the stable. An' he told me that when he got into
+Shanwalla, a little fellow about as high as his knee, but having a head
+as big as a man's body, came beside him and led him out of the path an'
+round about, and at last it brought him to the lime-kiln, and then it
+vanished and left him."
+
+A woman told me of a sight that she and others had seen by a certain
+deep pool in the river. She said, "I came over the stile from the
+chapel, and others along with me; and a great blast of wind came and
+two trees were bent and broken and fell into the river, and the splash
+of water out of it went up to the skies. And those that were with me
+saw many figures, but myself I only saw one, sitting there by the bank
+where the trees fell. Dark clothes he had on, and he was headless."
+
+A man told me that one day, when he was a boy, he and another boy went
+to catch a horse in a certain field, full of boulders and bushes of
+hazel and creeping juniper and rock-roses, that is where the lake side
+is for a little clear of the woods. He said to the boy that was with
+him, "I bet a button that if I fling a pebble on to that bush it will
+stay on it," meaning that the bush was so matted the pebble would not
+be able to go through it. So he took up "a pebble of cow-dung, and as
+soon as it hit the bush there came out of it the most beautiful music
+that ever was heard." They ran away, and when they had gone about two
+hundred yards they looked back and saw a woman dressed in white,
+walking round and round the bush. "First it had the form of a woman,
+and then of a man, and it was going round the bush."
+
+
+II
+
+I often entangle myself in argument more complicated than even those
+paths of Inchy as to what is the true nature of apparitions, but at
+other times I say as Socrates said when they told him a learned opinion
+about a nymph of the Illissus, "The common opinion is enough for me." I
+believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we
+cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some
+wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever
+seen, and that these are not far away when we are walking in pleasant
+and quiet places. Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood
+without feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or
+something I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And
+now I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with
+almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me.
+You too meet with a like imagination, doubtless, somewhere, wherever
+your ruling stars will have it, Saturn driving you to the woods, or the
+Moon, it may be, to the edges of the sea. I will not of a certainty
+believe that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers
+imagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some
+vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway
+out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be
+beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and
+fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport
+than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among
+green leaves. I say to myself, when I am well out of that thicket of
+argument, that they are surely there, the divine people, for only we
+who have neither simplicity nor wisdom have denied them, and the simple
+of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even
+spoken to them. They live out their passionate lives not far off, as I
+think, and we shall be among them when we die if we but keep our
+natures simple and passionate. May it not even be that death shall
+unite us to all romance, and that some day we shall fight dragons among
+blue hills, or come to that whereof all romance is but
+
+
+    Foreshadowings mingled with the images
+    Of man's misdeeds in greater days than these,
+
+
+as the old men thought in The Earthly Paradise when they were in good
+spirits.
+
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+MIRACULOUS CREATURES
+
+
+There are marten cats and badgers and foxes in the Enchanted Woods,
+but there are of a certainty mightier creatures, and the lake hides
+what neither net nor fine can take. These creatures are of the race of
+the white stag that flits in and out of the tales of Arthur, and of the
+evil pig that slew Diarmuid where Ben Bulben mixes with the sea wind.
+They are the wizard creatures of hope and fear, they are of them that
+fly and of them that follow among the thickets that are about the Gates
+of Death. A man I know remembers that his father was one night in the
+wood Of Inchy, "where the lads of Gort used to be stealing rods. He was
+sitting by the wall, and the dog beside him, and he heard something
+come running from Owbawn Weir, and he could see nothing, but the sound
+of its feet on the ground was like the sound of the feet of a deer. And
+when it passed him, the dog got between him and the wall and scratched
+at it there as if it was afraid, but still he could see nothing but
+only hear the sound of hoofs. So when it was passed he turned and came
+away home. Another time," the man says, "my father told me he was in a
+boat out on the lake with two or three men from Gort, and one of them
+had an eel-spear, and he thrust it into the water, and it hit
+something, and the man fainted and they had to carry him out of the
+boat to land, and when he came to himself he said that what he struck
+was like a calf, but whatever it was, it was not fish!" A friend of
+mine is convinced that these terrible creatures, so common in lakes,
+were set there in old times by subtle enchanters to watch over the
+gates of wisdom. He thinks that if we sent our spirits down into the
+water we would make them of one substance with strange moods Of ecstasy
+and power, and go out it may be to the conquest of the world. We would,
+however, he believes, have first to outface and perhaps overthrow
+strange images full of a more powerful life than if they were really
+alive. It may be that we shall look at them without fear when we have
+endured the last adventure, that is death.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ARISTOTLE OF THE BOOKS
+
+
+The friend who can get the wood-cutter to talk more readily than he
+will to anybody else went lately to see his old wife. She lives in a
+cottage not far from the edge of the woods, and is as full of old talk
+as her husband. This time she began to talk of Goban, the legendary
+mason, and his wisdom, but said presently, "Aristotle of the Books,
+too, was very wise, and he had a great deal of experience, but did not
+the bees get the better of him in the end? He wanted to know how they
+packed the comb, and he wasted the better part of a fortnight watching
+them, and he could not see them doing it. Then he made a hive with a
+glass cover on it and put it over them, and he thought to see. But when
+he went and put his eyes to the glass, they had it all covered with wax
+so that it was as black as the pot; and he was as blind as before. He
+said he was never rightly kilt till then. They had him that time
+surely!"
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWINE OF THE GODS
+
+
+A few years ago a friend of mine told me of something that happened to
+him when he was a. young man and out drilling with some Connaught
+Fenians. They were but a car-full, and drove along a hillside until
+they came to a quiet place. They left the car and went further up the
+hill with their rifles, and drilled for a while. As they were coming
+down again they saw a very thin, long-legged pig of the old Irish sort,
+and the pig began to follow them. One of them cried out as a joke that
+it was a fairy pig, and they all began to run to keep up the joke. The
+pig ran too, and presently, how nobody knew, this mock terror became
+real terror, and they ran as for their lives. When they got to the car
+they made the horse gallop as fast as possible, but the pig still
+followed. Then one of them put up his rifle to fire, but when he looked
+along the barrel he could see nothing. Presently they turned a corner
+and came to a village. They told the people of the village what had
+happened, and the people of the village took pitchforks and spades and
+the like, and went along the road with them to drive the pig away. When
+they turned the comer they could not find anything.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+A VOICE
+
+
+One day I was walking over a bit of marshy ground close to Inchy Wood
+when I felt, all of a sudden, and only for a second, an emotion which I
+said to myself was the root of Christian mysticism. There had swept
+over me a sense of weakness, of dependence on a great personal Being
+somewhere far off yet near at hand. No thought of mine had prepared me
+for this emotion, for I had been pre-occupied with Aengus and Edain, and
+with Mannanan, son of the sea. That night I awoke lying upon my back
+and hearing a voice speaking above me and saying, "No human soul is
+like any other human soul, and therefore the love of God for any human
+soul is infinite, for no other soul can satisfy the same need in God."
+A few nights after this I awoke to see the loveliest people I have ever
+seen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green raiment, cut
+like old Greek raiment, were standing at my bedside. I looked at the
+girl and noticed that her dress was gathered about her neck into a kind
+of chain, or perhaps into some kind of stiff embroidery which
+represented ivy-leaves. But what filled me with wonder was the
+miraculous mildness of her face. There are no such faces now. It was
+beautiful, as few faces are beautiful, but it had neither, one would
+think, the light that is in desire or in hope or in fear or in
+speculation. It was peaceful like the faces of animals, or like
+mountain pools at evening, so peaceful that it was a little sad. I
+thought for a moment that she might be the beloved of Aengus, but how
+could that hunted, alluring, happy, immortal wretch have a face like
+this? Doubtless she was from among the children of the Moon, but who
+among them I shall never know.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+KIDNAPPERS
+
+
+A little north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben
+Bulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white square
+in the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand; no sheep
+or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more inaccessible
+place upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to the deep
+considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of night it
+swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out. All night the gay
+rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless
+perhaps where, in some more than commonly "gentle" place--Drumcliff or
+Drum-a-hair--the nightcapped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from
+their doors to see what mischief the "gentry" are doing. To their
+trained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and
+the air is full of shrill voices--a sound like whistling, as an ancient
+Scottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the
+angels, who "speak much in the throat, like the Irish," as Lilly, the
+astrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed
+bride in the neighbourhood, the nightcapped "doctors" will peer with
+more than common care, for the unearthly troop do not always return
+empty-handed. Sometimes a new-wed bride or a new-born baby goes with
+them into their mountains; the door swings to behind, and the new-born
+or the new-wed moves henceforth in the bloodless land of Faery; happy
+enough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright vapour,
+for the soul cannot live without sorrow. Through this door of white
+stone, and the other doors of that land where geabheadh tu an sonas aer
+pighin ("you can buy joy for a penny"), have gone kings, queens, and
+princes, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there are
+none but peasants in these sad chronicles of mine.
+
+Somewhere about the beginning of last century appeared at the western
+corner of Market Street, Sligo, where the butcher's shop now is, not a
+palace, as in Keats's Lamia, but an apothecary's shop, ruled over by a
+certain unaccountable Dr. Opendon. Where he came from, none ever knew.
+There also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name, whose
+husband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make nothing of
+him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he grew. Away
+went the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop parlour. A
+black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had just time to
+see that the side-board was covered with fruit, and to say to herself,
+"Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much," before Dr.
+Opendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as the cat, and
+his wife walked behind him dressed in black likewise. She gave him a
+guinea, and got a little bottle in return. Her husband recovered that
+time. Meanwhile the black doctor cured many people; but one day a rich
+patient died, and cat, wife, and doctor all vanished the night after.
+In a year the man Ormsby fell sick once more. Now he was a goodlooking
+man, and his wife felt sure the "gentry" were coveting him. She went
+and called on the "faery-doctor" at Cairnsfoot. As soon as he had heard
+her tale, he went behind the back door and began muttering, muttering,
+muttering-making spells. Her husband got well this time also. But after
+a while he sickened again, the fatal third time, and away went she once
+more to Cairnsfoot, and out went the faery-doctor behind his back door
+and began muttering, but soon he came in and told her it was no use--
+her husband would die; and sure enough the man died, and ever after
+when she spoke of him Mrs. Ormsby shook her head saying she knew well
+where he was, and it wasn't in heaven or hell or purgatory either. She
+probably believed that a log of wood was left behind in his place, but
+so bewitched that it seemed the dead body of her husband.
+
+She is dead now herself, but many still living remember her. She was,
+I believe, for a time a servant or else a kind of pensioner of some
+relations of my own.
+
+Sometimes those who are carried off are allowed after many years--
+seven usually--a final glimpse of their friends. Many years ago a woman
+vanished suddenly from a Sligo garden where she was walking with her
+husband. When her son, who was then a baby, had grown up he received
+word in some way, not handed down, that his mother was glamoured by
+faeries, and imprisoned for the time in a house in Glasgow and longing
+to see him. Glasgow in those days of sailing-ships seemed to the
+peasant mind almost over the edge of the known world, yet he, being a
+dutiful son, started away. For a long time he walked the streets of
+Glasgow; at last down in a cellar he saw his mother working. She was
+happy, she said, and had the best of good eating, and would he not eat?
+and therewith laid all kinds of food on the table; but he, knowing well
+that she was trying to cast on him the glamour by giving him faery
+food, that she might keep him with her, refused and came home to his
+people in Sligo.
+
+Some five miles southward of Sligo is a gloomy and tree-bordered pond,
+a great gathering-place of water-fowl, called, because of its form, the
+Heart Lake. It is haunted by stranger things than heron, snipe, or wild
+duck. Out of this lake, as from the white square stone in Ben Bulben,
+issues an unearthly troop. Once men began to drain it; suddenly one of
+them raised a cry that he saw his house in flames. They turned round,
+and every man there saw his own cottage burning. They hurried home to
+find it was but faery glamour. To this hour on the border of the lake
+is shown a half-dug trench--the signet of their impiety. A little way
+from this lake I heard a beautiful and mournful history of faery
+kidnapping. I heard it from a little old woman in a white cap, who
+sings to herself in Gaelic, and moves from one foot to the other as
+though she remembered the dancing of her youth.
+
+A young man going at nightfall to the house of his just married bride,
+met in the way a jolly company, and with them his bride. They were
+faeries, and had stolen her as a wife for the chief of their band. To
+him they seemed only a company of merry mortals. His bride, when she
+saw her old love, bade him welcome, but was most fearful lest be should
+eat the faery food, and so be glamoured out of the earth into that
+bloodless dim nation, wherefore she set him down to play cards with
+three of the cavalcade; and he played on, realizing nothing until he
+saw the chief of the band carrying his bride away in his arms.
+Immediately he started up, and knew that they were faeries; for slowly
+all that jolly company melted into shadow and night. He hurried to the
+house of his beloved. As he drew near came to him the cry of the
+keeners. She had died some time before he came. Some noteless Gaelic
+poet had made this into a forgotten ballad, some odd verses of which my
+white-capped friend remembered and sang for me.
+
+Sometimes one hears of stolen people acting as good genii to the
+living, as in this tale, heard also close by the haunted pond, of John
+Kirwan of Castle Hacket. The Kirwans[FN#8] are a family much rumoured
+of in peasant stories, and believed to be the descendants of a man and
+a spirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that
+the mother of the present Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe.
+
+
+[FN#8]  I have since heard that it was not the Kirwans, but their
+predecessors at Castle Hacket, the Hackets themselves, I think, who
+were descended from a man and a spirit, and were notable for beauty. I
+imagine that the mother of Lord Cloncurry was descended from the
+Hackets. It may well be that all through these stories the name of
+Kirwan has taken the place of the older name. Legend mixes everything
+together in her cauldron.
+
+
+John Kirwan was a great horse-racing man, and once landed in Liverpool
+with a fine horse, going racing somewhere in middle England. That
+evening, as he walked by the docks, a slip of a boy came up and asked
+where he was stabling his horse. In such and such a place, he answered.
+"Don't put him there," said the slip of a boy; "that stable will be
+burnt to-night." He took his horse elsewhere, and sure enough the
+stable was burnt down. Next day the boy came and asked as reward to
+ride as his jockey in the coming race, and then was gone. The race-time
+came round. At the last moment the boy ran forward and mounted, saying,
+"If I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in
+my right hand bet all you are worth." For, said Paddy Flynn, who told
+me the tale, "the left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making
+the sign of the cross with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a
+Banshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom."
+Well, the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John
+Kirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, "What can I do
+for you now?" said he. "Nothing but this," said the boy: "my mother has
+a cottage on your land-they stole me from the cradle. Be good to her,
+John Kirwan, and wherever your horses go I will watch that no ill
+follows them; but you will never see me more." With that he made
+himself air, and vanished.
+
+Sometimes animals are carried off--apparently drowned animals more
+than others. In Claremorris, Galway, Paddy Flynn told me, lived a poor
+widow with one cow and its calf. The cow fell into the river, and was
+washed away. There was a man thereabouts who went to a red-haired woman
+--for such are supposed to be wise in these things--and she told him to
+take the calf down to the edge of the river, and hide himself and
+watch. He did as she had told him, and as evening came on the calf
+began to low, and after a while the cow came along the edge of the
+river and commenced suckling it. Then, as he had been told, he caught
+the cow's tail. Away they went at a great pace across hedges and
+ditches, till they came to a royalty (a name for the little circular
+ditches, commonly called raths or forts, that Ireland is covered with
+since Pagan times). Therein he saw walking or sitting all the people
+who had died out of his village in his time. A woman was sitting on the
+edge with a child on her knees, and she called out to him to mind what
+the red-haired woman had told him, and he remembered she had said,
+Bleed the cow. So he stuck his knife into the cow and drew blood. That
+broke the spell, and he was able to turn her homeward. "Do not forget
+the spancel," said the woman with the child on her knees; "take the
+inside one." There were three spancels on a bush; he took one, and the
+cow was driven safely home to the widow.
+
+There is hardly a valley or mountainside where folk cannot tell you of
+some one pillaged from amongst them. Two or three miles from the Heart
+Lake lives an old woman who was stolen away in her youth. After seven
+years she was brought home again for some reason or other, but she had
+no toes left. She had danced them off. Many near the white stone door
+in Ben Bulben have been stolen away.
+
+It is far easier to be sensible in cities than in many country places
+I could tell you of. When one walks on those grey roads at evening by
+the scented elder-bushes of the white cottages, watching the faint
+mountains gathering the clouds upon their heads, one all too readily
+discovers, beyond the thin cobweb veil of the senses, those creatures,
+the goblins, hurrying from the white square stone door to the north, or
+from the Heart Lake in the south.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNTIRING ONES
+
+
+It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any
+unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like,
+and something in our sweetheart that we dislike. It is this
+entanglement of moods which makes us old, and puckers our brows and
+deepens the furrows about our eyes. If we could love and hate with as
+good heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them.
+But until that day their untiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-
+half of their fascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can
+the circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet. The Donegal
+peasants remember this when they bend over the spade, or sit full of
+the heaviness of the fields beside the griddle at nightfall, and they
+tell stories about it that it may not be forgotten. A short while ago,
+they say, two faeries, little creatures, one like a young man, one like
+a young woman, came to a farmer's house, and spent the night sweeping
+the hearth and setting all tidy. The next night they came again, and
+while the farmer was away, brought all the furniture up-stairs into one
+room, and having arranged it round the walls, for the greater grandeur
+it seems, they began to dance. They danced on and on, and days and days
+went by, and all the country-side came to look at them, but still their
+feet never tired. The farmer did not dare to live at home the while;
+and after three months he made up his mind to stand it no more, and
+went and told them that the priest was coming. The little creatures
+when they heard this went back to their own country, and there their
+joy shall last as long as the points of the rushes are brown, the
+people say, and that is until God shall burn up the world with a kiss.
+
+But it is not merely faeries who know untiring days, for there have
+been men and women who, falling under their enchantment, have attained,
+perhaps by the right of their God-given spirits, an even more than
+faery abundance of life and feeling. It seems that when mortals have
+gone amid those poor happy leaves of the Imperishable Rose of Beauty,
+blown hither and thither by the winds that awakened the stars, the dim
+kingdom has acknowledged their birthright, perhaps a little sadly, and
+given them of its best. Such a mortal was born long ago at a village in
+the south of Ireland. She lay asleep in a cradle, and her mother sat by
+rocking her, when a woman of the Sidhe (the faeries) came in, and said
+that the child was chosen to be the bride of the prince of the dim
+kingdom, but that as it would never do for his wife to grow old and die
+while he was still in the first ardour of his love, she would be gifted
+with a faery life. The mother was to take the glowing log out of the
+fire and bury it in the garden, and her child would live as long as it
+remained unconsumed. The mother buried the log, and the child grew up,
+became a beauty, and married the prince of the faeries, who came to her
+at nightfall. After seven hundred years the prince died, and another
+prince ruled in his stead and married the beautiful peasant girl in his
+turn; and after another seven hundred years he died also, and another
+prince and another husband came in his stead, and so on until she had
+had seven husbands. At last one day the priest of the parish called
+upon her, and told her that she was a scandal to the whole
+neighbourhood with her seven husbands and her long life. She was very
+sorry, she said, but she was not to blame, and then she told him about
+the log, and he went straight out and dug until he found it, and then
+they burned it, and she died, and was buried like a Christian, and
+everybody was pleased. Such a mortal too was Clooth-na-bare,[FN#9] who
+went all over the world seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery
+life, of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to lake and lake
+to hill, and setting up a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted,
+until at last she found the deepest water in the world in little Lough
+Ia, on the top of the Birds' Mountain at Sligo.
+
+
+[FN#9]  Doubtless Clooth-na-bare should be Cailleac Bare, which would
+mean the old Woman Bare. Bare or Bere or Verah or Dera or Dhera was a
+very famous person, perhaps the mother of the Gods herself. A friend of
+mine found her, as he thinks frequenting Lough Leath, or the Grey Lake
+on a mountain of the Fews. Perhaps Lough Ia is my mishearing, or the
+storyteller's mispronunciation of Lough Leath, for there are many Lough
+Leaths.
+
+
+The two little creatures may well dance on, and the woman of the log
+and Clooth-na-bare sleep in peace, for they have known untrammelled
+hate and unmixed love, and have never wearied themselves with "yes" and
+"no," or entangled their feet with the sorry net of "maybe" and
+"perhaps." The great winds came and took them up into themselves.
+
+
+
+
+EARTH, FIRE AND WATER
+
+
+Some French writer that I read when I was a boy, said that the desert
+went into the heart of the Jews in their wanderings and made them what
+they are. I cannot remember by what argument he proved them to be even
+yet the indestructible children of earth, but it may well be that the
+elements have their children. If we knew the Fire Worshippers better we
+might find that their centuries of pious observance have been rewarded,
+and that the fire has given them a little of its nature; and I am
+certain that the water, the water of the seas and of lakes and of mist
+and rain, has all but made the Irish after its image. Images form
+themselves in our minds perpetually as if they were reflected in some
+pool. We gave ourselves up in old times to mythology, and saw the Gods
+everywhere. We talked to them face to face, and the stories of that
+communion are so many that I think they outnumber all the like stories
+of all the rest of Europe. Even to-day our country people speak with
+the dead and with some who perhaps have never died as we understand
+death; and even our educated people pass without great difficulty into
+the condition of quiet that is the condition of vision. We can make our
+minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may
+see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a
+clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. Did not
+the wise Porphyry think that all souls come to be born because of
+water, and that "even the generation of images in the mind is from
+water"?
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD TOWN
+
+
+I fell, one night some fifteen years ago, into what seemed the power
+of faery.
+
+I had gone with a young man and his sister--friends and relations of
+my own--to pick stories out of an old countryman; and we were coming
+home talking over what he had told us. It was dark, and our
+imaginations were excited by his stories of apparitions, and this may
+have brought us, unknown to us, to the threshold, between sleeping and
+waking, where Sphinxes and Chimaeras sit open-eyed and where there are
+always murmurings and whisperings. I cannot think that what we saw was
+an imagination of the waking mind. We had come under some trees that
+made the road very dark, when the girl saw a bright light moving slowly
+across the road. Her brother and myself saw nothing, and did not see
+anything until we had walked for about half-an-hour along the edge of
+the river and down a narrow lane to some fields where there was a
+ruined church covered with ivy, and the foundations of what was called
+"the Old Town," which had been burned down, it was said, in Cromwell's
+day. We had stood for some few minutes, so far as I can recollect,
+looking over the fields full of stones and brambles and elder-bushes,
+when I saw a small bright light on the horizon, as it seemed, mounting
+up slowly towards the sky; then we saw other faint lights for a minute
+or two, and at last a bright flame like the flame of a torch moving
+rapidly over the river. We saw it all in such a dream, and it seems all
+so unreal, that I have never written of it until now, and hardly ever
+spoken of it, and even when thinking, because of some unreasoning
+impulse, I have avoided giving it weight in the argument. Perhaps I
+have felt that my recollections of things seen when the sense of
+reality was weakened must be untrustworthy. A few months ago, however,
+I talked it over with my two friends, and compared their somewhat
+meagre recollections with my own. That sense of unreality was all the
+more wonderful because the next day I heard sounds as unaccountable as
+were those lights, and without any emotion of unreality, and I remember
+them with perfect distinctness and confidence. The girl was sitting
+reading under a large old-fashioned mirror, and I was reading and
+writing a couple of yards away, when I heard a sound as if a shower of
+peas had been thrown against the mirror, and while I was looking at it
+I heard the sound again, and presently, while I was alone in the room,
+I heard a sound as if something much bigger than a pea had struck the
+wainscoting beside my head. And after that for some days came other
+sights and sounds, not to me but to the girl, her brother, and the
+servants. Now it was a bright light, now it was letters of fire that
+vanished before they could be read, now it was a heavy foot moving
+about in the seemingly empty house. One wonders whether creatures who
+live, the country people believe, wherever men and women have lived in
+earlier times, followed us from the ruins of the old town? or did they
+come from the banks of the river by the trees where the first light
+had shone for a moment?
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN AND HIS BOOTS
+
+
+There was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of ghosts or
+sheogues, and there was a house in Donegal that had been haunted as
+long as man could remember, and this is the story of how the house got
+the better of the man. The man came into the house and lighted a fire
+in the room under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them
+On the hearth, and stretched out his feet and warmed him self. For a
+time he prospered in his unbelief; but a little while after the night
+had fallen, and everything had got very dark, one of his boots began to
+move. It got up off the floor and gave a kind of slow jump towards the
+door, and then the other boot did the same, and after that the first
+boot jumped again. And thereupon it struck the man that an invisible
+being had got into his boots, and was now going away in them. When the
+boots reached the door they went up-stairs slowly, and then the man
+heard them go tramp, tramp round the haunted room over his head. A few
+minutes passed, and he could hear them again upon the stairs, and after
+that in the passage outside, and then one of them came in at the door,
+and the other gave a jump past it and came in too. They jumped along
+towards him, and then one got up and hit him, and afterwards the other
+hit him, and then again the first hit him, and so on, until they drove
+him out of the room, and finally out of the house. In this way he was
+kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter.
+It is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of
+the Sidhe, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work
+of the Sidhe who live in the heart of fantasy.
+
+
+
+
+A COWARD
+
+
+One day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who lives
+beyond Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain, and met there a young lad who
+seemed to be disliked by the two daughters. I asked why they disliked
+him, and was; told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom
+robust children of nature take to be cowards are but men and women with
+a nervous system too finely made for their life and work. I looked at
+the lad; but no, that pink-and-white face and strong body had nothing
+of undue sensibility. After a little he told me his story. He had lived
+a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he was
+coming home late at night, and suddenly fell himself sinking in, as it
+were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a dead
+brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not stop
+till he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung himself
+against the door with so much of violence that he broke the thick
+wooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his wild
+life, but was a hopeless coward. Nothing could ever bring him to look,
+either by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face, and
+he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, "the
+prettiest girl in the country" persuade him to see her home after a
+party if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had looked at the
+face no man can see unchanged-the imponderable face of a spirit.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE O'BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES
+
+
+In the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things.
+There is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing
+there than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon
+the earth. In the beginning the earth was perhaps made to fulfil the
+desire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What
+wonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom!
+
+A friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was
+straying about a rath called "Cashel Nore." A man with a haggard face
+and unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and
+began digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was working near and
+asked who the man was. "That is the third O'Byrne," was the answer. A
+few days after he learned this story: A great quantity of treasure had
+been buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries
+set to guard it; but some day it was to be found and belong to the
+family of the O'Byrnes. Before that day three O'Byrnes must find it and
+die. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last
+he had got a glimpse of the stone coffin that contained it, but
+immediately a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and
+tore him to pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished
+deep into the earth. The second O'Byrne came and dug and dug until he
+found the coffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within.
+He saw some horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and
+soon died. The treasure again sank out of sight. The third O'Byrne is
+now digging. He believes that he will die in some terrible way the
+moment he finds the treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and
+the O'Byrne family made rich for ever, as they were of old.
+
+A peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the
+shin-bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up; there was a hole
+in it; he looked through the hole, and saw the gold heaped up under the
+ground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath
+again he could not find the spot where he had seen it.
+
+
+
+
+DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES
+
+
+Drumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven!
+places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time
+after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore.
+Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the
+mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall
+to loose the faery riders on the world. The great St. Columba himself,
+the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed the
+mountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his prayers.
+Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,
+like a green tablecloth, and lying in the foam midway between the round
+cairn-headed Knocknarea and "Ben Bulben, famous for hawks":
+
+
+    But for Benbulben and Knocknarea
+    Many a poor sailor'd be cast away,
+
+
+as the rhyme goes.
+
+At the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and
+rocks and grass: a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall
+asleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake "silly,"
+the "good people" having carried off his soul. There is no more ready
+shortcut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered
+and smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes
+thither "full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and
+drawing-rooms." Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and
+was heard yelping helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland.
+These forts or raths, made before modern history had begun, cover all
+Rosses and all Columkille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most
+others, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I was
+poking about there, an unusually intelligent and "reading" peasant who
+had come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and
+whispered in a timid voice, "Are you all right, sir?" I had been some
+little while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the
+dog.
+
+No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by ill-
+boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose northern
+slope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer's young son came
+from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards it, but
+the "glamour" fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence, cross-legged,
+and commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined the fence was a
+horse, and that all night long he went on the most wonderful ride
+through the country. In the morning he was still beating his fence, and
+they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for three years
+before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer tried to level
+the fort. His cows and horses died, and an manner of trouble overtook
+him, and finally he himself was led home, and left useless with "his
+head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death."
+
+A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is
+another angle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with
+sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or
+four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the
+darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave's mouth
+two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A
+great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers,
+but the creatures had gone.
+
+To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of
+never-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door in
+the evening, and, in her own words, "looks at the mountains and thinks
+of the goodness of God," God is all the nearer, because the pagan
+powers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for hawks,
+the white square door swings open at sundown, and those wild
+unchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the
+White Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself, wanders under the broad
+cloud nightcap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these things, even
+though the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no long
+while since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of
+her dress touched him. "He fell down, and was dead three days." But
+this is merely the small gossip of faerydom--the little stitches that
+join this world and the other.
+
+One night as I sat eating Mrs. H-----'s soda-bread, her husband told
+me a longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor
+man from Fin M'Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell
+of, for those creatures, the "good people," love to repeat themselves.
+At any rate the story-tellers do. "In the times when we used to travel
+by the canal," he said, "I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to
+Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued
+I was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then
+we walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls
+milking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked
+them for a drink of milk. 'We have nothing to put it in here,' they
+said, 'but come to the house with us.' We went home with them, and sat
+round the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me,
+loath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to
+eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it
+on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head.
+When I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It
+grew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave
+the good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them
+a corpse. When I saw them, coming I hid behind the door. Says one to
+the other, putting the corpse on the spit, 'Who'll turn the spit? Says
+the other, 'Michael H-----, come out of that and turn the meat.' I came
+out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. 'Michael H------,'
+says the one who spoke first, 'if you let it burn we'll have to put you
+on the spit instead'; and on that they went out. I sat there trembling
+and turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and
+the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But
+having fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that
+time; and, sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: 'Michael H-----,
+can you tell me a story?' 'Divil a one,' said I. On which he caught me
+by the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing
+night. Never in all my born days did I see such a night-the darkest
+night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for
+the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on
+the shoulder, with a 'Michael H----, can you tell a story now?' 'I
+can,' says I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says:
+'Begin.' 'I have no story but the one,' says I, 'that I was sitting
+here, and you two men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and
+set me turning it.' 'That will do,' says he; 'ye may go in there and
+lie down on the bed.' And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning
+where was I but in the middle of a green field!"
+
+"Drumcliff" is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing
+season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a
+place called Columkille's Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient
+boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a
+moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread
+portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon,
+renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or
+care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest
+boscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchullin and his heroes. A
+vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.
+
+Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath,
+hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men in
+armour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on.
+A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there is a
+very ancient graveyard. The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse
+about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: "A pious soldier of
+the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff." Not very long
+ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray,
+saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was
+going. It was the "pious soldier of the race of Con," says local
+wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the
+graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling
+the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young
+child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from
+the too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut
+your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.
+
+There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the snipe-
+ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well:
+for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on
+the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea. There
+is a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived there
+who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred
+pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea captain. This my man
+knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain,
+not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean. Shortly
+afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange
+sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered
+since the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive
+out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade
+of the dead man appeared there at times. The bush remains to this day:
+once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put
+spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices,
+they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a
+snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say
+the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.
+
+My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these
+many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find
+nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
+as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of
+the few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:
+"They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine": for it is
+dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or
+knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
+friend, "the sweet Harp-String" (I give no more than his Irish name for
+fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart,
+but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields.
+Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the
+"dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of prescriptive
+right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are
+almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of
+magicians be true.
+
+
+
+
+THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE
+
+
+I
+
+Once a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the
+cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made them
+feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil
+himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows
+with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break, and
+they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet, and
+worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the
+Icelanders, or "Danes" as we call them and all other dwellers in the
+Scandinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places,
+and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same
+way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the
+custom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people
+of Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland
+which once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses
+itself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as
+Roughley, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red
+beards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a
+boat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike
+each other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint of
+hitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing, only
+to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a man
+from Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row, and
+made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so thin
+you cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of
+passionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and
+cried, "that little fellow's skull if ye were to hit it would go like
+an egg-shell," he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,
+"but a man might wallop away at your lordship's for a fortnight."
+
+
+II
+
+I wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories.
+I was in Roughley the other day, and found it much like other desolate
+places. I may have been thinking of Moughorow, a much wilder place, for
+the memories of one's childhood are brittle things to lean upon.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR
+
+
+A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his
+deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the
+valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all
+things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow
+under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must
+needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper
+with a Captain Moran on board the S.S. Margaret, that had put into a
+western river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions
+all flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He
+talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all
+his words broke the hard energy of his calling.
+
+"Sur," said he, "did you ever hear tell of the sea captain's prayer?"
+
+"No," said I; "what is it?"
+
+"It is," he replied, "'O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip.'"
+
+"And what does that mean?"
+
+"It means," he said, "that when they come to me some night and wake me
+up, and say, 'Captain, we're going down,' that I won't make a fool o'
+meself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I standin' on the bridge,
+when the third mate comes up to me looking mortial bad. Says he,
+'Captain, all's up with us.' Says I, 'Didn't you know when you joined
+that a certain percentage go down every year?' 'Yes, sur,' says he; and
+says I, 'Arn't you paid to go down?' 'Yes, sur,' says he; and says I,
+'Then go down like a man, and be damned to you!"'
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY
+
+
+In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far
+apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many
+years in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, "There is
+a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there are
+two souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way the
+one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has the
+shelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for
+shelter. I don't believe it, but there is many a one would not pass by
+it at night." Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near
+together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than the
+shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child
+running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the
+creature why she did not have it cut short. "It was my grandmother's,"
+said the child; "would you have her going about yonder with her
+petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days?" I have read a
+story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had made
+her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her
+knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like
+their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never grow leaky, nor
+the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time
+empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent
+or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the
+righteous from the unrighteous.
+
+
+1892 and 1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES
+
+
+Sometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
+for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
+and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
+under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the
+power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will, and
+sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands. One day
+I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went a circular
+parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating precious
+stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered green and
+crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable hunger. I knew
+that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell of the artist,
+and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful things with too
+avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I
+have seen into other people's hells also, and saw in one an infernal
+Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who weighed on a
+curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed, but the good
+deeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could see the scales
+go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were, I knew,
+crowding about him. I saw on another occasion a quantity of demons of
+all kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and dog-like
+--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and looking at
+a moon--like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from the depths
+of the pit.
+
+
+
+
+OUR LADY OF THE HILLS
+
+
+When we were children we did not say at such a distance from the post-
+office, or so far from the butcher's or the grocer's, but measured
+things by the covered well in the wood, or by the burrow of the fox in
+the hill. We belonged then to God and to His works, and to things come
+down from the ancient days. We would not have been greatly surprised
+had we met the shining feet of an angel among the white mushrooms upon
+the mountains, for we knew in those days immense despair, unfathomed
+love--every eternal mood,--but now the draw-net is about our feet. A
+few miles eastward of Lough Gill, a young Protestant girl, who was both
+pretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white, wandered up
+among those mountain mushrooms, and I have a letter of hers telling how
+she met a troop of children, and became a portion of their dream. When
+they first saw her they threw themselves face down in a bed of rushes,
+as if in a great fear; but after a little other children came about
+them, and they got up and followed her almost bravely. She noticed
+their fear, and presently stood still and held out her arms. A little
+girl threw herself into them with the cry, "Ah, you are the Virgin out
+o' the picture!" "No," said another, coming near also, "she is a sky
+faery, for she has the colour of the sky." "No," said a third, "she is
+the faery out of the foxglove grown big." The other children, however,
+would have it that she was indeed the Virgin, for she wore the Virgin's
+colours. Her good Protestant heart was greatly troubled, and she got
+the children to sit down about her, and tried to explain who she was,
+but they would have none of her explanation. Finding explanation of no
+avail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ? "Yes," said one; "but
+we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the
+Virgin." "Tell Him to be good to me," whispered another into her ear.
+"We would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil," burst out a
+third.
+
+She talked to them a long time about Christ and the apostles, but was
+finally interrupted by an elderly woman with a stick, who, taking her
+to be some adventurous hunter for converts, drove the children away,
+despite their explanation that here was the great Queen of Heaven come
+to walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had
+gone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the
+child who was called "a divil" jumped down from the high ditch by the
+lane, and said she would believe her "an ordinary lady" if she had "two
+skirts," for "ladies always had two skirts." The "two skirts" were
+shown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later
+jumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, "Dad's a divil,
+mum's a divil, and I'm a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady," and
+having flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When my
+pretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had
+dropped the tassels of her parasol. A year later she was by chance upon
+the mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child
+who had first called her the Virgin out o' the picture, and saw the
+tassels hanging about the child's neck, and said, "I am the lady you
+met last year, who told you about Christ." "No, you are not! no, you
+are not! no, you are not!" was the passionate reply. And after all, it
+was not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking
+in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who
+cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that
+man pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and
+the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and
+evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+
+A while ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time
+I had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a
+message from those beings or bodiless moods, or whatever they be, who
+inhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw
+with blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel, half dog,
+moving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal
+vanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his
+pink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light;
+and I remembered a pleasant belief about two faery dogs who go about
+representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the
+excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and
+chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage
+and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box,
+and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest
+emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden
+Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a
+beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and
+flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and
+kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried
+like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the
+more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our
+fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song
+of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the
+fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the
+clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred
+by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and
+that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only
+they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the
+sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must
+weep until the Eternal gates swing open.
+
+We were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the
+fiddler put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a
+copper, and then opened the door and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF
+THEIR GHOSTS AND FAERIES
+
+
+Not only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the
+other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in
+front of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it,
+and dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It
+would have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An
+Irish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature.
+For in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and
+spirits. They only ill-treat each other in reason. Each admits the
+other side to have feelings. There are points beyond which neither will
+go. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man
+Campbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his
+horse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a
+needle into her. They came to a river, and she grew very restless,
+fearing to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her.
+She cried out, "Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-
+like slave (the needle) out of me." They came to an inn. He turned the
+light of a lantern on her; immediately she dropped down like a falling
+star, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they
+treat the faeries as one is treated in an old Highland poem. A faery
+loved a little child who used to cut turf at the side of a faery hill.
+Every day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted
+knife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take
+long, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done
+so quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped
+her. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little
+child take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her
+make three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out
+of the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off
+with a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm
+into the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand
+through the treachery of the child.
+
+In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even
+the Devil religious. "Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the
+minister?" he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it
+came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we
+have left them alone. To be sure, the "loyal minority" knocked out the
+eye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town
+of Carrickfergus. But then the "loyal minority" is half Scottish. You
+have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like to
+have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have
+gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn
+have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear
+their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes
+ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland
+you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been
+permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls.
+Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they
+will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but more in
+sadness than in anger they have said it. The Catholic religion likes to
+keep on good terms with its neighbours.
+
+These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each
+country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and
+graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror to
+Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of make-
+believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is made to
+turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not feel
+anxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the dew on
+his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have soured
+the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The piper
+M'Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched into a
+sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a long time
+the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a mile, when
+they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased suddenly.
+Some time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern completely
+flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of the
+cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake where
+treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close to the
+coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came. He rose
+to the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen the
+treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while his
+heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw the
+rest of his body.
+
+These water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish folk-
+lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our tales
+turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly
+humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one of
+these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does not
+prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding it with
+conscious fantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day for
+congers in the monster hole. Returning home, a great eel on my
+shoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail sweeping the ground
+behind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an
+immense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had
+broken my line and escaped. "That was him," said the fisherman. "Did
+you ever hear how he made my brother emigrate? My brother was a diver,
+you know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast
+comes up to him, and says, 'What are you after?' 'Stones, sur,' says
+he. 'Don't you think you had better be going?' 'Yes, sur,' says he. And
+that's why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got
+poor, but that's not true."
+
+You--you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and air
+and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We--we exchange
+civilities with the world beyond.
+
+
+
+
+WAR
+
+
+When there was a rumour of war with France a while ago, I met a poor
+Sligo woman, a soldier's widow, that I know, and I read her a sentence
+out of a letter I had just had from London: "The people here are mad
+for war, but France seems inclined to take things peacefully," or some
+like sentence. Her mind ran a good deal on war, which she imagined
+partly from what she had heard from soldiers, and partly from tradition
+of the rebellion of '98, but the word London doubled her interest, for
+she knew there were a great many people in London, and she herself had
+once lived in "a congested district." "There are too many over one
+another in London. They are getting tired of the world. It is killed
+they want to be. It will be no matter; but sure the French want nothing
+but peace and quietness. The people here don't mind the war coming.
+They could not be worse than they are. They may as well die soldierly
+before God. Sure they will get quarters in heaven." Then she began to
+say that it would be a hard thing to see children tossed about on
+bayonets, and I knew her mind was running on traditions of the great
+rebellion. She said presently, "I never knew a man that was in a battle
+that liked to speak of it after. They'd sooner be throwing hay down
+from a hayrick." She told me how she and her neighbours used to be
+sitting over the fire when she was a girl, talking of the war that was
+coming, and now she was afraid it was coming again, for she had dreamed
+that all the bay was "stranded and covered with seaweed." I asked her
+if it was in the Fenian times that she had been so much afraid of war
+coming. But she cried out, "Never had I such fun and pleasure as in the
+Fenian times. I was in a house where some of the officers used to be
+staying, and in the daytime I would be walking after the soldiers'
+band, and at night I'd be going down to the end of the garden watching
+a soldier, with his red coat on him, drilling the Fenians in the field
+behind the house. One night the boys tied the liver of an old horse,
+that had been dead three weeks, to the knocker, and I found it when I
+opened the door in the morning." And presently our talk of war shifted,
+as it had a way of doing, to the battle of the Black Pig, which seems
+to her a battle between Ireland and England, but to me an Armageddon
+which shall quench all things in the Ancestral Darkness again, and from
+this to sayings about war and vengeance. "Do you know," she said, "what
+the curse of the Four Fathers is? They put the man-child on the spear,
+and somebody said to them, 'You will be cursed in the fourth generation
+after you,' and that is why disease or anything always comes in the
+fourth generation."
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL
+
+
+I have heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of Clare
+and Galway, say that in "every household" of faery "there is a queen
+and a fool," and that if you are "touched" by either you never recover,
+though you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said of the
+fool that he was "maybe the wisest of all," and spoke of him as dressed
+like one of the "mummers that used to be going about the country."
+Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him, and I have
+heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember seeing a
+long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of an old
+miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was
+a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he
+is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes an
+Amadan-na-Breena, a fool of the forth, and is attached to a household
+there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know well, and who has
+been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said, "There are fools
+amongst them, and the fools we see, like that Amadan of Ballylee, go
+away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that we call
+Oinseachs (apes)." A woman who is related to the witch-doctor on the
+border of Clare, and who can Cure people and cattle by spells, said,
+"There are some cures I can't do. I can't help any one that has got a
+stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a woman that
+saw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian. I never
+heard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking near
+Gort, and she called out, 'There's the fool of the forth coming after
+me.' So her friends that were with her called out, though they could
+see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no harm.
+He was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that is all
+she said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a cousin of
+Hearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years." The wife of the old
+miller said, "It is said they are mostly good neighbours, but the
+stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets that
+is gone. The Amadan-na-Breena we call him!" And an old woman who lives
+in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, "It is true enough,
+there is no cure for the stroke of the Amadan-na-Breena. There was an
+old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell what diseases
+you had with measuring you; and he knew many things. And he said to me
+one time, 'What month of the year is the worst?' and I said, 'The month
+of May, of course.' 'It is not,' he said; 'but the month of June, for
+that's the month that the Amadan gives his stroke!' They say he looks
+like any other man, but he's leathan (wide), and not smart. I knew a
+boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb looked over the wall at him
+with a beard on it, and he knew it was the Amadan, for it was the month
+of June. And they brought him to that man I was telling about, that had
+the tape, and when he saw him he said, 'Send for the priest, and get a
+Mass said over him.' And so they did, and what would you say but he's
+living yet and has a family! A certain Regan said, 'They, the other
+sort of people, might be passing you close here and they might touch
+you. But any that gets the touch of the Amadan-na-Breena is done for.'
+It's true enough that it's in the month of June he's most likely to
+give the touch. I knew one that got it, and he told me about it
+himself. He was a boy I knew well, and he told me that one night a
+gentleman came to him, that had been his land-lord, and that was dead.
+And he told him to come along with him, for he wanted him to fight
+another man. And when he went he found two great troops of them, and
+the other troop had a living man with them too, and he was put to fight
+him. And they had a great fight, and he got the better of the other
+man, and then the troop on his side gave a great shout, and he was left
+home again. But about three years after that he was cutting bushes in a
+wood and he saw the Amadan coming at him. He had a big vessel in his
+arms, and it was shining, so that the boy could see nothing else; but
+he put it behind his back then and came running, and the boy said he
+looked wild and wide, like the side of the hill. And the boy ran, and
+he threw the vessel after him, and it broke with a great noise, and
+whatever came out of it, his head was gone there and then. He lived for
+a while after, and used to tell us many things, but his wits were gone.
+He thought they mightn't have liked him to beat the other man, and he
+used to be afraid something would come on him." And an old woman in a
+Galway workhouse, who had some little knowledge of Queen Maive, said
+the other day, "The Amadan-na-Breena changes his shape every two days.
+Sometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he'll come like the worst
+of beasts, trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of
+late he was shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him."
+
+I knew a man who was trying to bring before his mind's eye an image of
+Aengus, the old Irish god of love and poetry and ecstasy, who changed
+four of his kisses into birds, and suddenly the image of a man with a
+cap and bells rushed before his mind's eye, and grew vivid and spoke
+and called itself "Aengus' messenger." And I knew another man, a truly
+great seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there was
+a tree with peacocks' feathers instead of leaves, and flowers that
+opened to show little human faces when the white fool had touched them
+with his coxcomb, and he saw at another time a white fool sitting by a
+pool and smiling and watching the images of many fair women floating up
+from the pool.
+
+What else can death be but the beginning of wisdom and power and
+beauty? and foolishness may be a kind of death. I cannot think it
+wonderful that many should see a fool with a shining vessel of some
+enchantment or wisdom or dream too powerful for mortal brains in "every
+household of them." It is natural, too, that there should be a queen to
+every household of them, and that one should hear little of their
+kings, for women come more easily than men to that wisdom which ancient
+peoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom. The
+self, which is the foundation of our knowledge, is broken in pieces by
+foolishness, and is forgotten in the sudden emotions of women, and
+therefore fools may get, and women do get of a certainty, glimpses of
+much that sanctity finds at the end of its painful journey. The man who
+saw the white fool said of a certain woman, not a peasant woman, "If I
+had her power of vision I would know all the wisdom of the gods, and
+her visions do not interest her." And I know of another woman, also not
+a peasant woman, who would pass in sleep into countries of an unearthly
+beauty, and who never cared for anything but to be busy about her house
+and her children; and presently an herb doctor cured her, as he called
+it. Wisdom and beauty and power may sometimes, as I think, come to
+those who die every day they live, though their dying may not be like
+the dying Shakespeare spoke of. There is a war between the living and
+the dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it. They will have it
+that when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of the
+earth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their wisdom
+when the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make the trees
+wither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery in
+November, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes. Because the
+soul always believes in these, or in like things, the cell and the
+wilderness shall never be long empty, or lovers come into the world who
+will not understand the verse--
+
+
+    Heardst thou not sweet words among
+    That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
+    Heardst thou not that those who die
+    Awake in a world of ecstasy?
+    How love, when limbs are interwoven,
+    And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
+    And thought to the world's dim boundaries clinging,
+    And music when one's beloved is singing,
+    Is death?
+
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE OF FAERY
+
+
+Those that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of
+their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to
+have a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has
+passed the threshold of trance, to those sweet waters where Maeldun saw
+the dishevelled eagles bathe and become young again.
+
+There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of
+Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the
+end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told
+me a few months before his death that "they" would not let him sleep at
+night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their pipes.
+He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend had told
+him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or to play
+on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and he did,
+and they always went out into the field when he began to play. He
+showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he did
+not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his
+chimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the
+pipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for
+she heard that "three of them" had told him he was to die. He said they
+had gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they
+had "taken," I suppose) who used to come with them, and play about the
+house with them, had "gone to some other place," because "they found
+the house too cold for them, maybe"; and he died a week after he had
+said these things.
+
+His neighbours were not certain that he really saw anything in his old
+age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young
+man. His brother said, "Old he is, and it's all in his brain the things
+he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him." But he was
+improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, "The
+poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a
+fine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two
+lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they
+took away Fallon's little girl." And she told how Fallon's little girl
+had met a woman "with red hair that was as bright as silver," who took
+her away. Another neighbour, who was herself "clouted over the ear" by
+one of them for going into a fort where they were, said, "I believe
+it's mostly in his head they are; and when he stood in the door last
+night I said, 'The wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it
+never stops,' to make him think it was the same with him; but he says,
+'I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them is
+after bringing out a little flute, and it's on it he's playing to
+them.' And this I know, that when he pulled down the chimney where he
+said the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones, and
+he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and
+strong."
+
+A friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms of
+true friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down
+accurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman's story some
+time before I heard of it, got her to tell it over again, and wrote it
+out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not like
+being in the house alone because of the ghosts and fairies; and the old
+woman said, "There's nothing to be frightened about in faeries, miss.
+Many's the time I talked to a woman myself that was a faery, or
+something of the sort, and no less and more than mortal anyhow. She
+used to come about your grandfather's house--your mother's grandfather,
+that is--in my young days. But you'll have heard all about her." My
+friend said that she had heard about her, but a long time before, and
+she wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went on, "Well
+dear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming about was
+when your uncle--that is, your mother's uncle--Joseph married, and
+building a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his
+father's, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living
+nigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men
+at their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all
+there into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked
+out, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come
+yet; and one day I was standing with my mother foment the house, when
+we sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I
+was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
+I mind her as well as if I saw her there now!" My friend asked how the
+woman was dressed, and the old woman said, "It was a gray cloak she had
+on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied round
+her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times." My
+friend asked, "How wee was she?" And the old woman said, "Well now, she
+wasn't wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the Wee
+Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you would
+say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round in the
+face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother's sister, and Betty was
+like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of them. She
+was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married, and she
+never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee Woman--her
+being like Betty--was, maybe, one of their own people that had been
+took off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was
+always following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks
+straight over to where my mother was standing. 'Go over to the Lough
+this minute!'--ordering her like that--'Go over to the Lough, and tell
+Joseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I'll
+show you fornent the thornbush. That is where it is to be built, if he
+is to have luck and prosperity, so do what I'm telling ye this minute.'
+The house was being built on 'the path' I suppose--the path used by the
+people of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down and
+shows him, and he changes the foundations, the way he was bid, but
+didn't bring it exactly to where was pointed, and the end of that was,
+when he come to the house, his own wife lost her life with an accident
+that come to a horse that hadn't room to turn right with a harrow
+between the bush and the wall. The Wee Woman was queer and angry when
+next she come, and says to us, 'He didn't do as I bid him, but he'll
+see what he'll see."' My friend asked where the woman came from this
+time, and if she was dressed as before, and the woman said, "Always the
+same way, up the field beyant the burn. It was a thin sort of shawl she
+had about her in summer, and a cloak about her in winter; and many and
+many a time she came, and always it was good advice she was giving to
+my mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck.
+There was none of the other children of us ever seen her unless me; but
+I used to be glad when I seen her coming up the bum, and would run out
+and catch her by the hand and the cloak, and call to my mother, 'Here's
+the Wee Woman!' No man body ever seen her. My father used to be wanting
+to, and was angry with my mother and me, thinking we were telling lies
+and talking foolish like. And so one day when she had come, and was
+sitting by the fireside talking to my mother, I slips out to the field
+where he was digging. 'Come up,' says I, 'if ye want to see her. She's
+sitting at the fireside now, talking to mother.' So in he comes with me
+and looks round angry like and sees nothing, and he up with a broom
+that was near hand and hits me a crig with it. 'Take that now!' says
+he, 'for making a fool of me!' and away with him as fast as he could,
+and queer and angry with me. The Wee Woman says to me then, 'Ye got
+that now for bringing people to see me. No man body ever seen me, and
+none ever will.'
+
+"There was one day, though, she gave him a queer fright anyway,
+whether he had seen her or not. He was in among the cattle when it
+happened, and he comes up to the house all trembling like. 'Don't let
+me hear you say another word of your Wee Woman. I have got enough of
+her this time.' Another time, all the same, he was up Gortin to sell
+horses, and before he went off, in steps the Wee Woman and says she to
+my mother, holding out a sort of a weed, 'Your man is gone up by
+Gortin, and there's a bad fright waiting him coming home, but take this
+and sew it in his coat, and he'll get no harm by it.' My mother takes
+the herb, but thinks to herself, 'Sure there's nothing in it,' and
+throws it on the floor, and lo and behold, and sure enough! coming home
+from Gortin, my father got as bad a fright as ever he got in his life.
+What it was I don't right mind, but anyway he was badly damaged by it.
+My mother was in a queer way, frightened of the Wee Woman, after what
+she done, and sure enough the next time she was angry. 'Ye didn't
+believe me,' she said, 'and ye threw the herb I gave ye in the fire,
+and I went far enough for it.' There was another time she came and told
+how William Hearne was dead in America. 'Go over,' she says, 'to the
+Lough, and say that William is dead, and he died happy, and this was
+the last Bible chapter ever he read,' and with that she gave the verse
+and chapter. 'Go,' she says, 'and tell them to read them at the next
+class meeting, and that I held his head while he died.' And sure enough
+word came after that how William had died on the day she named. And,
+doing as she did about the chapter and hymn, they never had such a
+prayer-meeting as that. One day she and me and my mother was standing
+talking, and she was warning her about something, when she says of a
+sudden, 'Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery, and it's time for me
+to be off.' And with that she gave a swirl round on her feet, and
+raises up in the air, and round and round she goes, and up and up, as
+if it was a winding stairs she went up, only far swifter. She went up
+and up, till she was no bigger than a bird up against the clouds,
+singing and singing the whole time the loveliest music I ever heard in
+my life from that day to this. It wasn't a hymn she was singing, but
+poetry, lovely poetry, and me and my mother stands gaping up, and all
+of a tremble. 'What is she at all, mother?' says I. 'Is it an angel she
+is, or a faery woman, or what?' With that up come Miss Letty, that was
+your grandmother, dear, but Miss Letty she was then, and no word of her
+being anything else, and she wondered to see us gaping up that way,
+till me and my mother told her of it. She went on gay-dressed then, and
+was lovely looking. She was up the lane where none of us could see her
+coming forward when the Wee Woman rose up in that queer way, saying,
+'Here comes Miss Letty in all her finery.' Who knows to what far
+country she went, or to see whom dying?
+
+"It was never after dark she came, but daylight always, as far as I
+mind, but wanst, and that was on a Hallow Eve night. My mother was by
+the fire, making ready the supper; she had a duck down and some apples.
+In slips the Wee Woman, 'I'm come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,' says
+she. 'That's right,' says my mother, and thinks to herself, 'I can give
+her her supper nicely.' Down she sits by the fire a while. 'Now I'll
+tell you where you'll bring my supper,' says she. 'In the room beyond
+there beside the loom--set a chair in and a plate.' 'When ye're
+spending the night, mayn't ye as well sit by the table and eat with the
+rest of us?' 'Do what you're bid, and set whatever you give me in the
+room beyant. I'll eat there and nowhere else.' So my mother sets her a
+plate of duck and some apples, whatever was going, in where she bid,
+and we got to our supper and she to hers; and when we rose I went in,
+and there, lo and behold ye, was her supper-plate a bit ate of each
+portion, and she clean gone!"
+
+
+1897.
+
+
+
+
+DREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL
+
+
+The friend who heard about Maive and the hazel-stick went to the
+workhouse another day. She found the old people cold and wretched,
+"like flies in winter," she said; but they forgot the cold when they
+began to talk. A man had just left them who had played cards in a rath
+with the people of faery, who had played "very fair"; and one old man
+had seen an enchanted black pig one night, and there were two old
+people my friend had heard quarrelling as to whether Raftery or
+Callanan was the better poet. One had said of Raftery, "He was a big
+man, and his songs have gone through the whole world. I remember him
+well. He had a voice like the wind"; but the other was certain "that
+you would stand in the snow to listen to Callanan." Presently an old
+man began to tell my friend a story, and all listened delightedly,
+bursting into laughter now and then. The story, which I am going to
+tell just as it was told, was one of those old rambling moralless
+tales, which are the delight of the poor and the hard driven, wherever
+life is left in its natural simplicity. They tell of a time when
+nothing had consequences, when even if you were killed, if only you had
+a good heart, somebody would bring you to life again with a touch of a
+rod, and when if you were a prince and happened to look exactly like
+your brother, you might go to bed with his queen, and have only a
+little quarrel afterwards. We too, if we were so weak and poor that
+everything threatened us with misfortune, would remember, if foolish
+people left us alone, every old dream that has been strong enough to
+fling the weight of the world from its shoulders.
+
+There was a king one time who was very much put out because he had no
+son, and he went at last to consult his chief adviser. And the chief
+adviser said, "It's easy enough managed if you do as I tell you. Let
+you send some one," says he, "to such a place to catch a fish. And when
+the fish is brought in, give it to the queen, your wife, to eat."
+
+So the king sent as he was told, and the fish was caught and brought
+in, and he gave it to the cook, and bade her put it before the fire,
+but to be careful with it, and not to let any blob or blister rise on
+it. But it is impossible to cook a fish before the fire without the
+skin of it rising in some place or other, and so there came a blob on
+the skin, and the cook put her finger on it to smooth it down, and then
+she put her finger into her mouth to cool it, and so she got a taste of
+the fish. And then it was sent up to the queen, and she ate it, and
+what was left of it was thrown out into the yard, and there was a mare
+in the yard and a greyhound, and they ate the bits that were thrown out.
+
+And before a year was out, the queen had a young son, and the cook had
+a young son, and the mare had two foals, and the greyhound had two pups.
+
+And the two young sons were sent out for a while to some place to be
+cared, and when they came back they adviser and said, "Tell me some way
+that I can know were so much like one another no person could know
+which was the queen's son and which was the cook's. And the queen was
+vexed at that, and she went to the chief which is my own son, for I
+don't like to be giving the same eating and drinking to the cook's son
+as to my own." "It is easy to know that," said the chief adviser, "if
+you will do as I tell you. Go you outside, and stand at the door they
+will be coming in by, and when they see you, your own son will bow his
+head, but the cook's son will only laugh."
+
+So she did that, and when her own son bowed his head, her servants put
+a mark on him that she would know him again. And when they were all
+sitting at their dinner after that, she said to Jack, that was the
+cook's son, "It is time for you to go away out of this, for you are not
+my son." And her own son, that we will call Bill, said, "Do not send
+him away, are we not brothers?" But Jack said, "I would have been long
+ago out of this house if I knew it was not my own father and mother
+owned it." And for all Bill could say to him, he would not stop. But
+before he went, they were by the well that was in the garden, and he
+said to Bill, "If harm ever happens to me, that water on the top of the
+well will be blood, and the water below will be honey."
+
+Then he took one of the pups, and one of the two horses, that was
+foaled after the mare eating the fish, and the wind that was after him
+could not catch him, and he caught the wind that was before him. And he
+went on till he came to a weaver's house, and he asked him for a
+lodging, and he gave it to him. And then he went on till he came to a
+king's house, and he sent in at the door to ask, "Did he want a
+servant?" "All I want," said the king, "is a boy that will drive out
+the cows to the field every morning, and bring them in at night to be
+milked." "I will do that for you," said Jack; so the king engaged him.
+
+In the morning Jack was sent out with the four-and-twenty cows, and
+the place he was told to drive them to had not a blade of grass in it
+for them, but was full of stones. So Jack looked about for some place
+where there would be better grass, and after a while he saw a field
+with good green grass in it, and it belonging to a giant. So he knocked
+down a bit of the wall and drove them in, and he went up himself into
+an apple-tree and began to eat the apples. Then the giant came into the
+field. "Fee-faw-fum," says he, "I smell the blood of an Irishman. I see
+you where you are, up in the tree," he said; "you are too big for one
+mouthful, and too small for two mouthfuls, and I don't know what I'll
+do with you if I don't grind you up and make snuff for my nose." "As
+you are strong, be merciful," says Jack up in the tree. "Come down out
+of that, you little dwarf," said the giant, "or I'll tear you and the
+tree asunder." So Jack came down. "Would you sooner be driving red-hot
+knives into one another's hearts," said the giant, "or would you sooner
+be fighting one another on red-hot flags?" "Fighting on red-hot flags
+is what I'm used to at home," said Jack, "and your dirty feet will be
+sinking in them and my feet will be rising." So then they began the
+fight. The ground that was hard they made soft, and the ground that was
+soft they made hard, and they made spring wells come up through the
+green flags. They were like that all through the day, no one getting
+the upper hand of the other, and at last a little bird came and sat on
+the bush and said to Jack, "If you don't make an end of him by sunset,
+he'll make an end of you." Then Jack put out his strength, and he
+brought the giant down on his knees. "Give me my life," says the giant,
+"and I'll give you the three best gifts." "What are those?" said Jack.
+"A sword that nothing can stand against, and a suit that when you put
+it on, you will see everybody, and nobody will see you, and a pair of
+shoes that will make you ran faster than the wind blows." "Where are
+they to be found?" said Jack. "In that red door you see there in the
+hill." So Jack went and got them out. "Where will I try the sword?"
+says he. "Try it on that ugly black stump of a tree," says the giant.
+"I see nothing blacker or uglier than your own head," says Jack. And
+with that he made one stroke, and cut off the giant's head that it went
+into the air, and he caught it on the sword as it was coming down, and
+made two halves of it. "It is well for you I did not join the body
+again," said the head, "or you would have never been able to strike it
+off again." "I did not give you the chance of that," said Jack. And he
+brought away the great suit with him.
+
+So he brought the cows home at evening, and every one wondered at all
+the milk they gave that night. And when the king was sitting at dinner
+with the princess, his daughter, and the rest, he said, "I think I only
+hear two roars from beyond to-night in place of three."
+
+The next morning Jack went out again with the cows, and he saw another
+field full of grass, and he knocked down the wall and let the cows in.
+All happened the same as the day before, but the giant that came this
+time had two heads, and they fought together, and the little bird came
+and spoke to Jack as before. And when Jack had brought the giant down,
+he said, "Give me my life, and I'll give you the best thing I have."
+"What is that?" says Jack. "It's a suit that you can put on, and you
+will see every one but no one can see you." "Where is it?" said Jack.
+"It's inside that little red door at the side of the hill." So Jack
+went and brought out the suit. And then he cut off the giant's two
+heads, and caught them coming down and made four halves of them. And
+they said it was well for him he had not given them time to join the
+body.
+
+That night when the cows came home they gave so much milk that all the
+vessels that could be found were filled up.
+
+The next morning Jack went out again, and all happened as before, and
+the giant this time had four heads, and Jack made eight halves of them.
+And the giant had told him to go to a little blue door in the side of
+the hill, and there he got a pair of shoes that when you put them on
+would go faster than the wind.
+
+That night the cows gave so much milk that there were not vessels
+enough to hold it, and it was given to tenants and to poor people
+passing the road, and the rest was thrown out at the windows. I was
+passing that way myself, and I got a drink of it.
+
+That night the king said to Jack, "Why is it the cows are giving so
+much milk these days? Are you bringing them to any other grass?" "I am
+not," said Jack, "but I have a good stick, and whenever they would stop
+still or lie down, I give them blows of it, that they jump and leap
+over walls and stones and ditches; that's the way to make cows give
+plenty of milk."
+
+And that night at the dinner, the king said, "I hear no roars at all."
+
+The next morning, the king and the princess were watching at the
+window to see what would Jack do when he got to the field. And Jack
+knew they were there, and he got a stick, and began to batter the cows,
+that they went leaping and jumping over stones, and walls, and ditches.
+"There is no lie in what Jack said," said the king then.
+
+Now there was a great serpent at that time used to come every seven
+years, and he had to get a kines daughter to eat, unless she would have
+some good man to fight for her. And it was the princess at the place
+Jack was had to be given to it that time, and the king had been feeding
+a bully underground for seven years, and you may believe he got the
+best of everything, to be ready to fight it.
+
+And when the time came, the princess went out, and the bully with her
+down to the shore, and when they got there what did he do, but to tie
+the princess to a tree, the way the serpent would be able to swallow
+her easy with no delay, and he himself went and hid up in an ivy-tree.
+And Jack knew what was going on, for the princess had told him about
+it, and had asked would he help her, but he said he would not. But he
+came out now, and he put on the suit he had taken from the first giant,
+and he came by the place the princess was, but she didn't know him. "Is
+that right for a princess to be tied to a tree?" said Jack. "It is not,
+indeed," said she, and she told him what had happened, and how the
+serpent was coming to take her. "If you will let me sleep for awhile
+with my head in your lap," said Jack, "you could wake me when it is
+coming." So he did that, and she awakened him when she saw the serpent
+coming, and Jack got up and fought with it, and drove it back into the
+sea. And then he cut the rope that fastened her, and he went away. The
+bully came down then out of the tree, and he brought the princess to
+where the king was, and he said, "I got a friend of mine to come and
+fight the serpent to-day, where I was a little timorous after being so
+long shut up underground, but I'll do the fighting myself to-morrow."
+
+The next day they went out again, and the same thing happened, the
+bully tied up the princess where the serpent could come at her fair and
+easy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree. Then Jack put on the
+suit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and the
+princess did not know him, but she told him all that had happened
+yesterday, and how some young gentleman she did not know had come and
+saved her. So Jack asked might he lie down and take a sleep with his
+head in her lap, the way she could awake him. And an happened the same
+way as the day before. And the bully gave her up to the king, and said
+he had brought another of his friends to fight for her that day.
+
+The next day she was brought down to the shore as before, and a great
+many people gathered to see the serpent that was coming to bring the
+king's daughter away. And Jack brought out the suit of clothes he had
+brought away from the third giant, and she did not know him, and they
+talked as before. But when he was asleep this time, she thought she
+would make sure of being able to find him again, and she took out her
+scissors and cut off a piece of his hair, and made a little packet of
+it and put it away. And she did another thing, she took off one of the
+shoes that was on his feet.
+
+And when she saw the serpent coming she woke him, and he said, "This
+time I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king's
+daughters." So he took out the sword he had got from the giant, and he
+put it in at the back of the serpent's neck, the way blood and water
+came spouting out that went for fifty miles inland, and made an end of
+him. And then he made off, and no one saw what way he went, and the
+bully brought the princess to the king, and claimed to have saved her,
+and it is he who was made much of, and was the right-hand man after
+that.
+
+But when the feast was made ready for the wedding, the princess took
+out the bit of hair she had, and she said she would marry no one but
+the man whose hair would match that, and she showed the shoe and said
+that she would marry no one whose foot would not fit that shoe as well.
+And the bully tried to put on the shoe, but so much as his toe would
+not go into it, and as to his hair, it didn't match at all to the bit
+of hair she had cut from the man that saved her.
+
+So then the king gave a great ball, to bring all the chief men of the
+country together to try would the shoe fit any of them. And they were
+all going to carpenters and joiners getting bits of their feet cut off
+to try could they wear the shoe, but it was no use, not one of them
+could get it on.
+
+Then the king went to his chief adviser and asked what could he do.
+And the chief adviser bade him to give another ball, and this time he
+said, "Give it to poor as well as rich."
+
+So the ball was given, and many came flocking to it, but the shoe
+would not fit any one of them. And the chief adviser said, "Is every
+one here that belongs to the house?" "They are all here," said the
+king, "except the boy that minds the cows, and I would not like him to
+be coming up here."
+
+Jack was below in the yard at the time, and he heard what the king
+said, and he was very angry, and he went and got his sword and came
+running up the stairs to strike off the king's head, but the man that
+kept the gate met him on the stairs before he could get to the king,
+and quieted him down, and when he got to the top of the stairs and the
+princess saw him, she gave a cry and ran into his arms. And they tried
+the shoe and it fitted him, and his hair matched to the piece that had
+been cut off. So then they were married, and a great feast was given
+for three days and three nights.
+
+And at the end of that time, one morning there came a deer outside the
+window, with bells on it, and they ringing. And it called out, "Here is
+the hunt, where is the huntsman and the hound?" So when Jack heard that
+he got up and took his horse and his hound and went hunting the deer.
+When it was in the hollow he was on the hill, and when it was on the
+hill he was in the hollow, and that went on all through the day, and
+when night fell it went into a wood. And Jack went into the wood after
+it, and all he could see was a mud-wall cabin, and he went in, and
+there he saw an old woman, about two hundred years old, and she sitting
+over the fire. "Did you see a deer pass this way?" says Jack. "I did
+not," says she, "but it's too late now for you to be following a deer,
+let you stop the night here." "What will I do with my horse and my
+hound?" said Jack. "Here are two ribs of hair," says she, "and let you
+tie them up with them." So Jack went out and tied up the horse and the
+hound, and when he came in again the old woman said, "You killed my
+three sons, and I'm going to kill you now," and she put on a pair of
+boxing-gloves, each one of them nine stone weight, and the nails in
+them fifteen inches long. Then they began to fight, and Jack was
+getting the worst of it. "Help, hound!" he cried out, then "Squeeze
+hair," cried out the old woman, and the rib of hair that was about the
+hound's neck squeezed him to death. "Help, horse!" Jack called out,
+then, "Squeeze hair," called out the old woman, and the rib of hair
+that was about the horse's neck began to tighten and squeeze him to
+death. Then the old woman made an end of Jack and threw him outside the
+door.
+
+To go back now to Bill. He was out in the garden one day, and he took
+a look at the well, and what did he see but the water at the top was
+blood, and what was underneath was honey. So he went into the house
+again, and he said to his mother, "I will never eat a second meal at
+the same table, or sleep a second night in the same bed, till I know
+what is happening to Jack."
+
+So he took the other horse and hound then, and set off, over the hills
+where cock never crows and horn never sounds, and the devil never blows
+his bugle. And at last he came to the weaver's house, and when he went
+in, the weaver says, "You are welcome, and I can give you better
+treatment than I did the last time you came in to me," for she thought
+it was Jack who was there, they were so much like one another. "That is
+good," said Bill to himself, "my brother has been here." And he gave
+the weaver the full of a basin of gold in the morning before he left.
+
+Then he went on till he came to the king's house, and when he was at
+the door the princess came running down the stairs, and said, "Welcome
+to you back again." And all the people said, "It is a wonder you have
+gone hunting three days after your marriage, and to stop so long away."
+So he stopped that night with the princess, and she thought it was her
+own husband all the time.
+
+And in the morning the deer came, and bells ringing on her, under the
+windows, and called out, "The hunt is here, where are the huntsmen and
+the hounds?" Then Bill got up and got his horse and his hound, and
+followed her over hills and hollows till they came to the wood, and
+there he saw nothing but the mud-wall cabin and the old woman sitting
+by the fire, and she bade him stop the night there, and gave him two
+ribs of hair to tie his horse and his hound with. But Bill was wittier
+than Jack was, and before he went out, he threw the ribs of hair into
+the fire secretly. When he came in the old woman said, "Your brother
+killed my three sons, and I killed him, and I'll kill you along with
+him." And she put her gloves on, and they began the fight, and then
+Bill called out, "Help, horse." "Squeeze hair," called the old woman;
+"I can't squeeze, I'm in the fire," said the hair. And the horse came
+in and gave her a blow of his hoof. "Help, hound," said Bill then.
+"Squeeze, hair," said the old woman; "I can't, I'm in the fire," said
+the second hair. Then the bound put his teeth in her, and Bill brought
+her down, and she cried for mercy. "Give me my life," she said, "and
+I'll tell you where you'll get your brother again, and his hound and
+horse." "Where's that?" said Bill. "Do you see that rod over the fire?"
+said she; "take it down and go outside the door where you'll see three
+green stones, and strike them with the rod, for they are your brother,
+and his horse and hound, and they'll come to life again." "I will, but
+I'll make a green stone of you first," said Bill, and he cut off her
+head with his sword.
+
+Then he went out and struck the stones, and sure enough there were
+Jack, and his horse and hound, alive and well. And they began striking
+other stones around, and men came from them, that had been turned to
+stones, hundreds and thousands of them.
+
+Then they set out for home, but on the way they had some dispute or
+some argument together, for Jack was not well pleased to hear he had
+spent the night with his wife, and Bill got angry, and he struck Jack
+with the rod, and turned him to a green stone. And he went home, but
+the princess saw he had something on his mind, and he said then, "I
+have killed my brother." And he went back then and brought him to life,
+and they lived happy ever after, and they had children by the
+basketful, and threw them out by the shovelful. I was passing one time
+myself, and they called me in and gave me a cup of tea.
+
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+BY THE ROADSIDE
+
+
+Last night I went to a wide place on the Kiltartan road to listen to
+some Irish songs. While I waited for the singers an old man sang about
+that country beauty who died so many years ago, and spoke of a singer
+he had known who sang so beautifully that no horse would pass him, but
+must turn its head and cock its ears to listen. Presently a score of
+men and boys and girls, with shawls over their beads, gathered under
+the trees to listen. Somebody sang Sa Muirnin Diles, and then somebody
+else Jimmy Mo Milestor, mournful songs of separation, of death, and of
+exile. Then some of the men stood up and began to dance, while another
+lilted the measure they danced to, and then somebody sang Eiblin a
+Ruin, that glad song of meeting which has always moved me more than
+other songs, because the lover who made it sang it to his sweetheart
+under the shadow of a mountain I looked at every day through my
+childhood. The voices melted into the twilight and were mixed into the
+trees, and when I thought of the words they too melted away, and were
+mixed with the generations of men. Now it was a phrase, now it was an
+attitude of mind, an emotional form, that had carried my memory to
+older verses, or even to forgotten mythologies. I was carried so far
+that it was as though I came to one of the four rivers, and followed it
+under the wall of Paradise to the roots of the trees of knowledge and
+of life. There is no song or story handed down among the cottages that
+has not words and thoughts to carry one as far, for though one can know
+but a little of their ascent, one knows that they ascend like medieval
+genealogies through unbroken dignities to the beginning of the world.
+Folk art is, indeed, the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and
+because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and
+pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has
+gathered into itself the simplest and most unforgetable thoughts of the
+generations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted. Wherever it
+is spoken by the fireside, or sung by the roadside, or carved upon the
+lintel, appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and
+design to, spreads quickly when its hour is come.
+
+In a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few
+people--three or four thousand out of millions--favoured by their own
+characters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour,
+have understanding of imaginative things, and yet "the imagination is
+the man himself." The churches in the Middle Age won all the arts into
+their service because men understood that when imagination is
+impoverished, a principal voice--some would say the only voice--for the
+awakening of wise hope and durable faith, and understanding charity,
+can speak but in broken words, if it does not fall silent. And so it
+has always seemed to me that we, who would re-awaken imaginative
+tradition by making old songs live again, or by gathering old stories
+into books, take part in the quarrel of Galilee. Those who are Irish
+and would spread foreign ways, which, for all but a few, are ways of
+spiritual poverty, take part also. Their part is with those who were of
+Jewry, and yet cried out, "If thou let this man go thou art not
+Caesar's friend."
+
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+INTO THE TWILIGHT
+
+
+    Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
+    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
+    Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight;
+    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
+    Thy mother Eire is always young,
+    Dew ever shining and twilight gray,
+    Though hope fall from thee or love decay
+    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
+    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill,
+    For there the mystical brotherhood
+    Of hollow wood and the hilly wood
+    And the changing moon work out their will.
+    And God stands winding his lonely horn;
+    And Time and World are ever in flight,
+    And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
+    And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celtic Twilight, by W. B. Yeats
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10459 ***