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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The crock of gold, by James Stephens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The crock of gold
+
+Author: James Stephens
+
+Release Date: January 1, 1999 [eBook #1605]
+
+[Most recently updated: January 12, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROCK OF GOLD ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Philosophers were able to hear each other
+thinking all day long (page 5)]
+
+
+
+
+                                THE
+                           CROCK OF GOLD
+
+
+                                By
+                          James Stephens
+
+
+                WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+                                BY
+                         THOMAS MACKENZIE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                          BOOK I
+  THE COMING OF PAN                                  1
+
+                          BOOK II
+  THE PHILOSOPHER’S JOURNEY                         91
+
+                          BOOK III
+  THE TWO GODS                                     135
+
+                          BOOK IV
+  THE PHILOSOPHER’S RETURN                         151
+
+                          BOOK V
+  THE POLICEMEN                                    185
+
+                          BOOK VI
+  THE THIN WOMAN’S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH     253
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+IN COLOUR
+
+
+  The Philosophers were able to hear each other
+  thinking all day long (page 5)                      _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACE PAGE
+
+  “Will you never be done talking?” shouted the Thin
+  Woman passionately                                              26
+
+  He stood waist-deep in greenery fronting her squarely           42
+
+  “Do you remember,” said Seumas, “the way he hopped and
+  waggled his leg the last time he was here?”                     58
+
+  He saw Caitilin Ni Murrachu walking a little way in front
+  with a small vessel in her hand                                 74
+
+  At that moment the Philosopher’s cake lost all its savour       97
+
+  A swift shadow darkened the passage                            109
+
+  A young woman came along the road and stood gazing earnestly
+  at this house                                                  129
+
+  “Tell me where the money is?” he hissed                        166
+
+  He . . . wept in so loud a voice that his comrades swarmed
+  up to see what had happened to him                             200
+
+  When they topped a slight incline they saw a light shining
+  some distance away                                             212
+
+  Caitilin danced in uncontrollable gaiety                       222
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I. THE COMING OF PAN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In the centre of the pine wood called Coilla Doraca there lived
+not long ago two Philosophers. They were wiser than anything else
+in the world except the Salmon who lies in the pool of Glyn Cagny
+into which the nuts of knowledge fall from the hazel bush on its
+bank. He, of course, is the most profound of living creatures, but
+the two Philosophers are next to him in wisdom. Their faces looked
+as though they were made of parchment, there was ink under their
+nails, and every difficulty that was submitted to them, even by
+women, they were able to instantly resolve. The Grey Woman of Dun
+Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath asked them the three
+questions which nobody had ever been able to answer, and they were
+able to answer them. That was how they obtained the enmity of these
+two women which is more valuable than the friendship of angels. The
+Grey Woman and the Thin Woman were so incensed at being answered
+that they married the two Philosophers in order to be able to
+pinch them in bed, but the skins of the Philosophers were so thick
+that they did not know they were being pinched. They repaid the
+fury of the women with such tender affection that these vicious
+creatures almost expired of chagrin, and once, in a very ecstasy
+of exasperation, after having been kissed by their husbands, they
+uttered the fourteen hundred maledictions which comprised their
+wisdom, and these were learned by the Philosophers who thus became
+even wiser than before.
+
+In due process of time two children were born of these marriages.
+They were born on the same day and in the same hour, and they were
+only different in this, that one of them was a boy and the other
+one was a girl. Nobody was able to tell how this had happened, and,
+for the first time in their lives, the Philosophers were forced
+to admire an event which they had been unable to prognosticate;
+but having proved by many different methods that the children were
+really children, that what must be must be, that a fact cannot be
+controverted, and that what has happened once may happen twice,
+they described the occurrence as extraordinary but not unnatural,
+and submitted peacefully to a Providence even wiser than they were.
+
+The Philosopher who had the boy was very pleased because, he said,
+there were too many women in the world, and the Philosopher who
+had the girl was very pleased also because, he said, you cannot
+have too much of a good thing: the Grey Woman and the Thin Woman,
+however, were not in the least softened by maternity-they said
+that they had not bargained for it, that the children were gotten
+under false presences, that they were respectable married women,
+and that, as a protest against their wrongs, they would not cook
+any more food for the Philosophers. This was pleasant news for
+their husbands, who disliked the women’s cooking very much, but
+they did not say so, for the women would certainly have insisted
+on their rights to cook had they imagined their husbands disliked
+the results: therefore, the Philosophers besought their wives every
+day to cook one of their lovely dinners again, and this the women
+always refused to do.
+
+They all lived together in a small house in the very centre of a
+dark pine wood. Into this place the sun never shone because the
+shade was too deep, and no wind ever came there either, because
+the boughs were too thick, so that it was the most solitary and
+quiet place in the world, and the Philosophers were able to hear
+each other thinking all day long, or making speeches to each other,
+and these were the pleasantest sounds they knew of. To them there
+were only two kinds of sounds anywhere—these were conversation and
+noise: they liked the first very much indeed, but they spoke of
+the second with stern disapproval, and, even when it was made by a
+bird, a breeze, or a shower of rain, they grew angry and demanded
+that it should be abolished. Their wives seldom spoke at all and
+yet they were never silent: they communicated with each other by
+a kind of physical telegraphy which they had learned among the
+Shee-they cracked their finger-joints quickly or slowly and so were
+able to communicate with each other over immense distances, for by
+dint of long practice they could make great explosive sounds which
+were nearly like thunder, and gentler sounds like the tapping of
+grey ashes on a hearthstone. The Thin Woman hated her own child,
+but she loved the Grey Woman’s baby, and the Grey Woman loved the
+Thin Woman’s infant but could not abide her own. A compromise may
+put an end to the most perplexing of situations, and, consequently,
+the two women swapped children, and at once became the most tender
+and amiable mothers imaginable, and the families were able to live
+together in a more perfect amity than could be found anywhere else.
+
+The children grew in grace and comeliness. At first the little boy
+was short and fat and the little girl was long and thin, then the
+little girl became round and chubby while the little boy grew lanky
+and wiry. This was because the little girl used to sit very quiet
+and be good and the little boy used not.
+
+They lived for many years in the deep seclusion of the pine wood
+wherein a perpetual twilight reigned, and here they were wont
+to play their childish games, flitting among the shadowy trees
+like little quick shadows. At times their mothers, the Grey Woman
+and the Thin Woman, played with them, but this was seldom, and
+sometimes their fathers, the two Philosophers, came out and looked
+at them through spectacles which were very round and very glassy,
+and had immense circles of horn all round the edges. They had,
+however, other playmates with whom they could romp all day long.
+There were hundreds of rabbits running about in the brushwood; they
+were full of fun and were very fond of playing with the children.
+There were squirrels who joined cheerfully in their games, and some
+goats, having one day strayed in from the big world, were made so
+welcome that they always came again whenever they got the chance.
+There were birds also, crows and blackbirds and willy-wagtails,
+who were well acquainted with the youngsters, and visited them as
+frequently as their busy lives permitted.
+
+At a short distance from their home there was a clearing in the
+wood about ten feet square; through this clearing, as through a
+funnel, the sun for a few hours in the summer time blazed down.
+It was the boy who first discovered the strange radiant shaft in
+the wood. One day he had been sent out to collect pine cones for
+the fire. As these were gathered daily the supply immediately near
+the house was scanty, therefore he had, while searching for more,
+wandered further from his home than usual. The first sight of the
+extraordinary blaze astonished him. He had never seen anything
+like it before, and the steady, unwinking glare aroused his fear
+and curiosity equally. Curiosity will conquer fear even more than
+bravery will; indeed, it has led many people into dangers which
+mere physical courage would shudder away from, for hunger and love
+and curiosity are the great impelling forces of life. When the
+little boy found that the light did not move he drew closer to it,
+and at last, emboldened by curiosity, he stepped right into it and
+found that it was not a thing at all. The instant that he stepped
+into the light he found it was hot, and this so frightened him that
+he jumped out of it again and ran behind a tree. Then he jumped
+into it for a moment and out of it again, and for nearly half an
+hour he played a splendid game of tip and tig with the sunlight.
+At last he grew quite bold and stood in it and found that it did
+not burn him at all, but he did not like to remain in it, fearing
+that he might be cooked. When he went home with the pine cones he
+said nothing to the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin or to the Thin Woman
+of Inis Magrath or to the two Philosophers, but he told the little
+girl all about it when they went to bed, and every day afterwards
+they used to go and play with the sunlight, and the rabbits and
+the squirrels would follow them there and join in their games with
+twice the interest they had shown before.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+To the lonely house in the pine wood people sometimes came for
+advice on subjects too recondite for even those extremes of
+elucidation, the parish priest and the tavern. These people were
+always well received, and their perplexities were attended to
+instantly, for the Philosophers liked being wise and they were not
+ashamed to put their learning to the proof, nor were they, as so
+many wise people are, fearful lest they should become poor or less
+respected by giving away their knowledge. These were favourite
+maxims with them:
+
+You must be fit to give before you can be fit to receive.
+
+Knowledge becomes lumber in a week, therefore, get rid of it.
+
+The box must be emptied before it can be refilled.
+
+Refilling is progress.
+
+A sword, a spade, and a thought should never be allowed to rust.
+
+The Grey Woman and the Thin Woman, however, held opinions quite
+contrary to these, and their maxims also were different:
+
+A secret is a weapon and a friend.
+
+Man is God’s secret, Power is man’s secret, Sex is woman’s secret.
+
+By having much you are fitted to have more.
+
+There is always room in the box.
+
+The art of packing is the last lecture of wisdom.
+
+The scalp of your enemy is progress.
+
+Holding these opposed views it seemed likely that visitors seeking
+for advice from the Philosophers might be astonished and captured
+by their wives; but the women were true to their own doctrines and
+refused to part with information to any persons saving only those
+of high rank, such as policemen, gombeen men, and district and
+county councillors; but even to these they charged high prices for
+their information, and a bonus on any gains which accrued through
+the following of their advices. It is unnecessary to state that
+their following was small when compared with those who sought the
+assistance of their husbands, for scarcely a week passed but some
+person came through the pine wood with his brows in a tangle of
+perplexity.
+
+In these people the children were deeply interested. They used
+to go apart afterwards and talk about them, and would try to
+remember what they looked like, how they talked, and their manner
+of walking or taking snuff. After a time they became interested in
+the problems which these people submitted to their parents and the
+replies or instructions wherewith the latter relieved them. Long
+training had made the children able to sit perfectly quiet, so
+that when the talk came to the interesting part they were entirely
+forgotten, and ideas which might otherwise have been spared their
+youth became the commonplaces of their conversation.
+
+When the children were ten years of age one of the Philosophers
+died. He called the household together and announced that the
+time had come when he must bid them all good-bye, and that his
+intention was to die as quickly as might be. It was, he continued,
+an unfortunate thing that his health was at the moment more
+robust than it had been for a long time, but that, of course,
+was no obstacle to his resolution, for death did not depend upon
+ill-health but upon a multitude of other factors with the details
+whereof he would not trouble them.
+
+His wife, the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin, applauded this resolution
+and added as an amendment that it was high time he did something,
+that the life he had been leading was an arid and unprofitable one,
+that he had stolen her fourteen hundred maledictions for which he
+had no use and presented her with a child for which she had none,
+and that, all things concerned, the sooner he did die and stop
+talking the sooner everybody concerned would be made happy.
+
+The other Philosopher replied mildly as he lit his pipe: “Brother,
+the greatest of all virtues is curiosity, and the end of all desire
+is wisdom; tell us, therefore, by what steps you have arrived at
+this commendable resolution.”
+
+To this the Philosopher replied: “I have attained to all the wisdom
+which I am fitted to bear. In the space of one week no new truth
+has come to me. All that I have read lately I knew before; all that
+I have thought has been but a recapitulation of old and wearisome
+ideas. There is no longer an horizon before my eves. Space has
+narrowed to the petty dimensions of my thumb. Time is the tick of
+a clock. Good and evil are two peas in the one pod. My wife’s face
+is the same for ever. I want to play with the children, and yet I
+do not want to. Your conversation with me, brother, is like the
+droning of a bee in a dark cell. The pine trees take root and grow
+and die.—It’s all bosh. Good-bye.”
+
+His friend replied:
+
+“Brother, these are weighty reflections, and I do clearly perceive
+that the time has come for you to stop. I might observe, not in
+order to combat your views, but merely to continue an interesting
+conversation, that there are still some knowledges which you have
+not assimilated—you do not yet know how to play the tambourine, nor
+how to be nice to your wife, nor how to get up first in the morning
+and cook the breakfast. Have you learned how to smoke strong
+tobacco as I do? or can you dance in the moonlight with a woman of
+the Shee? To understand the theory which underlies all things is
+not sufficient. It has occurred to me, brother, that wisdom may not
+be the end of everything. Goodness and kindliness are, perhaps,
+beyond wisdom. Is it not possible that the ultimate end is gaiety
+and music and a dance of joy? Wisdom is the oldest of all things.
+Wisdom is all head and no heart. Behold, brother, you are being
+crushed under the weight of your head. You are dying of old age
+while you are yet a child.”
+
+“Brother,” replied the other Philosopher, “your voice is like
+the droning of a bee in a dark cell. If in my latter days I am
+reduced to playing on the tambourine and running after a hag in the
+moonlight, and cooking your breakfast in the grey morning, then it
+is indeed time that I should die. Good-bye, brother.”
+
+So saying, the Philosopher arose and removed all the furniture to
+the sides of the room so that there was a clear space left in the
+centre. He then took off his boots and his coat, and standing on
+his toes he commenced to gyrate with extraordinary rapidity. In a
+few moments his movements became steady and swift, and a sound came
+from him like the humming of a swift saw; this sound grew deeper
+and deeper, and at last continuous, so that the room was filled
+with a thrilling noise. In a quarter of an hour the movement began
+to noticeably slacken. In another three minutes it was quite slow.
+In two more minutes he grew visible again as a body, and then he
+wobbled to and fro, and at last dropped in a heap on the floor.
+He was quite dead, and on his face was an expression of serene
+beatitude.
+
+“God be with you, brother,” said the remaining Philosopher, and he
+lit his pipe, focused his vision on the extreme tip of his nose,
+and began to meditate profoundly on the aphorism whether the good
+is the all or the all is the good. In another moment he would have
+become oblivious of the room, the company, and the corpse, but the
+Grey Woman of Dun Gortin shattered his meditation by a demand for
+advice as to what should next be done. The Philosopher, with an
+effort, detached his eyes from his nose and his mind from his maxim.
+
+“Chaos,” said he, “is the first condition. Order is the first
+law. Continuity is the first reflection. Quietude is the
+first happiness. Our brother is dead—bury him.” So saying, he
+returned his eyes to his nose, and his mind to his maxim, and
+lapsed to a profound reflection wherein nothing sat perched on
+insubstantiality, and the Spirit of Artifice goggled at the puzzle.
+
+The Grey Woman of Dun Gortin took a pinch of snuff from her box and
+raised the keen over her husband:
+
+
+    “You were my husband and you are dead.
+
+    It is wisdom that has killed you.
+
+    If you had listened to my wisdom instead of to your own you
+    would still be a trouble to me and I would still be happy.
+
+    Women are stronger than men—they do not die of wisdom.
+
+    They are better than men because they do not seek wisdom.
+
+    They are wiser than men because they know less and
+    understand more.
+
+    I had fourteen hundred maledictions, my little store, and
+    by a trick you stole them and left me empty.
+
+    You stole my wisdom and it has broken your neck.
+
+    I lost my knowledge and I am yet alive raising the keen
+    over your body, but it was too heavy for you, my little
+    knowledge.
+
+    You will never go out into the pine wood in the morning, or
+    wander abroad on a night of stars.
+
+    You will not sit in the chimney-corner on the hard nights,
+    or go to bed, or rise again, or do anything at all from
+    this day out.
+
+    Who will gather pine cones now when the fire is going down,
+    or call my name in the empty house, or be angry when the
+    kettle is not boiling?
+
+    Now I am desolate indeed. I have no knowledge, I have no
+    husband, I have no more to say.”
+
+
+“If I had anything better you should have it,” said she politely to
+the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath.
+
+“Thank you,” said the Thin Woman, “it was very nice. Shall I begin
+now? My husband is meditating and we may be able to annoy him.”
+
+“Don’t trouble yourself,” replied the other, “I am past enjoyment
+and am, moreover, a respectable woman.”
+
+“That is no more than the truth, indeed.”
+
+“I have always done the right thing at the right time.”
+
+“I’d be the last body in the world to deny that,” was the warm
+response.
+
+“Very well, then,” said the Grey Woman, and she commenced to take
+off her boots. She stood in the centre of the room and balanced
+herself on her toe.
+
+“You are a decent, respectable lady,” said the Thin Woman of
+Inis Magrath, and then the Grey Woman began to gyrate rapidly
+and more rapidly until she was a very fervour of motion, and in
+three-quarters of an hour (for she was very tough) she began to
+slacken, grew visible, wobbled, and fell beside her dead husband,
+and on her face was a beatitude almost surpassing his.
+
+The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath smacked the children and put them
+to bed, next she buried the two bodies under the hearthstone, and
+then, with some trouble, detached her husband from his meditations.
+When he became capable of ordinary occurrences she detailed all
+that had happened, and said that he alone was to blame for the sad
+bereavement. He replied:
+
+“The toxin generates the anti-toxin. The end lies concealed in the
+beginning. All bodies grow around a skeleton. Life is a petticoat
+about death. I will not go to bed.”
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On the day following this melancholy occurrence Meehawl MacMurrachu,
+a small farmer in the neighbourhood, came through the pine trees
+with tangled brows. At the door of the little house he said, “God
+be with all here,” and marched in.
+
+The Philosopher removed his pipe from his lips—
+
+“God be with yourself,” said he, and he replaced his pipe.
+
+Meehawl MacMurrachu crooked his thumb at space, “Where is the other
+one?” said he.
+
+“Ah!” said the Philosopher.
+
+“He might be outside, maybe?”
+
+“He might, indeed,” said the Philosopher gravely.
+
+“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said the visitor, “for you have
+enough knowledge by yourself to stock a shop. The reason I came
+here to-day was to ask your honoured advice about my wife’s
+washing-board. She only has it a couple of years, and the last time
+she used it was when she washed out my Sunday shirt and her black
+skirt with the red things on it—you know the one?”
+
+“I do not,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Well, anyhow, the washboard is gone, and my wife says it was
+either taken by the fairies or by Bessie Hannigan—you know Bessie
+Hannigan? She has whiskers like a goat and a lame leg!” “I do not,”
+said the Philosopher.
+
+“No matter,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu. “She didn’t take it, because
+my wife got her out yesterday and kept her talking for two hours
+while I went through everything in her bit of a house—the washboard
+wasn’t there.”
+
+“It wouldn’t be,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Maybe your honour could tell a body where it is then?”
+
+“Maybe I could,” said the Philosopher; “are you listening?”
+
+“I am,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu.
+
+The Philosopher drew his chair closer to the visitor until their
+knees were jammed together. He laid both his hands on Meehawl
+MacMurrachu’s knees “Washing is an extraordinary custom,” said he.
+“We are washed both on coming into the world and on going out of
+it, and we take no pleasure from the first washing nor any profit
+from the last.”
+
+“True for you, sir,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu.
+
+“Many people consider that scourings supplementary to these are
+only due to habit. Now, habit is continuity of action, it is a most
+detestable thing and is very difficult to get away from. A proverb
+will run where a writ will not, and the follies of our forefathers
+are of greater importance to us than is the well-being of our
+posterity.”
+
+“I wouldn’t say a word against that, sir,” said Meehawl MacMurrachu.
+
+“Cats are a philosophic and thoughtful race, but they do not
+admit the efficacy of either water or soap, and yet it is usually
+conceded that they are cleanly folk. There are exceptions to every
+rule, and I once knew a cat who lusted after water and bathed
+daily: he was an unnatural brute and died ultimately of the head
+staggers. Children are nearly as wise as cats. It is true that
+they will utilize water in a variety of ways, for instance, the
+destruction of a tablecloth or a pinafore, and I have observed
+them greasing a ladder with soap, showing in the process a great
+knowledge of the properties of this material.”
+
+“Why shouldn’t they, to be sure?” said Meehawl MacMurrachu. “Have
+you got a match, sir?”
+
+“I have not,” said the Philosopher. “Sparrows, again, are a highly
+acute and reasonable folk. They use water to quench thirst, but
+when they are dirty they take a dust bath and are at once cleansed.
+Of course, birds are often seen in the water, but they go there to
+catch fish and not to wash. I have often fancied that fish are a
+dirty, sly, and unintelligent people—this is due to their staying
+so much in the water, and it has been observed that on being
+removed from this element they at once expire through sheer ecstasy
+at escaping from their prolonged washing.”
+
+“I have seen them doing it myself,” said Meehawl. “Did you ever
+hear, sir, about the fish that Paudeen MacLoughlin caught in the
+policeman’s hat.”
+
+“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “The first person who washed
+was possibly a person seeking a cheap notoriety. Any fool can
+wash himself, but every wise man knows that it is an unnecessary
+labour, for nature will quickly reduce him to a natural and
+healthy dirtiness again. We should seek, therefore, not how to
+make ourselves clean, but how to attain a more unique and splendid
+dirtiness, and perhaps the accumulated layers of matter might, by
+ordinary geologic compulsion, become incorporated with the human
+cuticle and so render clothing unnecessary—”
+
+“About that washboard,” said Meehawl, “I was just going to say—”
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “In its proper place I
+admit the necessity for water. As a thing to sail a ship on it can
+scarcely be surpassed (not, you will understand, that I entirely
+approve of ships, they tend to create and perpetuate international
+curiosity and the smaller vermin of different latitudes). As an
+element wherewith to put out a fire, or brew tea, or make a slide
+in winter it is useful, but in a tin basin it has a repulsive and
+meagre aspect.—Now as to your wife’s washboard—”
+
+“Good luck to your honour,” said Meehawl.
+
+“Your wife says that either the fairies or a woman with a goat’s
+leg has it.”
+
+“It’s her whiskers,” said Meehawl.
+
+“They are lame,” said the Philosopher sternly.
+
+“Have it your own way, sir, I’m not certain now how the creature is
+afflicted.”
+
+“You say that this unhealthy woman has not got your wife’s
+washboard. It remains, therefore, that the fairies have it.”
+
+“It looks that way,” said Meehawl.
+
+“There are six clans of fairies living in this neighbourhood;
+but the process of elimination, which has shaped the world to a
+globe, the ant to its environment, and man to the captaincy of the
+vertebrates, will not fail in this instance either.”
+
+“Did you ever see anything like the way wasps have increased this
+season?” said Meehawl; “faith, you can’t sit down anywhere but your
+breeches—”
+
+“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Did you leave out a pan of milk
+on last Tuesday?”
+
+“I did then.”
+
+“Do you take off your hat when you meet a dust twirl?”
+
+“I wouldn’t neglect that,” said Meehawl.
+
+“Did you cut down a thorn bush recently?”
+
+“I’d sooner cut my eye out,” said Meehawl, “and go about as
+wall-eyed as Lorcan O’Nualain’s ass: I would that. Did you ever see
+his ass, sir? It—”
+
+“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Did you kill a robin redbreast?”
+
+“Never,” said Meehawl. “By the pipers,” he added, “that old skinny
+cat of mine caught a bird on the roof yesterday.”
+
+“Hah!” cried the Philosopher, moving, if it were possible, even
+closer to his client, “now we have it. It is the Leprecauns of Gort
+na Cloca Mora took your washboard. Go to the Gort at once. There
+is a hole under a tree in the southeast of the field. Try what you
+will find in that hole.”
+
+“I’ll do that,” said Meehawl. “Did you ever—”
+
+“I did not,” said the Philosopher.
+
+So Meehawl MacMurrachu went away and did as he had been bidden, and
+underneath the tree of Gort na Cloca Mora he found a little crock
+of gold.
+
+“There’s a power of washboards in that,” said he.
+
+By reason of this incident the fame of the Philosopher became even
+greater than it had been before, and also by reason of it many
+singular events were to happen with which you shall duly become
+acquainted.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It so happened that the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora were not
+thankful to the Philosopher for having sent Meehawl MacMurrachu
+to their field. In stealing Meehawl’s property they were quite
+within their rights because their bird had undoubtedly been slain
+by his cat. Not alone, therefore, was their righteous vengeance
+nullified, but the crock of gold which had taken their community
+many thousands of years to amass was stolen. A Leprecaun without
+a pot of gold is like a rose without perfume, a bird without a
+wing, or an inside without an outside. They considered that the
+Philosopher had treated them badly, that his action was mischievous
+and unneighbourly, and that until they were adequately compensated
+for their loss both of treasure and dignity, no conditions other
+than those of enmity could exist between their people and the
+little house in the pine wood. Furthermore, for them the situation
+was cruelly complicated. They were unable to organise a direct,
+personal hostility against their new enemy, because the Thin Woman
+of Inis Magrath would certainly protect her husband. She belonged
+to the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, who had relatives in every fairy
+fort in Ireland, and were also strongly represented in the forts
+and duns of their immediate neighbours. They could, of course,
+have called an extraordinary meeting of the Sheogs, Leprecauns,
+and Cluricauns, and presented their case with a claim for damages
+against the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, but that Clann would
+assuredly repudiate any liability on the ground that no member of
+their fraternity was responsible for the outrage, as it was the
+Philosopher, and not the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath, who had done
+the deed. Notwithstanding this they were unwilling to let the
+matter rest, and the fact that justice was out of reach only added
+fury to their anger.
+
+One of their number was sent to interview the Thin Woman of Inis
+Magrath, and the others concentrated nightly about the dwelling
+of Meehawl MacMurrachu in an endeavour to recapture the treasure
+which they were quite satisfied was hopeless. They found that
+Meehawl, who understood the customs of the Earth Folk very well,
+had buried the crock of gold beneath a thorn bush, thereby placing
+it under the protection of every fairy in the world—the Leprecauns
+themselves included, and until it was removed from this place by
+human hands they were bound to respect its hiding-place, and even
+guarantee its safety with their blood.
+
+They afflicted Meehawl with an extraordinary attack of rheumatism
+and his wife with an equally virulent sciatica, but they got no
+lasting pleasure from their groans.
+
+The Leprecaun, who had been detailed to visit the Thin Woman of
+Inis Magrath, duly arrived at the cottage in the pine wood and made
+his complaint. The little man wept as he told the story, and the
+two children wept out of sympathy for him. The Thin Woman said she
+was desperately grieved by the whole unpleasant transaction, and
+that all her sympathies were with Gort na Cloca Mora, but that she
+must disassociate herself from any responsibility in the matter as
+it was her husband who was the culpable person, and that she had no
+control over his mental processes, which, she concluded, was one of
+the seven curious things in the world.
+
+As her husband was away in a distant part of the wood nothing
+further could be done at that time, so the Leprecaun returned again
+to his fellows without any good news, but he promised to come back
+early on the following day. When the Philosopher come home late
+that night the Thin Woman was waiting up for him.
+
+“Woman,” said the Philosopher, “you ought to be in bed.”
+
+“Ought I indeed?” said the Thin Woman. “I’d have you know that I’ll
+go to bed when I like and get up when I like without asking your or
+any one else’s permission.”
+
+“That is not true,” said the Philosopher. “You get sleepy whether
+you like it or not, and you awaken again without your permission
+being asked. Like many other customs such as singing, dancing,
+music, and acting, sleep has crept into popular favour as part of a
+religious ceremonial. Nowhere can one go to sleep more easily than
+in a church.”
+
+“Do you know,” said the Thin Woman, “that a Leprecaun came here
+to-day?”
+
+“I do not,” said the Philosopher, “and notwithstanding the
+innumerable centuries which have elapsed since that first sleeper
+(probably with extreme difficulty) sank into his religious trance,
+we can to-day sleep through a religious ceremony with an ease which
+would have been a source of wealth and fame to that prehistoric
+worshipper and his acolytes.”
+
+“Are you going to listen to what I am telling you about the
+Leprecaun?” said the Thin Woman.
+
+“I am not,” said the Philosopher. “It has been suggested that we go
+to sleep at night because it is then too dark to do anything else;
+but owls, who are a venerably sagacious folk, do not sleep in the
+night time. Bats, also, are a very clear-minded race; they sleep in
+the broadest day, and they do it in a charming manner. They clutch
+the branch of a tree with their toes and hang head downwards—a
+position which I consider singularly happy, for the rush of blood
+to the head consequent on this inverted position should engender a
+drowsiness and a certain imbecility of mind which must either sleep
+or explode.”
+
+[Illustration: “Will you never be done talking?” shouted the Thin
+Woman passionately]
+
+“Will you never be done talking?” shouted the Thin Woman
+passionately.
+
+“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “In certain ways sleep is
+useful. It is an excellent way of listening to an opera or seeing
+pictures on a bioscope. As a medium for day-dreams I know of
+nothing that can equal it. As an accomplishment it is graceful, but
+as a means of spending a night it is intolerably ridiculous. If you
+were going to say anything, my love, please say it now, but you
+should always remember to think before you speak. A woman should
+be seen seldom but never heard. Quietness is the beginning of
+virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.
+Children should always be in bed. These are serious truths, which
+cannot be controverted; therefore, silence is fitting as regards
+them.”
+
+“Your stirabout is on the hob,” said the Thin Woman. “You can get
+it for yourself. I would not move the breadth of my nail if you
+were dying of hunger. I hope there’s lumps in it. A Leprecaun
+from Gort na Cloca Mora was here to-day. They’ll give it to you
+for robbing their pot of gold. You old thief, you! you lobeared,
+crock-kneed fat-eye!”
+
+The Thin Woman whizzed suddenly from where she stood and leaped
+into bed. From beneath the blanket she turned a vivid, furious
+eye on her husband. She was trying to give him rheumatism and
+toothache and lockjaw all at once. If she had been satisfied to
+concentrate her attention on one only of these torments she might
+have succeeded in afflicting her husband according to her wish, but
+she was not able to do that.
+
+“Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect.
+There are lumps in it,” said the Philosopher.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+When the Leprecaun came through the pine wood on the following day
+he met two children at a little distance from the house. He raised
+his open right hand above his head (this is both the fairy and the
+Gaelic form of salutation), and would have passed on but that a
+thought brought him to a halt. Sitting down before the two children
+he stared at them for a long time, and they stared back at him. At
+last he said to the boy:
+
+“What is your name, a vic vig O?”
+
+“Seumas Beg, sir,” the boy replied.
+
+“It’s a little name,” said the Leprecaun.
+
+“It’s what my mother calls me, sir,” returned the boy.
+
+“What does your father call you,” was the next question.
+
+“Seumas Roghan Maelduin O’Carbhail Mac an Droid.”
+
+“It’s a big name,” said the Leprecaun, and he turned to the little
+girl. “What is your name, a cailin vig O?”
+
+“Brigid Beg, sir.”
+
+“And what does your father call you?”
+
+“He never calls me at all, sir.”
+
+“Well, Seumaseen and Breedeen, you are good little children, and
+I like you very much. Health be with you until I come to see you
+again.”
+
+And then the Leprecaun went back the way he had come. As he went he
+made little jumps and cracked his fingers, and sometimes he rubbed
+one leg against the other.
+
+“That’s a nice Leprecaun,” said Seumas.
+
+“I like him too,” said Brigid.
+
+“Listen,” said Seumas, “let me be the Leprecaun, and you be the two
+children, and I will ask you our names.”
+
+So they did that.
+
+The next day the Leprecaun came again. He sat down beside the
+children and, as before, he was silent for a little time.
+
+“Are you not going to ask us our names, sir?” said Seumas.
+
+His sister smoothed out her dress shyly. “My name, sir, is Brigid
+Beg,” said she.
+
+“Did you ever play Jackstones?” said the Leprecaun.
+
+“No, sir,” replied Seumas.
+
+“I’ll teach you how to play Jackstones,” said the Leprecaun, and he
+picked up some pine cones and taught the children that game.
+
+“Did you ever play Ball in the Decker?”
+
+“No, sir,” said Seumas.
+
+“Did you ever play ‘I can make a nail with my ree-ro-raddy-O, I can
+make a nail with my ree-ro-ray’?”
+
+“No, sir,” replied Seumas.
+
+“It’s a nice game,” said the Leprecaun, “and so is Capon-the-back,
+and Twenty-four yards on the Billy-goat’s Tail, and Towns, and
+Relievo, and Leap-frog. I’ll teach you all these games,” said
+the Leprecaun, “and I’ll teach you how to play Knifey, and
+Hole-and-taw, and Horneys and Robbers.
+
+“Leap-frog is the best one to start with, so I’ll teach it to you
+at once. Let you bend down like this, Breedeen, and you bend down
+like that a good distance away, Seumas. Now I jump over Breedeen’s
+back, and then I run and jump over Seumaseen’s back like this, and
+then I run ahead again and I bend down. Now, Breedeen, you jump
+over your brother, and then you jump over me, and run a good bit on
+and bend down again. Now, Seumas, it’s your turn; you jump over me
+and then over your sister, and then you run on and bend down again
+and I jump.”
+
+“This is a fine game, sir,” said Seumas.
+
+“It is, a vic vig,—keep in your head,” said the Leprecaun. “That’s
+a good jump, you couldn’t beat that jump, Seumas.”
+
+“I can jump better than Brigid already,” replied Seumas, “and I’ll
+jump as well as you do when I get more practice—keep in your head,
+sir.”
+
+Almost without noticing it they had passed through the edge of the
+wood, and were playing into a rough field which was cumbered with
+big, grey rocks. It was the very last field in sight, and behind
+it the rough, heather-packed mountain sloped distantly away to
+the skyline. There was a raggedy blackberry hedge all round the
+field, and there were long, tough, haggard-looking plants growing
+in clumps here and there. Near a corner of this field there was
+a broad, low tree, and as they played they came near and nearer
+to it. The Leprecaun gave a back very close to the tree. Seumas
+ran and jumped and slid down a hole at the side of the tree. Then
+Brigid ran and jumped and slid down the same hole.
+
+“Dear me!” said Brigid, and she flashed out of sight.
+
+The Leprecaun cracked his fingers and rubbed one leg against the
+other, and then he also dived into the hole and disappeared from
+view.
+
+When the time at which the children usually went home had passed,
+the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath became a little anxious. She had
+never known them to be late for dinner before. There was one of
+the children whom she hated; it was her own child, but as she
+had forgotten which of them was hers, and as she loved one of
+them, she was compelled to love both for fear of making a mistake
+and chastising the child for whom her heart secretly yearned.
+Therefore, she was equally concerned about both of them.
+
+Dinner time passed and supper time arrived, but the children did
+not. Again and again the Thin Woman went out through the dark pine
+trees and called until she was so hoarse that she could not even
+hear herself when she roared. The evening wore on to the night, and
+while she waited for the Philosopher to come in she reviewed the
+situation. Her husband had not come in, the children had not come
+in, the Leprecaun had not returned as arranged.... A light flashed
+upon her. The Leprecaun had kidnapped her children! She announced
+a vengeance against the Leprecauns which would stagger humanity.
+While in the extreme centre of her ecstasy the Philosopher came
+through the trees and entered the house.
+
+The Thin Woman flew to him—
+
+“Husband,” said she, “the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora have
+kidnapped our children.”
+
+The Philosopher gazed at her for a moment.
+
+“Kidnapping,” said he, “has been for many centuries a favourite
+occupation of fairies, gypsies, and the brigands of the East. The
+usual procedure is to attach a person and hold it to ransom. If the
+ransom is not paid an ear or a finger may be cut from the captive
+and despatched to those interested, with the statement that an arm
+or a leg will follow in a week unless suitable arrangements are
+entered into.”
+
+“Do you understand,” said the Thin Woman passionately, “that it is
+your own children who have been kidnapped?”
+
+“I do not,” said the Philosopher. “This course, however, is rarely
+followed by the fairy people: they do not ordinarily steal for
+ransom, but for love of thieving, or from some other obscure and
+possibly functional causes, and the victim is retained in their
+forts or duns until by the effluxion of time they forget their
+origin and become peaceable citizens of the fairy state. Kidnapping
+is not by any means confined to either humanity or the fairy
+people.”
+
+“Monster,” said the Thin Woman in a deep voice, “will you listen to
+me?”
+
+“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Many of the insectivora
+also practice this custom. Ants, for example, are a respectable
+race living in well-ordered communities. They have attained to
+a most complex and artificial civilization, and will frequently
+adventure far afield on colonising or other expeditions from
+whence they return with a rich booty of aphides and other stock,
+who thenceforward become the servants and domestic creatures of
+the republic. As they neither kill nor eat their captives, this
+practice will be termed kidnapping. The same may be said of bees,
+a hardy and industrious race living in hexagonal cells which are
+very difficult to make. Sometimes, on lacking a queen of their
+own, they have been observed to abduct one from a less powerful
+neighbour, and use her for their own purposes without shame, mercy,
+or remorse.”
+
+“Will you not understand?” screamed the Thin Woman.
+
+“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Semi-tropical apes have been
+rumoured to kidnap children, and are reported to use them very
+tenderly indeed, sharing their coconuts, yams, plantains, and other
+equatorial provender with the largest generosity, and conveying
+their delicate captives from tree to tree (often at great distances
+from each other and from the ground) with the most guarded
+solicitude and benevolence.”
+
+“I am going to bed,” said the Thin Woman, “your stirabout is on the
+hob.”
+
+“Are there lumps in it, my dear?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I hope there are,” replied the Thin Woman, and she leaped into bed.
+
+That night the Philosopher was afflicted with the most extraordinary
+attack of rheumatism he had ever known, nor did he get any ease
+until the grey morning wearied his lady into a reluctant slumber.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath slept very late that morning, but
+when she did awaken her impatience was so urgent that she could
+scarcely delay to eat her breakfast. Immediately after she had
+eaten she put on her bonnet and shawl and went through the pine
+wood in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. In a short time she
+reached the rocky field, and, walking over to the tree in the
+southeast corner, she picked up a small stone and hammered loudly
+against the trunk of the tree. She hammered in a peculiar fashion,
+giving two knocks and then three knocks, and then one knock. A
+voice came up from the hole.
+
+“Who is that, please?” said the voice.
+
+“Ban na Droid of Inis Magrath, and well you know it,” was her reply.
+
+“I am coming up, Noble Woman,” said the voice, and in another
+moment the Leprecaun leaped out of the hole.
+
+“Where are Seumas and Brigid Beg?” said the Thin Woman sternly.
+
+“How would I know where they are?” replied the Leprecaun. “Wouldn’t
+they be at home now?”
+
+“If they were at home I wouldn’t have come here looking for them,”
+was her reply. “It is my belief that you have them.”
+
+“Search me,” said the Leprecaun, opening his waistcoat.
+
+“They are down there in your little house,” said the Thin Woman
+angrily, “and the sooner you let them up the better it will be for
+yourself and your five brothers.”
+
+“Noble Woman,” said the Leprecaun, “you can go down yourself into
+our little house and look. I can’t say fairer than that.”
+
+“I wouldn’t fit down there,” said she. “I’m too big.”
+
+“You know the way for making yourself little,” replied the
+Leprecaun.
+
+“But I mightn’t be able to make myself big again,” said the Thin
+Woman, “and then you and your dirty brothers would have it all your
+own way. If you don’t let the children up,” she continued, “I’ll
+raise the Shee of Croghan Conghaile against you. You know what
+happened to the Cluricauns of Oilean na Glas when they stole the
+Queen’s baby—It will be a worse thing than that for you. If the
+children are not back in my house before moonrise this night, I’ll
+go round to my people. Just tell that to your five ugly brothers.
+Health with you,” she added, and strode away.
+
+“Health with yourself, Noble Woman,” said the Leprecaun, and he
+stood on one leg until she was out of sight and then he slid down
+into the hole again.
+
+When the Thin Woman was going back through the pine wood she saw
+Meehawl MacMurrachu travelling in the same direction and his brows
+were in a tangle of perplexity.
+
+“God be with you, Meehawl MacMurrachu,” said she.
+
+“God and Mary be with you, ma’am,” he replied, “I am in great
+trouble this day.”
+
+“Why wouldn’t you be?” said the Thin Woman.
+
+“I came up to have a talk with your husband about a particular
+thing.”
+
+“If it’s talk you want you have come to a good house, Meehawl.”
+
+“He’s a powerful man right enough,” said Meehawl.
+
+After a few minutes the Thin Woman spoke again. “I can get the reek
+of his pipe from here. Let you go right in to him now and I’ll stay
+outside for a while, for the sound of your two voices would give me
+a pain in my head.”
+
+“Whatever will please you will please me, ma’am,” said her
+companion, and he went into the little house.
+
+Meehawl MacMurrachu had good reason to be perplexed. He was the
+father of one child only, and she was the most beautiful girl in
+the whole world. The pity of it was that no one at all knew she
+was beautiful, and she did not even know it herself. At times when
+she bathed in the eddy of a mountain stream and saw her reflection
+looking up from the placid water she thought that she looked very
+nice, and then a great sadness would come upon her, for what is the
+use of looking nice if there is nobody to see one’s beauty? Beauty,
+also, is usefulness. The arts as well as the crafts, the graces
+equally with the utilities must stand up in the marketplace and be
+judged by the gombeen men.
+
+The only house near to her father’s was that occupied by Bessie
+Hannigan. The other few houses were scattered widely with long,
+quiet miles of hill and bog between them, so that she had hardly
+seen more than a couple of men beside her father since she was
+born. She helped her father and mother in all the small businesses
+of their house, and every day also she drove their three cows and
+two goats to pasture on the mountain slopes. Here through the sunny
+days the years had passed in a slow, warm thoughtlessness wherein,
+without thinking, many thoughts had entered into her mind and many
+pictures hung for a moment like birds in the thin air. At first,
+and for a long time, she had been happy enough; there were many
+things in which a child might be interested: the spacious heavens
+which never wore the same beauty on any day; the innumerable little
+creatures living among the grasses or in the heather; the steep
+swing of a bird down from the mountain to the infinite plains
+below; the little flowers which were so contented each in its
+peaceful place; the bees gathering food for their houses, and the
+stout beetles who are always losing their way in the dusk. These
+things, and many others, interested her. The three cows after they
+had grazed for a long time would come and lie by her side and look
+at her as they chewed their cud, and the goats would prance from
+the bracken to push their heads against her breast because they
+loved her.
+
+Indeed, everything in her quiet world loved this girl: but very
+slowly there was growing in her consciousness an unrest, a
+disquietude to which she had hitherto been a stranger. Sometimes an
+infinite weariness oppressed her to the earth. A thought was born
+in her mind and it had no name. It was growing and could not be
+expressed. She had no words wherewith to meet it, to exorcise or
+greet this stranger who, more and more insistently and pleadingly,
+tapped upon her doors and begged to be spoken to, admitted and
+caressed and nourished. A thought is a real thing and words are
+only its raiment, but a thought is as shy as a virgin; unless it
+is fittingly apparelled we may not look on its shadowy nakedness:
+it will fly from us and only return again in the darkness crying
+in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with
+aching minds, listening and divining, we at last fashion for it
+those symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she could
+not understand the touch that came to her from afar and yet how
+intimately, the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly personal.
+The standard of either language or experience was not hers; she
+could listen but not think, she could feel but not know, her eyes
+looked forward and did not see, her hands groped in the sunlight
+and felt nothing. It was like the edge of a little wind which
+stirred her tresses but could not lift them, or the first white
+peep of the dawn which is neither light nor darkness. But she
+listened, not with her ears but with her blood. The fingers of her
+soul stretched out to clasp a stranger’s hand, and her disquietude
+was quickened through with an eagerness which was neither physical
+nor mental, for neither her body nor her mind was definitely
+interested. Some dim region between these grew alarmed and watched
+and waited and did not sleep or grow weary at all.
+
+One morning she lay among the long, warm grasses. She watched
+a bird who soared and sang for a little time, and then it sped
+swiftly away down the steep air and out of sight in the blue
+distance. Even when it was gone the song seemed to ring in her
+ears. It seemed to linger with her as a faint, sweet echo, coming
+fitfully, with little pauses as though a wind disturbed it, and
+careless, distant eddies. After a few moments she knew it was not a
+bird. No bird’s song had that consecutive melody, for their themes
+are as careless as their wings. She sat up and looked about her,
+but there was nothing in sight: the mountains sloped gently above
+her and away to the clear sky; around her the scattered clumps of
+heather were drowsing in the sunlight; far below she could see her
+father’s house, a little grey patch near some trees—and then the
+music stopped and left her wondering.
+
+She could not find her goats anywhere although for a long time she
+searched. They came to her at last of their own accord from behind
+a fold in the hills, and they were more wildly excited than she
+had ever seen them before. Even the cows forsook their solemnity
+and broke into awkward gambols around her. As she walked home that
+evening a strange elation taught her feet to dance. Hither and
+thither she flitted in front of the beasts and behind them. Her
+feet tripped to a wayward measure. There was a tune in her ears
+and she danced to it, throwing her arms out and above her head
+and swaying and bending as she went. The full freedom of her body
+was hers now: the lightness and poise and certainty of her limbs
+delighted her, and the strength that did not tire delighted her
+also. The evening was full of peace and quietude, the mellow, dusky
+sunlight made a path for her feet, and everywhere through the wide
+fields birds were flashing and singing, and she sang with them a
+song that had no words and wanted none.
+
+The following day she heard the music again, faint and thin,
+wonderfully sweet and as wild as the song of a bird, but it was a
+melody which no bird would adhere to. A theme was repeated again
+and again. In the middle of trills, grace-notes, runs and catches
+it recurred with a strange, almost holy, solemnity,—a hushing,
+slender melody full of austerity and aloofness. There was something
+in it to set her heart beating. She yearned to it with her ears and
+her lips. Was it joy, menace, carelessness? She did not know, but
+this she did know, that however terrible it was personal to her.
+It was her unborn thought strangely audible and felt rather than
+understood.
+
+On that day she did not see anybody either. She drove her charges
+home in the evening listlessly and the beasts also were very quiet.
+
+When the music came again she made no effort to discover where it
+came from. She only listened, and when the tune was ended she saw
+a figure rise from the fold of a little hill. The sunlight was
+gleaming from his arms and shoulders but the rest of his body was
+hidden by the bracken, and he did not look at her as he went away
+playing softly on a double pipe.
+
+[Illustration: He stood waist-deep in greenery fronting her
+squarely]
+
+The next day he did look at her. He stood waist-deep in greenery
+fronting her squarely. She had never seen so strange a face before.
+Her eyes almost died on him as she gazed and he returned her look
+for a long minute with an intent, expressionless regard. His hair
+was a cluster of brown curls, his nose was little and straight, and
+his wide mouth drooped sadly at the corners. His eyes were wide and
+most mournful, and his forehead was very broad and white. His sad
+eyes and mouth almost made her weep.
+
+When he turned away he smiled at her, and it was as though the
+sun had shone suddenly in a dark place, banishing all sadness
+and gloom. Then he went mincingly away. As he went he lifted the
+slender double reed to his lips and blew a few careless notes.
+
+The next day he fronted her as before, looking down to her eyes
+from a short distance. He played for only a few moments, and
+fitfully, and then he came to her. When he left the bracken the
+girl suddenly clapped her hands against her eyes affrighted.
+There was something different, terrible about him. The upper part
+of his body was beautiful, but the lower part.... She dared not
+look at him again. She would have risen and fled away but she
+feared he might pursue her, and the thought of such a chase and
+the inevitable capture froze her blood. The thought of anything
+behind us is always terrible. The sound of pursuing feet is worse
+than the murder from which we fly—So she sat still and waited but
+nothing happened. At last, desperately, she dropped her hands. He
+was sitting on the ground a few paces from her. He was not looking
+at her but far away sidewards across the spreading hill. His legs
+were crossed; they were shaggy and hoofed like the legs of a goat:
+but she would not look at these because of his wonderful, sad,
+grotesque face. Gaiety is good to look upon and an innocent face
+is delightful to our souls, but no woman can resist sadness or
+weakness, and ugliness she dare not resist. Her nature leaps to
+be the comforter. It is her reason. It exalts her to an ecstasy
+wherein nothing but the sacrifice of herself has any proportion.
+Men are not fathers by instinct but by chance, but women are
+mothers beyond thought, beyond instinct which is the father of
+thought. Motherliness, pity, self-sacrifice—these are the charges
+of her primal cell, and not even the discovery that men are
+comedians, liars, and egotists will wean her from this. As she
+looked at the pathos of his face she repudiated the hideousness of
+his body. The beast which is in all men is glossed by women; it is
+his childishness, the destructive energy inseparable from youth and
+high spirits, and it is always forgiven by women, often forgotten,
+sometimes, and not rarely, cherished and fostered.
+
+After a few moments of this silence he placed the reed to his lips
+and played a plaintive little air, and then he spoke to her in a
+strange voice, coming like a wind from distant places.
+
+“What is your name, Shepherd Girl?” said he.
+
+“Caitilin, Ingin Ni Murrachu,” she whispered.
+
+“Daughter of Murrachu,” said he, “I have come from a far place
+where there are high hills. The men and maidens who follow their
+flocks in that place know me and love me for I am the Master of
+the Shepherds. They sing and dance and are glad when I come to
+them in the sunlight; but in this country no people have done any
+reverence to me. The shepherds fly away when they hear my pipes in
+the pastures; the maidens scream in fear when I dance to them in
+the meadows. I am very lonely in this strange country. You also,
+although you danced to the music of my pipes, have covered your
+face against me and made no reverence.”
+
+“I will do whatever you say if it is right,” said she.
+
+“You must not do anything because it is right, but because it is
+your wish. Right is a word and Wrong is a word, but the sun shines
+in the morning and the dew falls in the dusk without thinking of
+these words which have no meaning. The bee flies to the flower and
+the seed goes abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd Girl?—it
+is wrong also. I come to you because the bee goes to the flower—it
+is wrong! If I did not come to you to whom would I go? There is no
+right and no wrong but only the will of the gods.”
+
+“I am afraid of you,” said the girl.
+
+“You fear me because my legs are shaggy like the legs of a goat.
+Look at them well, O Maiden, and know that they are indeed the
+legs of a beast and then you will not be afraid any more. Do you
+not love beasts? Surely you should love them for they yearn to you
+humbly or fiercely, craving your hand upon their heads as I do. If
+I were not fashioned thus I would not come to you because I would
+not need you. Man is a god and a brute. He aspires to the stars
+with his head but his feet are contented in the grasses of the
+field, and when he forsakes the brute upon which he stands then
+there will be no more men and no more women and the immortal gods
+will blow this world away like smoke.”
+
+“I don’t know what you want me to do,” said the girl.
+
+“I want you to want me. I want you to forget right and wrong; to be
+as happy as the beasts, as careless as the flowers and the birds.
+To live to the depths of your nature as well as to the heights.
+Truly there are stars in the heights and they will be a garland for
+your forehead. But the depths are equal to the heights. Wondrous
+deep are the depths, very fertile is the lowest deep. There are
+stars there also, brighter than the stars on high. The name of the
+heights is Wisdom and the name of the depths is Love. How shall
+they come together and be fruitful if you do not plunge deeply
+and fearlessly? Wisdom is the spirit and the wings of the spirit,
+Love is the shaggy beast that goes down. Gallantly he dives, below
+thought, beyond Wisdom, to rise again as high above these as he had
+first descended. Wisdom is righteous and clean, but Love is unclean
+and holy. I sing of the beast and the descent: the great unclean
+purging itself in fire: the thought that is not born in the measure
+or the ice or the head, but in the feet and the hot blood and the
+pulse of fury. The Crown of Life is not lodged in the sun: the wise
+gods have buried it deeply where the thoughtful will not find it,
+nor the good: but the Gay Ones, the Adventurous Ones, the Careless
+Plungers, they will bring it to the wise and astonish them. All
+things are seen in the light—How shall we value that which is easy
+to see? But the precious things which are hidden, they will be more
+precious for our search: they will be beautiful with our sorrow:
+they will be noble because of our desire for them. Come away with
+me, Shepherd Girl, through the fields, and we will be careless and
+happy, and we will leave thought to find us when it can, for that
+is the duty of thought, and it is more anxious to discover us than
+we are to be found.”
+
+So Caitilin Ni Murrachu arose and went with him through the fields,
+and she did not go with him because of love, nor because his words
+had been understood by her, but only because he was naked and
+unashamed.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+It was on account of his daughter that Meehawl MacMurrachu had come
+to visit the Philosopher. He did not know what had become of her,
+and the facts he had to lay before his adviser were very few.
+
+He left the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath taking snuff under a pine
+tree and went into the house.
+
+“God be with all here,” said he as he entered.
+
+“God be with yourself, Meehawl MacMurrachu,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I am in great trouble this day, sir,” said Meehawl, “and if you
+would give me an advice I’d be greatly beholden to you.”
+
+“I can give you that,” replied the Philosopher.
+
+“None better than your honour and no trouble to you either. It was
+a powerful advice you gave me about the washboard, and if I didn’t
+come here to thank you before this it was not because I didn’t want
+to come, but that I couldn’t move hand or foot by dint of the cruel
+rheumatism put upon me by the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora, bad
+cess to them for ever: twisted I was the way you’d get a squint in
+your eye if you only looked at me, and the pain I suffered would
+astonish you.”
+
+“It would not,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“No matter,” said Meehawl. “What I came about was my young daughter
+Caitilin. Sight or light of her I haven’t had for three days. My
+wife said first, that it was the fairies had taken her, and then
+she said it was a travelling man that had a musical instrument she
+went away with, and after that she said, that maybe the girl was
+lying dead in the butt of a ditch with her eyes wide open, and she
+staring broadly at the moon in the night time and the sun in the
+day until the crows would be finding her out.”
+
+The Philosopher drew his chair closer to Meehawl.
+
+“Daughters,” said he, “have been a cause of anxiety to their
+parents ever since they were instituted. The flightiness of the
+female temperament is very evident in those who have not arrived
+at the years which teach how to hide faults and frailties, and,
+therefore, indiscretions bristle from a young girl the way branches
+do from a bush.”
+
+“The person who would deny that—” said Meehawl.
+
+“Female children, however, have the particular sanction of
+nature. They are produced in astonishing excess over males, and
+may, accordingly, be admitted as dominant to the male; but the
+well-proven law that the minority shall always control the majority
+will relieve our minds from a fear which might otherwise become
+intolerable.”
+
+“It’s true enough,” said Meehawl. “Have you noticed, sir, that in a
+litter of pups—”
+
+“I have not,” said the Philosopher. “Certain trades and professions,
+it is curious to note, tend to be perpetuated in the female line.
+The sovereign profession among bees and ants is always female, and
+publicans also descend on the distaff side. You will have noticed
+that every publican has three daughters of extraordinary charms.
+Lacking these signs we would do well to look askance at such a man’s
+liquor, divining that in his brew there will be an undue percentage
+of water, for if his primogeniture is infected how shall his honesty
+escape?”
+
+“It would take a wise head to answer that,” said Meehawl.
+
+“It would not,” said the Philosopher. “Throughout nature the female
+tends to polygamy.”
+
+“If,” said Meehawl, “that unfortunate daughter of mine is lying
+dead in a ditch—”
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “Many races have
+endeavoured to place some limits to this increase in females.
+Certain Oriental peoples have conferred the titles of divinity
+on crocodiles, serpents, and tigers of the jungle, and have fed
+these with their surplusage of daughters. In China, likewise, such
+sacrifices are defended as honourable and economic practices.
+But, broadly speaking, if daughters have to be curtailed I prefer
+your method of losing them rather than the religio-hysterical
+compromises of the Orient.”
+
+“I give you my word, sir,” said Meehawl, “that I don’t know what
+you are talking about at all.”
+
+“That,” said the Philosopher, “may be accounted for in three
+ways—firstly, there is a lack of cerebral continuity: that is,
+faulty attention; secondly, it might be due to a local peculiarity
+in the conformation of the skull, or, perhaps, a superficial
+instead of a deep indenting of the cerebral coil; and thirdly—”
+
+“Did you ever hear,” said Meehawl, “of the man that had the scalp
+of his head blown off by a gun, and they soldered the bottom of a
+tin dish to the top of his skull the way you could hear his brains
+ticking inside of it for all the world like a Waterbury watch?”
+
+“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Thirdly, it may—”
+
+“It’s my daughter, Caitilin, sir,” said Meehawl humbly. “Maybe she
+is lying in the butt of a ditch and the crows picking her eyes out.”
+
+“What did she die of?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“My wife only put it that maybe she was dead, and that maybe she
+was taken by the fairies, and that maybe she went away with the
+travelling man that had the musical instrument. She said it was a
+concertina, but I think myself it was a flute he had.”
+
+“Who was this traveller?”
+
+“I never saw him,” said Meehawl, “but one day I went a few perches
+up the hill and I heard him playing—thin, squeaky music it was
+like you’d be blowing out of a tin whistle. I looked about for him
+everywhere, but not a bit of him could I see.”
+
+“Eh?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I looked about—” said Meehawl.
+
+“I know,” said the Philosopher. “Did you happen to look at your
+goats?”
+
+“I couldn’t well help doing that,” said Meehawl.
+
+“What were they doing?” said the Philosopher eagerly.
+
+“They were bucking each other across the field, and standing on
+their hind legs and cutting such capers that I laughed till I had a
+pain in my stomach at the gait of them.”
+
+“This is very interesting,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Do you tell me so?” said Meehawl.
+
+“I do,” said the Philosopher, “and for this reason-most of the
+races of the world have at one time or another—”
+
+“It’s my little daughter, Caitilin, sir,” said Meehawl.
+
+“I’m attending to her,” the Philosopher replied.
+
+“I thank you kindly,” returned Meehawl.
+
+The Philosopher continued “Most of the races of the world have at
+one time or another been visited by this deity, whose title is
+the ‘Great God Pan,’ but there is no record of his ever having
+journeyed to Ireland, and, certainly within historic times, he has
+not set foot on these shores. He lived for a great number of years
+in Egypt, Persia, and Greece, and although his empire is supposed
+to be world-wide, this universal sway has always been, and always
+will be, contested; but nevertheless, however sharply his empire
+may be curtailed, he will never be without a kingdom wherein his
+exercise of sovereign rights will be gladly and passionately
+acclaimed.”
+
+“Is he one of the old gods, sir?” said Meehawl.
+
+“He is,” replied the Philosopher, “and his coming intends no good
+to this country. Have you any idea why he should have captured your
+daughter?”
+
+“Not an idea in the world.”
+
+“Is your daughter beautiful?”
+
+“I couldn’t tell you, because I never thought of looking at her
+that way. But she is a good milker, and as strong as a man. She can
+lift a bag of meal under her arm easier than I can; but she’s a
+timid creature for all that.”
+
+“Whatever the reason is I am certain that he has the girl, and I am
+inclined to think that he was directed to her by the Leprecauns of
+the Gort. You know they are at feud with you ever since their bird
+was killed?”
+
+“I am not likely to forget it, and they racking me day and night
+with torments.”
+
+“You may be sure,” said the Philosopher, “that if he’s anywhere at
+all it’s at Gort na Cloca Mora he is, for, being a stranger, he
+wouldn’t know where to go unless he was directed, and they know
+every hole and corner of this countryside since ancient times. I’d
+go up myself and have a talk with him, but it wouldn’t be a bit of
+good, and it wouldn’t be any use your going either. He has power
+over all grown people so that they either go and get drunk or else
+they fall in love with every person they meet, and commit assaults
+and things I wouldn’t like to be telling you about. The only folk
+who can go near him at all are little children, because he has no
+power over them until they grow to the sensual age, and then he
+exercises lordship over them as over every one else. I’ll send my
+two children with a message to him to say that he isn’t doing the
+decent thing, and that if he doesn’t let the girl alone and go back
+to his own country we’ll send for Angus Óg.”
+
+“He’d make short work of him, I’m thinking.”
+
+“He might surely; but he may take the girl for himself all the
+same.”
+
+“Well, I’d sooner he had her than the other one, for he’s one of
+ourselves anyhow, and the devil you know is better than the devil
+you don’t know.”
+
+“Angus Óg is a god,” said the Philosopher severely.
+
+“I know that, sir,” replied Meehawl; “it’s only a way of talking I
+have. But how will your honour get at Angus? for I heard say that
+he hadn’t been seen for a hundred years, except one night only when
+he talked to a man for half an hour on Kilmasheogue.”
+
+“I’ll find him, sure enough,” replied the Philosopher.
+
+“I’ll warrant you will,” replied Meehawl heartily as he stood up.
+“Long life and good health to your honour,” said he as he turned
+away.
+
+The Philosopher lit his pipe.
+
+“We live as long as we are let,” said he, “and we get the health we
+deserve. Your salutation embodies a reflection on death which is
+not philosophic. We must acquiesce in all logical progressions. The
+merging of opposites is completion. Life runs to death as to its
+goal, and we should go towards that next stage of experience either
+carelessly as to what must be, or with a good, honest curiosity as
+to what may be.”
+
+“There’s not much fun in being dead, sir,” said Meehawl.
+
+“How do you know?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I know well enough,” replied Meehawl.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+When the children leaped into the hole at the foot of the tree they
+found themselves sliding down a dark, narrow slant which dropped
+them softly enough into a little room. This room was hollowed out
+immediately under the tree, and great care had been taken not to
+disturb any of the roots which ran here and there through the
+chamber in the strangest criss-cross, twisted fashion. To get
+across such a place one had to walk round, and jump over, and
+duck under perpetually. Some of the roots had formed themselves
+very conveniently into low seats and narrow, uneven tables, and
+at the bottom all the roots ran into the floor and away again in
+the direction required by their business. After the clear air
+outside this place was very dark to the children’s eyes, so that
+they could not see anything for a few minutes, but after a little
+time their eyes became accustomed to the semiobscurity and they
+were able to see quite well. The first things they became aware
+of were six small men who were seated on low roots. They were all
+dressed in tight green clothes and little leathern aprons, and they
+wore tall green hats which wobbled when they moved. They were all
+busily engaged making shoes. One was drawing out wax ends on his
+knee, another was softening pieces of leather in a bucket of water,
+another was polishing the instep of a shoe with a piece of curved
+bone, another was paring down a heel with a short broad-bladed
+knife, and another was hammering wooden pegs into a sole. He had
+all the pegs in his mouth, which gave him a widefaced, jolly
+expression, and according as a peg was wanted he blew it into his
+hand and hit it twice with his hammer, and then he blew another
+peg, and he always blew the peg with the right end uppermost, and
+never had to hit it more than twice. He was a person well worth
+watching.
+
+The children had slid down so unexpectedly that they almost forgot
+their good manners, but as soon as Seumas Beg discovered that he
+was really in a room he removed his cap and stood up.
+
+“God be with all here,” said he.
+
+The Leprecaun who had brought them lifted Brigid from the floor to
+which amazement still constrained her.
+
+“Sit down on that little root, child of my heart,” said he, “and
+you can knit stockings for us.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Brigid meekly.
+
+The Leprecaun took four knitting needles and a ball of green wool
+from the top of a high, horizontal root. He had to climb over one,
+go round three and climb up two roots to get at it, and he did
+this so easily that it did not seem a bit of trouble. He gave the
+needles and wool to Brigid Beg.
+
+“Do you know how to turn the heel, Brigid Beg?” said he.
+
+“No, sir,” said Brigid.
+
+“Well, I’ll show you how when you come to it.”
+
+The other six Leprecauns had ceased work and were looking at the
+children. Seumas turned to them.
+
+“God bless the work,” said he politely.
+
+One of the Leprecauns, who had a grey, puckered face and a thin
+fringe of grey whisker very far under his chin, then spoke.
+
+“Come over here, Seumas Beg,” said he, “and I’ll measure you for a
+pair of shoes. Put your foot up on that root.”
+
+The boy did so, and the Leprecaun took the measure of his foot with
+a wooden rule.
+
+“Now, Brigid Beg, show me your foot,” and he measured her also.
+“They’ll be ready for you in the morning.”
+
+“Do you never do anything else but make shoes, sir?” said Seumas.
+
+“We do not,” replied the Leprecaun, “except when we want new
+clothes, and then we have to make them, but we grudge every minute
+spent making anything else except shoes, because that is the proper
+work for a Leprecaun. In the night time we go about the country
+into people’s houses and we clip little pieces off their money,
+and so, bit by bit, we get a crock of gold together, because, do
+you see, a Leprecaun has to have a crock of gold so that if he’s
+captured by men folk he may be able to ransom himself. But that
+seldom happens, because it’s a great disgrace altogether to be
+captured by a man, and we’ve practiced so long dodging among the
+roots here that we can easily get away from them. Of course, now
+and again we are caught; but men are fools, and we always escape
+without having to pay the ransom at all. We wear green clothes
+because it’s the colour of the grass and the leaves, and when we
+sit down under a bush or lie in the grass they just walk by without
+noticing us.”
+
+“Will you let me see your crock of gold?” said Seumas.
+
+The Leprecaun looked at him fixedly for a moment.
+
+“Do you like griddle bread and milk?” said he.
+
+“I like it well,” Seumas answered.
+
+“Then you had better have some,” and the Leprecaun took a piece of
+griddle bread from the shelf and filled two saucers with milk.
+
+While the children were eating the Leprecauns asked them many
+questions “What time do you get up in the morning?”
+
+“Seven o’clock,” replied Seumas.
+
+“And what do you have for breakfast?”
+
+“Stirabout and milk,” he replied.
+
+“It’s good food,” said the Leprecaun. “What do you have for dinner?”
+
+“Potatoes and milk,” said Seumas.
+
+“It’s not bad at all,” said the Leprecaun. “And what do you have
+for supper?”
+
+Brigid answered this time because her brother’s mouth was full.
+
+“Bread and milk, sir,” said she.
+
+“There’s nothing better,” said the Leprecaun.
+
+“And then we go to bed,” continued Brigid.
+
+“Why wouldn’t you?” said the Leprecaun.
+
+It was at this point the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath knocked on the
+tree trunk and demanded that the children should be returned to her.
+
+When she had gone away the Leprecauns held a consultation, whereat
+it was decided that they could not afford to anger the Thin Woman
+and the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, so they shook hands with the
+children and bade them good-bye. The Leprecaun who had enticed
+them away from home brought them back again, and on parting he
+begged the children to visit Gort na Cloca Mora whenever they felt
+inclined.
+
+“There’s always a bit of griddle bread or potato cake, and a noggin
+of milk for a friend,” said he.
+
+“You are very kind, sir,” replied Seumas, and his sister said the
+same words.
+
+As the Leprecaun walked away they stood watching him.
+
+[Illustration: “Do you remember,” said Seumas, “the way he hopped
+and waggled his leg the last time he was here?”]
+
+“Do you remember,” said Seumas, “the way he hopped and waggled his
+leg the last time he was here?”
+
+“I do so,” replied Brigid.
+
+“Well, he isn’t hopping or doing anything at all this time,” said
+Seumas.
+
+“He’s not in good humour to-night,” said Brigid, “but I like him.”
+
+“So do I,” said Seumas.
+
+When they went into the house the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath was
+very glad to see them, and she baked a cake with currants in it,
+and also gave them both stirabout and potatoes; but the Philosopher
+did not notice that they had been away at all. He said at last that
+“talking was bad wit, that women were always making a fuss, that
+children should be fed, but not fattened, and that beds were meant
+to be slept in.” The Thin Woman replied “that he was a grisly old
+man without bowels, that she did not know what she had married him
+for, that he was three times her age, and that no one would believe
+what she had to put up with.”
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Pursuant to his arrangement with Meehawl MacMurrachu, the
+Philosopher sent the children in search of Pan. He gave them the
+fullest instructions as to how they should address the Sylvan
+Deity, and then, having received the admonishments of the Thin
+Woman of Inis Magrath, the children departed in the early morning.
+
+When they reached the clearing in the pine wood, through which the
+sun was blazing, they sat down for a little while to rest in the
+heat. Birds were continually darting down this leafy shaft, and
+diving away into the dark wood. These birds always had something in
+their beaks. One would have a worm, or a snail, or a grasshopper,
+or a little piece of wool torn off a sheep, or a scrap of cloth,
+or a piece of hay; and when they had put these things in a certain
+place they flew up the sun-shaft again and looked for something
+else to bring home. On seeing the children each of the birds
+waggled his wings, and made a particular sound. They said “caw” and
+“chip” and “twit” and “tut” and “what” and “pit”; and one, whom the
+youngsters liked very much, always said “tit-tittit-tit-tit.” The
+children were fond of him because he was so all-of-asudden. They
+never knew where he was going to fly next, and they did not believe
+he knew himself. He would fly backwards and forwards, and up and
+down, and sideways and bawways—all, so to speak, in the one breath.
+He did this because he was curious to see what was happening
+everywhere, and, as something is always happening everywhere, he
+was never able to fly in a straight line for more than the littlest
+distance. He was a cowardly bird too, and continually fancied that
+some person was going to throw a stone at him from behind a bush,
+or a wall, or a tree, and these imaginary dangers tended to make
+his journeyings still more wayward and erratic. He never flew where
+he wanted to go himself, but only where God directed him, and so he
+did not fare at all badly.
+
+The children knew each of the birds by their sounds, and always
+said these words to them when they came near. For a little time
+they had difficulty in saying the right word to the right bird, and
+sometimes said “chip” when the salutation should have been “tut.”
+The birds always resented this, and would scold them angrily, but
+after a little practice they never made any mistakes at all. There
+was one bird, a big, black fellow, who loved to be talked to. He
+used to sit on the ground beside the children, and say “caw” as
+long as they would repeat it after him. He often wasted a whole
+morning in talk, but none of the other birds remained for more than
+a few minutes at a time. They were always busy in the morning, but
+in the evening they had more leisure, and would stay and chat as
+long as the children wanted them. The awkward thing was that in the
+evening all the birds wanted to talk at the same moment, so that
+the youngsters never knew which of them to answer. Seumas Beg got
+out of that difficulty for a while by learning to whistle their
+notes, but, even so, they spoke with such rapidity that he could
+not by any means keep pace with them. Brigid could only whistle
+one note; it was a little flat “whoo” sound, which the birds all
+laughed at, and after a few trials she refused to whistle any more.
+
+While they were sitting two rabbits came to play about in the
+brush. They ran round and round in a circle, and all their
+movements were very quick and twisty. Sometimes they jumped over
+each other six or seven times in succession, and every now and then
+they sat upright on their hind legs, and washed their faces with
+their paws. At other times they picked up a blade of grass, which
+they ate with great deliberation, pretending all the time that it
+was a complicated banquet of cabbage leaves and lettuce.
+
+While the children were playing with the rabbits an ancient,
+stalwart he-goat came prancing through the bracken. He was an
+old acquaintance of theirs, and he enjoyed lying beside them to
+have his forehead scratched with a piece of sharp stick. His
+forehead was hard as rock, and the hair grew there as sparse as
+grass does on a wall, or rather the way moss grows on a wall—it
+was a mat instead of a crop. His horns were long and very sharp,
+and brilliantly polished. On this day the he-goat had two chains
+around his neck—one was made of butter-cups and the other was made
+of daisies, and the children wondered to each other who it was
+could have woven these so carefully. They asked the he-goat this
+question, but he only looked at them and did not say a word. The
+children liked examining this goat’s eyes; they were very big, and
+of the queerest light-gray colour. They had a strange steadfast
+look, and had also at times a look of queer, deep intelligence, and
+at other times they had a fatherly and benevolent expression, and
+at other times again, especially when he looked sidewards, they
+had a mischievous, light-and-airy, daring, mocking, inviting and
+terrifying look; but he always looked brave and unconcerned. When
+the he-goat’s forehead had been scratched as much as he desired
+he arose from between the children and went pacing away lightly
+through the wood. The children ran after him and each caught hold
+of one of his horns, and he ambled and reared between them while
+they danced along on his either side singing snatches of bird
+songs, and scraps of old tunes which the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath
+had learned among the people of the Shee.
+
+In a little time they came to Gort na Cloca Mora, but here
+the he-goat did not stop. They went past the big tree of the
+Leprecauns, through a broken part of the hedge and into another
+rough field. The sun was shining gloriously. There was scarcely a
+wind at all to stir the harsh grasses. Far and near was silence
+and warmth, an immense, cheerful peace. Across the sky a few light
+clouds sailed gently on a blue so vast that the eye failed before
+that horizon. A few bees sounded their deep chant, and now and
+again a wasp rasped hastily on his journey. Than these there was no
+sound of any kind. So peaceful, innocent and safe did everything
+appear that it might have been the childhood of the world as it was
+of the morning.
+
+The children, still clinging to the friendly goat, came near the
+edge of the field, which here sloped more steeply to the mountain
+top. Great boulders, slightly covered with lichen and moss, were
+strewn about, and around them the bracken and gorse were growing,
+and in every crevice of these rocks there were plants whose little,
+tight-fisted roots gripped a desperate, adventurous habitation in
+a soil scarcely more than half an inch deep. At some time these
+rocks had been smitten so fiercely that the solid granite surfaces
+had shattered into fragments. At one place a sheer wall of stone,
+ragged and battered, looked harshly out from the thin vegetation.
+To this rocky wall the he-goat danced. At one place there was a
+hole in the wall covered by a thick brush. The goat pushed his way
+behind this growth and disappeared. Then the children, curious
+to see where he had gone, pushed through also. Behind the bush
+they found a high, narrow opening, and when they had rubbed their
+legs, which smarted from the stings of nettles, thistles and gorse
+prickles, they went into the hole which they thought was a place
+the goat had for sleeping in on cold, wet nights. After a few paces
+they found the passage was quite comfortably big, and then they saw
+a light, and in another moment they were blinking at the god Pan
+and Caitilin Ni Murrachu.
+
+Caitilin knew them at once and came forward with welcome.
+
+“O, Seumas Beg,” she cried reproachfully, “how dirty you have let
+your feet get. Why don’t you walk in the grassy places? And you,
+Brigid, have a right to be ashamed of yourself to have your hands
+the way they are. Come over here at once.”
+
+Every child knows that every grown female person in the world
+has authority to wash children and to give them food; that is
+what grown people were made for, consequently Seumas and Brigid
+Beg submitted to the scouring for which Caitilin made instant
+preparation. When they were cleaned she pointed to a couple of flat
+stones against the wall of the cave and bade them sit down and be
+good, and this the children did, fixing their eyes on Pan with the
+cheerful gravity and curiosity which good-natured youngsters always
+give to a stranger.
+
+Pan, who had been lying on a couch of dried grass, sat up and bent
+an equally cheerful regard on the children.
+
+“Shepherd Girl,” said he, “who are those children?”
+
+“They are the children of the Philosophers of Coilla Doraca; the
+Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath are
+their mothers, and they are decent, poor children, God bless them.”
+
+“What have they come here for?”
+
+“You will have to ask themselves that.”
+
+Pan looked at them smilingly.
+
+“What have you come here for, little children?” said he.
+
+The children questioned one another with their eyes to see which of
+them would reply, and then Seumas Beg answered:
+
+“My father sent me to see you, sir, and to say that you were not
+doing a good thing in keeping Caitilin Ni Murrachu away from her
+own place.”
+
+Brigid Beg turned to Caitilin—
+
+“Your father came to see our father, and he said that he didn’t know
+what had become of you at all, and that maybe you were lying flat in
+a ditch with the black crows picking at your flesh.”
+
+“And what,” said Pan, “did your father say to that?”
+
+“He told us to come and ask her to go home.”
+
+“Do you love your father, little child?” said Pan.
+
+Brigid Beg thought for a moment. “I don’t know, sir,” she replied.
+
+“He doesn’t mind us at all,” broke in Seumas Beg, “and so we don’t
+know whether we love him or not.”
+
+“I like Caitilin,” said Brigid, “and I like you.”
+
+“So do I,” said Seumas.
+
+“I like you also, little children,” said Pan. “Come over here and
+sit beside me, and we will talk.”
+
+So the two children went over to Pan and sat down one each side of
+him, and he put his arms about them. “Daughter of Murrachu,” said
+he, “is there no food in the house for guests?”
+
+“There is a cake of bread, a little goat’s milk and some cheese,”
+she replied, and she set about getting these things.
+
+“I never ate cheese,” said Seumas. “Is it good?”
+
+“Surely it is,” replied Pan. “The cheese that is made from goat’s
+milk is rather strong, and it is good to be eaten by people who
+live in the open air, but not by those who live in houses, for such
+people do not have any appetite. They are poor creatures whom I do
+not like.”
+
+“I like eating,” said Seumas.
+
+“So do I,” said Pan. “All good people like eating. Every person who
+is hungry is a good person, and every person who is not hungry is a
+bad person. It is better to be hungry than rich.”
+
+Caitilin having supplied the children with food, seated herself in
+front of them. “I don’t think that is right,” said she. “I have
+always been hungry, and it was never good.”
+
+“If you had always been full you would like it even less,” he
+replied, “because when you are hungry you are alive, and when you
+are not hungry you are only half alive.”
+
+“One has to be poor to be hungry,” replied Caitilin. “My father is
+poor and gets no good of it but to work from morning to night and
+never to stop doing that.”
+
+“It is bad for a wise person to be poor,” said Pan, “and it is bad
+for a fool to be rich. A rich fool will think of nothing else at
+first but to find a dark house wherein to hide away, and there he
+will satisfy his hunger, and he will continue to do that until his
+hunger is dead and he is no better than dead but a wise person who
+is rich will carefully preserve his appetite. All people who have
+been rich for a long time, or who are rich from birth, live a great
+deal outside of their houses, and so they are always hungry and
+healthy.”
+
+“Poor people have no time to be wise,” said Caitilin.
+
+“They have time to be hungry,” said Pan. “I ask no more of them.”
+
+“My father is very wise,” said Seumas Beg.
+
+“How do you know that, little boy?” said Pan.
+
+“Because he is always talking,” replied Seumas. “Do you always
+listen, my dear?”
+
+“No, sir,” said Seumas; “I go to sleep when he talks.”
+
+“That is very clever of you,” said Pan.
+
+“I go to sleep too,” said Brigid.
+
+“It is clever of you also, my darling. Do you go to sleep when your
+mother talks?”
+
+“Oh, no,” she answered. “If we went to sleep then our mother would
+pinch us and say that we were a bad breed.”
+
+“I think your mother is wise,” said Pan. “What do you like best in
+the world, Seumas Beg?”
+
+The boy thought for a moment and replied: “I don’t know, sir.”
+
+Pan also thought for a little time.
+
+“I don’t know what I like best either,” said he. “What do you like
+best in the world, Shepherd Girl?”
+
+Caitilin’s eyes were fixed on his.
+
+“I don’t know yet,” she answered slowly.
+
+“May the gods keep you safe from that knowledge,” said Pan gravely.
+
+“Why would you say that?” she replied. “One must find out all
+things, and when we find out a thing we know if it is good or bad.”
+
+“That is the beginning of knowledge,” said Pan, “but it is not the
+beginning of wisdom.”
+
+“What is the beginning of wisdom?”
+
+“It is carelessness,” replied Pan.
+
+“And what is the end of wisdom?” said she.
+
+“I do not know,” he answered, after a little pause.
+
+“Is it greater carelessness?” she enquired.
+
+“I do not know, I do not know,” said he sharply. “I am tired of
+talking,” and, so saying, he turned his face away from them and lay
+down on the couch.
+
+Caitilin in great concern hurried the children to the door of the
+cave and kissed them good-bye.
+
+“Pan is sick,” said the boy gravely.
+
+“I hope he will be well soon again,” the girl murmured.
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Caitilin, and she ran back quickly to her lord.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II. THE PHILOSOPHER’S JOURNEY
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+When the children reached home they told the Philosopher-the result
+of their visit. He questioned them minutely as to the appearance
+of Pan, how he had received them, and what he had said in defence
+of his iniquities; but when he found that Pan had not returned any
+answer to his message he became very angry. He tried to persuade
+his wife to undertake another embassy setting forth his abhorrence
+and defiance of the god, but the Thin Woman replied sourly that
+she was a respectable married woman, that having been already
+bereaved of her wisdom she had no desire to be further curtailed
+of her virtue, that a husband would go any length to asperse his
+wife’s reputation, and that although she was married to a fool
+her self-respect had survived even that calamity. The Philosopher
+pointed out that her age, her appearance, and her tongue were
+sufficient guarantees of immunity against the machinations of
+either Pan or slander, and that he had no personal feelings in the
+matter beyond a scientific and benevolent interest in the troubles
+of Meehawl MacMurrachu; but this was discounted by his wife as the
+malignant and subtle tactics customary to all husbands.
+
+Matters appeared to be thus at a deadlock so far as they were
+immediately concerned, and the Philosopher decided that he
+would lay the case before Angus Óg and implore his protection
+and assistance on behalf of the Clann MacMurrachu. He therefore
+directed the Thin Woman to bake him two cakes of bread, and set
+about preparations for a journey.
+
+The Thin Woman baked the cakes, and put them in a bag, and early
+on the following morning the Philosopher swung this bag over his
+shoulder, and went forth on his quest.
+
+[Illustration: He saw Caitilin Ni Murrachu walking a little way in
+front with a small vessel in her hand]
+
+When he came to the edge of the pine wood he halted for a few
+moments, not being quite certain of his bearings, and then went
+forward again in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. It came
+into his mind as he crossed the Gort that he ought to call on the
+Leprecauns and have a talk with them, but a remembrance of Meehawl
+MacMurrachu and the troubles under which he laboured (all directly
+to be traced to the Leprecauns) hardened his heart against his
+neighbours, so that he passed by the yew tree without any stay. In
+a short time he came to the rough, heather-clumped field wherein
+the children had found Pan, and as he was proceeding up the hill,
+he saw Caitilin Ni Murrachu walking a little way in front with a
+small vessel in her hand. The she-goat which she had just milked
+was bending again to the herbage, and as Caitilin trod lightly in
+front of him the Philosopher closed his eyes in virtuous anger and
+opened them again in a not unnatural curiosity, for the girl had no
+clothes on. He watched her going behind the brush and disappearing
+in the cleft of the rock, and his anger, both with her and Pan,
+mastering him he forsook the path of prudence which soared to the
+mountain top, and followed that leading to the cave. The sound of
+his feet brought Caitilin out hastily, but he pushed her by with a
+harsh word. “Hussy,” said he, and he went into the cave where Pan
+was.
+
+As he went in he already repented of his harshness and said “The
+human body is an aggregation of flesh and sinew, around a central
+bony structure. The use of clothing is primarily to protect this
+organism from rain and cold, and it may not be regarded as the
+banner of morality without danger to this fundamental premise.
+If a person does not desire to be so protected who will quarrel
+with an honourable liberty? Decency is not clothing but Mind.
+Morality is behaviour. Virtue is thought; I have often fancied,”
+he continued to Pan, whom he was now confronting, “that the effect
+of clothing on mind must be very considerable, and that it must
+have a modifying rather than an expanding effect, or, even, an
+intensifying as against an exuberant effect. With clothing the
+whole environment is immediately affected. The air, which is our
+proper medium, is only filtered to our bodies in an abated and
+niggardly fashion which can scarcely be as beneficial as the
+generous and unintermitted elemental play. The question naturally
+arises whether clothing is as unknown to nature as we have fancied?
+Viewed as a protective measure against atmospheric rigour we find
+that many creatures grow, by their own central impulse, some
+kind of exterior panoply which may be regarded as their proper
+clothing. Bears, cats, dogs, mice, sheep and beavers are wrapped
+in fur, hair, fell, fleece or pelt, so these creatures cannot by
+any means be regarded as being naked. Crabs, cockroaches, snails
+and cockles have ordered around them a crusty habiliment, wherein
+their original nakedness is only to be discovered by force, and
+other creatures have similarly provided themselves with some
+species of covering. Clothing, therefore, is not an art, but an
+instinct, and the fact that man is born naked and does not grow
+his clothing upon himself from within but collects it from various
+distant and haphazard sources is not any reason to call this
+necessity an instinct for decency. These, you will admit, are
+weighty reflections and worthy of consideration before we proceed
+to the wide and thorny subject of moral and immoral action. Now,
+what is virtue?” Pan, who had listened with great courtesy to these
+remarks, here broke in on the Philosopher.
+
+“Virtue,” said he, “is the performance of pleasant actions.”
+
+The Philosopher held the statement for a moment on his forefinger.
+
+“And what, then, is vice?” said he.
+
+“It is vicious,” said Pan, “to neglect the performance of pleasant
+actions.”
+
+“If this be so,” the other commented, “philosophy has up to the
+present been on the wrong track.”
+
+“That is so,” said Pan. “Philosophy is an immoral practice because
+it suggests a standard of practice impossible of being followed,
+and which, if it could be followed, would lead to the great sin of
+sterility.”
+
+“The idea of virtue,” said the Philosopher, with some indignation,
+“has animated the noblest intellects of the world.”
+
+“It has not animated them,” replied Pan; “it has hypnotised them so
+that they have conceived virtue as repression and self-sacrifice as
+an honourable thing instead of the suicide which it is.”
+
+“Indeed,” said the Philosopher; “this is very interesting, and if
+it is true the whole conduct of life will have to be very much
+simplified.”
+
+“Life is already very simple,” said Pan; “it is to be born and to
+die, and in the interval to eat and drink, to dance and sing, to
+marry and beget children.”
+
+“But it is simply materialism,” cried the Philosopher.
+
+“Why do you say ‘but’?” replied Pan.
+
+“It is sheer, unredeemed animalism,” continued his visitor.
+
+“It is any name you please to call it,” replied Pan.
+
+“You have proved nothing,” the Philosopher shouted.
+
+“What can be sensed requires no proof.”
+
+“You leave out the new thing,” said the Philosopher. “You leave
+out brains. I believe in mind above matter. Thought above emotion.
+Spirit above flesh.”
+
+“Of course you do,” said Pan, and he reached for his oaten pipe.
+
+The Philosopher ran to the opening of the passage and thrust
+Caitilin aside. “Hussy,” said he fiercely to her, and he darted out.
+
+As he went up the rugged path he could hear the pipes of Pan,
+calling and sobbing and making high merriment on the air.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+“She does not deserve to be rescued,” said the Philosopher, “but I
+will rescue her. Indeed,” he thought a moment later, “she does not
+want to be rescued, and, _therefore_, I will rescue her.”
+
+As he went down the road her shapely figure floated before his
+eyes as beautiful and simple as an old statue. He wagged his head
+angrily at the apparition, but it would not go away. He tried
+to concentrate his mind on a deep, philosophical maxim, but her
+disturbing image came between him and his thought, blotting out the
+latter so completely that a moment after he had stated his aphorism
+he could not remember what it had been. Such a condition of mind
+was so unusual that it bewildered him.
+
+“Is a mind, then, so unstable,” said he, “that a mere figure, an
+animated geometrical arrangement can shake it from its foundations?”
+
+The idea horrified him: he saw civilisation building its temples
+over a volcano....
+
+“A puff,” said he, “and it is gone. Beneath all is chaos and red
+anarchy, over all a devouring and insistent appetite. Our eyes tell
+us what to think about, and our wisdom is no more than a catalogue
+of sensual stimuli.”
+
+He would have been in a state of deep dejection were it not that
+through his perturbation there bubbled a stream of such amazing
+well-being as he had not felt since childhood. Years had toppled
+from his shoulders. He left one pound of solid matter behind at
+every stride. His very skin grew flexuous, and he found a pleasure
+in taking long steps such as he could not have accounted for by
+thought. Indeed, thought was the one thing he felt unequal to,
+and it was not precisely that he could not think but that he did
+not want to. All the importance and authority of his mind seemed
+to have faded away, and the activity which had once belonged to
+that organ was now transferred to his eyes. He saw, amazedly, the
+sunshine bathing the hills and the valleys. A bird in the hedge
+held him—beak, head, eyes, legs, and the wings that tapered widely
+at angles to the wind. For the first time in his life he really
+saw a bird, and one minute after it had flown away he could have
+reproduced its strident note. With every step along the curving
+road the landscape was changing. He saw and noted it almost in an
+ecstasy. A sharp hill jutted out into the road, it dissolved into a
+sloping meadow, rolled down into a valley and then climbed easily
+and peacefully into a hill again. On this side a clump of trees
+nodded together in the friendliest fashion. Yonder a solitary tree,
+well-grown and clean, was contented with its own bright company. A
+bush crouched tightly on the ground as though, at a word, it would
+scamper from its place and chase rabbits across the sward with
+shouts and laughter. Great spaces of sunshine were everywhere, and
+everywhere there were deep wells of shadow; and the one did not
+seem more beautiful than the other. That sunshine! Oh, the glory
+of it, the goodness and bravery of it, how broadly and grandly
+it shone, without stint, without care; he saw its measureless
+generosity and gloried in it as though himself had been the flinger
+of that largesse. And was he not? Did the sunlight not stream from
+his head and life from his finger-tips? Surely the well-being that
+was in him did bubble out to an activity beyond the universe.
+Thought! Oh! the petty thing! but motion! emotion! these were the
+realities. To feel, to do, to stride forward in elation chanting a
+paean of triumphant life!
+
+After a time he felt hungry, and thrusting his hand into his wallet
+he broke off a piece of one of his cakes and looked about for a
+place where he might happily eat it. By the side of the road there
+was a well; just a little corner filled with water. Over it was a
+rough stone coping, and around, hugging it on three sides almost
+from sight, were thick, quiet bushes. He would not have noticed the
+well at all but for a thin stream, the breadth of two hands, which
+tiptoed away from it through a field. By this well he sat down and
+scooped the water in his hand and it tasted good.
+
+He was eating his cake when a sound touched his ear from some
+distance, and shortly a woman came down the path carrying a vessel
+in her hand to draw water.
+
+She was a big, comely woman, and she walked as one who had no
+misfortunes and no misgivings. When she saw the Philosopher sitting
+by the well she halted a moment in surprise and then came forward
+with a good-humoured smile.
+
+“Good morrow to you, sir,” said she.
+
+“Good morrow to you too, ma’am,” replied the Philosopher. “Sit down
+beside me here and eat some of my cake.”
+
+“Why wouldn’t I, indeed,” said the woman, and she did sit beside
+him.
+
+The Philosopher cracked a large piece off his cake and gave it to
+her and she ate some.
+
+“There’s a taste on that cake,” said she. “Who made it?”
+
+“My wife did,” he replied.
+
+“Well, now!” said she, looking at him. “Do you know, you don’t look
+a bit like a married man.”
+
+“No?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Not a bit. A married man looks comfortable and settled: he looks
+finished, if you understand me, and a bachelor looks unsettled and
+funny, and he always wants to be running round seeing things. I’d
+know a married man from a bachelor any day.”
+
+“How would you know that?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Easily,” said she, with a nod. “It’s the way they look at a woman.
+A married man looks at you quietly as if he knew all about you.
+There isn’t any strangeness about him with a woman at all; but a
+bachelor man looks at you very sharp and looks away and then looks
+back again, the way you’d know he was thinking about you and didn’t
+know what you were thinking about him; and so they are always
+strange, and that’s why women like them.”
+
+“Why!” said the Philosopher, astonished, “do women like bachelors
+better than married men?”
+
+“Of course they do,” she replied heartily. “They wouldn’t look at
+the side of the road a married man was on if there was a bachelor
+man on the other side.”
+
+“This,” said the Philosopher earnestly, “is very interesting.”
+
+“And the queer thing is,” she continued, “that when I came up the
+road and saw you I said to myself ‘it’s a bachelor man.’ How long
+have you been married, now?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said the Philosopher. “Maybe it’s ten years.”
+
+“And how many children would you have, mister?”
+
+“Two,” he replied, and then corrected himself, “No, I have only
+one.”
+
+“Is the other one dead?”
+
+“I never had more than one.”
+
+“Ten years married and only one child,” said she. “Why, man dear,
+you’re not a married man. What were you doing at all, at all! I
+wouldn’t like to be telling you the children I have living and
+dead. But what I say is that married or not you’re a bachelor man.
+I knew it the minute I looked at you. What sort of a woman is
+herself?”
+
+“She’s a thin sort of woman,” cried the Philosopher, biting into
+his cake.
+
+“Is she now?”
+
+“And,” the Philosopher continued, “the reason I talked to you is
+because you are a fat woman.”
+
+“I am not fat,” was her angry response.
+
+“You are fat,” insisted the Philosopher, “and that’s the reason I
+like you.”
+
+“Oh, if you mean it that way . . .” she chuckled.
+
+“I think,” he continued, looking at her admiringly, “that women
+ought to be fat.”
+
+“Tell you the truth,” said she eagerly, “I think that myself. I
+never met a thin woman but she was a sour one, and I never met a
+fat man but he was a fool. Fat women and thin men; it’s nature,”
+said she.
+
+“It is,” said he, and he leaned forward and kissed her eye.
+
+“Oh, you villain!” said the woman, putting out her hands against
+him.
+
+The Philosopher drew back abashed. “Forgive me,” he began, “if I
+have alarmed your virtue—”
+
+“It’s the married man’s word,” said she, rising hastily: “now I
+know you; but there’s a lot of the bachelor in you all the same,
+God help you! I’m going home.” And, so saying, she dipped her
+vessel in the well and turned away.
+
+“Maybe,” said the Philosopher, “I ought to wait until your husband
+comes home and ask his forgiveness for the wrong I’ve done him.”
+
+The woman turned round on him and each of her eyes was as big as a
+plate.
+
+“What do you say?” said she. “Follow me if you dare and I’ll set
+the dog on you; I will so,” and she strode viciously homewards.
+
+After a moment’s hesitation the Philosopher took his own path
+across the hill.
+
+The day was now well advanced, and as he trudged forward the happy
+quietude of his surroundings stole into his heart again and so
+toned down his recollection of the fat woman that in a little time
+she was no more than a pleasant and curious memory. His mind was
+exercised superficially, not in thinking, but in wondering how it
+was he had come to kiss a strange woman. He said to himself that
+such conduct was not right; but this statement was no more than the
+automatic working of a mind long exercised in the distinctions of
+right and wrong, for, almost in the same breath, he assured himself
+that what he had done did not matter in the least. His opinions
+were undergoing a curious change. Right and wrong were meeting and
+blending together so closely that it became difficult to dissever
+them, and the obloquy attaching to the one seemed out of proportion
+altogether to its importance, while the other by no means justified
+the eulogy wherewith it was connected. Was there any immediate or
+even distant, effect on life caused by evil which was not instantly
+swung into equipoise by goodness? But these slender reflections
+troubled him only for a little time. He had little desire for any
+introspective quarryings. To feel so well was sufficient in itself.
+Why should thought be so apparent to us, so insistent? We do not
+know we have digestive or circulatory organs until these go out of
+order, and then the knowledge torments us. Should not the labours
+of a healthy brain be equally subterranean and equally competent?
+Why have we to think aloud and travel laboriously from syllogism
+to ergo, chary of our conclusions and distrustful of our premises?
+Thought, as we know it, is a disease and no more. The healthy
+mentality should register its convictions and not its labours. Our
+ears should not hear the clamour of its doubts nor be forced to
+listen to the pro and con wherewith we are eternally badgered and
+perplexed.
+
+The road was winding like a ribbon in and out of the mountains. On
+either side there were hedges and bushes,—little, stiff trees which
+held their foliage in their hands and dared the winds snatch a leaf
+from that grip. The hills were swelling and sinking, folding and
+soaring on every view. Now the silence was startled by the falling
+tinkle of a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or
+a goat’s call trembled from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there
+was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small winged life.
+Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient,
+stamping vigorously as he trod, almost snorting like a bull in the
+pride of successful energy. Coming down the slope he braced back
+and let his legs loose to do as they pleased. Didn’t they know
+their business—Good luck to them, and away!
+
+As he walked along he saw an old woman hobbling in front of him.
+She was leaning on a stick and her hand was red and swollen with
+rheumatism. She hobbled by reason of the fact that there were
+stones in her shapeless boots. She was draped in the sorriest
+miscellaneous rags that could be imagined, and these were knotted
+together so intricately that her clothing, having once been
+attached to her body, could never again be detached from it. As she
+walked she was mumbling and grumbling to herself, so that her mouth
+moved round and round in an india-rubber fashion.
+
+The Philosopher soon caught up on her.
+
+“Good morrow, ma’am,” said he.
+
+But she did not hear him: she seemed to be listening to the pain
+which the stones in her boots gave her.
+
+“Good morrow, ma’am,” said the Philosopher again.
+
+This time she heard him and replied, turning her old, bleared eyes
+slowly in his direction—
+
+“Good morrow to yourself, sir,” said she, and the Philosopher
+thought her old face was a very kindly one.
+
+“What is it that is wrong with you, ma’am?” said he.
+
+“It’s my boots, sir,” she replied. “Full of stones they are, the
+way I can hardly walk at all, God help me!”
+
+“Why don’t you shake them out?”
+
+“Ah, sure, I couldn’t be bothered, sir, for there are so many holes
+in the boots that more would get in before I could take two steps,
+and an old woman can’t be always fidgeting, God help her!”
+
+There was a little house on one side of the road, and when the old
+woman saw this place she brightened up a little.
+
+“Do you know who lives in that house?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I do not,” she replied, “but it’s a real nice house with clean
+windows and a shiny knocker on the door, and smoke in the chimney—I
+wonder would herself give me a cup of tea now if I asked her—A poor
+old woman walking the roads on a stick! and maybe a bit of meat, or
+an egg perhaps....”
+
+“You could ask,” suggested the Philosopher gently.
+
+“Maybe I will, too,” said she, and she sat down by the road just
+outside the house and the Philosopher also sat down.
+
+A little puppy dog came from behind the house and approached them
+cautiously. Its intentions were friendly but it had already found
+that amicable advances are sometimes indifferently received, for,
+as it drew near, it wagged its dubious tail and rolled humbly on
+the ground. But very soon the dog discovered that here there was no
+evil, for it trotted over to the old woman, and without any more
+preparation jumped into her lap.
+
+The old woman grinned at the dog “Ah, you thing you!” said she,
+and she gave it her finger to bite. The delighted puppy chewed her
+bony finger, and then instituted a mimic warfare against a piece of
+rag that fluttered from her breast, barking and growling in joyous
+excitement, while the old woman fondled and hugged it.
+
+The door of the house opposite opened quickly, and a woman with a
+frost-bitten face came out.
+
+“Leave that dog down,” said she.
+
+The old woman grinned humbly at her.
+
+“Sure, ma’am, I wouldn’t hurt the little dog, the thing!”
+
+“Put down that dog,” said the woman, “and go about your business—the
+likes of you ought to be arrested.”
+
+A man in shirt sleeves appeared behind her, and at him the old
+woman grinned even more humbly.
+
+“Let me sit here for a while and play with the little dog, sir,”
+said she; “sure the roads do be lonesome—”
+
+The man stalked close and grabbed the dog by the scruff of the
+neck. It hung between his finger and thumb with its tail tucked
+between its legs and its eyes screwed round on one side in
+amazement.
+
+“Be off with you out of that, you old strap!” said the man in a
+terrible voice.
+
+So the old woman rose painfully to her feet again, and as she went
+hobbling along the dusty road she began to cry.
+
+The Philosopher also arose; he was very indignant but did not
+know what to do. A singular lassitude also prevented him from
+interfering. As they paced along his companion began mumbling,
+more to herself than to him “Ah, God be with me,” said she, “an
+old woman on a stick, that hasn’t a place in the wide world to go
+to or a neighbour itself.... I wish I could get a cup of tea, so I
+do. I wish to God I could get a cup of tea.... Me sitting down in
+my own little house, with the white tablecloth on the table, and
+the butter in the dish, and the strong, red tea in the tea-cup;
+and me pouring cream into it, and, maybe, telling the children
+not to be wasting the sugar, the things! and himself saying he’d
+got to mow the big field to-day, or that the red cow was going to
+calve, the poor thing, and that if the boys went to school, who was
+going to weed the turnips—and me sitting drinking my strong cup of
+tea, and telling him where that old trapesing hen was laying....
+Ah, God be with me! an old creature hobbling along the roads on
+a stick. I wish I was a young girl again, so I do, and himself
+coming courting me, and him saying that I was a real nice little
+girl surely, and that nothing would make him happy or easy at all
+but me to be loving him.—Ah, the kind man that he was, to be sure,
+the kind, decent man.... And Sorca Reilly to be trying to get
+him from me, and Kate Finnegan with her bold eyes looking after
+him in the Chapel; and him to be saying that along with me they
+were only a pair of old nanny goats.... And then me to be getting
+married and going home to my own little house with my man—ah, God
+be with me! and him kissing me, and laughing, and frightening me
+with his goings-on. Ah, the kind man, with his soft eyes, and his
+nice voice, and his jokes and laughing, and him thinking the world
+and all of me—ay, indeed.... And the neighbours to be coming in
+and sitting round the fire in the night time, putting the world
+through each other, and talking about France and Russia and them
+other queer places, and him holding up the discourse like a learned
+man, and them all listening to him and nodding their heads at each
+other, and wondering at his education and all: or, maybe, the
+neighbours to be singing, or him making me sing the Coulin, and him
+to be proud of me . . . and then him to be killed on me with a cold
+on his chest.... Ah, then, God be with me, a lone, old creature on
+a stick, and the sun shining into her eyes and she thirsty—I wish
+I had a cup of tea, so I do. I wish to God I had a cup of tea and
+a bit of meat . . . or, maybe, an egg. A nice fresh egg laid by
+the speckeldy hen that used to be giving me all the trouble, the
+thing!... Sixteen hens I had, and they were the ones for laying,
+surely.... It’s the queer world, so it is, the queer world—and the
+things that do happen for no reason at all.... Ah, God be with me!
+I wish there weren’t stones in my boots, so I do, and I wish to
+God I had a cup of tea and a fresh egg. Ah, glory be, my old legs
+are getting tireder every day, so they are. Wisha, one time—when
+himself was in it—I could go about the house all day long, cleaning
+the place, and feeding the pigs, and the hens and all, and then
+dance half the night, so I could: and himself proud of me....”
+
+The old woman turned up a little rambling road and went on still
+talking to herself, and the Philosopher watched her go up that
+road for a long time. He was very glad she had gone away, and as
+he tramped forward he banished her sad image so that in a little
+time he was happy again. The sun was still shining, the birds were
+flying on every side, and the wide hillside above him smiled gaily.
+
+A small, narrow road cut at right angles into his path, and as he
+approached this he heard the bustle and movement of a host, the
+trample of feet, the rolling and creaking of wheels, and the long
+unwearied drone of voices. In a few minutes he came abreast of this
+small road, and saw an ass and cart piled with pots and pans, and
+walking beside this there were two men and a woman. The men and the
+woman were talking together loudly, even fiercely, and the ass was
+drawing his cart along the road without requiring assistance or
+direction. While there was a road he walked on it: when he might
+come to a cross road he would turn to the right: when a man said
+“whoh” he would stop: when he said “hike” he would go backwards,
+and when he said “yep” he would go on again. That was life, and if
+one questioned it, one was hit with a stick, or a boot, or a lump
+of rock: if one continued walking nothing happened, and that was
+happiness.
+
+The Philosopher saluted this cavalcade.
+
+“God be with you,” said he.
+
+“God and Mary be with you,” said the first man.
+
+“God, and Mary, and Patrick be with you,” said the second man.
+
+“God, and Mary, and Patrick, and Brigid be with you,” said the
+woman.
+
+The ass, however, did not say a thing. As the word “whoh” had not
+entered into the conversation he knew it was none of his business,
+and so he turned to the right on the new path and continued his
+journey.
+
+“Where are you going to, stranger,” said the first man.
+
+“I am going to visit Angus Óg,” replied the Philosopher.
+
+The man gave him a quick look.
+
+“Well,” said he, “that’s the queerest story I ever heard. Listen
+here,” he called to the others, “this man is looking for Angus Óg.”
+
+The other man and woman came closer.
+
+“What would you be wanting with Angus Óg, Mister Honey?” said the
+woman.
+
+“Oh,” replied the Philosopher, “it’s a particular thing, a family
+matter.”
+
+There was silence for a few minutes, and they all stepped onwards
+behind the ass and cart.
+
+“How do you know where to look for himself?” said the first man
+again: “maybe you got the place where he lives written down in an
+old book or on a carved stone?”
+
+“Or did you find the staff of Amergin or of Ossian in a bog and it
+written from the top to the bottom with signs?” said the second man.
+
+“No,” said the Philosopher, “it isn’t that way you’d go visiting a
+god. What you do is, you go out from your house and walk straight
+away in any direction with your shadow behind you so long as it
+is towards a mountain, for the gods will not stay in a valley
+or a level plain, but only in high places; and then, if the god
+wants you to see him, you will go to his rath as direct as if you
+knew where it was, for he will be leading you with an airy thread
+reaching from his own place to wherever you are, and if he doesn’t
+want to see you, you will never find out where he is, not if you
+were to walk for a year or twenty years.”
+
+“How do you know he wants to see you?” said the second man.
+
+“Why wouldn’t he want?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Maybe, Mister Honey,” said the woman, “you are a holy sort of a
+man that a god would like well.”
+
+“Why would I be that?” said the Philosopher. “The gods like a man
+whether he’s holy or not if he’s only decent.”
+
+“Ah, well, there’s plenty of that sort,” said the first man. “What
+do you happen to have in your bag, stranger?”
+
+“Nothing,” replied the Philosopher, “but a cake and a half that was
+baked for my journey.”
+
+“Give me a bit of your cake, Mister Honey,” said the woman. “I like
+to have a taste of everybody’s cake.”
+
+“I will, and welcome,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“You may as well give us all a bit while you are about it,” said
+the second man. “That woman hasn’t got all the hunger of the world.”
+
+“Why not,” said the Philosopher, and he divided the cake.
+
+“There’s a sup of water up yonder,” said the first man, “and it
+will do to moisten the cake—Whoh, you devil,” he roared at the ass,
+and the ass stood stock still on the minute.
+
+There was a thin fringe of grass along the road near a wall, and
+towards this the ass began to edge very gently.
+
+“Hike, you beast, you,” shouted the man, and the ass at once hiked,
+but he did it in a way that brought him close to the grass. The
+first man took a tin can out of the cart and climbed over the
+little wall for water. Before he went he gave the ass three kicks
+on the nose, but the ass did not say a word, he only hiked still
+more which brought him directly on to the grass, and when the man
+climbed over the wall the ass commenced to crop the grass. There
+was a spider sitting on a hot stone in the grass. He had a small
+body and wide legs, and he wasn’t doing anything.
+
+“Does anybody ever kick you in the nose?” said the ass to him.
+
+“Ay does there,” said the spider; “you and your like that are
+always walking on me, or lying down on me, or running over me with
+the wheels of a cart.”
+
+“Well, why don’t you stay on the wall?” said the ass.
+
+“Sure, my wife is there,” replied the spider.
+
+“What’s the harm in that?” said the ass.
+
+“She’d eat me,” said the spider, “and, anyhow, the competition on
+the wall is dreadful, and the flies are getting wiser and timider
+every season. Have you got a wife yourself, now?”
+
+“I have not,” said the ass; “I wish I had.”
+
+“You like your wife for the first while,” said the spider, “and
+after that you hate her.”
+
+“If I had the first while I’d chance the second while,” replied the
+ass.
+
+“It’s bachelor’s talk,” said the spider; “all the same, we can’t
+keep away from them,” and so saying he began to move all his legs
+at once in the direction of the wall. “You can only die once,” said
+he.
+
+“If your wife was an ass she wouldn’t eat you,” said the ass.
+
+“She’d be doing something else then,” replied the spider, and he
+climbed up the wall.
+
+The first man came back with the can of water and they sat down on
+the grass and ate the cake and drank the water. All the time the
+woman kept her eyes fixed on the Philosopher.
+
+“Mister Honey,” said she, “I think you met us just at the right
+moment.”
+
+The other two men sat upright and looked at each other and then
+with equal intentness they looked at the woman.
+
+“Why do you say that?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“We were having a great argument along the road, and if we were to
+be talking from now to the day of doom that argument would never be
+finished.”
+
+“It must have been a great argument. Was it about predestination or
+where consciousness comes from?”
+
+“It was not; it was which of these two men was to marry me.”
+
+“That’s not a great argument,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Isn’t it,” said the woman. “For seven days and six nights we
+didn’t talk about anything else, and that’s a great argument or I’d
+like to know what is.”
+
+“But where is the trouble, ma’am?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“It’s this,” she replied, “that I can’t make up my mind which of
+the men I’ll take, for I like one as well as the other and better,
+and I’d as soon have one as the other and rather.”
+
+“It’s a hard case,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“It is,” said the woman, “and I’m sick and sorry with the trouble
+of it.”
+
+“And why did you say that I had come up in a good minute?”
+
+“Because, Mister Honey, when a woman has two men to choose from she
+doesn’t know what to do, for two men always become like brothers
+so that you wouldn’t know which of them was which: there isn’t any
+more difference between two men than there is between a couple
+of hares. But when there’s three men to choose from, there’s no
+trouble at all; and so I say that it’s yourself I’ll marry this
+night and no one else—and let you two men be sitting quiet in your
+places, for I’m telling you what I’ll do and that’s the end of it.”
+
+“I’ll give you my word,” said the first man, “that I’m just as glad
+as you are to have it over and done with.”
+
+“Moidered I was,” said the second man, “with the whole argument,
+and the this and that of it, and you not able to say a word
+but—maybe I will and maybe I won’t, and this is true and that is
+true, and why not to me and why not to him—I’ll get a sleep this
+night.”
+
+The Philosopher was perplexed.
+
+“You cannot marry me, ma’am,” said he, “because I’m married
+already.”
+
+The woman turned round on him angrily.
+
+“Don’t be making any argument with me now,” said she, “for I won’t
+stand it.”
+
+The first man looked fiercely at the Philosopher, and then motioned
+to his companion.
+
+“Give that man a clout in the jaw,” said he.
+
+The second man was preparing to do this when the woman intervened
+angrily.
+
+“Keep your hands to yourself,” said she, “or it’ll be the worse for
+you. I’m well able to take care of my own husband,” and she drew
+nearer and sat between the Philosopher and the men.
+
+[Illustration: At that moment the Philosopher’s cake lost all its
+savour]
+
+At that moment the Philosopher’s cake lost all its savour, and he
+packed the remnant into his wallet. They all sat silently looking
+at their feet and thinking each one according to his nature. The
+Philosopher’s mind, which for the past day had been in eclipse,
+stirred faintly to meet these new circumstances, but without much
+result. There was a flutter at his heart which was terrifying,
+but not unpleasant. Quickening through his apprehension was an
+expectancy which stirred his pulses into speed. So rapidly did his
+blood flow, so quickly were an hundred impressions visualized and
+recorded, so violent was the surface movement of his brain that he
+did not realize he was unable to think and that he was only seeing
+and feeling.
+
+The first man stood up.
+
+“The night will be coming on soon,” said he, “and we had better
+be walking on if we want to get a good place to sleep. Yep, you
+devil,” he roared at the ass, and the ass began to move almost
+before he lifted his head from the grass. The two men walked one on
+either side of the cart, and the woman and the Philosopher walked
+behind at the tail-board.
+
+“If you were feeling tired, or anything like that, Mister Honey,”
+said the woman, “you could climb up into the little cart, and
+nobody would say a word to you, for I can see that you are not used
+to travelling.”
+
+“I am not indeed, ma’am,” he replied; “this is the first time I
+ever came on a journey, and if it wasn’t for Angus Óg I wouldn’t
+put a foot out of my own place for ever.”
+
+“Put Angus Óg out of your head, my dear,” she replied, “for what
+would the likes of you and me be saying to a god. He might put a
+curse on us would sink us into the ground or burn us up like a grip
+of straw. Be contented now, I’m saying, for if there is a woman in
+the world who knows all things I am that woman myself, and if you
+tell your trouble to me I’ll tell you the thing to do just as good
+as Angus himself, and better perhaps.”
+
+“That is very interesting,” said the Philosopher. “What kind of
+things do you know best?”
+
+“If you were to ask one of them two men walking beside the ass
+they’d tell you plenty of things they saw me do when they could
+do nothing themselves. When there wasn’t a road to take anywhere
+I showed them a road, and when there wasn’t a bit of food in the
+world I gave them food, and when they were bet to the last I put
+shillings in their hands, and that’s the reason they wanted to
+marry me.”
+
+“Do you call that kind of thing wisdom?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Why wouldn’t I?” said she. “Isn’t it wisdom to go through the
+world without fear and not to be hungry in a hungry hour?”
+
+“I suppose it is,” he replied, “but I never thought of it that way
+myself.”
+
+“And what would you call wisdom?”
+
+“I couldn’t rightly say now,” he replied, “but I think it was not
+to mind about the world, and not to care whether you were hungry or
+not, and not to live in the world at all but only in your own head,
+for the world is a tyrannous place. You have to raise yourself
+above things instead of letting things raise themselves above you.
+We must not be slaves to each other, and we must not be slaves to
+our necessities either. That is the problem of existence. There
+is no dignity in life at all if hunger can shout ‘stop’ at every
+turn of the road and the day’s journey is measured by the distance
+between one sleep and the next sleep. Life is all slavery, and
+Nature is driving us with the whips of appetite and weariness; but
+when a slave rebels he ceases to be a slave, and when we are too
+hungry to live we can die and have our laugh. I believe that Nature
+is just as alive as we are, and that she is as much frightened of
+us as we are of her, and, mind you this, mankind has declared war
+against Nature and we will win. She does not understand yet that
+her geologic periods won’t do any longer, and that while she is
+pattering along the line of least resistance we are going to travel
+fast and far until we find her, and then, being a female, she is
+bound to give in when she is challenged.”
+
+“It’s good talk,” said the woman, “but it’s foolishness. Women
+never give in unless they get what they want, and where’s the harm
+to them then? You have to live in the world, my dear, whether you
+like it or not, and, believe me now, that there isn’t any wisdom
+but to keep clear of the hunger, for if that gets near enough it
+will make a hare of you. Sure, listen to reason now like a good
+man. What is Nature at all but a word that learned men have made
+to talk about. There’s clay and gods and men, and they are good
+friends enough.”
+
+The sun had long since gone down, and the grey evening was bowing
+over the land, hiding the mountain peaks, and putting a shadow
+round the scattered bushes and the wide clumps of heather.
+
+“I know a place up here where we can stop for the night,” said she,
+“and there’s a little shebeen round the bend of the road where we
+can get anything we want.”
+
+At the word “whoh” the ass stopped and one of the men took the
+harness off him. When he was unyoked the man gave him two kicks:
+“Be off with you, you devil, and see if you can get anything to
+eat,” he roared. The ass trotted a few paces off and searched about
+until he found some grass. He ate this, and when he had eaten as
+much as he wanted he returned and lay down under a wall. He lay for
+a long time looking in the one direction, and at last he put his
+head down and went to sleep. While he was sleeping he kept one ear
+up and the other ear down for about twenty minutes, and then he put
+the first ear down and the other one up, and he kept on doing this
+all the night. If he had anything to lose you wouldn’t mind him
+setting up sentries, but he hadn’t a thing in the world except his
+skin and his bones, and no one would be bothered stealing them.
+
+One of the men took a long bottle out of the cart and walked up
+the road with it. The other man lifted out a tin bucket which was
+punched all over with jagged holes. Then he took out some sods of
+turf and lumps of wood and he put these in the bucket, and in a few
+minutes he had a very nice fire lit. A pot of water was put on to
+boil, and the woman cut up a great lump of bacon which she put into
+the pot. She had eight eggs in a place in the cart, and a flat loaf
+of bread, and some cold boiled potatoes, and she spread her apron
+on the ground and arranged these things on it.
+
+The other man came down the road again with his big bottle filled
+with porter, and he put this in a safe place. Then they emptied
+everything out of the cart and hoisted it over the little wall.
+They turned the cart on one side and pulled it near to the fire,
+and they all sat inside the cart and ate their supper. When supper
+was done they lit their pipes, and the woman lit a pipe also. The
+bottle of porter was brought forward, and they took drinks in turn
+out of the bottle, and smoked their pipes, and talked.
+
+There was no moon that night, and no stars, so that just beyond the
+fire there was a thick darkness which one would not like to look
+at, it was so cold and empty. While talking they all kept their
+eyes fixed on the red fire, or watched the smoke from their pipes
+drifting and curling away against the blackness, and disappearing
+as suddenly as lightning.
+
+“I wonder,” said the first man, “what it was gave you the idea
+of marrying this man instead of myself or my comrade, for we are
+young, hardy men, and he is getting old, God help him!”
+
+“Aye, indeed,” said the second man; “he’s as grey as a badger, and
+there’s no flesh on his bones.”
+
+“You have a right to ask that,” said she, “and I’ll tell you why I
+didn’t marry either of you. You are only a pair of tinkers going
+from one place to another, and not knowing anything at all of fine
+things; but himself was walking along the road looking for strange,
+high adventures, and it’s a man like that a woman would be wishing
+to marry if he was twice as old as he is. When did either of you go
+out in the daylight looking for a god and you not caring what might
+happen to you or where you went?”
+
+“What I’m thinking,” said the second man, “is that if you leave the
+gods alone they’ll leave you alone. It’s no trouble to them to do
+whatever is right themselves, and what call would men like us have
+to go mixing or meddling with their high affairs?”
+
+“I thought all along that you were a timid man,” said she, “and
+now I know it.” She turned again to the Philosopher—“Take off your
+boots, Mister Honey, the way you’ll rest easy, and I’ll be making
+down a soft bed for you in the cart.”
+
+In order to take off his boots the Philosopher had to stand up, for
+in the cart they were too cramped for freedom. He moved backwards
+a space from the fire and took off his boots. He could see the
+woman stretching sacks and clothes inside the cart, and the two men
+smoking quietly and handing the big bottle from one to the other.
+Then in his stockinged feet he stepped a little farther from the
+fire, and, after another look, he turned and walked quietly away
+into the blackness. In a few minutes he heard a shout from behind
+him, and then a number of shouts and then these died away into a
+plaintive murmur of voices, and next he was alone in the greatest
+darkness he had ever known.
+
+He put on his boots and walked onwards. He had no idea where the
+road lay, and every moment he stumbled into a patch of heather or
+prickly furze. The ground was very uneven with unexpected mounds
+and deep hollows: here and there were water-soaked, soggy places,
+and into these cold ruins he sank ankle deep. There was no longer
+an earth or a sky, but only a black void and a thin wind and a
+fierce silence which seemed to listen to him as he went. Out of
+that silence a thundering laugh might boom at an instant and stop
+again while he stood appalled in the blind vacancy.
+
+The hill began to grow more steep and rocks were lying everywhere
+in his path. He could not see an inch in front, and so he went with
+his hands out-stretched like a blind man who stumbles painfully
+along. After a time he was nearly worn out with cold and weariness,
+but he dared not sit down anywhere; the darkness was so intense
+that it frightened him, and the overwhelming, crafty silence
+frightened him also.
+
+At last, and at a great distance, he saw a flickering, waving
+light, and he went towards this through drifts of heather, and over
+piled rocks and sodden bogland. When he came to the light he saw it
+was a torch of thick branches, the flame whereof blew hither and
+thither on the wind. The torch was fastened against a great cliff
+of granite by an iron band. At one side there was a dark opening
+in the rock, so he said: “I will go in there and sleep until the
+morning comes,” and he went in. At a very short distance the cleft
+turned again to the right, and here there was another torch fixed.
+When he turned this corner he stood for an instant in speechless
+astonishment, and then he covered his face and bowed down upon the
+ground.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III. THE TWO GODS
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Caitilin Ni Murrachu was sitting alone in the little cave behind
+Gort na Cloca Mora. Her companion had gone out as was his custom
+to walk in the sunny morning and to sound his pipe in desolate,
+green spaces whence, perhaps, the wanderer of his desire might hear
+the guiding sweetness. As she sat she was thinking. The last few
+days had awakened her body, and had also awakened her mind, for
+with the one awakening comes the other. The despondency which had
+touched her previously when tending her father’s cattle came to her
+again, but recognizably now. She knew the thing which the wind had
+whispered in the sloping field and for which she had no name—it was
+Happiness. Faintly she shadowed it forth, but yet she could not see
+it. It was only a pearl-pale wraith, almost formless, too tenuous
+to be touched by her hands, and too aloof to be spoken to. Pan had
+told her that he was the giver of happiness, but he had given her
+only unrest and fever and a longing which could not be satisfied.
+Again there was a want, and she could not formulate, or even
+realize it with any closeness. Her new-born Thought had promised
+everything, even as Pan, and it had given—she could not say that
+it had given her nothing or anything. Its limits were too quickly
+divinable. She had found the Tree of Knowledge, but about on every
+side a great wall soared blackly enclosing her in from the Tree of
+Life—a wall which her thought was unable to surmount even while
+instinct urged that it must topple before her advance; but instinct
+may not advance when thought has schooled it in the science of
+unbelief; and this wall will not be conquered until Thought and
+Instinct are wed, and the first son of that bridal will be called
+The Scaler of the Wall.
+
+So, after the quiet weariness of ignorance, the unquiet weariness
+of thought had fallen upon her. That travail of mind which, through
+countless generations, has throed to the birth of an ecstasy, the
+prophecy which humanity has sworn must be fulfilled, seeing through
+whatever mists and doubtings the vision of a gaiety wherein the
+innocence of the morning will not any longer be strange to our
+maturity.
+
+[Illustration: A swift shadow darkened the passage]
+
+While she was so thinking Pan returned, a little disheartened
+that he had found no person to listen to his pipings. He had been
+seated but a little time when suddenly, from without, a chorus of
+birds burst into joyous singing. Limpid and liquid cadenzas, mellow
+flutings, and the sweet treble of infancy met and danced and piped
+in the airy soundings. A round, soft tenderness of song rose and
+fell, broadened and soared, and then the high flight was snatched,
+eddied a moment, and was borne away to a more slender and wonderful
+loftiness, until, from afar, that thrilling song turned on the very
+apex of sweetness, dipped steeply and flashed its joyous return
+to the exultations of its mates below, rolling an ecstasy of song
+which for one moment gladdened the whole world and the sad people
+who moved thereon; then the singing ceased as suddenly as it began,
+a swift shadow darkened the passage, and Angus Óg came into the
+cave.
+
+Caitilin sprang from her seat Frighted, and Pan also made a half
+movement towards rising, but instantly sank back again to his
+negligent, easy posture.
+
+The god was slender and as swift as a wind. His hair swung about
+his face like golden blossoms. His eyes were mild and dancing and
+his lips smiled with quiet sweetness. About his head there flew
+perpetually a ring of singing birds, and when he spoke his voice
+came sweetly from a centre of sweetness.
+
+“Health to you, daughter of Murrachu,” said he, and he sat down.
+
+“I do not know you, sir,” the terrified girl whispered.
+
+“I cannot be known until I make myself known,” he replied. “I am
+called Infinite Joy, O daughter of Murrachu, and I am called Love.”
+
+The girl gazed doubtfully from one to the other.
+
+Pan looked up from his pipes.
+
+“I also am called Love,” said he gently, “and I am called Joy.”
+
+Angus Óg looked for the first time at Pan.
+
+“Singer of the Vine,” said he, “I know your names-they are Desire
+and Fever and Lust and Death. Why have you come from your own place
+to spy upon my pastures and my quiet fields?”
+
+Pan replied mildly.
+
+“The mortal gods move by the Immortal Will, and, therefore, I am
+here.”
+
+“And I am here,” said Angus.
+
+“Give me a sign,” said Pan, “that I must go.”
+
+Angus Óg lifted his hand and from without there came again the
+triumphant music of the birds.
+
+“It is a sign,” said he, “the voice of Dana speaking in the air,”
+and, saying so, he made obeisance to the great mother.
+
+Pan lifted his hand, and from afar there came the lowing of the
+cattle and the thin voices of the goats.
+
+“It is a sign,” said he, “the voice of Demeter speaking from the
+earth,” and he also bowed deeply to the mother of the world.
+
+Again Angus Óg lifted his hand, and in it there appeared a spear,
+bright and very terrible.
+
+But Pan only said, “Can a spear divine the Eternal Will?” and Angus
+Óg put his weapon aside, and he said: “The girl will choose between
+us, for the Divine Mood shines in the heart of man.”
+
+Then Caitilin Ni Murrachu came forward and sat between the gods,
+but Pan stretched out his hand and drew her to him, so that she sat
+resting against his shoulder and his arm was about her body.
+
+“We will speak the truth to this girl,” said Angus Óg.
+
+“Can the gods speak otherwise?” said Pan, and he laughed with
+delight.
+
+“It is the difference between us,” replied Angus Óg. “She will
+judge.”
+
+“Shepherd Girl,” said Pan, pressing her with his arm, “you will
+judge between us. Do you know what is the greatest thing in the
+world?—because it is of that you will have to judge.”
+
+“I have heard,” the girl replied, “two things called the greatest
+things. You,” she continued to Pan, “said it was Hunger, and long
+ago my father said that Commonsense was the greatest thing in the
+world.”
+
+“I have not told you,” said Angus Óg, “what I consider is the
+greatest thing in the world.”
+
+“It is your right to speak,” said Pan.
+
+“The greatest thing in the world,” said Angus Óg, “is the Divine
+Imagination.”
+
+“Now,” said Pan, “we know all the greatest things and we can talk
+of them.”
+
+“The daughter of Murrachu,” continued Angus Óg, “has told us what
+you think and what her father thinks, but she has not told us what
+she thinks herself. Tell us, Caitilin Ni Murrachu, what you think
+is the greatest thing in the world.”
+
+So Caitilin Ni Murrachu thought for a few moments and then replied
+timidly.
+
+“I think that Happiness is the greatest thing in the world,” said
+she.
+
+Hearing this they sat in silence for a little time, and then Angus
+Óg spoke again “The Divine Imagination may only be known through
+the thoughts of His creatures. A man has said Commonsense and a
+woman has said Happiness are the greatest things in the world.
+These things are male and female, for Commonsense is Thought and
+Happiness is Emotion, and until they embrace in Love the will
+of Immensity cannot be fruitful. For, behold, there has been no
+marriage of humanity since time began. Men have but coupled with
+their own shadows. The desire that sprang from their heads they
+pursued, and no man has yet known the love of a woman. And women
+have mated with the shadows of their own hearts, thinking fondly
+that the arms of men were about them. I saw my son dancing with
+an Idea, and I said to him, ‘With what do you dance, my son?’ and
+he replied, ‘I make merry with the wife of my affection,’ and
+truly she was shaped as a woman is shaped, but it was an Idea he
+danced with and not a woman. And presently he went away to his
+labours, and then his Idea arose and her humanity came upon her so
+that she was clothed with beauty and terror, and she went apart
+and danced with the servant of my son, and there was great joy of
+that dancing—for a person in the wrong place is an Idea and not a
+person. Man is Thought and woman is Intuition, and they have never
+mated. There is a gulf between them and it is called Fear, and what
+they fear is, that their strengths shall be taken from them and
+they may no longer be tyrants. The Eternal has made love blind,
+for it is not by science, but by intuition alone, that he may come
+to his beloved; but desire, which is science, has many eyes and
+sees so vastly that he passes his love in the press, saying there
+is no love, and he propagates miserably on his own delusions. The
+finger-tips are guided by God, but the devil looks through the
+eyes of all creatures so that they may wander in the errors of
+reason and justify themselves of their wanderings. The desire of a
+man shall be Beauty, but he has fashioned a slave in his mind and
+called it Virtue. The desire of a woman shall be Wisdom, but she
+has formed a beast in her blood and called it Courage: but the real
+virtue is courage, and the real courage is liberty, and the real
+liberty is wisdom, and Wisdom is the son of Thought and Intuition;
+and his names also are Innocence and Adoration and Happiness.”
+
+When Angus Óg had said these words he ceased, and for a time there
+was silence in the little cave. Caitilin had covered her face with
+her hands and would not look at him, but Pan drew the girl closer
+to his side and peered sideways, laughing at Angus.
+
+“Has the time yet come for the girl to judge between us?” said he.
+
+“Daughter of Murrachu,” said Angus Óg, “will you come away with me
+from this place?”
+
+Caitilin then looked at the god in great distress. “I do not know
+what to do,” said she. “Why do you both want me? I have given
+myself to Pan, and his arms are about me.”
+
+“I want you,” said Angus Óg, “because the world has forgotten me.
+In all my nation there is no remembrance of me. I, wandering on
+the hills of my country, am lonely indeed. I am the desolate god
+forbidden to utter my happy laughter. I hide the silver of my
+speech and the gold of my merriment. I live in the holes of the
+rocks and the dark caves of the sea. I weep in the morning because
+I may not laugh, and in the evening I go abroad and am not happy.
+Where I have kissed a bird has flown; where I have trod a flower
+has sprung. But Thought has snared my birds in his nets and sold
+them in the market-places. Who will deliver me from Thought, from
+the base holiness of Intellect, the maker of chains and traps? Who
+will save me from the holy impurity of Emotion, whose daughters are
+Envy and Jealousy and Hatred, who plucks my flowers to ornament
+her lusts and my little leaves to shrivel on the breasts of
+infamy? Lo, I am sealed in the caves of nonentity until the head
+and the heart shall come together in fruitfulness, until Thought
+has wept for Love, and Emotion has purified herself to meet her
+lover. Tir-na-nÓg is the heart of a man and the head of a woman.
+Widely they are separated. Self-centred they stand, and between
+them the seas of space are flooding desolately. No voice can shout
+across those shores. No eye can bridge them, nor any desire bring
+them together until the blind god shall find them on the wavering
+stream—not as an arrow searches straightly from a bow, but gently,
+imperceptibly as a feather on the wind reaches the ground on a
+hundred starts; not with the compass and the chart, but by the
+breath of the Almighty which blows from all quarters without care
+and without ceasing. Night and day it urges from the outside to
+the inside. It gathers ever to the centre. From the far without
+to the deep within, trembling from the body to the soul until the
+head of a woman and the heart of a man are filled with the Divine
+Imagination. Hymen, Hymenæa! I sing to the ears that are stopped,
+the eyes that are sealed, and the minds that do not labour. Sweetly
+I sing on the hillside. The blind shall look within and not
+without; the deaf shall hearken to the murmur of their own veins,
+and be enchanted with the wisdom of sweetness; the thoughtless
+shall think without effort as the lightning flashes, that the hand
+of Innocence may reach to the stars, that the feet of Adoration may
+dance to the Father of Joy, and the laugh of Happiness be answered
+by the Voice of Benediction.”
+
+Thus Angus Óg sang in the cave, and ere he had ceased Caitilin Ni
+Murrachu withdrew herself from the arms of her desires. But so
+strong was the hold of Pan upon her that when she was free her body
+bore the marks of his grip, and many days passed away before these
+marks faded.
+
+Then Pan arose in silence, taking his double reed in his hand, and
+the girl wept, beseeching him to stay to be her brother and the
+brother of her beloved, but Pan smiled and said: “Your beloved is
+my father and my son. He is yesterday and to-morrow. He is the
+nether and the upper millstone, and I am crushed between until I
+kneel again before the throne from whence I came,” and, saying so,
+he embraced Angus Óg most tenderly and went his way to the quiet
+fields, and across the slopes of the mountains, and beyond the blue
+distances of space.
+
+And in a little time Caitilin Ni Murrachu went with her companion
+across the brow of the hill, and she did not go with him because
+she had understood his words, nor because he was naked and
+unashamed, but only because his need of her was very great, and,
+therefore, she loved him, and stayed his feet in the way, and was
+concerned lest he should stumble.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV. THE PHILOSOPHER’S RETURN
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Which is, the Earth or the creatures that move upon it, the more
+important? This is a question prompted solely by intellectual
+arrogance, for in life there is no greater and no less. The thing
+that _is_ has justified its own importance by mere existence, for
+that is the great and equal achievement. If life were arranged
+for us from without such a question of supremacy would assume
+importance, but life is always from within, and is modified or
+extended by our own appetites, aspirations, and central activities.
+From without we get pollen and the refreshment of space and
+quietude—it is sufficient. We might ask, is the Earth anything more
+than an extension of our human consciousness, or are we, moving
+creatures, only projections of the Earth’s antennæ? But these
+matters have no value save as a field wherein Thought, like a wise
+lamb, may frolic merrily. And all would be very well if Thought
+would but continue to frolic, instead of setting up first as _locum
+tenens_ for Intuition and sticking to the job, and afterwards as
+the counsel and critic of Omnipotence. Everything has two names,
+and everything is twofold. The name of male Thought as it faces
+the world is Philosophy, but the name it bears in Tir-na-nÓg is
+Delusion. Female Thought is called Socialism on earth, but in
+Eternity it is known as Illusion; and this is so because there has
+been no matrimony of minds, but only an hermaphroditic propagation
+of automatic ideas, which in their due rotation assume dominance
+and reign severely. To the world this system of thought, because
+it is consecutive, is known as Logic, but Eternity has written
+it down in the Book of Errors as Mechanism: for life may not be
+consecutive, but explosive and variable, else it is a shackled and
+timorous slave.
+
+One of the great troubles of life is that Reason has taken charge
+of the administration of Justice, and by mere identification it has
+achieved the crown and sceptre of its master. But the imperceptible
+usurpation was recorded, and discriminating minds understand
+the chasm which still divides the pretender Law from the exiled
+King. In a like manner, and with feigned humility, the Cold Demon
+advanced to serve Religion, and by guile and violence usurped
+her throne; but the pure in heart still fly from the spectre
+Theology to dance in ecstasy before the starry and eternal goddess.
+Statecraft, also, that tender Shepherd of the Flocks, has been
+despoiled of his crook and bell, and wanders in unknown desolation
+while, beneath the banner of Politics, Reason sits howling over an
+intellectual chaos.
+
+Justice is the maintaining of equilibrium. The blood of Cain must
+cry, not from the lips of the Avenger, but from the aggrieved Earth
+herself who demands that atonement shall be made for a disturbance
+of her consciousness. All justice is, therefore, readjustment. A
+thwarted consciousness has every right to clamour for assistance,
+but not for punishment. This latter can only be sought by timorous
+and egotistic Intellect, which sees the Earth from which it has
+emerged and into which it must return again in its own despite,
+and so, being self-centred and envious and a renegade from life,
+Reason is more cruelly unjust, and more timorous than any other
+manifestation of the divinely erratic energy—erratic, because, as
+has been said, “the crooked roads are the roads of genius.” Nature
+grants to all her creatures an unrestricted liberty, quickened by
+competitive appetite, to succeed or to fail; save only to Reason,
+her Demon of Order, which can do neither, and whose wings she has
+clipped for some reason with which I am not yet acquainted. It may
+be that an unrestricted mentality would endanger her own intuitive
+perceptions by shackling all her other organs of perception, or
+annoy her by vexatious efforts at creative rivalry.
+
+It will, therefore, be understood that when the Leprecauns of Gort
+na Cloca Mora acted in the manner about to be recorded, they were
+not prompted by any lewd passion for revenge, but were merely
+striving to reconstruct a rhythm which was their very existence,
+and which must have been of direct importance to the Earth. Revenge
+is the vilest passion known to life. It has made Law possible, and
+by doing so it gave to Intellect the first grip at that universal
+dominion which is its ambition. A Leprecaun is of more value to
+the Earth than is a Prime Minister or a stockbroker, because a
+Leprecaun dances and makes merry, while a Prime Minister knows
+nothing of these natural virtues—consequently, an injury done to a
+Leprecaun afflicts the Earth with misery, and justice is, for these
+reasons, an imperative and momentous necessity.
+
+A community of Leprecauns without a crock of gold is a blighted
+and merriless community, and they are certainly justified in
+seeking sympathy and assistance for the recovery of so essential
+a treasure. But the steps whereby the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca
+Mora sought to regain their property must for ever brand their
+memory with a certain odium. It should be remembered in their
+favour that they were cunningly and cruelly encompassed. Not only
+was their gold stolen, but it was buried in such a position as
+placed it under the protection of their own communal honour, and
+the household of their enemy was secured against their active and
+righteous malice, because the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath belonged
+to the most powerful Shee of Ireland. It is in circumstances such
+as these that dangerous alliances are made, and, for the first time
+in history, the elemental beings invoked bourgeois assistance.
+
+They were loath to do it, and justice must record the fact. They
+were angry when they did it, and anger is both mental and intuitive
+blindness. It is not the beneficent blindness which prevents one
+from seeing without, but it is that desperate darkness which
+cloaks the within, and hides the heart and the brain from each
+other’s husbandry and wifely recognition. But even those mitigating
+circumstances cannot justify the course they adopted, and the wider
+idea must be sought for, that out of evil good must ultimately
+come, or else evil is vitiated beyond even the redemption of usage.
+When they were able to realize of what they had been guilty,
+they were very sorry indeed, and endeavoured to publish their
+repentance in many ways; but, lacking atonement, repentance is only
+a post-mortem virtue which is good for nothing but burial.
+
+When the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora found they were unable
+to regain their crock of gold by any means they laid an anonymous
+information at the nearest Police Station showing that two dead
+bodies would be found under the hearthstone in the hut of Coille
+Doraca, and the inference to be drawn from their crafty missive was
+that these bodies had been murdered by the Philosopher for reasons
+very discreditable to him.
+
+The Philosopher had been scarcely more than three hours on his
+journey to Angus Óg when four policemen approached the little
+house from as many different directions, and without any trouble
+they effected an entrance. The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath and the
+two children heard from afar their badly muffled advance, and
+on discovering the character of their visitors they concealed
+themselves among the thickly clustering trees. Shortly after the
+men had entered the hut loud and sustained noises began to issue
+therefrom, and in about twenty minutes the invaders emerged again
+bearing the bodies of the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and her husband.
+They wrenched the door off its hinges, and, placing the bodies
+on the door, proceeded at a rapid pace through the trees and
+disappeared in a short time. When they had departed the Thin Woman
+and the children returned to their home and over the yawning hearth
+the Thin Woman pronounced a long and fervid malediction wherein
+policemen were exhibited naked before the blushes of Eternity....
+
+With your goodwill let us now return to the Philosopher.
+
+Following his interview with Angus Óg the Philosopher received the
+blessing of the god and returned on his homeward journey. When
+he left the cave he had no knowledge where he was nor whether he
+should turn to the right hand or to the left. This alone was his
+guiding idea, that as he had come up the mountain on his first
+journey his home-going must, by mere opposition, be down the
+mountain, and, accordingly, he set his face downhill and trod
+lustily forward. He had stamped up the hill with vigour, he strode
+down it in ecstasy. He tossed his voice on every wind that went
+by. From the wells of forgetfulness he regained the shining words
+and gay melodies which his childhood had delighted in, and these
+he sang loudly and unceasingly as he marched. The sun had not yet
+risen but, far away, a quiet brightness was creeping over the sky.
+The daylight, however, was near the full, one slender veil only
+remaining of the shadows, and a calm, unmoving quietude brooded
+from the grey sky to the whispering earth. The birds had begun to
+bestir themselves but not to sing. Now and again a solitary wing
+feathered the chill air; but for the most part the birds huddled
+closer in the swinging nests, or under the bracken, or in the
+tufty grass. Here a faint twitter was heard and ceased. A little
+farther a drowsy voice called “cheep-cheep” and turned again to
+the warmth of its wing. The very grasshoppers were silent. The
+creatures who range in the night time had returned to their cells
+and were setting their households in order, and those who belonged
+to the day hugged their comfort for but one minute longer. Then the
+first level beam stepped like a mild angel to the mountain top. The
+slender radiance brightened and grew strong. The grey veil faded
+away. The birds leaped from their nests. The grasshoppers awakened
+and were busy at a stroke. Voice called to voice without ceasing,
+and, momently, a song thrilled for a few wide seconds. But for
+the most part it was chatter-chatter they went as they soared and
+plunged and swept, each bird eager for its breakfast.
+
+The Philosopher thrust his hand into his wallet and found there the
+last broken remnants of his cake, and the instant his hand touched
+the food he was seized by a hunger so furious that he sat down
+where he stopped and prepared to eat.
+
+The place where he sat was a raised bank under a hedge, and this
+place directly fronted a clumsy wooden gate leading into a great
+field. When the Philosopher had seated himself he raised his eyes
+and saw through the gate a small company approaching. There were
+four men and three women, and each of them carried a metal pail.
+The Philosopher with a sigh returned the cake to his wallet, saying:
+
+“All men are brothers, and it may be that these people are as
+hungry as I am.”
+
+In a short time the strangers came near. The foremost of them was a
+huge man who was bearded to the eyelids and who moved like a strong
+wind. He opened the gate by removing a piece of wood wherewith it
+was jammed, and he and his companions passed through, whereupon he
+closed the gate and secured it. To this man, as being the eldest,
+the Philosopher approached.
+
+“I am about to breakfast,” said he, “and if you are hungry perhaps
+you would like to eat with me.”
+
+“Why not,” said the man, “for the person who would refuse a kind
+invitation is a dog. These are my three sons and three of my
+daughters, and we are all thankful to you.”
+
+Saying this he sat down on the bank and his companions, placing
+their pails behind them, did likewise. The Philosopher divided his
+cake into eight pieces and gave one to each person.
+
+“I am sorry it is so little,” said he.
+
+“A gift,” said the bearded man, “is never little,” and he
+courteously ate his piece in three bites although he could have
+easily eaten it in one, and his children also.
+
+“That was a good, satisfying cake,” said he when he had finished;
+“it was well baked and well shared, but,” he continued, “I am in a
+difficulty and maybe you could advise me what to do, sir?”
+
+“What might be your trouble?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“It is this,” said the man. “Every morning when we go out to milk
+the cows the mother of my clann gives to each of us a parcel of
+food so that we need not be any hungrier than we like; but now
+we have had a good breakfast with you, what shall we do with the
+food that we brought with us? The woman of the house would not be
+pleased if we carried it back to her, and if we threw food away it
+would be a sin. If it was not disrespectful to your breakfast the
+boys and girls here might be able to get rid of it by eating it,
+for, as you know, young people can always eat a bit more, no matter
+how much they have already eaten.”
+
+“It would surely be better to eat it than to waste it,” said the
+Philosopher wistfully.
+
+The young people produced large parcels of food from their pockets
+and opened them, and the bearded man said, “I have a little one
+myself also, and it would not be wasted if you were kind enough to
+help me to eat it,” and he pulled out his parcel, which was twice
+as big as any of the others.
+
+He opened the parcel and handed the larger part of its contents to
+the Philosopher; he then plunged a tin vessel into one of the milk
+pails and set this also by the Philosopher, and, instantly, they
+all began to eat with furious appetite.
+
+When the meal was finished the Philosopher filled his tobacco pipe
+and the bearded man and his three sons did likewise.
+
+“Sir,” said the bearded man, “I would be glad to know why you are
+travelling abroad so early in the morning, for, at this hour,
+no one stirs but the sun and the birds and the folk who, like
+ourselves, follow the cattle?”
+
+“I will tell you that gladly,” said the Philosopher, “if you will
+tell me your name.”
+
+“My name,” said the bearded man, “is Mac Cúl.”
+
+“Last night,” said the Philosopher, “when I came from the house of
+Angus Óg in the Caves of the Sleepers of Erinn I was bidden say to
+a man named Mac Cúl—that the horses had trampled in their sleep and
+the sleepers had turned on their sides.”
+
+“Sir,” said the bearded man, “your words thrill in my heart like
+music, but my head does not understand them.”
+
+“I have learned,” said the Philosopher, “that the head does not
+hear anything until the heart has listened, and that what the heart
+knows to-day the head will understand to-morrow.”
+
+“All the birds of the world are singing in my soul,” said the
+bearded man, “and I bless you because you have filled me with hope
+and pride.”
+
+So the Philosopher shook him by the hand, and he shook the hands
+of his sons and daughters who bowed before him at the mild command
+of their father, and when he had gone a little way he looked
+around again and he saw that group of people standing where he had
+left them, and the bearded man was embracing his children on the
+highroad.
+
+A bend in the path soon shut them from view, and then the
+Philosopher, fortified by food and the freshness of the morning,
+strode onwards singing for very joy. It was still early, but now
+the birds had eaten their breakfasts and were devoting themselves
+to each other. They rested side by side on the branches of
+the trees and on the hedges, they danced in the air in happy
+brotherhoods and they sang to one another amiable and pleasant
+ditties.
+
+[Illustration: A young woman came along the road and stood gazing
+earnestly at this house]
+
+When the Philosopher had walked for a long time he felt a little
+weary and sat down to refresh himself in the shadow of a great
+tree. Hard by there was a house of rugged stone. Long years ago
+it had been a castle, and, even now, though patched by time and
+misfortune its front was warlike and frowning. While he sat a young
+woman came along the road and stood gazing earnestly at this house.
+Her hair was as black as night and as smooth as still water, but
+her face came so stormily forward that her quiet attitude had yet
+no quietness in it. To her, after a few moments, the Philosopher
+spoke.
+
+“Girl,” said he, “why do you look so earnestly at the house?”
+
+The girl turned her pale face and stared at him.
+
+“I did not notice you sitting under the tree,” said she, and she
+came slowly forward.
+
+“Sit down by me,” said the Philosopher, “and we will talk. If you
+are in any trouble tell it to me, and perhaps you will talk the
+heaviest part away.”
+
+“I will sit beside you willingly,” said the girl, and she did so.
+
+“It is good to talk trouble over,” he continued. “Do you know that
+talk is a real thing? There is more power in speech than many
+people conceive. Thoughts come from God, they are born through the
+marriage of the head and the lungs. The head moulds the thought
+into the form of words, then it is borne and sounded on the air
+which has been already in the secret kingdoms of the body, which
+goes in bearing life and come out freighted with wisdom. For
+this reason a lie is very terrible, because it is turning mighty
+and incomprehensible things to base uses, and is burdening the
+life-giving element with a foul return for its goodness; but those
+who speak the truth and whose words are the symbols of wisdom and
+beauty, these purify the whole world and daunt contagion. The only
+trouble the body can know is disease. All other miseries come from
+the brain, and, as these belong to thought, they can be driven
+out by their master as unruly and unpleasant vagabonds; for a
+mental trouble should be spoken to, confronted, reprimanded and
+so dismissed. The brain cannot afford to harbour any but pleasant
+and eager citizens who will do their part in making laughter and
+holiness for the world, for that is the duty of thought.”
+
+While the Philosopher spoke the girl had been regarding him
+steadfastly.
+
+“Sir,” said she, “we tell our hearts to a young man and our heads
+to an old man, and when the heart is a fool the head is bound to
+be a liar. I can tell you the things I know, but how will I tell
+you the things I feel when I myself do not understand them? If I
+say these words to you ‘I love a man’ I do not say anything at all,
+and you do not hear one of the words which my heart is repeating
+over and over to itself in the silence of my body. Young people are
+fools in their heads and old people are fools in their hearts, and
+they can only look at each other and pass by in wonder.”
+
+“You are wrong,” said the Philosopher. “An old person can take
+your hand like this and say, ‘May every good thing come to you, my
+daughter.’ For all trouble there is sympathy, and for love there
+is memory, and these are the head and the heart talking to each
+other in quiet friendship. What the heart knows to-day the head
+will understand to-morrow, and as the head must be the scholar of
+the heart it is necessary that our hearts be purified and free from
+every false thing, else we are tainted beyond personal redemption.”
+
+“Sir,” said the girl, “I know of two great follies-they are love
+and speech, for when these are given they can never be taken back
+again, and the person to whom these are given is not any richer,
+but the giver is made poor and abashed. I gave my love to a man who
+did not want it. I told him of my love, and he lifted his eyelids
+at me; that is my trouble.”
+
+For a moment the Philosopher sat in stricken silence looking on
+the ground. He had a strange disinclination to look at the girl
+although he felt her eyes fixed steadily on him. But in a little
+while he did look at her and spoke again.
+
+“To carry gifts to an ungrateful person cannot be justified and
+need not be mourned for. If your love is noble why do you treat it
+meanly? If it is lewd the man was right to reject it.”
+
+“We love as the wind blows,” she replied.
+
+“There is a thing,” said the Philosopher, “and it is both the
+biggest and the littlest thing in the world.”
+
+“What is that?” said the girl.
+
+“It is pride,” he answered. “It lives in an empty house. The head
+which has never been visited by the heart is the house pride lives
+in. You are in error, my dear, and not in love. Drive out the knave
+pride, put a flower in your hair and walk freely again.”
+
+The girl laughed, and suddenly her pale face became rosy as the
+dawn and as radiant and lovely as a cloud. She shed warmth and
+beauty about her as she leaned forward.
+
+“You are wrong,” she whispered, “because he does love me; but he
+does not know it yet. He is young and full of fury, and has no
+time to look at women, but he looked at me. My heart knows it and
+my head knows it, but I am impatient and yearn for him to look at
+me again. His heart will remember me to-morrow, and he will come
+searching for me with prayers and tears, with shouts and threats.
+I will be very hard to find to-morrow when he holds out his arms
+to the air and the sky, and is astonished and frightened to find
+me nowhere. I will hide from him to-morrow, and frown at him when
+he speaks, and turn aside when he follows me: until the day after
+to-morrow when he will frighten me with his anger, and hold me with
+his furious hands, and make me look at him.”
+
+Saying this the girl arose and prepared to go away.
+
+“He is in that house,” said she, “and I would not let him see me
+here for anything in the world.”
+
+“You have wasted all my time,” said the Philosopher, smiling.
+
+“What else is time for?” said the girl, and she kissed the
+Philosopher and ran swiftly down the road.
+
+She had been gone but a few moments when a man came out of the
+grey house and walked quickly across the grass. When he reached
+the hedge separating the field from the road he tossed his two
+arms in the air, swung them down, and jumped over the hedge into
+the roadway. He was a short, dark youth, and so swift and sudden
+were his movements that he seemed to look on every side at the one
+moment although he bore furiously to his own direction.
+
+The Philosopher addressed him mildly.
+
+“That was a good jump,” said he.
+
+The young man spun around from where he stood, and was by the
+Philosopher’s side in an instant.
+
+“It would be a good jump for other men,” said he, “but it is only
+a little jump for me. You are very dusty, sir; you must have
+travelled a long distance to-day.”
+
+“A long distance,” replied the Philosopher. “Sit down here, my
+friend, and keep me company for a little time.”
+
+“I do not like sitting down,” said the young man, “but I always
+consent to a request, and I always accept friendship.” And, so
+saying, he threw himself down on the grass.
+
+“Do you work in that big house?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I do,” he replied. “I train the hounds for a fat, jovial man, full
+of laughter and insolence.”
+
+“I think you do not like your master.”
+
+“Believe, sir, that I do not like any master; but this man I hate.
+I have been a week in his service, and he has not once looked on
+me as on a friend. This very day, in the kennel, he passed me as
+though I were a tree or a stone. I almost leaped to catch him by
+the throat and say: ‘Dog, do you not salute your fellow-man?’ But
+I looked after him and let him go, for it would be an unpleasant
+thing to strangle a fat person.”
+
+“If you are displeased with your master should you not look for
+another occupation?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I was thinking of that, and I was thinking whether I ought to
+kill him or marry his daughter. She would have passed me by as
+her father did, but I would not let a woman do that to me: no man
+would.”
+
+“What did you do to her?” said the Philosopher.
+
+The young man chuckled “I did not look at her the first time, and
+when she came near me the second time I looked another way, and on
+the third day she spoke to me, and while she stood I looked over
+her shoulder distantly. She said she hoped I would be happy in my
+new home, and she made her voice sound pleasant while she said it;
+but I thanked her and turned away carelessly.”
+
+“Is the girl beautiful?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I do not know,” he replied; “I have not looked at her yet,
+although now I see her everywhere. I think she is a woman who would
+annoy me if I married her.”
+
+“If you haven’t seen her, how can you think that?”
+
+“She has tame feet,” said the youth. “I looked at them and they got
+frightened. Where have you travelled from, sir?”
+
+“I will tell you that,” said the Philosopher, “if you will tell me
+your name.”
+
+“It is easily told,” he answered; “my name is MacCulain.”
+
+“When I came last night,” said the Philosopher, “from the place of
+Angus Óg in the cave of the Sleepers of Erinn I was bidden say to a
+man named MacCulain that The Grey of Macha had neighed in his sleep
+and the sword of Laeg clashed on the floor as he turned in his
+slumber.”
+
+The young man leaped from the grass.
+
+“Sir,” said he in a strained voice, “I do not understand your
+words, but they make my heart to dance and sing within me like a
+bird.”
+
+“If you listen to your heart,” said the Philosopher, “you will
+learn every good thing, for the heart is the fountain of wisdom
+tossing its thoughts up to the brain which gives them form,”—and,
+so saying, he saluted the youth and went again on his way by the
+curving road.
+
+Now the day had advanced, noon was long past, and the strong
+sunlight blazed ceaselessly on the world. His path was still on
+the high mountains, running on for a short distance and twisting
+perpetually to the right hand and to the left. One might scarcely
+call it a path, it grew so narrow. Sometimes, indeed, it almost
+ceased to be a path, for the grass had stolen forward inch by inch
+to cover up the tracks of man. There were no hedges but rough,
+tumbled ground only, which was patched by trailing bushes and
+stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There
+was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun
+shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish
+of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an
+occasional bee that came and was gone in an instant.
+
+The Philosopher was very hungry, and he looked about on all sides
+to see if there was anything he might eat. “If I were a goat or a
+cow,” said he, “I could eat this grass and be nourished. If I were
+a donkey I could crop the hard thistles which are growing on every
+hand, or if I were a bird I could feed on the caterpillars and
+creeping things which stir innumerably everywhere. But a man may
+not eat even in the midst of plenty, because he has departed from
+nature, and lives by crafty and twisted thought.”
+
+Speaking in this manner he chanced to lift his eyes from the ground
+and saw, far away, a solitary figure which melted into the folding
+earth and reappeared again in a different place. So peculiar and
+erratic were the movements of this figure that the Philosopher had
+great difficulty in following it, and, indeed, would have been
+unable to follow, but that the other chanced in his direction. When
+they came nearer he saw it was a young boy, who was dancing hither
+and thither in any and every direction. A bushy mound hid him for
+an instant, and the next they were standing face to face staring
+at each other. After a moment’s silence the boy, who was about
+twelve years of age, and as beautiful as the morning, saluted the
+Philosopher.
+
+“Have you lost your way, sir?” said he.
+
+“All paths,” the Philosopher replied, “are on the earth, and so one
+can never be lost—but I have lost my dinner.”
+
+The boy commenced to laugh.
+
+“What are you laughing at, my son?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Because,” he replied, “I am bringing you your dinner. I wondered
+what sent me out in this direction, for I generally go more to the
+east.”
+
+“Have you got my dinner?” said the Philosopher anxiously.
+
+“I have,” said the boy: “I ate my own dinner at home, and I put
+your dinner in my pocket. I thought,” he explained, “that I might
+be hungry if I went far away.”
+
+“The gods directed you,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“They often do,” said the boy, and he pulled a small parcel from
+his pocket.
+
+The Philosopher instantly sat down, and the boy handed him the
+parcel. He opened this and found bread and cheese.
+
+“It’s a good dinner,” said he, and commenced to eat.
+
+“Would you not like a piece also, my son?”
+
+“I would like a little piece,” said the boy, and he sat down before
+the Philosopher, and they ate together happily.
+
+When they had finished the Philosopher praised the gods, and then
+said, more to himself than to the boy:
+
+“If I had a little drink of water I would want nothing else.”
+
+“There is a stream four paces from here,” said his companion. “I
+will get some water in my cap,” and he leaped away.
+
+In a few moments he came back holding his cap tenderly, and the
+Philosopher took this and drank the water.
+
+“I want nothing more in the world,” said he, “except to talk with
+you. The sun is shining, the wind is pleasant, and the grass is
+soft. Sit down beside me again for a little time.”
+
+So the boy sat down, and the Philosopher lit his pipe.
+
+“Do you live far from here?” said he.
+
+“Not far,” said the boy. “You could see my mother’s house from this
+place if you were as tall as a tree, and even from the ground you
+can see a shape of smoke yonder that floats over our cottage.”
+
+The Philosopher looked but could see nothing.
+
+“My eyes are not as good as yours are,” said he, “because I am
+getting old.”
+
+“What does it feel like to be old?” said the boy.
+
+“It feels stiff like,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Is that all?” said the boy.
+
+“I don’t know,” the Philosopher replied after a few moments’
+silence. “Can you tell me what it looks like to be young?”
+
+“Why not?” said the boy, and then a slight look of perplexity
+crossed his face, and he continued, “I don’t think I can.”
+
+“Young people,” said the Philosopher, “do not know what age is, and
+old people forget what youth was. When you begin to grow old always
+think deeply of your youth, for an old man without memories is a
+wasted life, and nothing is worth remembering but our childhood. I
+will tell you some of the differences between being old and young,
+and then you can ask me questions, and so we will get at both sides
+of the matter. First, an old man gets tired quicker than a boy.”
+
+The boy thought for a moment, and then replied:
+
+“That is not a great difference, for a boy does get very tired.”
+
+The Philosopher continued:
+
+“An old man does not want to eat as often as a boy.”
+
+“That is not a great difference either,” the boy replied, “for they
+both do eat. Tell me the big difference.”
+
+“I do not know it, my son; but I have always thought there was
+a big difference. Perhaps it is that an old man has memories of
+things which a boy cannot even guess at.”
+
+“But they both have memories,” said the boy, laughing, “and so it
+is not a big difference.”
+
+“That is true,” said the Philosopher. “Maybe there is not so much
+difference after all. Tell me things you do, and we will see if I
+can do them also.”
+
+“But I don’t know what I do,” he replied.
+
+“You must know the things you do,” said the Philosopher, “but you
+may not understand how to put them in order. The great trouble
+about any kind of examination is to know where to begin, but there
+are always two places in everything with which we can commence—they
+are the beginning and the end. From either of these points a view
+may be had which comprehends the entire period. So we will begin
+with the things you did this morning.”
+
+“I am satisfied with that,” said the boy.
+
+The Philosopher then continued:
+
+“When you awakened this morning and went out of the house what was
+the first thing you did?”
+
+The boy thought “I went out, then I picked up a stone and threw it
+into the field as far as I could.”
+
+“What then?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“Then I ran after the stone to see could I catch up on it before it
+hit the ground.”
+
+“Yes,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“I ran so fast that I tumbled over myself into the grass.”
+
+“What did you do after that?”
+
+“I lay where I fell and plucked handfuls of the grass with both
+hands and threw them on my back.”
+
+“Did you get up then?”
+
+“No, I pressed my face into the grass and shouted a lot of times
+with my mouth against the ground, and then I sat up and did not
+move for a long time.”
+
+“Were you thinking?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“No, I was not thinking or doing anything.”
+
+“Why did you do all these things?” said the Philosopher.
+
+“For no reason at all,” said the boy.
+
+“That,” said the Philosopher triumphantly, “is the difference
+between age and youth. Boys do things for no reason, and old people
+do not. I wonder do we get old because we do things by reason
+instead of instinct?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said the boy, “everything gets old. Have you
+travelled very far to-day, sir?”
+
+“I will tell you that if you will tell me your name.”
+
+“My name,” said the boy, “is MacCushin.”
+
+“When I came last night,” said the Philosopher, “from the place
+of Angus Óg in the Caste of the Sleepers I was bidden say to one
+named MacCushin that a son would be born to Angus Óg and his wife,
+Caitilin, and that the sleepers of Erinn had turned in their
+slumbers.”
+
+The boy regarded him steadfastly.
+
+“I know,” said he, “why Angus Óg sent me that message. He wants me
+to make a poem to the people of Erinn, so that when the Sleepers
+arise they will meet with friends.”
+
+“The Sleepers have arisen,” said the Philosopher. “They are about
+us on every side. They are walking now, but they have forgotten
+their names and the meanings of their names. You are to tell them
+their names and their lineage, for I am an old man, and my work is
+done.”
+
+“I will make a poem some day,” said the boy, “and every man will
+shout when he hears it.”
+
+“God be with you, my son,” said the Philosopher, and he embraced
+the boy and went forward on his journey.
+
+About half an hour’s easy travelling brought him to a point from
+which he could see far down below to the pine trees of Coille
+Doraca. The shadowy evening had crept over the world ere he reached
+the wood, and when he entered the little house the darkness had
+already descended.
+
+The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath met him as he entered, and was about
+to speak harshly of his long absence, but the Philosopher kissed
+her with such unaccustomed tenderness, and spoke so mildly to her,
+that, first, astonishment enchained her tongue, and then delight
+set it free in a direction to which it had long been a stranger.
+
+“Wife,” said the Philosopher, “I cannot say how joyful I am to see
+your good face again.”
+
+The Thin Woman was unable at first to reply to this salutation,
+but, with incredible speed, she put on a pot of stirabout, began
+to bake a cake, and tried to roast potatoes. After a little while
+she wept loudly, and proclaimed that the world did not contain the
+equal of her husband for comeliness and goodness, and that she was
+herself a sinful person unworthy of the kindness of the gods or of
+such a mate.
+
+But while the Philosopher was embracing Seumas and Brigid Beg, the
+door was suddenly burst open with a great noise, four policemen
+entered the little room, and after one dumbfoundered minute they
+retreated again bearing the Philosopher with them to answer a
+charge of murder.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V. THE POLICEMEN
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Some distance down the road the policemen halted. The night
+had fallen before they effected their capture, and now, in the
+gathering darkness, they were not at ease. In the first place, they
+knew that the occupation upon which they were employed was not a
+creditable one to a man whatever it might be to a policeman. The
+seizure of a criminal may be justified by certain arguments as to
+the health of society and the preservation of property, but no
+person wishes under any circumstances to hale a wise man to prison.
+They were further distressed by the knowledge that they were in the
+very centre of a populous fairy country, and that on every side the
+elemental hosts might be ranging, ready to fall upon them with the
+terrors of war or the still more awful scourge of their humour. The
+path leading to their station was a long one, winding through great
+alleys of trees, which in some places overhung the road so thickly
+that even the full moon could not search out that deep blackness.
+In the daylight these men would have arrested an Archangel and, if
+necessary, bludgeoned him, but in the night time a thousand fears
+afflicted and a multitude of sounds shocked them from every quarter.
+
+Two men were holding the Philosopher, one on either side; the other
+two walked one before and one behind him. In this order they were
+proceeding when just in front through the dim light they saw the
+road swallowed up by one of these groves already spoken of. When
+they came nigh they halted irresolutely: the man who was in front
+(a silent and perturbed sergeant) turned fiercely to the others
+“Come on, can’t you?” said he; “what the devil are you waiting
+for?” and he strode forward into the black gape.
+
+“Keep a good hold of that man,” said the one behind.
+
+“Don’t be talking out of you,” replied he on the right. “Haven’t we
+got a good grip of him, and isn’t he an old man into the bargain?”
+
+“Well, keep a good tight grip of him, anyhow, for if he gave you
+the slip in there he’d vanish like a weasel in a bush. Them old
+fellows do be slippery customers. Look here, mister,” said he to
+the Philosopher, “if you try to run away from us I’ll give you a
+clout on the head with my baton; do you mind me now!”
+
+They had taken only a few paces forward when the sound of hasty
+footsteps brought them again to a halt, and in a moment the
+sergeant came striding back. He was angry.
+
+“Are you going to stay there the whole night, or what are you going
+to do at all?” said he.
+
+“Let you be quiet now,” said another; “we were only settling with
+the man here the way he wouldn’t try to give us the slip in a dark
+place.”
+
+“Is it thinking of giving us the slip he is?” said the sergeant.
+“Take your baton in your hand, Shawn, and if he turns his head to
+one side of him hit him on that side.”
+
+“I’ll do that,” said Shawn, and he pulled out his truncheon.
+
+The Philosopher had been dazed by the suddenness of these
+occurrences, and the enforced rapidity of his movements prevented
+him from either thinking or speaking, but during this brief
+stoppage his scattered wits began to return to their allegiance.
+First, bewilderment at his enforcement had seized him, and the four
+men, who were continually running round him and speaking all at
+once, and each pulling him in a different direction, gave him the
+impression that he was surrounded by a great rabble of people, but
+he could not discover what they wanted. After a time he found that
+there were only four men, and gathered from their remarks that he
+was being arrested for murder—this precipitated him into another
+and a deeper gulf of bewilderment. He was unable to conceive why
+they should arrest him for murder when he had not committed any;
+and, following this, he became indignant.
+
+“I will not go another step,” said he, “unless you tell me where
+you are bringing me and what I am accused of.”
+
+“Tell me,” said the sergeant, “what did you kill them with? for
+it’s a miracle how they came to their ends without as much as a
+mark on their skins or a broken tooth itself.”
+
+“Who are you talking about?” the Philosopher demanded.
+
+“It’s mighty innocent you are,” he replied. “Who would I be talking
+about but the man and woman that used to be living with you beyond
+in the little house? Is it poison you gave them now, or what was
+it? Take a hold of your note-book, Shawn.”
+
+“Can’t you have sense, man?” said Shawn. “How would I be writing in
+the middle of a dark place and me without as much as a pencil, let
+alone a book?”
+
+“Well, we’ll take it down at the station, and himself can tell us
+all about it as we go along. Move on now, for this is no place to
+be conversing in.”
+
+They paced on again, and in another moment they were swallowed up
+by the darkness. When they had proceeded for a little distance
+there came a peculiar sound in front like the breathing of some
+enormous animal, and also a kind of shuffling noise, and so they
+again halted.
+
+“There’s a queer kind of a thing in front of us,” said one of the
+men in a low voice.
+
+“If I had a match itself,” said another.
+
+The sergeant had also halted.
+
+“Draw well into the side of the road,” said he, “and poke your
+batons in front of you. Keep a tight hold of that man, Shawn.”
+
+“I’ll do that,” said Shawn.
+
+Just then one of them found a few matches in his pocket, and he
+struck a light; there was no wind, so that it blazed easily enough,
+and they all peered in front. A big black cart-horse was lying in
+the middle of the road having a gentle sleep, and when the light
+shone it scrambled to its feet and went thundering away in a panic.
+
+“Isn’t that enough to put the heart crossways in you?” said one of
+the men, with a great sigh.
+
+“Ay,” said another; “if you stepped on that beast in the darkness
+you wouldn’t know what to be thinking.”
+
+“I don’t quite remember the way about here,” said the sergeant
+after a while, “but I think we should take the first turn to the
+right. I wonder have we passed the turn yet; these criss-cross
+kinds of roads are the devil, and it dark as well. Do any of you
+men know the way?”
+
+“I don’t,” said one voice; “I’m a Cavan man myself.”
+
+“Roscommon,” said another, “is my country, and I wish I was there
+now, so I do.”
+
+“Well, if we walk straight on we’re bound to get somewhere, so step
+it out. Have you got a good hold of that man, Shawn?”
+
+“I have so,” said Shawn.
+
+The Philosopher’s voice came pealing through the darkness.
+
+“There is no need to pinch me, sir,” said he.
+
+“I’m not pinching you at all,” said the man.
+
+“You are so,” returned the Philosopher. “You have a big lump of
+skin doubled up in the sleeve of my coat, and unless you instantly
+release it I will sit down in the road.”
+
+“Is that any better?” said the man, relaxing his hold a little.
+
+“You have only let out half of it,” replied the Philosopher.
+“That’s better now,” he continued, and they resumed their journey.
+
+After a few minutes of silence the Philosopher began to speak.
+
+“I do not see any necessity in nature for policemen,” said he,
+“nor do I understand how the custom first originated. Dogs and
+cats do not employ these extraordinary mercenaries, and yet their
+polity is progressive and orderly. Crows are a gregarious race with
+settled habitations and an organized commonwealth. They usually
+congregate in a ruined tower or on the top of a church, and their
+civilization is based on mutual aid and tolerance for each other’s
+idiosyncrasies. Their exceeding mobility and hardiness renders them
+dangerous to attack, and thus they are free to devote themselves to
+the development of their domestic laws and customs. If policemen
+were necessary to a civilization crows would certainly have
+evolved them, but I triumphantly insist that they have not got any
+policemen in their republic—”
+
+“I don’t understand a word you are saying,” said the sergeant.
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “Ants and bees also live
+in specialized communities and have an extreme complexity both of
+function and occupation. Their experience in governmental matters
+is enormous, and yet they have never discovered that a police force
+is at all essential to their well-being—”
+
+“Do you know,” said the sergeant, “that whatever you say now will
+be used in evidence against you later on?”
+
+“I do not,” said the Philosopher. “It may be said that these races
+are free from crime, that such vices as they have are organized
+and communal instead of individual and anarchistic, and that,
+consequently, there is no necessity for policecraft, but I cannot
+believe that these large aggregations of people could have attained
+their present high culture without an interval of both national and
+individual dishonesty—”
+
+“Tell me now, as you are talking,” said the sergeant, “did you buy
+the poison at a chemist’s shop, or did you smother the pair of them
+with a pillow?”
+
+“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “If crime is a condition
+precedent to the evolution of policemen, then I will submit that
+jackdaws are a very thievish clan—they are somewhat larger than a
+blackbird, and will steal wool off a sheep’s back to line their
+nests with; they have, furthermore, been known to abstract one
+shilling in copper and secrete this booty so ingeniously that it
+has never since been recovered—”
+
+“I had a jackdaw myself,” said one of the men. “I got it from a
+woman that came to the door with a basket for fourpence. My mother
+stood on its back one day, and she getting out of bed. I split its
+tongue with a threepenny bit the way it would talk, but devil the
+word it ever said for me. It used to hop around letting on it had a
+lame leg, and then it would steal your socks.”
+
+“Shut up!” roared the sergeant.
+
+“If,” said the Philosopher, “these people steal both from sheep and
+from men, if their peculations range from wool to money, I do not
+see how they can avoid stealing from each other, and consequently,
+if anywhere, it is amongst jackdaws one should look for the growth
+of a police force, but there is no such force in existence. The
+real reason is that they are a witty and thoughtful race who look
+temperately on what is known as crime and evil—one eats, one
+steals; it is all in the order of things, and therefore not to be
+quarrelled with. There is no other view possible to a philosophical
+people—”
+
+“What the devil is he talking about?” said the sergeant.
+
+“Monkeys are gregarious and thievish and semi-human. They inhabit
+the equatorial latitudes and eat nuts—”
+
+“Do you know what he is saying, Shawn?”
+
+“I do not,” said Shawn.
+
+“—they ought to have evolved professional thief-takers, but it is
+common knowledge that they have not done so. Fishes, squirrels,
+rats, beavers, and bison have also abstained from this singular
+growth—therefore, when I insist that I see no necessity for
+policemen and object to their presence, I base that objection on
+logic and facts, and not on any immediate petty prejudice.”
+
+“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “have you got a good grip on that man?”
+
+“I have,” said Shawn.
+
+“Well, if he talks any more hit him with your baton.”
+
+“I will so,” said Shawn.
+
+“There’s a speck of light down yonder, and, maybe, it’s a candle in
+a window—we’ll ask the way at that place.”
+
+In about three minutes they came to a small house which was
+overhung by trees. If the light had not been visible they would
+undoubtedly have passed it in the darkness. As they approached the
+door the sound of a female voice came to them scoldingly.
+
+“There’s somebody up anyhow,” said the sergeant, and he tapped at
+the door.
+
+The scolding voice ceased instantly. After a few seconds he tapped
+again; then a voice was heard from just behind the door.
+
+“Tomas,” said the voice, “go and bring up the two dogs with you
+before I take the door off the chain.”
+
+The door was then opened a few inches and a face peered out “What
+would you be wanting at this hour of the night?” said the woman.
+
+“Not much, ma’am,” said the sergeant; “only a little direction
+about the road, for we are not sure whether we’ve gone too far or
+not far enough.”
+
+The woman noticed their uniforms.
+
+“Is it policemen ye are? There’s no harm in your coming in, I
+suppose, and if a drink of milk is any good to ye I have plenty of
+it.”
+
+“Milk’s better than nothing,” said the sergeant with a sigh.
+
+“I’ve a little sup of spirits,” said she, “but it wouldn’t be
+enough to go around.”
+
+“Ah, well,” said he, looking sternly at his comrades, “everybody
+has to take their chance in this world,” and he stepped into the
+house followed by his men.
+
+The women gave him a little sup of whisky from a bottle, and to
+each of the other men she gave a cup of milk.
+
+“It’ll wash the dust out of our gullets, anyhow,” said one of them.
+
+There were two chairs, a bed, and a table in the room. The
+Philosopher and his attendants sat on the bed. The sergeant sat
+on the table, the fourth man took a chair, and the woman dropped
+wearily into the remaining chair from which she looked with pity at
+the prisoner.
+
+“What are you taking the poor man away for?” she asked.
+
+“He’s a bad one, ma’am,” said the sergeant. “He killed a man and
+a woman that were staying with him and he buried their corpses
+underneath the hearthstone of his house. He’s a real malefactor,
+mind you.”
+
+“Is it hanging him you’ll be, God help us?”
+
+“You never know, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it came to
+that. But you were in trouble yourself, ma’am, for we heard your
+voice lamenting about something as we came along the road.”
+
+“I was, indeed,” she replied, “for the person that has a son in her
+house has a trouble in her heart.”
+
+“Do you tell me now—What did he do on you?” and the sergeant bent a
+look of grave reprobation on a young lad who was standing against
+the wall between two dogs.
+
+“He’s a good boy enough in some ways,” said she, “but he’s too fond
+of beasts. He’ll go and lie in the kennel along with them two dogs
+for hours at a time, petting them and making a lot of them, but if
+I try to give him a kiss, or to hug him for a couple of minutes
+when I do be tired after the work, he’ll wriggle like an eel till
+I let him out—it would make a body hate him, so it would. Sure,
+there’s no nature in him, sir, and I’m his mother.”
+
+“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you young whelp,” said the
+sergeant very severely.
+
+“And then there’s the horse,” she continued. “Maybe you met it down
+the road a while ago?”
+
+“We did, ma’am,” said the sergeant.
+
+“Well, when he came in Tomas went to tie him up, for he’s a caution
+at getting out and wandering about the road, the way you’d break
+your neck over him if you weren’t minding. After a while I told the
+boy to come in, but he didn’t come, so I went out myself, and there
+was himself and the horse with their arms round each other’s necks
+looking as if they were moonstruck.”
+
+“Faith, he’s the queer lad!” said the sergeant. “What do you be
+making love to the horse for, Tomas?”
+
+“It was all I could do to make him come in,” she continued, “and
+then I said to him, ‘Sit down alongside of me here, Tomas, and
+keep me company for a little while’—for I do be lonely in the
+night time—but he wouldn’t stay quiet at all. One minute he’d
+say, ‘Mother, there’s a moth flying round the candle and it’ll be
+burnt,’ and then, ‘There was a fly going into the spider’s web in
+the corner,’ and he’d have to save it, and after that, ‘There’s a
+daddy-long-legs hurting himself on the window-pane,’ and he’d have
+to let it out; but when I try to kiss him he pushes me away. My
+heart is tormented, so it is, for what have I in the world but him?”
+
+“Is his father dead, ma’am?” said the sergeant kindly.
+
+“I’ll tell the truth,” said she. “I don’t know whether he is or
+not, for a long time ago, when we used to live in the city of
+Bla’ Cliah, he lost his work one time and he never came back to
+me again. He was ashamed to come home I’m thinking, the poor man,
+because he had no money; as if I would have minded whether he had
+any money or not—sure, he was very fond of me, sir, and we could
+have pulled along somehow. After that I came back to my father’s
+place here; the rest of the children died on me, and then my father
+died, and I’m doing the best I can by myself. It’s only that I’m a
+little bit troubled with the boy now and again.”
+
+“It’s a hard case, ma’am,” said the sergeant, “but maybe the boy is
+only a bit wild not having his father over him, and maybe it’s just
+that he’s used to yourself, for there isn’t a child at all that
+doesn’t love his mother. Let you behave yourself now, Tomas; attend
+to your mother, and leave the beasts and the insects alone, like a
+decent boy, for there’s no insect in the world will ever like you
+as well as she does. Could you tell me, ma’am, if we have passed
+the first turn on this road, or is it in front of us still, for we
+are lost altogether in the darkness?”
+
+“It’s in front of you still,” she replied, “about ten minutes down
+the road; you can’t miss it, for you’ll see the sky where there is
+a gap in the trees, and that gap is the turn you want.”
+
+“Thank you, ma’am,” said the sergeant; “we’d better be moving on,
+for there’s a long tramp in front of us before we get to sleep this
+night.”
+
+He stood up and the men rose to follow him when, suddenly, the boy
+spoke in a whisper.
+
+“Mother,” said he, “they are going to hang the man,” and he burst
+into tears.
+
+“Oh, hush, hush,” said the woman, “sure, the men can’t help it.”
+She dropped quickly on her knees and opened her arms, “Come over to
+your mother, my darling.”
+
+The boy ran to her.
+
+“They are going to hang him,” he cried in a high, thin voice, and
+he plucked at her arm violently.
+
+“Now, then, my young boy-o,” said the sergeant, “none of that
+violence.”
+
+The boy turned suddenly and flew at him with astonishing ferocity.
+He hurled himself against the sergeant’s legs and bit, and kicked,
+and struck at him. So furiously sudden was his attack that the
+man went staggering back against the wall, then he plucked at the
+boy and whirled him across the room. In an instant the two dogs
+leaped at him snarling with rage—one of these he kicked into a
+corner, from which it rebounded again bristling and red-eyed; the
+other dog was caught by the woman, and after a few frantic seconds
+she gripped the first dog also. To a horrible chorus of howls and
+snapping teeth the men hustled outside and slammed the door.
+
+“Shawn,” the sergeant bawled, “have you got a good grip of that
+man?”
+
+“I have so,” said Shawn.
+
+“If he gets away I’ll kick the belly out of you; mind that now!
+Come along with you and no more of your slouching.”
+
+They marched down the road in a tingling silence.
+
+“Dogs,” said the Philosopher, “are a most intelligent race of
+people—”
+
+“People, my granny!” said the sergeant.
+
+“From the earliest ages their intelligence has been observed and
+recorded, so that ancient literatures are bulky with references to
+their sagacity and fidelity—”
+
+“Will you shut your old jaw?” said the sergeant.
+
+“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Elephants also are credited
+with an extreme intelligence and devotion to their masters, and
+they will build a wall or nurse a baby with equal skill and
+happiness. Horses have received high recommendations in this
+respect, but crocodiles, hens, beetles, armadillos, and fish do not
+evince any remarkable partiality for man—”
+
+“I wish,” said the sergeant bitterly, “that all them beasts were
+stuffed down your throttle the way you’d have to hold your prate.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “I do not know why these
+animals should attach themselves to men with gentleness and love
+and yet be able to preserve intact their initial bloodthirstiness,
+so that while they will allow their masters to misuse them in
+any way they will yet fight most willingly with each other, and
+are never really happy saving in the conduct of some private and
+nonsensical battle of their own. I do not believe that it is fear
+which tames these creatures into mildness, but that the most savage
+animal has a capacity for love which has not been sufficiently
+noted, and which, if more intelligent attention had been directed
+upon it, would have raised them to the status of intellectual
+animals as against intelligent ones, and, perhaps, have opened
+to us a correspondence which could not have been other than
+beneficial.”
+
+“Keep your eyes out for that gap in the trees, Shawn,” said the
+sergeant.
+
+“I’m doing that,” said Shawn.
+
+The Philosopher continued:
+
+“Why can I not exchange ideas with a cow? I am amazed at the
+incompleteness of my growth when I and a fellow-creature stand
+dumbly before each other without one glimmer of comprehension,
+locked and barred from all friendship and intercourse—”
+
+“Shawn,” cried the sergeant.
+
+“Don’t interrupt,” said the Philosopher; “you are always
+talking.—The lower animals, as they are foolishly called, have
+abilities at which we can only wonder. The mind of an ant is one
+to which I would readily go to school. Birds have atmospheric and
+levitational information which millions of years will not render
+accessible to us; who that has seen a spider weaving his labyrinth,
+or a bee voyaging safely in the trackless air, can refuse to credit
+that a vivid, trained intelligence animates these small enigmas?
+and the commonest earthworm is the heir to a culture before which I
+bow with the profoundest veneration—”
+
+“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “say something for goodness’ sake to
+take the sound of that man’s clack out of my ear.”
+
+“I wouldn’t know what to be talking about,” said Shawn, “for I
+never was much of a hand at conversation, and, barring my prayers,
+I got no education—I think myself that he was making a remark about
+a dog. Did you ever own a dog, sergeant?”
+
+“You are doing very well, Shawn,” said the sergeant, “keep it up
+now.”
+
+“I knew a man had a dog would count up to a hundred for you. He won
+lots of money in bets about it, and he’d have made a fortune, only
+that I noticed one day he used to be winking at the dog, and when
+he’d stop winking the dog would stop counting. We made him turn his
+back after that, and got the dog to count sixpence, but he barked
+for more than five shillings, he did so, and he would have counted
+up to a pound, maybe, only that his master turned round and hit
+him a kick. Every person that ever paid him a bet said they wanted
+their money back, but the man went away to America in the night,
+and I expect he’s doing well there for he took the dog with him. It
+was a wire-haired terrier bitch, and it was the devil for having
+pups.”
+
+“It is astonishing,” said the Philosopher, “on what slender
+compulsion people will go to America—”
+
+“Keep it up, Shawn,” said the sergeant, “you are doing me a favour.”
+
+“I will so,” said Shawn. “I had a cat one time and it used to have
+kittens every two months.”
+
+The Philosopher’s voice arose:
+
+“If there was any periodicity about these migrations one could
+understand them. Birds, for example, migrate from their homes in
+the late autumn and seek abroad the sustenance and warmth which
+the winter would withhold if they remained in their native lands.
+The salmon also, a dignified fish with a pink skin, emigrates from
+the Atlantic Ocean, and betakes himself inland to the streams and
+lakes, where he recuperates for a season, and is often surprised by
+net, angle, or spear—”
+
+“Cut in now, Shawn,” said the sergeant anxiously.
+
+Shawn began to gabble with amazing speed and in a mighty voice:
+
+“Cats sometimes eat their kittens, and sometimes they don’t. A cat
+that eats its kittens is a heartless brute. I knew a cat used to
+eat its kittens—it had four legs and a long tail, and it used to
+get the head-staggers every time it had eaten its kittens. I killed
+it myself one day with a hammer for I couldn’t stand the smell it
+made, so I couldn’t—”
+
+“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “can’t you talk about something else
+besides cats and dogs?”
+
+“Sure, I don’t know what to talk about,” said Shawn. “I’m sweating
+this minute trying to please you, so I arm. If you’ll tell me what
+to talk about I’ll do my endeavours.”
+
+“You’re a fool,” said the sergeant sorrowfully; “you’ll never make
+a constable. I’m thinking that I would sooner listen to the man
+himself than to you. Have you got a good hold of him now?”
+
+“I have so,” said Shawn.
+
+“Well, step out and maybe we’ll reach the barracks this night,
+unless this is a road that there isn’t any end to at all. What was
+that? Did you hear a noise?”
+
+“I didn’t hear a thing,” said Shawn.
+
+“I thought,” said another man, “that I heard something moving in
+the hedge at the side of the road.”
+
+“That’s what I heard,” said the sergeant. “Maybe it was a weasel.
+I wish to the devil that we were out of this place where you can’t
+see as much as your own nose. Now did you hear it, Shawn?”
+
+“I did so,” said Shawn; “there’s some one in the hedge, for a
+weasel would make a different kind of a noise if it made any at
+all.”
+
+“Keep together, men,” said the sergeant, “and march on; if there’s
+anybody about they’ve no business with us.”
+
+He had scarcely spoken when there came a sudden pattering of feet,
+and immediately the four men were surrounded and were being struck
+at on every side with sticks and hands and feet.
+
+“Draw your batons,” the sergeant roared; “keep a good grip of that
+man, Shawn.”
+
+“I will so,” said Shawn.
+
+“Stand round him, you other men, and hit anything that comes near
+you.”
+
+There was no sound of voices from the assailants, only a rapid
+scuffle of feet, the whistle of sticks as they swung through the
+air or slapped smartly against a body or clashed upon each other,
+and the quick breathing of many people; but from the four policemen
+there came noise and to spare as they struck wildly on every side,
+cursing the darkness and their opposers with fierce enthusiasm.
+
+“Let out,” cried Shawn suddenly. “Let out or I’ll smash your nut
+for you. There’s some one pulling at the prisoner, and I’ve dropped
+my baton.”
+
+The truncheons of the policemen had been so ferociously exercised
+that their antagonists departed as swiftly and as mysteriously as
+they came. It was just two minutes of frantic, aimless conflict,
+and then the silent night was round them again, without any sound
+but the slow creaking of branches, the swish of leaves as they
+swung and poised, and the quiet croon of the wind along the road.
+
+“Come on, men,” said the sergeant, “we’d better be getting out of
+this place as quick as we can. Are any of ye hurted?”
+
+“I’ve got one of the enemy,” said Shawn, panting.
+
+“You’ve got what?” said the sergeant.
+
+“I’ve got one of them, and he is wriggling like an eel on a pan.”
+
+“Hold him tight,” said the sergeant excitedly.
+
+“I will so,” said Shawn. “It’s a little one by the feel of it. If
+one of ye would hold the prisoner, I’d get a better grip on this
+one. Aren’t they dangerous villains now?”
+
+Another man took hold of the Philosopher’s arm, and Shawn got both
+hands on his captive.
+
+“Keep quiet, I’m telling you,” said he, “or I’ll throttle you, I
+will so. Faith, it seems like a little boy by the feel of it!”
+
+“A little boy!” said the sergeant.
+
+“Yes, he doesn’t reach up to my waist.”
+
+“It must be the young brat from the cottage that set the dogs on
+us, the one that loves beasts. Now then, boy, what do you mean by
+this kind of thing? You’ll find yourself in gaol for this, my young
+buck-o. Who was with you, eh? Tell me that now?” and the sergeant
+bent forward.
+
+“Hold up your head, sonny, and talk to the sergeant,” said Shawn.
+“Oh!” he roared, and suddenly he made a little rush forward. “I’ve
+got him,” he gasped; “he nearly got away. It isn’t a boy at all,
+sergeant; there’s whiskers on it!”
+
+“What do you say?” said the sergeant.
+
+“I put my hand under its chin and there’s whiskers on it. I nearly
+let him out with the surprise, I did so.”
+
+“Try again,” said the sergeant in a low voice; “you are making a
+mistake.”
+
+“I don’t like touching them,” said Shawn. “It’s a soft whisker like
+a billy-goat’s. Maybe you’d try yourself, sergeant, for I tell you
+I’m frightened of it.”
+
+“Hold him over here,” said the sergeant, “and keep a good grip of
+him.”
+
+“I’ll do that,” said Shawn, and he hauled some reluctant object
+towards his superior.
+
+The sergeant put out his hand and touched a head.
+
+“It’s only a boy’s size to be sure,” said he, then he slid his hand
+down the face and withdrew it quickly.
+
+“There are whiskers on it,” said he soberly. “What the devil can
+it be? I never met whiskers so near the ground before. Maybe they
+are false ones, and it’s just the boy yonder trying to disguise
+himself.” He put out his hand again with an effort, felt his way to
+the chin, and tugged.
+
+Instantly there came a yell, so loud, so sudden, that every man of
+them jumped in a panic.
+
+“They are real whiskers,” said the sergeant with a sigh. “I wish I
+knew what it is. His voice is big enough for two men, and that’s a
+fact. Have you got another match on you?”
+
+“I have two more in my waistcoat pocket,” said one of the men.
+
+“Give me one of them,” said the sergeant; “I’ll strike it myself.”
+
+He groped about until he found the hand with the match.
+
+“Be sure and hold him tight, Shawn, the way we can have a good look
+at him, for this is like to be a queer miracle of a thing.”
+
+“I’m holding him by the two arms,” said Shawn, “he can’t stir
+anything but his head, and I’ve got my chest on that.”
+
+The sergeant struck the match, shading it for a moment with his
+hand, then he turned it on their new prisoner.
+
+They saw a little man dressed in tight green clothes; he had a
+broad pale face with staring eyes, and there was a thin fringe of
+grey whisker under his chin—then the match went out.
+
+“It’s a Leprecaun,” said the sergeant.
+
+The men were silent for a full couple of minutes—at last Shawn
+spoke.
+
+“Do you tell me so?” said he in a musing voice; “that’s a queer
+miracle altogether.”
+
+“I do,” said the sergeant. “Doesn’t it stand to reason that it
+can’t be anything else? You saw it yourself.”
+
+Shawn plumped down on his knees before his captive.
+
+[Illustration: “Tell me where the money is?” he hissed]
+
+“Tell me where the money is?” he hissed. “Tell me where the money
+is or I’ll twist your neck off.”
+
+The other men also gathered eagerly around, shouting threats and
+commands at the Leprecaun.
+
+“Hold your whist,” said Shawn fiercely to them. “He can’t answer
+the lot of you, can he?” and he turned again to the Leprecaun and
+shook him until his teeth chattered.
+
+“If you don’t tell me where the money is at once I’ll kill you, I
+will so.”
+
+“I haven’t got any money at all, sir,” said the Leprecaun.
+
+“None of your lies,” roared Shawn. “Tell the truth now or it’ll be
+worse for you.”
+
+“I haven’t got any money,” said the Leprecaun, “for Meehawl
+MacMurrachu of the Hill stole our crock a while back, and he buried
+it under a thorn bush. I can bring you to the place if you don’t
+believe me.”
+
+“Very good,” said Shawn. “Come on with me now, and I’ll clout you
+if you as much as wriggle; do you mind me?”
+
+“What would I wriggle for?” said the Leprecaun: “sure I like being
+with you.”
+
+Hereupon the sergeant roared at the top of his voice.
+
+“Attention,” said he, and the men leaped to position like automata.
+
+“What is it you are going to do with your prisoner, Shawn?” said he
+sarcastically. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough tramping of these
+roads for one night, now? Bring up that Leprecaun to the barracks
+or it’ll be the worse for you—do you hear me talking to you?”
+
+“But the gold, sergeant,” said Shawn sulkily.
+
+“If there’s any gold it’ll be treasure trove, and belong to the
+Crown. What kind of a constable are you at all, Shawn? Mind what
+you are about now, my man, and no back answers. Step along there.
+Bring that murderer up at once, whichever of you has him.”
+
+There came a gasp from the darkness.
+
+“Oh, Oh, Oh!” said a voice of horror.
+
+“What’s wrong with you?” said the sergeant: “are you hurted?”
+
+“The prisoner!” he gasped, “he, he’s got away!”
+
+“Got away?” and the sergeant’s voice was a blare of fury.
+
+“While we were looking at the Leprecaun,” said the voice of woe, “I
+must have forgotten about the other one—I, I haven’t got him—”
+
+“You gawm!” gritted the sergeant.
+
+“Is it my prisoner that’s gone?” said Shawn in a deep voice. He
+leaped forward with a curse and smote his negligent comrade so
+terrible a blow in the face, that the man went flying backwards,
+and the thud of his head on the road could have been heard anywhere.
+
+“Get up,” said Shawn, “get up till I give you another one.”
+
+“That will do,” said the sergeant, “we’ll go home. We’re the
+laughing-stock of the world. I’ll pay you out for this some time,
+every damn man of ye. Bring that Leprecaun along with you, and
+quick march.”
+
+“Oh!” said Shawn in a strangled tone.
+
+“What is it now?” said the sergeant testily.
+
+“Nothing,” replied Shawn.
+
+“What did you say ‘Oh!’ for then, you block-head?”
+
+“It’s the Leprecaun, sergeant,” said Shawn in a whisper—“he’s
+got away—when I was hitting the man there I forgot all about the
+Leprecaun: he must have run into the hedge. Oh, sergeant, dear,
+don’t say anything to me now—!”
+
+“Quick march,” said the sergeant, and the four men moved on through
+the darkness in a silence, which was only skin deep.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+By reason of the many years which he had spent in the gloomy pine
+wood, the Philosopher could see a little in the darkness, and when
+he found there was no longer any hold on his coat he continued his
+journey quietly, marching along with his head sunken on his breast
+in a deep abstraction. He was meditating on the word “Me,” and
+endeavouring to pursue it through all its changes and adventures.
+The fact of “me-ness” was one which startled him. He was amazed at
+his own being. He knew that the hand which he held up and pinched
+with another hand was not him and the endeavour to find out what
+was him was one which had frequently exercised his leisure. He had
+not gone far when there came a tug at his sleeve and looking down
+he found one of the Leprecauns of the Gort trotting by his side.
+
+“Noble Sir,” said the Leprecaun, “you are terrible hard to get into
+conversation with. I have been talking to you for the last long
+time and you won’t listen.”
+
+“I am listening now,” replied the Philosopher.
+
+“You are, indeed,” said the Leprecaun heartily. “My brothers are on
+the other side of the road over there beyond the hedge, and they
+want to talk to you: will you come with me, Noble Sir?”
+
+“Why wouldn’t I go with you?” said the Philosopher, and he turned
+aside with the Leprecaun.
+
+They pushed softly through a gap in the hedge and into a field
+beyond.
+
+“Come this way, sir,” said his guide, and the Philosopher followed
+him across the field. In a few minutes they came to a thick bush
+among the leaves of which the other Leprecauns were hiding. They
+thronged out to meet the Philosopher’s approach and welcomed him
+with every appearance of joy. With them was the Thin Woman of Inis
+Magrath, who embraced her husband tenderly and gave thanks for his
+escape.
+
+“The night is young yet,” remarked one of the Leprecauns. “Let us
+sit down here and talk about what should be done.”
+
+“I am tired enough,” said the Philosopher, “for I have been
+travelling all yesterday, and all this day and the whole of this
+night I have been going also, so I would be glad to sit down
+anywhere.”
+
+They sat down under the bush and the Philosopher lit his pipe. In
+the open space where they were there was just light enough to see
+the smoke coming from his pipe, but scarcely more. One recognized
+a figure as a deeper shadow than the surrounding darkness; but as
+the ground was dry and the air just touched with a pleasant chill,
+there was no discomfort. After the Philosopher had drawn a few
+mouthfuls of smoke he passed his pipe on to the next person, and in
+this way his pipe made the circuit of the party.
+
+“When I put the children to bed,” said the Thin Woman, “I came down
+the road in your wake with a basin of stirabout, for you had no
+time to take your food, God help you! and I was thinking you must
+have been hungry.”
+
+“That is so,” said the Philosopher in a very anxious voice: “but I
+don’t blame you, my dear, for letting the basin fall on the road—”
+
+“While I was going along,” she continued, “I met these good people
+and when I told them what happened they came with me to see if
+anything could be done. The time they ran out of the hedge to
+fight the policemen I wanted to go with them, but I was afraid the
+stirabout would be spilt.”
+
+The Philosopher licked his lips.
+
+“I am listening to you, my love,” said he.
+
+“So I had to stay where I was with the stirabout under my shawl—”
+
+“Did you slip then, dear wife?”
+
+“I did not, indeed,” she replied: “I have the stirabout with me
+this minute. It’s rather cold, I’m thinking, but it is better than
+nothing at all,” and she placed the bowl in his hands.
+
+“I put sugar in it,” said she shyly, “and currants, and I have a
+spoon in my pocket.”
+
+“It tastes well,” said the Philosopher, and he cleaned the basin so
+speedily that his wife wept because of his hunger.
+
+By this time the pipe had come round to him again and it was
+welcomed.
+
+“Now we can talk,” said he, and he blew a great cloud of smoke into
+the darkness and sighed happily.
+
+“We were thinking,” said the Thin Woman, “that you won’t be able
+to come back to our house for a while yet: the policemen will
+be peeping about Coille Doraca for a long time, to be sure; for
+isn’t it true that if there is a good thing coming to a person,
+nobody takes much trouble to find him, but if there is a bad thing
+or a punishment in store for a man, then the whole world will be
+searched until he be found?”
+
+“It is a true statement,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“So what we arranged was this—that you should go to live with these
+little men in their house under the yew tree of the Gort. There is
+not a policeman in the world would find you there; or if you went
+by night to the Brugh of the Boyne, Angus Óg himself would give you
+a refuge.”
+
+One of the Leprecauns here interposed.
+
+“Noble Sir,” said he, “there isn’t much room in our house but
+there’s no stint of welcome in it. You would have a good time with
+us travelling on moonlit nights and seeing strange things, for we
+often go to visit the Shee of the Hills and they come to see us;
+there is always something to talk about, and we have dances in the
+caves and on the tops of the hills. Don’t be imagining now that we
+have a poor life for there is fun and plenty with us and the Brugh
+of Angus Mac an Óg is hard to be got at.”
+
+“I would like to dance, indeed,” returned the Philosopher, “for I
+do believe that dancing is the first and last duty of man. If we
+cannot be gay what can we be? Life is not any use at all unless we
+find a laugh here and there—but this time, decent men of the Gort,
+I cannot go with you, for it is laid on me to give myself up to the
+police.”
+
+“You would not do that,” exclaimed the Thin Woman pitifully: “You
+wouldn’t think of doing that now!”
+
+“An innocent man,” said he, “cannot be oppressed, for he is
+fortified by his mind and his heart cheers him. It is only on
+a guilty person that the rigour of punishment can fall, for he
+punishes himself. This is what I think, that a man should always
+obey the law with his body and always disobey it with his mind. I
+have been arrested, the men of the law had me in their hands, and I
+will have to go back to them so that they may do whatever they have
+to do.”
+
+The Philosopher resumed his pipe, and although the others reasoned
+with him for a long time they could not by any means remove him
+from his purpose. So, when the pale glimmer of dawn had stolen over
+the sky, they arose and went downwards to the cross-roads and so to
+the Police Station.
+
+Outside the village the Leprecauns bade him farewell and the Thin
+Woman also took her leave of him, saying she would visit Angus Óg
+and implore his assistance on behalf of her husband, and then the
+Leprecauns and the Thin Woman returned again the way they came, and
+the Philosopher walked on to the barracks.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+When he knocked at the barracks door it was opened by a man with
+tousled, red hair, who looked as though he had just awakened from
+sleep.
+
+“What do you want at this hour of the night?” said he.
+
+“I want to give myself up,” said the Philosopher. The policeman
+looked at him “A man as old as you are,” said he, “oughtn’t to be
+a fool. Go home now, I advise you, and don’t say a word to any one
+whether you did it or not. Tell me this now, was it found out, or
+are you only making a clean breast of it?”
+
+“Sure I must give myself up,” said the Philosopher.
+
+“If you must, you must, and that’s an end of it. Wipe your feet on
+the rail there and come in—I’ll take your deposition.”
+
+“I have no deposition for you,” said the Philosopher, “for I didn’t
+do a thing at all.”
+
+The policeman stared at him again.
+
+“If that’s so,” said he, “you needn’t come in at all, and you
+needn’t have wakened me out of my sleep either. Maybe, tho’, you
+are the man that fought the badger on the Naas Road—Eh?”
+
+“I am not,” replied the Philosopher: “but I was arrested for
+killing my brother and his wife, although I never touched them.”
+
+“Is that who you are?” said the policeman; and then, briskly,
+“You’re as welcome as the cuckoo, you are so. Come in and make
+yourself comfortable till the men awaken, and they are the lads
+that’ll be glad to see you. I couldn’t make head or tail of what
+they said when they came in last night, and no one else either, for
+they did nothing but fight each other and curse the banshees and
+cluricauns of Leinster. Sit down there on the settle by the fire
+and, maybe, you’ll be able to get a sleep; you look as if you were
+tired, and the mud of every county in Ireland is on your boots.”
+
+The Philosopher thanked him and stretched out on the settle. In a
+short time, for he was very weary, he fell asleep.
+
+Many hours later he was awakened by the sound of voices, and found
+on rising, that the men who had captured him on the previous
+evening were standing by the bed. The sergeant’s face beamed with
+joy. He was dressed only in his trousers and shirt. His hair was
+sticking up in some places and sticking out in others which gave
+a certain wild look to him, and his feet were bare. He took the
+Philosopher’s two hands in his own and swore if ever there was
+anything he could do to comfort him he would do that and more.
+Shawn, in a similar state of unclothedness, greeted the Philosopher
+and proclaimed himself his friend and follower for ever. Shawn
+further announced that he did not believe the Philosopher had
+killed the two people, that if he had killed them they must have
+richly deserved it, and that if he was hung he would plant flowers
+on his grave; for a decenter, quieter, and wiser man he had never
+met and never would meet in the world.
+
+These professions of esteem comforted the Philosopher, and he
+replied to them in terms which made the red-haired policeman gape
+in astonishment and approval.
+
+He was given a breakfast of bread and cocoa which he ate with his
+guardians, and then, as they had to take up their outdoor duties,
+he was conducted to the backyard and informed he could walk about
+there and that he might smoke until he was black in the face. The
+policemen severally presented him with a pipe, a tin of tobacco,
+two boxes of matches and a dictionary, and then they withdrew,
+leaving him to his own devices.
+
+The garden was about twelve feet square, having high, smooth walls
+on every side, and into it there came neither sun nor wind. In
+one corner a clump of rusty-looking sweet-pea was climbing up
+the wall—every leaf of this plant was riddled with holes, and
+there were no flowers on it. Another corner was occupied by dwarf
+nasturtiums, and on this plant, in despite of every discouragement,
+two flowers were blooming, but its leaves also were tattered and
+dejected. A mass of ivy clung to the third corner, its leaves were
+big and glossy at the top, but near the ground there was only grey,
+naked stalks laced together by cobwebs. The fourth wall was clothed
+in a loose Virginia creeper every leaf of which looked like an
+insect that could crawl if it wanted to. The centre of this small
+plot had used every possible artifice to cover itself with grass,
+and in some places it had wonderfully succeeded, but the pieces of
+broken bottles, shattered jampots, and sections of crockery were so
+numerous that no attempt at growth could be other than tentative
+and unpassioned.
+
+Here, for a long time, the Philosopher marched up and down. At one
+moment he examined the sweet-pea and mourned with it on a wretched
+existence. Again he congratulated the nasturtium on its two
+bright children; but he thought of the gardens wherein they might
+have bloomed and the remembrance of that spacious, sunny freedom
+saddened him.
+
+“Indeed, poor creatures!” said he, “ye also are in gaol.”
+
+The blank, soundless yard troubled him so much that at last he
+called to the red-haired policeman and begged to be put into a
+cell in preference; and to the common cell he was, accordingly,
+conducted.
+
+This place was a small cellar built beneath the level of the
+ground. An iron grating at the top of the wall admitted one
+blanched wink of light, but the place was bathed in obscurity. A
+wooden ladder led down to the cell from a hole in the ceiling, and
+this hole also gave a spark of brightness and some little air to
+the room. The walls were of stone covered with plaster, but the
+plaster had fallen away in many places leaving the rough stones
+visible at every turn of the eye.
+
+There were two men in the cell, and these the Philosopher saluted;
+but they did not reply, nor did they speak to each other. There was
+a low, wooden form fixed to the wall, running quite round the room,
+and on this, far apart from each other, the two men were seated,
+with their elbows resting on their knees, their heads propped upon
+their hands, and each of them with an unwavering gaze fixed on the
+floor between his feet.
+
+The Philosopher walked for a time up and down the little cell, but
+soon he also sat down on the low form, propped his head on his
+hands and lapsed to a melancholy dream.
+
+So the day passed. Twice a policeman came down the ladder bearing
+three portions of food, bread and cocoa; and by imperceptible
+gradations the light faded away from the grating and the darkness
+came. After a great interval the policeman again approached
+carrying three mattresses and three rough blankets, and these he
+bundled through the hole. Each of the men took a mattress and a
+blanket and spread them on the floor, and the Philosopher took his
+share also.
+
+By this time they could not see each other and all their operations
+were conducted by the sense of touch alone. They laid themselves
+down on the beds and a terrible, dark silence brooded over the room.
+
+But the Philosopher could not sleep, he kept his eyes shut, for
+the darkness under his eyelids was not so dense as that which
+surrounded him; indeed, he could at will illuminate his own
+darkness and order around him the sunny roads or the sparkling
+sky. While his eyes were closed he had the mastery of all pictures
+of light and colour and warmth, but an irresistible fascination
+compelled him every few minutes to reopen them, and in the sad
+space around he could not create any happiness. The darkness
+weighed very sadly upon him so that in a short time it did creep
+under his eyelids and drowned his happy pictures until a blackness
+possessed him both within and without “Can one’s mind go to prison
+as well as one’s body?” said he.
+
+He strove desperately to regain his intellectual freedom, but he
+could not. He could conjure up no visions but those of fear. The
+creatures of the dark invaded him, fantastic terrors were thronging
+on every side: they came from the darkness into his eyes and beyond
+into himself, so that his mind as well as his fancy was captured,
+and he knew he was, indeed, in gaol.
+
+It was with a great start that he heard a voice speaking from the
+silence—a harsh, yet cultivated voice, but he could not imagine
+which of his companions was speaking. He had a vision of that man
+tormented by the mental imprisonment of the darkness, trying to get
+away from his ghosts and slimy enemies, goaded into speech in his
+own despite lest he should be submerged and finally possessed by
+the abysmal demons. For a while the voice spoke of the strangeness
+of life and the cruelty of men to each other—disconnected
+sentences, odd words of selfpity and self-encouragement, and then
+the matter became more connected and a story grew in the dark cell
+“I knew a man,” said the voice, “and he was a clerk. He had thirty
+shillings a week, and for five years he had never missed a day
+going to his work. He was a careful man, but a person with a wife
+and four children cannot save much out of thirty shillings a week.
+The rent of a house is high, a wife and children must be fed, and
+they have to get boots and clothes, so that at the end of each week
+that man’s thirty shillings used to be all gone. But they managed
+to get along somehow—the man and his wife and the four children
+were fed and clothed and educated, and the man often wondered how
+so much could be done with so little money; but the reason was
+that his wife was a careful woman . . . and then the man got sick.
+A poor person cannot afford to get sick, and a married man cannot
+leave his work. If he is sick he has to be sick; but he must go
+to his work all the same, for if he stayed away who would pay the
+wages and feed his family? and when he went back to work he might
+find that there was nothing for him to do. This man fell sick, but
+he made no change in his way of life: he got up at the same time
+and went to the office as usual, and he got through the day somehow
+without attracting his employer’s attention. He didn’t know what
+was wrong with him: he only knew that he was sick. Sometimes he had
+sharp, swift pains in his head, and again there would be long hours
+of languor when he could scarcely bear to change his position or
+lift a pen. He would commence a letter with the words ‘Dear Sir,’
+forming the letter ‘D’ with painful, accurate slowness, elaborating
+and thickening the up and down strokes, and being troubled when he
+had to leave that letter for the next one; he built the next letter
+by hair strokes and would start on the third with hatred. The end
+of a word seemed to that man like the conclusion of an event—it was
+a surprising, isolated, individual thing, having no reference to
+anything else in the world, and on starting a new word he seemed
+bound, in order to preserve its individuality, to write it in a
+different handwriting. He would sit with his shoulders hunched up
+and his pen resting on the paper, staring at a letter until he
+was nearly mesmerized, and then come to himself with a sense of
+fear, which started him working like a madman, so that he might
+not be behind with his business. The day seemed to be so long. It
+rolled on rusty hinges that could scarcely move. Each hour was like
+a great circle swollen with heavy air, and it droned and buzzed
+into an eternity. It seemed to the man that his hand in particular
+wanted to rest. It was luxury not to work with it. It was good to
+lay it down on a sheet of paper with the pen sloping against his
+finger, and then watch his hand going to sleep—it seemed to the
+man that it was his hand and not himself wanted to sleep, but it
+always awakened when the pen slipped. There was an instinct in him
+somewhere not to let the pen slip, and every time the pen moved
+his hand awakened, and began to work languidly. When he went home
+at night he lay down at once and stared for hours at a fly on the
+wall or a crack on the ceiling. When his wife spoke to him he heard
+her speaking as from a great distance, and he answered her dully as
+though he was replying through a cloud. He only wanted to be let
+alone, to be allowed to stare at the fly on the wall, or the crack
+on the ceiling.
+
+“One morning he found that he couldn’t get up, or rather, that
+he didn’t want to get up. When his wife called him he made no
+reply, and she seemed to call him every ten seconds—the words,
+‘get up, get up,’ were crackling all round him; they were bursting
+like bombs on the right hand and on the left of him: they were
+scattering from above and all around him, bursting upwards from the
+floor, swirling, swaying, and jostling each other. Then the sounds
+ceased, and one voice only said to him ‘You are late!’ He saw these
+words like a blur hanging in the air, just beyond his eyelids, and
+he stared at the blur until he fell asleep.”
+
+The voice in the cell ceased speaking for a few minutes, and then
+it went on again.
+
+“For three weeks the man did not leave his bed—he lived faintly
+in a kind of trance, wherein great forms moved about slowly and
+immense words were drumming gently for ever. When he began to
+take notice again everything in the house was different. Most of
+the furniture, paid for so hardly, was gone. He missed a thing
+everywhere—chairs, a mirror, a table: wherever he looked he missed
+something; and downstairs was worse—there, everything was gone. His
+wife had sold all her furniture to pay for doctors, for medicine,
+for food and rent. And she was changed too: good things had gone
+from her face; she was gaunt, sharp-featured, miserable—but she was
+comforted to think he was going back to work soon.
+
+“There was a flurry in his head when he went to his office. He
+didn’t know what his employer would say for stopping away. He
+might blame him for being sick—he wondered would his employer pay
+him for the weeks he was absent. When he stood at the door he was
+frightened. Suddenly the thought of his master’s eye grew terrible
+to him: it was a steady, cold, glassy eye; but he opened the door
+and went in. His master was there with another man and he tried to
+say ‘Good morning, sir,’ in a natural and calm voice; but he knew
+that the strange man had been engaged instead of himself, and this
+knowledge posted itself between his tongue and his thought. He
+heard himself stammering, he felt that his whole bearing had become
+drooping and abject. His master was talking swiftly and the other
+man was looking at him in an embarrassed, stealthy, and pleading
+manner: his eyes seemed to be apologising for having supplanted
+him—so he mumbled ‘Good day, sir,’ and stumbled out.
+
+“When he got outside he could not think where to go. After a while
+he went in the direction of the little park in the centre of the
+city. It was quite near and he sat down on an iron bench facing
+a pond. There were children walking up and down by the water
+giving pieces of bread to the swans. Now and again a labouring
+man or a messenger went by quickly; now and again a middleaged,
+slovenly-dressed man drooped past aimlessly: sometimes a tattered,
+self-intent woman with a badgered face flopped by him. When he
+looked at these dull people the thought came to him that they
+were not walking there at all; they were trailing through hell,
+and their desperate eyes saw none but devils around them. He saw
+himself joining these battered strollers . . . and he could not
+think what he would tell his wife when he went home. He rehearsed
+to himself the terms of his dismissal a hundred times. How his
+master looked, what he had said: and then the fine, ironical things
+he had said to his master. He sat in the park all day, and when
+evening fell he went home at his accustomed hour.
+
+“His wife asked him questions as to how he had got on, and wanted
+to know was there any chance of being paid for the weeks of
+absence; the man answered her volubly, ate his supper and went to
+bed: but he did not tell his wife that he had been dismissed and
+that there would be no money at the end of the week. He tried to
+tell her, but when he met her eye he found that he could not say
+the words—he was afraid of the look that might come into her face
+when she heard it—she, standing terrified in those dismantled
+rooms...!
+
+“In the morning he ate his breakfast and went out again—to work,
+his wife thought. She bid him ask the master about the three weeks’
+wages, or to try and get an advance on the present week’s wages,
+for they were hardly put to it to buy food. He said he would do his
+best, but he went straight to the park and sat looking at the pond,
+looking at the passers-by and dreaming. In the middle of the day he
+started up in a panic and went about the city asking for work in
+offices, shops, warehouses, everywhere, but he could not get any.
+He trailed back heavy-footed again to the park and sat down.
+
+“He told his wife more lies about his work that night and what his
+master had said when he asked for an advance. He couldn’t bear the
+children to touch him. After a little time he sneaked away to his
+bed.
+
+“A week went that way. He didn’t look for work any more. He sat in
+the park, dreaming, with his head bowed into his hands. The next
+day would be the day he should have been paid his wages. The next
+day! What would his wife say when he told her he had no money? She
+would stare at him and flush and say—’Didn’t you go out every day
+to work?’—How would he tell her then so that she could understand
+quickly and spare him words?
+
+“Morning came and the man ate his breakfast silently. There was no
+butter on the bread, and his wife seemed to be apologising to him
+for not having any. She said, ‘We’ll be able to start fair from
+to-morrow,’ and when he snapped at her angrily she thought it was
+because he had to eat dry bread.
+
+“He went to the park and sat there for hours. Now and again he got
+up and walked into a neighbouring street, but always, after half an
+hour or so, he came back. Six o’clock in the evening was his hour
+for going home. When six o’clock came he did not move, he still sat
+opposite the pond with his head bowed down into his arms. Seven
+o’clock passed. At nine o’clock a bell was rung and every one had
+to leave. He went also. He stood outside the gates looking on this
+side and on that. Which way would he go? All roads were alike to
+him, so he turned at last and walked somewhere. He did not go home
+that night. He never went home again. He never was heard of again
+anywhere in the wide world.”
+
+The voice ceased speaking and silence swung down again upon the
+little cell. The Philosopher had been listening intently to this
+story, and after a few minutes he spoke “When you go up this road
+there is a turn to the left and all the path along is bordered with
+trees—there are birds in the trees, Glory be to God! There is only
+one house on that road, and the woman in it gave us milk to drink.
+She has but one son, a good boy, and she said the other children
+were dead; she was speaking of a husband who went away and left
+her—‘Why should he have been afraid to come home?’ said she—‘sure,
+I loved him.’”
+
+After a little interval the voice spoke again “I don’t know what
+became of the man I was speaking of. I am a thief, and I’m well
+known to the police everywhere. I don’t think that man would get a
+welcome at the house up here, for why should he?”
+
+Another, a different, querulous kind of voice came from the
+silence “If I knew a place where there was a welcome I’d go there
+as quickly as I could, but I don’t know a place and I never will,
+for what good would a man of my age be to any person? I am a thief
+also. The first thing I stole was a hen out of a little yard. I
+roasted it in a ditch and ate it, and then I stole another one and
+ate it, and after that I stole everything I could lay my hands on.
+I suppose I will steal as long as I live, and I’ll die in a ditch
+at the heel of the hunt. There was a time, not long ago, and if
+any one had told me then that I would rob, even for hunger, I’d
+have been insulted: but what does it matter now? And the reason I
+am a thief is because I got old without noticing it. Other people
+noticed it, but I did not. I suppose age comes on one so gradually
+that it is seldom observed. If there are wrinkles on one’s face we
+do not remember when they were not there: we put down all kind of
+little infirmities to sedentary living, and you will see plenty of
+young people bald. If a man has no occasion to tell any one his
+age, and if he never thinks of it himself, he won’t see ten years’
+difference between his youth and his age, for we live in slow,
+quiet times, and nothing ever happens to mark the years as they go
+by, one after the other, and all the same.
+
+“I lodged in a house for a great many years, and a little girl grew
+up there, the daughter of my landlady. She used to slide down the
+bannisters very well, and she used to play the piano very badly.
+These two things worried me many a time. She used to bring me my
+meals in the morning and the evening, and often enough she’d stop
+to talk with me while I was eating. She was a very chatty girl and
+I was a talkative person myself. When she was about eighteen years
+of age I got so used to her that if her mother came with the food
+I would be worried for the rest of the day. Her face was as bright
+as a sunbeam, and her lazy, careless ways, big, free movements,
+and girlish chatter were pleasant to a man whose loneliness was
+only beginning to be apparent to him through her company. I’ve
+thought of it often since, and I suppose that’s how it began. She
+used to listen to all my opinions and she’d agree with them because
+she had none of her own yet. She was a good girl, but lazy in her
+mind and body; childish, in fact. Her talk was as involved as her
+actions: she always seemed to be sliding down mental bannisters;
+she thought in kinks and spoke in spasms, hopped mentally from one
+subject to another without the slightest difficulty, and could use
+a lot of language in saying nothing at all. I could see all that
+at the time, but I suppose I was too pleased with my own sharp
+business brains, and sick enough, although I did not know it, of my
+sharp-brained, business companions—dear Lord! I remember them well.
+It’s easy enough to have brains as they call it, but it is not so
+easy to have a little gaiety or carelessness or childishness or
+whatever it was she had. It is good, too, to feel superior to some
+one, even a girl.
+
+“One day this thought came to me—‘It is time that I settled down.’
+I don’t know where the idea came from; one hears it often enough
+and it always seems to apply to some one else, but I don’t know
+what brought it to roost with me. I was foolish, too: I bought ties
+and differently shaped collars, and took to creasing my trousers
+by folding them under the bed and lying on them all night—It never
+struck me that I was more than three times her age. I brought home
+sweets for her and she was delighted. She said she adored sweets,
+and she used to insist on my eating some of them with her; she
+liked to compare notes as to how they tasted while eating them.
+I used to get a toothache from them, but I bore with it although
+at that time I hated toothache almost as much as I hated sweets.
+Then I asked her to come out with me for a walk. She was willing
+enough and it was a novel experience for me. Indeed, it was rather
+exciting. We went out together often after that, and sometimes we’d
+meet people I knew, young men from my office or from other offices.
+I used to be shy when some of these people winked at me as they
+saluted. It was pleasant, too, telling the girl who they were,
+their business and their salaries: for there was little I didn’t
+know. I used to tell her of my own position in the office and what
+the chief said to me through the day. Sometimes we talked of the
+things that had appeared in the evening papers. A murder perhaps,
+some phase of a divorce case, the speech a political person had
+made, or the price of stock. She was interested in anything so long
+as it was talk. And her own share in the conversation was good
+to hear. Every lady that passed us had a hat that stirred her to
+the top of rapture or the other pinnacle of disgust. She told me
+what ladies were frights and what were ducks. Under her scampering
+tongue I began to learn something of humanity, even though she saw
+most people as delightfully funny clowns or superb, majestical
+princes, but I noticed that she never said a bad word of a man,
+although many of the men she looked after were ordinary enough.
+Until I went walking with her I never knew what a shop window was.
+A jeweller’s window especially: there were curious things in it.
+She told me how a tiara should be worn, and a pendant, and she
+explained the kind of studs I should wear myself; they were made of
+gold and had red stones in them; she showed me the ropes of pearl
+or diamonds that she thought would look pretty on herself: and one
+day she said that she liked me very much. I was pleased and excited
+that day, but I was a business man and I said very little in reply.
+I never liked a pig in a poke.
+
+“She used to go out two nights in the week, Monday and Thursday,
+dressed in her best clothes. I didn’t know where she went, and I
+didn’t ask—I thought she visited an acquaintance, a girl friend or
+some such. The time went by and I made up my mind to ask her to
+marry me. I had watched her long enough and she was always kind
+and bright. I liked the way she smiled, and I liked her obedient,
+mannerly bearing. There was something else I liked, which I did
+not recognise then, something surrounding all her movements, a
+graciousness, a spaciousness: I did not analyse it; but I know now
+that it was her youth. I remember that when we were out together
+she walked slowly, but in the house she would leap up and down the
+stairs—she moved furiously, but I didn’t.
+
+“One evening she dressed to go out as usual, and she called at my
+door to know had I everything I wanted. I said I had something to
+tell her when she came home, something important. She promised to
+come in early to hear it, and I laughed at her and she laughed back
+and went sliding down the bannisters. I don’t think I have had any
+reason to laugh since that night. A letter came for me after she
+had gone, and I knew by the shape and the handwriting that it was
+from the office. It puzzled me to think why I should be written to.
+I didn’t like opening it somehow.... It was my dismissal on account
+of advancing age, and it hoped for my future welfare politely
+enough. It was signed by the Senior. I didn’t grip it at first, and
+then I thought it was a hoax. For a long time I sat in my room with
+an empty mind. I was watching my mind: there were immense distances
+in it that drowsed and buzzed; large, soft movements seemed to be
+made in my mind, and although I was looking at the letter in my
+hand I was really trying to focus those great, swinging spaces
+in my brain, and my ears were listening for a movement of some
+kind. I can see back to that time plainly. I went walking up and
+down the room. There was a dull, subterranean anger in me. I
+remember muttering once or twice, ‘Shameful!’ and again I said,
+‘Ridiculous!’ At the idea of age I looked at my face in the glass,
+but I was looking at my mind, and it seemed to go grey, there was a
+heaviness there also. I seemed to be peering from beneath a weight
+at something strange. I had a feeling that I had let go a grip
+which I had held tightly for a long time, and I had a feeling that
+the letting go was a grave disaster . . . that strange face in the
+glass! how wrinkled it was! there were only a few hairs on the head
+and they were grey ones. There was a constant twitching of the lips
+and the eyes were deep-set, little and dull. I left the glass and
+sat down by the window, looking out. I saw nothing in the street: I
+just looked into a blackness. My mind was as blank as the night and
+as soundless. There was a swirl outside the window, rain tossed by
+the wind; without noticing, I saw it, and my brain swung with the
+rain until it heaved in circles, and then a feeling of faintness
+awakened me to myself. I did not allow my mind to think, but now
+and again a word swooped from immense distances through my brain,
+swinging like a comet across a sky and jarring terribly when it
+struck: ‘Sacked’ was one word, ‘Old’ was another word.
+
+“I don’t know how long I sat watching the flight of these dreadful
+words and listening to their clanking impact, but a movement in
+the street aroused me. Two people, the girl and a young, slender
+man, were coming slowly up to the house. The rain was falling
+heavily, but they did not seem to mind it. There was a big puddle
+of water close to the kerb, and the girl, stepping daintily as a
+cat, went round this, but the young man stood for a moment beyond
+it. He raised both arms, clenched his fists, swung them, and jumped
+over the puddle. Then he and the girl stood looking at the water,
+apparently measuring the jump. I could see them plainly by a street
+lamp. They were bidding each other good-bye. The girl put her hand
+to his neck and settled the collar of his coat, and while her hand
+rested on him the young man suddenly and violently flung his arms
+about her and hugged her; then they kissed and moved apart. The
+man walked to the rain puddle and stood there with his face turned
+back laughing at her, and then he jumped straight into the middle
+of the puddle and began to dance up and down in it, the muddy
+water splashing up to his knees. She ran over to him crying ‘Stop,
+silly!’ When she came into the house, I bolted my door and I gave
+no answer to her knock.
+
+“In a few months the money I had saved was spent. I couldn’t get
+any work, I was too old; they put it that they wanted a younger
+man. I couldn’t pay my rent. I went out into the world again,
+like a baby, an old baby in a new world. I stole food, food, food
+anywhere and everywhere. At first I was always caught. Often I was
+sent to gaol; sometimes I was let go; sometimes I was kicked; but I
+learned to live like a wolf at last. I am not often caught now when
+I steal food. But there is something happening every day, whether
+it is going to gaol or planning how to steal a hen or a loaf of
+bread. I find that it is a good life, much better than the one I
+lived for nearly sixty years, and I have time to think over every
+sort of thing....”
+
+When the morning came the Philosopher was taken on a car to the big
+City in order that he might be put on his trial and hanged. It was
+the custom.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI. THE THIN WOMAN’S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The ability of the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath for anger was
+unbounded. She was not one of those limited creatures who are swept
+clean by a gust of wrath and left placid and smiling after its
+passing. She could store her anger in those caverns of eternity
+which open into every soul, and which are filled with rage and
+violence until the time comes when they may be stored with wisdom
+and love; for, in the genesis of life, love is at the beginning
+and the end of things. First, like a laughing child, love came to
+labour minutely in the rocks and sands of the heart, opening the
+first of those roads which lead inwards for ever, and then, the
+labour of his day being done, love fled away and was forgotten.
+Following came the fierce winds of hate to work like giants and
+gnomes among the prodigious debris, quarrying the rocks and
+levelling the roads which soar inwards; but when that work is
+completed love will come radiantly again to live for ever in the
+human heart, which is Eternity.
+
+Before the Thin Woman could undertake the redemption of her husband
+by wrath, it was necessary that she should be purified by the
+performance of that sacrifice which is called the Forgiveness of
+Enemies, and this she did by embracing the Leprecauns of the Gort
+and in the presence of the sun and the wind remitting their crime
+against her husband. Thus she became free to devote her malice
+against the State of Punishment, while forgiving the individuals
+who had but acted in obedience to the pressure of their infernal
+environment, which pressure is Sin.
+
+This done she set about baking the three cakes against her journey
+to Angus Óg.
+
+While she was baking the cakes, the children, Seumas and Brigid
+Beg, slipped away into the wood to speak to each other and to
+wonder over this extraordinary occurrence.
+
+At first their movements were very careful, for they could not be
+quite sure that the policemen had really gone away, or whether they
+were hiding in dark places waiting to pounce on them and carry
+them away to captivity. The word “murder” was almost unknown to
+them, and its strangeness was rendered still more strange by reason
+of the nearness of their father to the term. It was a terrible
+word and its terror was magnified by their father’s unthinkable
+implication. What had he done? Almost all his actions and habits
+were so familiar to them as to be commonplace, and yet, there was a
+dark something to which he was a party and which dashed before them
+as terrible and ungraspable as a lightning-flash. They understood
+that it had something to do with that other father and mother whose
+bodies had been snatched from beneath the hearthstone, but they
+knew the Philosopher had done nothing in that instance, and, so,
+they saw murder as a terrible, occult affair which was quite beyond
+their mental horizons.
+
+No one jumped out on them from behind the trees, so in a little
+time their confidence returned and they walked less carefully.
+When they reached the edge of the pine wood the brilliant sunshine
+invited them to go farther, and after a little hesitation they did
+so. The good spaces and the sweet air dissipated their melancholy
+thoughts, and very soon they were racing each other to this
+point and to that. Their wayward flights had carried them in the
+direction of Meehawl MacMurrachu’s cottage, and here, breathlessly,
+they threw themselves under a small tree to rest. It was a thorn
+bush, and as they sat beneath it the cessation of movement gave
+them opportunity to again consider the terrible position of their
+father. With children thought cannot be separated from action for
+very long. They think as much with their hands as with their heads.
+They have to do the thing they speak of in order to visualise the
+idea, and, consequently, Seumas Beg was soon reconstructing the
+earlier visit of the policemen to their house in grand pantomime.
+The ground beneath the thorn bush became the hearthstone of their
+cottage; he and Brigid became four policemen, and in a moment he
+was digging furiously with a broad piece of wood to find the two
+hidden bodies. He had digged for only a few minutes when the piece
+of wood struck against something hard. A very little time sufficed
+to throw the soil off this, and their delight was great when they
+unearthed a beautiful little earthen crock filled to the brim with
+shining, yellow dust. When they lifted this they were astonished
+at its great weight. They played for a long time with it, letting
+the heavy, yellow shower slip through their fingers and watching
+it glisten in the sunshine. After they tired of this they decided
+to bring the crock home, but by the time they reached the Gort
+na Cloca Mora they were so tired that they could not carry it
+any farther, and they decided to leave it with their friends the
+Leprecauns. Seumas Beg gave the taps on the tree trunk which they
+had learned, and in a moment the Leprecaun whom they knew came up.
+
+[Illustration: He . . . wept in so loud a voice that his comrades
+swarmed up to see what had happened to him]
+
+“We have brought this, sir,” said Seumas. But he got no further,
+for the instant the Leprecaun saw the crock he threw his arms
+around it and wept in so loud a voice that his comrades swarmed
+up to see what had happened to him, and they added their laughter
+and tears to his, to which chorus the children subjoined their
+sympathetic clamour, so that a noise of great complexity rang
+through all the Gort.
+
+But the Leprecauns’ surrender to this happy passion was short.
+Hard on their gladness came remembrance and consternation; and
+then repentance, that dismal virtue, wailed in their ears and
+their hearts. How could they thank the children whose father and
+protector they had delivered to the unilluminated justice of
+humanity? that justice which demands not atonement but punishment;
+which is learned in the Book of Enmity but not in the Book of
+Friendship; which calls hatred Nature, and Love a conspiracy; whose
+law is an iron chain and whose mercy is debility and chagrin; the
+blind fiend who would impose his own blindness; that unfruitful
+loin which curses fertility; that stony heart which would petrify
+the generations of man; before whom life withers away appalled and
+death would shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the
+inadequate ooze from their eyes and danced joyfully for spite. They
+could do no more, so they fed the children lovingly and carried
+them home.
+
+The Thin Woman had baked three cakes. One of these she gave to each
+of the children and one she kept herself, whereupon they set out
+upon their journey to Angus Óg.
+
+It was well after midday when they started. The fresh gaiety of the
+morning was gone, and a tyrannous sun, whose majesty was almost
+insupportable, lorded it over the world. There was but little shade
+for the travellers, and, after a time, they became hot and weary
+and thirsty—that is, the children did, but the Thin Woman, by
+reason of her thinness, was proof against every elemental rigour,
+except hunger, from which no creature is free.
+
+She strode in the centre of the road, a very volcano of silence,
+thinking twenty different thoughts at the one moment, so that
+the urgency of her desire for utterance kept her terribly quiet;
+but against this crust of quietude there was accumulating a mass
+of speech which must at the last explode or petrify. From this
+congestion of thought there arose the first deep rumblings,
+precursors of uproar, and another moment would have heard the
+thunder of her varied malediction, but that Brigid Beg began to
+cry: for, indeed, the poor child was both tired and parched to
+distraction, and Seumas had no barrier against a similar surrender,
+but two minutes’ worth of boyish pride. This discovery withdrew the
+Thin Woman from her fiery contemplations, and in comforting the
+children she forgot her own hardships.
+
+It became necessary to find water quickly: no difficult thing,
+for the Thin Woman, being a Natural, was like all other creatures
+able to sense the whereabouts of water, and so she at once led the
+children in a slightly different direction. In a few minutes they
+reached a well by the road-side, and here the children drank deeply
+and were comforted. There was a wide, leafy tree growing hard by
+the well, and in the shade of this tree they sat down and ate their
+cakes.
+
+While they rested the Thin Woman advised the children on many
+important matters. She never addressed her discourse to both of
+them at once, but spoke first to Seumas on one subject and then
+to Brigid on another subject; for, as she said, the things which
+a boy must learn are not those which are necessary to a girl. It
+is particularly important that a man should understand how to
+circumvent women, for this and the capture of food forms the basis
+of masculine wisdom, and on this subject she spoke to Seumas. It
+is, however, equally urgent that a woman should be skilled to
+keep a man in his proper place, and to this thesis Brigid gave an
+undivided attention.
+
+She taught that a man must hate all women before he is able to
+love a woman, but that he is at liberty, or rather he is under
+express command, to love all men because they are of his kind.
+Women also should love all other women as themselves, and they
+should hate all men but one man only, and him they should seek to
+turn into a woman, because women, by the order of their beings,
+must be either tyrants or slaves, and it is better they should
+be tyrants than slaves. She explained that between men and women
+there exists a state of unremitting warfare, and that the endeavour
+of each sex is to bring the other to subjection; but that women
+are possessed by a demon called Pity which severely handicaps
+their battle and perpetually gives victory to the male, who is
+thus constantly rescued on the very ridges of defeat. She said
+to Seumas that his fatal day would dawn when he loved a woman,
+because he would sacrifice his destiny to her caprice, and she
+begged him for love of her to beware of all that twisty sex. To
+Brigid she revealed that a woman’s terrible day is upon her when
+she knows that a man loves her, for a man in love submits only to
+a woman, a partial, individual and temporary submission, but a
+woman who is loved surrenders more fully to the very god of love
+himself, and so she becomes a slave, and is not alone deprived of
+her personal liberty, but is even infected in her mental processes
+by this crafty obsession. The fates work for man, and therefore,
+she averred, woman must be victorious, for those who dare to war
+against the gods are already assured of victory: this being the law
+of life, that only the weak shall conquer. The limit of strength
+is petrifaction and immobility, but there is no limit to weakness,
+and cunning or fluidity is its counsellor. For these reasons, and
+in order that life might not cease, women should seek to turn their
+husbands into women; then they would be tyrants and their husbands
+would be slaves, and life would be renewed for a further period.
+
+As the Thin Woman proceeded with this lesson it became at last so
+extremely complicated that she was brought to a stand by the knots,
+so she decided to resume their journey and disentangle her argument
+when the weather became cooler.
+
+They were repacking the cakes in their wallets when they observed a
+stout, comely female coming towards the well. This woman, when she
+drew near, saluted the Thin Woman, and her the Thin Woman saluted
+again, whereupon the stranger sat down.
+
+“It’s hot weather, surely,” said she, “and I’m thinking it’s as
+much as a body’s life is worth to be travelling this day and the
+sun the way it is. Did you come far, now, ma’am, or is it that you
+are used to going the roads and don’t mind it?”
+
+“Not far,” said the Thin Woman.
+
+“Far or near,” said the stranger, “a perch is as much as I’d like
+to travel this time of the year. That’s a fine pair of children you
+have with you now, ma’am.”
+
+“They are,” said the Thin Woman.
+
+“I’ve ten of them myself,” the other continued, “and I often
+wondered where they came from. It’s queer to think of one woman
+making ten new creatures and she not getting a penny for it, nor
+any thanks itself.”
+
+“It is,” said the Thin Woman.
+
+“Do you ever talk more than two words at the one time, ma’am?” said
+the stranger.
+
+“I do,” said the Thin Woman.
+
+“I’d give a penny to hear you,” replied the other angrily, “for a
+more bad-natured, cross-grained, cantankerous person than yourself
+I never met among womankind. It’s what I said to a man only
+yesterday, that thin ones are bad ones, and there isn’t any one
+could be thinner than you are yourself.”
+
+“The reason you say that,” said the Thin Woman calmly, “is because
+you are fat and you have to tell lies to yourself to hide your
+misfortune, and let on that you like it. There is no one in the
+world could like to be fat, and there I leave you, ma’am. You can
+poke your finger in your own eye, but you may keep it out of mine
+if you please, and, so, good-bye to you; and if I wasn’t a quiet
+woman I’d pull you by the hair of the head up a hill and down a
+hill for two hours, and now there’s an end of it. I’ve given you
+more than two words; let you take care or I’ll give you two more
+that will put blisters on your body for ever. Come along with me
+now, children, and if ever you see a woman like that woman you’ll
+know that she eats until she can’t stand, and drinks until she
+can’t sit, and sleeps until she is stupid; and if that sort of
+person ever talks to you remember that two words are all that’s due
+to her, and let them be short ones, for a woman like that would be
+a traitor and a thief, only that she’s too lazy to be anything but
+a sot, God help her I and, so, good-bye.”
+
+Thereupon the Thin Woman and the children arose, and having saluted
+the stranger they went down the wide path; but the other woman
+stayed where she was sitting, and she did not say a word even to
+herself.
+
+As she strode along the Thin Woman lapsed again to her anger, and
+became so distant in her aspect that the children could get no
+companionship from her; so, after a while, they ceased to consider
+her at all and addressed themselves to their play. They danced
+before and behind and around her. They ran and doubled, shouted
+and laughed and sang. Sometimes they pretended they were husband
+and wife, and then they plodded quietly side by side, making wise,
+occasional remarks on the weather, or the condition of their
+health, or the state of the fields of rye. Sometimes one was a
+horse and the other was a driver, and then they stamped along the
+road with loud, fierce snortings and louder and fiercer commands.
+At another moment one was a cow being driven with great difficulty
+to market by a driver whose temper had given way hours before; or
+they both became goats and with their heads jammed together they
+pushed and squealed viciously; and these changes lapsed into one
+another so easily that at no moment were they unoccupied. But
+as the day wore on to evening the immense surrounding quietude
+began to weigh heavily upon them. Saving for their own shrill
+voices there was no sound, and this unending, wide silence at last
+commanded them to a corresponding quietness. Little by little they
+ceased their play. The scamper became a trot, each run was more and
+more curtailed in its length, the race back became swifter than the
+run forth, and, shortly, they were pacing soberly enough one on
+either side of the Thin Woman sending back and forth a few quiet
+sentences. Soon even these sentences trailed away into the vast
+surrounding stillness. Then Brigid Beg clutched the Thin Woman’s
+right hand, and not long after Seumas gently clasped her left hand,
+and these mute appeals for protection and comfort again released
+her from the valleys of fury through which she had been so fiercely
+careering.
+
+As they went gently along they saw a cow lying in a field, and,
+seeing this animal, the Thin Woman stopped thoughtfully.
+
+“Everything,” said she, “belongs to the wayfarer,” and she crossed
+into the field and milked the cow into a vessel which she had.
+
+“I wonder,” said Seumas, “who owns that cow.”
+
+“Maybe,” said Brigid Beg, “nobody owns her at all.”
+
+“The cow owns herself,” said the Thin Woman, “for nobody can own a
+thing that is alive. I am sure she gives her milk to us with great
+goodwill, for we are modest, temperate people without greed or
+pretension.”
+
+On being released the cow lay down again in the grass and resumed
+its interrupted cud. As the evening had grown chill the Thin Woman
+and the children huddled close to the warm animal. They drew pieces
+of cake from their wallets, and ate these and drank happily from
+the vessel of milk. Now and then the cow looked benignantly over
+its shoulder bidding them a welcome to its hospitable flanks. It
+had a mild, motherly eye, and it was very fond of children. The
+youngsters continually deserted their meal in order to put their
+arms about the cow’s neck to thank and praise her for her goodness,
+and to draw each other’s attention to various excellences in its
+appearance.
+
+“Cow,” said Brigid Beg in an ecstasy, “I love you.”
+
+“So do I,” said Seumas. “Do you notice the kind of eyes it has?”
+
+“Why does a cow have horns?” said Brigid.
+
+So they asked the cow that question, but it only smiled and said
+nothing.
+
+“If a cow talked to you,” said Brigid, “what would it say?”
+
+“Let us be cows,” replied Seumas, “and then, maybe, we will find
+out.”
+
+So they became cows and ate a few blades of grass, but they found
+that when they were cows they did not want to say anything but
+“moo,” and they decided that cows did not want to say anything more
+than that either, and they became interested in the reflection
+that, perhaps, nothing else was worth saying.
+
+A long, thin, yellow-coloured fly was going in that direction on a
+journey, and he stopped to rest himself on the cow’s nose.
+
+“You are welcome,” said the cow.
+
+“It’s a great night for travelling,” said the fly, “but one gets
+tired alone. Have you seen any of my people about?”
+
+“No,” replied the cow, “no one but beetles to-night, and they
+seldom stop for a talk. You’ve rather a good kind of life, I
+suppose, flying about and enjoying yourself.”
+
+“We all have our troubles,” said the fly in a melancholy voice, and
+he commenced to clean his right wing with his leg.
+
+“Does any one ever lie against your back the way these people are
+lying against mine, or do they steal your milk?”
+
+“There are too many spiders about,” said the fly.
+
+“No corner is safe from them; they squat in the grass and pounce on
+you. I’ve got a twist, my eye trying to watch them. They are ugly,
+voracious people without manners or neighbourliness, terrible,
+terrible creatures.”
+
+“I have seen them,” said the cow, “but they never done me any harm.
+Move up a little bit please, I want to lick my nose: it’s queer
+how itchy my nose gets”—the fly moved up a bit. “If,” the cow
+continued, “you had stayed there, and if my tongue had hit you, I
+don’t suppose you would ever have recovered.”
+
+“Your tongue couldn’t have hit me,” said the by. “I move very
+quickly you know.”
+
+Hereupon the cow slily whacked her tongue across her nose. She did
+not see the fly move, but it was hovering safely half an inch over
+her nose.
+
+“You see,” said the fly.
+
+“I do,” replied the cow, and she bellowed so sudden and furious a
+snort of laughter that the fly was blown far away by that gust and
+never came back again.
+
+This amused the cow exceedingly, and she chuckled and sniggered
+to herself for a long time. The children had listened with great
+interest to the conversation, and they also laughed delightedly,
+and the Thin Woman admitted that the fly had got the worse of
+it; but, after a while, she said that the part of the cow’s back
+against which she was resting was bonier than anything she had ever
+leaned upon before, and that while thinness was a virtue no one had
+any right to be thin in lumps, and that on this count the cow was
+not to be commended. On hearing this the cow arose, and without
+another look at them it walked away into the dusky field. The Thin
+Woman told the children afterwards that she was sorry she had said
+anything, but she was unable to bring her self to apologise to the
+cow, and so they were forced to resume their journey in order to
+keep themselves warm.
+
+There was a sickle moon in the sky, a tender sword whose radiance
+stayed in its own high places and did not at all illumine the heavy
+world below; the glimmer of infrequent stars could also be seen
+with spacious, dark solitudes between them; but on the earth the
+darkness gathered in fold on fold of misty veiling, through which
+the trees uttered an earnest whisper, and the grasses lifted their
+little voices, and the wind crooned its thrilling, stern lament.
+
+As the travellers walked on, their eyes, flinching from the
+darkness, rested joyfully on the gracious moon, but that joy lasted
+only for a little time. The Thin Woman spoke to them curiously
+about the moon, and, indeed, she might speak with assurance on that
+subject, for her ancestors had sported in the cold beam through
+countless dim generations.
+
+“It is not known,” said she, “that the fairies seldom dance for
+joy, but for sadness that they have been expelled from the sweet
+dawn, and therefore their midnight revels are only ceremonies
+to remind them of their happy state in the morning of the world
+before thoughtful curiosity and self-righteous moralities drove
+them from the kind face of the sun to the dark exile of midnight.
+It is strange that we may not be angry while looking on the moon.
+Indeed, no mere appetite or passion of any kind dare become
+imperative in the presence of the Shining One; and this, in a more
+limited degree, is true also of every form of beauty; for there
+is something in an absolute beauty to chide away the desires of
+materiality and yet to dissolve the spirit in ecstasies of fear and
+sadness. Beauty has no liking for Thought, but will send terror
+and sorrow on those who look upon her with intelligent eyes. We
+may neither be angry nor gay in the presence of the moon, nor may
+we dare to think in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely
+afflict us. I think that she is not benevolent but malign, and
+that her mildness is a cloak for many shy infamies. I think that
+beauty tends to become frightful as it becomes perfect, and that,
+if we could see it comprehendingly, the extreme of beauty is a
+desolating hideousness, and that the name of ultimate, absolute
+beauty is Madness. Therefore men should seek loveliness rather
+than beauty, and so they would always have a friend to go beside
+them, to understand and to comfort them, for that is the business
+of loveliness: but the business of beauty—there is no person
+at all knows what that is. Beauty is the extreme which has not
+yet swung to and become merged in its opposite. The poets have
+sung of this beauty and the philosophers have prophesied of it,
+thinking that the beauty which passes all understanding is also
+the peace which passeth understanding; but I think that whatever
+passes understanding, which is imagination, is terrible, standing
+aloof from humanity and from kindness, and that this is the sin
+against the Holy Ghost, the great Artist. An isolated perfection
+is a symbol of terror and pride, and it is followed only by the
+head of man, but the heart winces from it aghast, cleaving to
+that loveliness which is modesty and righteousness. Every extreme
+is bad, in order that it may swing to and fertilize its equally
+horrible opposite.”
+
+Thus, speaking more to herself than to the children, the Thin Woman
+beguiled the way. The moon had brightened as she spoke, and on
+either side of the path, wherever there was a tree or a rise in the
+ground, a black shadow was crouching tensely watchful, seeming as
+if it might spring into terrible life at a bound. Of these shadows
+the children became so fearful that the Thin Woman forsook the path
+and adventured on the open hillside, so that in a short time the
+road was left behind and around them stretched the quiet slopes in
+the full shining of the moon.
+
+When they had walked for a long time the children became sleepy;
+they were unused to being awake in the night, and as there was no
+place where they could rest, and as it was evident that they could
+not walk much further, the Thin Woman grew anxious. Already Brigid
+had made a tiny, whimpering sound, and Seumas had followed this
+with a sigh, the slightest prolongation of which might have trailed
+into a sob, and when children are overtaken by tears they do not
+understand how to escape from them until they are simply bored by
+much weeping.
+
+[Illustration: When they topped a slight incline they saw a light
+shining some distance away]
+
+When they topped a slight incline they saw a light shining some
+distance away, and toward this the Thin Woman hurried. As they drew
+near she saw it was a small fire, and around this some figures were
+seated. In a few minutes she came into the circle of the firelight,
+and here she halted suddenly. She would have turned and fled, but
+fear loosened her knees so that they would not obey her will;
+also the people by the fire had observed her, and a great voice
+commanded that she should draw near.
+
+The fire was made of branches of heather, and beside it three
+figures sat. The Thin Woman, hiding her perturbation as well as
+she could, came nigh and sat down by the fire. After a low word of
+greeting she gave some of her cake to the children, drew them close
+to her, wrapped her shawl about their heads and bade them sleep.
+Then, shrinkingly, she looked at her hosts.
+
+They were quite naked, and each of them gazed on her with intent
+earnestness. The first was so beautiful that the eye failed upon
+him, flinching aside as from a great brightness. He was of mighty
+stature, and yet so nobly proportioned, so exquisitely slender and
+graceful, that no idea of gravity or bulk went with his height.
+His face was kingly and youthful and of a terrifying serenity. The
+second man was of equal height, but broad to wonderment. So broad
+was he that his great height seemed diminished. The tense arm on
+which he leaned was knotted and ridged with muscle, and his hand
+gripped deeply into the ground. His face seemed as though it had
+been hammered from hard rock, a massive, blunt face as rigid as
+his arm. The third man can scarcely be described. He was neither
+short nor tall. He was muscled as heavily as the second man. As he
+sat he looked like a colossal toad squatting with his arms about
+his knees, and upon these his chin rested. He had no shape nor
+swiftness, and his head was flattened down and was scarcely wider
+than his neck. He had a protruding dog-like mouth that twitched
+occasionally, and from his little eyes there glinted a horrible
+intelligence. Before this man the soul of the Thin Woman grovelled.
+She felt herself crawling to him. The last terrible abasement of
+which humanity is capable came upon her: a fascination which would
+have drawn her to him in screaming adoration. Hardly could she look
+away from him, but her arms were about the children, and love,
+mightiest of the powers, stirred fiercely in her heart.
+
+The first man spoke to her.
+
+“Woman,” said he, “for what purpose do you go abroad on this night
+and on this hill?”
+
+“I travel, sir,” said the Thin Woman, “searching for the Brugh of
+Angus the son of the Dagda Mór.”
+
+“We are all children of the Great Father,” said he. “Do you know
+who we are?”
+
+“I do not know that,” said she.
+
+“We are the Three Absolutes, the Three Redeemers, the three
+Alembics—the Most Beautiful Man, the Strongest Man and the Ugliest
+Man. In the midst of every strife we go unhurt. We count the slain
+and the victors and pass on laughing, and to us in the eternal
+order come all the peoples of the world to be regenerated for ever.
+Why have you called to us?”
+
+“I did not call to you, indeed,” said the Thin Woman; “but why do
+you sit in the path so that travellers to the House of the Dagda
+are halted on their journey?”
+
+“There are no paths closed to us,” he replied; “even the gods seek
+us, for they grow weary in their splendid desolation—saving Him who
+liveth in all things and in us; Him we serve and before His awful
+front we abase ourselves. You, O Woman, who are walking in the
+valleys of anger, have called to us in your heart, therefore we are
+waiting for you on the side of the hill. Choose now one of us to be
+your mate, and do not fear to choose, for our kingdoms are equal
+and our powers are equal.”
+
+“Why would I choose one of you,” replied the Thin Woman, “when I am
+well married already to the best man in the world?”
+
+“Beyond us there is no best man,” said he, “for we are the best in
+beauty, and the best in strength, and the best in ugliness; there
+is no excellence which is not contained in us three. If you are
+married what does that matter to us who are free from the pettiness
+of jealousy and fear, being at one with ourselves and with every
+manifestation of nature.”
+
+“If,” she replied, “you are the Absolute and are above all
+pettiness, can you not be superior to me also and let me pass
+quietly on my road to the Dagda!”
+
+“We are what all humanity desire,” quoth he, “and we desire all
+humanity. There is nothing, small or great, disdained by our
+immortal appetites. It is not lawful, even for the Absolute, to
+outgrow Desire, which is the breath of God quick in his creatures
+and not to be bounded or surmounted by any perfection.”
+
+During this conversation the other great figures had leaned forward
+listening intently but saying nothing. The Thin Woman could feel
+the children like little, terrified birds pressing closely and very
+quietly to her sides.
+
+“Sir,” said she, “tell me what is Beauty and what is Strength and
+what is Ugliness? for, although I can see these things, I do not
+know what they are.”
+
+“I will tell you that,” he replied—“Beauty is Thought and Strength
+is Love and Ugliness is Generation. The home of Beauty is the head
+of man. The home of Strength is the heart of man, and in the loins
+Ugliness keeps his dreadful state. If you come with me you shall
+know all delight. You shall live unharmed in the flame of the
+spirit, and nothing that is gross shall bind your limbs or hinder
+your thought. You shall move as a queen amongst all raging passions
+without torment or despair. Never shall you be driven or ashamed,
+but always you will choose your own paths and walk with me in
+freedom and contentment and beauty.”
+
+“All things,” said the Thin Woman, “must act according to the order
+of their being, and so I say to Thought, if you hold me against my
+will presently I will bind you against your will, for the holder
+of an unwilling mate becomes the guardian and the slave of his
+captive.”
+
+“That is true,” said he, “and against a thing that is true I cannot
+contend; therefore, you are free from me, but from my brethren you
+are not free.”
+
+The Thin Woman turned to the second man.
+
+“You are Strength?” said she.
+
+“I am Strength and Love,” he boomed, “and with me there is safety
+and peace; my days have honour and my nights quietness. There is
+no evil thing walks near my lands, nor is any sound heard but the
+lowing of my cattle, the songs of my birds and the laughter of my
+happy children. Come then to me who gives protection and happiness
+and peace, and does not fail or grow weary at any time.”
+
+“I will not go with you,” said the Thin Woman, “for I am a mother
+and my strength cannot be increased; I am a mother and my love
+cannot be added to. What have I further to desire from thee, thou
+great man?”
+
+“You are free of me,” said the second man, “but from my brother you
+are not free.”
+
+Then to the third man the Thin Woman addressed herself in terror,
+for to that hideous one something cringed within her in an ecstasy
+of loathing. That repulsion which at its strongest becomes
+attraction gripped her. A shiver, a plunge, and she had gone, but
+the hands of the children withheld her while in woe she abased
+herself before him.
+
+He spoke, and his voice came clogged and painful as though it urged
+from the matted pores of the earth itself.
+
+“There is none left to whom you may go but me only. Do not be
+afraid, but come to me and I will give you these wild delights
+which have been long forgotten. All things which are crude and
+riotous, all that is gross and without limit is mine. You shall
+not think and suffer any longer; but you shall feel so surely that
+the heat of the sun will be happiness: the taste of food, the wind
+that blows upon you, the ripe ease of your body—these things will
+amaze you who have forgotten them. My great arms about you will
+make you furious and young again; you shall leap on the hillside
+like a young goat and sing for joy as the birds sing. Leave this
+crabbed humanity that is barred and chained away from joy and come
+with me, to whose ancient quietude at the last both Strength and
+Beauty will come like children tired in the evening, returning to
+the freedom of the brutes and the birds, with bodies sufficient for
+their pleasure and with no care for Thought or foolish curiosity.”
+
+But the Thin Woman drew back from his hand, saying “It is not
+lawful to turn again when the journey is commenced, but to go
+forward to whatever is appointed; nor may we return to your meadows
+and trees and sunny places who have once departed from them. The
+torments of the mind may not be renounced for any easement of
+the body until the smoke that blinds us is blown away, and the
+tormenting flame has fitted us for that immortal ecstasy which is
+the bosom of God. Nor is it lawful that ye great ones should beset
+the path of travellers, seeking to lure them away with cunning
+promises. It is only at the cross-roads ye may sit where the
+traveller will hesitate and be in doubt, but on the highway ye have
+no power.”
+
+“You are free of me,” said the third man, “until you are ready
+to come to me again, for I only of all things am steadfast
+and patient, and to me all return in their seasons. There are
+brightnesses in my secret places in the woods, and lamps in my
+gardens beneath the hills, tended by the angels of God, and behind
+my face there is another face not hated by the Bright Ones.”
+
+So the three Absolutes arose and strode mightily away; and as they
+went their thunderous speech to each other boomed against the
+clouds and the earth like a gusty wind, and, even when they had
+disappeared, that great rumble could be heard dying gently away in
+the moonlit distances.
+
+The Thin Woman and the children went slowly forward on the rugged,
+sloping way. Far beyond, near the distant summit of the hill there
+was a light gleaming.
+
+“Yonder,” said the Thin Woman, “is the Brugh of Angus Mac an Óg,
+the son of the Dagda Mór,” and toward this light she assisted the
+weary children.
+
+In a little she was in the presence of the god and by him refreshed
+and comforted. She told him all that had happened to her husband
+and implored his assistance. This was readily accorded, for the
+chief business of the gods is to give protection and assistance
+to such of their people as require it; but (and this is their
+limitation) they cannot give any help until it is demanded, the
+freewill of mankind being the most jealously guarded and holy
+principle in life; therefore, the interference of the loving gods
+comes only on an equally loving summons.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Caitilin Ni Murrachu sat alone in the Brugh of Angus much as she
+had sat on the hillside and in the cave of Pan, and again she was
+thinking. She was happy now. There was nothing more she could
+desire, for all that the earth contained or the mind could describe
+was hers. Her thoughts were no longer those shy, subterranean
+gropings which elude the hand and the understanding. Each thought
+was a thing or a person, visible in its own radiant personal life,
+and to be seen or felt, welcomed or repulsed, as was its due. But
+she had discovered that happiness is not laughter or satisfaction,
+and that no person can be happy for themselves alone. So she had
+come to understand the terrible sadness of the gods, and why Angus
+wept in secret; for often in the night she had heard him weeping,
+and she knew that his tears were for those others who were unhappy,
+and that he could not be comforted while there was a woeful person
+or an evil deed hiding in the world. Her own happiness also had
+become infected with this alien misery, until she knew that nothing
+was alien to her, and that in truth all persons and all things were
+her brothers and sisters and that they were living and dying in
+distress; and at the last she knew that there was not any man but
+mankind, nor any human being but only humanity. Never again could
+the gratification of a desire give her pleasure for her sense of
+oneness was destroyed—she was not an individual only; she was also
+part of a mighty organism ordained, through whatever stress, to
+achieve its oneness, and this great being was threefold, comprising
+in its mighty units God and Man and Nature—the immortal trinity.
+The duty of life is the sacrifice of self: it is to renounce the
+little ego that the mighty ego may be freed; and, knowing this,
+she found at last that she knew Happiness, that divine discontent
+which cannot rest nor be at ease until its bourne is attained and
+the knowledge of a man is added to the gaiety of a child. Angus
+had told her that beyond this there lay the great ecstasy which
+is Love and God and the beginning and the end of all things; for
+everything must come from the Liberty into the Bondage, that it may
+return again to the Liberty comprehending all things and fitted for
+that fiery enjoyment. This cannot be until there are no more fools
+living, for until the last fool has grown wise wisdom will totter
+and freedom will still be invisible. Growth is not by years but by
+multitudes, and until there is a common eye no one person can see
+God, for the eye of all nature will scarcely be great enough to
+look upon that majesty. We shall greet Happiness by multitudes, but
+we can only greet Him by starry systems and a universal love.
+
+She was so thinking when Angus Óg came to her from the fields. The
+god was very radiant, smiling like the young morn when the buds
+awake, and to his lips song came instead of speech.
+
+“My beloved,” said he, “we will go on a journey to-day.”
+
+“My delight is where you go,” said Caitilin.
+
+“We will go down to the world of men—from our quiet dwelling among
+the hills to the noisy city and the multitude of people. This will
+be our first journey, but on a time not distant we will go to them
+again, and we will not return from that journey, for we will live
+among our people and be at peace.”
+
+“May the day come soon,” said she.
+
+“When thy son is a man he will go before us on that journey,” said
+Angus, and Caitilin shivered with a great delight, knowing that a
+son would be born to her.
+
+[Illustration: Caitilin danced in uncontrollable gaiety]
+
+Then Angus Óg put upon his bride glorious raiment, and they went
+out to the sunlight. It was the early morning, the sun had just
+risen and the dew was sparkling on the heather and the grass. There
+was a keen stir in the air that stung the blood to joy, so that
+Caitilin danced in uncontrollable gaiety, and Angus, with a merry
+voice, chanted to the sky and danced also. About his shining head
+the birds were flying; for every kiss he gave to Caitilin became a
+bird, the messengers of love and wisdom, and they also burst into
+triumphant melody, so that the quiet place rang with their glee.
+Constantly from the circling birds one would go flying with great
+speed to all quarters of space. These were his messengers flying to
+every fort and dún, every rath and glen and valley of Eiré to raise
+the Sluaige Shee (the Fairy Host). They were birds of love that
+flew, for this was a hosting of happiness, and, therefore the Shee
+would not bring weapons with them.
+
+It was towards Kilmasheogue their happy steps were directed, and
+soon they came to the mountain.
+
+After the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath had left the god she visited
+all the fairy forts of Kilmasheogue, and directed the Shee who
+lived there to be in waiting at the dawn on the summit of the
+mountain; consequently, when Angus and Caitilin came up the hill,
+they found the six clans coming to receive them, and with these
+were the people of the younger Shee, members of the Tuatha da
+Danaan, tall and beautiful men and women who had descended to the
+quiet underworld when the pressure of the sons of Milith forced
+them with their kind enchantments and invincible valour to the
+country of the gods.
+
+Of those who came were Aine Ni Eogáil of Cnoc Aine and Ivil of
+Craglea, the queens of North and South Munster, and Una the queen
+of Ormond; these, with their hosts, sang upon the summit of the
+hill welcoming the god. There came the five guardians of Ulster,
+the fomentors of combat:—Brier Mac Belgan of Dromona Breg, Redg
+Rotbill from the slopes of Magh-Itar, Tinnel the son of Boclacthna
+of Slieve Edlicon, Grici of Cruachán-Aigle, a goodly name, and
+Gulban Glas Mac Grici, whose dún is in the Ben of Gulban. These
+five, matchless in combat, marched up the hill with their tribes,
+shouting as they went. From north and south they came, and from
+east and west, bright and happy beings, a multitude, without fear,
+without distraction, so that soon the hill was gay with their
+voices and their noble raiment.
+
+Among them came the people of the Lupra, the ancient Leprecauns
+of the world, leaping like goats among the knees of the heroes.
+They were headed by their king Udán Mac Audain and Beg Mac Beg his
+tanist, and, following behind, was Glomhar O’Glomrach of the sea,
+the strongest man of their people, dressed in the skin of a weasel;
+and there were also the chief men of that clan, well known of old,
+Conan Mac Rihid, Gaerku Mac Gairid, Mether Mac Mintan and Esirt
+Mac Beg, the son of Bueyen, born in a victory. This king was that
+same Udán the chief of the Lupra who had been placed under bonds
+to taste the porridge in the great cauldron of Emania, into which
+pot he fell, and was taken captive with his wife, and held for five
+weary years, until he surrendered that which he most valued in the
+world, even his boots: the people of the hills laugh still at the
+story, and the Leprecauns may still be mortified by it.
+
+There came Bove Derg, the Fiery, seldom seen, and his harper the
+son of Trogain, whose music heals the sick and makes the sad heart
+merry; Rochy Mac Elathan, Dagda Mór, the Father of Stars, and his
+daughter from the Cave of Cruachán; Credh Mac Aedh of Raghery and
+Cas Corach son of the great Ollav; Mananaan Mac Lir came from his
+wide waters shouting louder than the wind, with his daughters
+Cliona and Aoife and Etain Fair-Hair; and Coll and Cecht and Mac
+Greina, the Plough, the Hazel, and the Sun came with their wives,
+whose names are not forgotten, even Banba and Fodla and Eiré, names
+of glory. Lugh of the Long-Hand, filled with mysterious wisdom,
+was not absent, whose father was sadly avenged on the sons of
+Turann—these with their hosts.
+
+And one came also to whom the hosts shouted with mighty love, even
+the Serene One, Dana, the Mother of the gods, steadfast for ever.
+Her breath is on the morning, her smile is summer. From her hand
+the birds of the air take their food. The mild ox is her friend,
+and the wolf trots by her friendly side; at her voice the daisy
+peeps from her cave and the nettle couches his lance. The rose
+arrays herself in innocence, scattering abroad her sweetness with
+the dew, and the oak tree laughs to her in the air. Thou beautiful!
+the lambs follow thy footsteps, they crop thy bounty in the meadows
+and are not thwarted: the weary men cling to thy bosom everlasting.
+Through thee all actions and the deeds of men, through thee all
+voices come to us, even the Divine Promise and the breath of the
+Almighty from afar laden with goodness.
+
+With wonder, with delight, the daughter of Murrachu watched the
+hosting of the Shee. Sometimes her eyes were dazzled as a jewelled
+forehead blazed in the sun, or a shoulder-torque of broad gold
+flamed like a torch. On fair hair and dark the sun gleamed: white
+arms tossed and glanced a moment and sank and reappeared. The eyes
+of those who did not hesitate nor compute looked into her eyes,
+not appraising, not questioning, but mild and unafraid. The voices
+of free people spoke in her ears and the laughter of happy hearts,
+unthoughtful of sin or shame, released from the hard bondage of
+selfhood. For these people, though many, were one. Each spoke to
+the other as to himself, without reservation or subterfuge. They
+moved freely each in his personal whim, and they moved also with
+the unity of one being: for when they shouted to the Mother of the
+gods they shouted with one voice, and they bowed to her as one man
+bows. Through the many minds there went also one mind, correcting,
+commanding, so that in a moment the interchangeable and fluid
+became locked, and organic with a simultaneous understanding, a
+collective action-which was freedom.
+
+While she looked the dancing ceased, and they turned their faces
+with one accord down the mountain. Those in the front leaped
+forward, and behind them the others went leaping in orderly
+progression.
+
+Then Angus Óg ran to where she stood, his bride of Beauty “Come, my
+beloved,” said he, and hand in hand they raced among the others,
+laughing as they ran.
+
+Here there was no green thing growing; a carpet of brown turf
+spread to the edge of sight on the sloping plain and away to
+where another mountain soared in the air. They came to this and
+descended. In the distance, groves of trees could be seen, and,
+very far away, the roofs and towers and spires of the Town of the
+Ford of Hurdles, and the little roads that wandered everywhere; but
+on this height there was only prickly furze growing softly in the
+sunlight; the bee droned his loud song, the birds flew and sang
+occasionally, and the little streams grew heavy with their falling
+waters. A little further and the bushes were green and beautiful,
+waving their gentle leaves in the quietude, and beyond again,
+wrapped in sunshine and peace, the trees looked on the world from
+their calm heights, having no complaint to make of anything.
+
+In a little they reached the grass land and the dance began. Hand
+sought for hand, feet moved companionably as though they loved each
+other; quietly intimate they tripped without faltering, and, then,
+the loud song arose—they sang to the lovers of gaiety and peace,
+long defrauded “Come to us, ye who do not know where ye are—ye who
+live among strangers in the house of dismay and self-righteousness.
+Poor, awkward ones! How bewildered and bedevilled ye go! Amazed ye
+look and do not comprehend, for your eyes are set upon a star and
+your feet move in the blessed kingdoms of the Shee Innocents! in
+what prisons are ye flung? To what lowliness are ye bowed? How are
+ye ground between the laws and the customs? The dark people of the
+Fomor have ye in thrall; and upon your minds they have fastened a
+band of lead, your hearts are hung with iron, and about your loins
+a cincture of brass impressed, woeful! Believe it, that the sun
+does shine, the flowers grow, and the birds sing pleasantly in the
+trees. The free winds are everywhere, the water tumbles on the
+hills, the eagle calls aloud through the solitude, and his mate
+comes speedily. The bees are gathering honey in the sunlight, the
+midges dance together, and the great bull bellows across the river.
+The crow says a word to his brethren, and the wren snuggles her
+young in the hedge.... Come to us, ye lovers of life and happiness.
+Hold out thy hand—a brother shall seize it from afar. Leave the
+plough and the cart for a little time: put aside the needle and the
+awl—Is leather thy brother, O man?... Come away! come away! from
+the loom and the desk, from the shop where the carcasses are hung,
+from the place where raiment is sold and the place where it is sewn
+in darkness: O bad treachery! Is it for joy you sit in the broker’s
+den, thou pale man? Has the attorney enchanted thee?... Come away!
+for the dance has begun lightly, the wind is sounding over the
+hill, the sun laughs down into the valley, and the sea leaps upon
+the shingle, panting for joy, dancing, dancing, dancing for joy....”
+
+They swept through the goat tracks and the little boreens and the
+curving roads. Down to the city they went dancing and singing;
+among the streets and the shops telling their sunny tale; not
+heeding the malignant eyes and the cold brows as the sons of Balor
+looked sidewards. And they took the Philosopher from his prison,
+even the Intellect of Man they took from the hands of the doctors
+and lawyers, from the sly priests, from the professors whose mouths
+are gorged with sawdust, and the merchants who sell blades of
+grass—the awful people of the Fomor . . . and then they returned
+again, dancing and singing, to the country of the gods....
+
+
+
+
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