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+Project Gutenberg's Poets and Dreamers, by Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poets and Dreamers
+       Studies and translations from the Irish
+
+Author: Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
+
+Translator: Lady Augusta Gregory
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2006 [EBook #18070]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETS AND DREAMERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POETS AND DREAMERS:
+STUDIES & TRANSLATIONS FROM
+THE IRISH, BY LADY GREGORY.
+
+
+
+DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, & CO., LTD.
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+1903.
+
+
+
+
+TO SOME UNDERGRADUATES OF TRINITY COLLEGE
+
+
+    'Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,
+    In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best;
+    In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;
+    Happiness, knowledge not in another place, but this place--not for
+        another hour but this hour.'
+
+WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                  PAGE
+RAFTERY                              1
+
+WEST IRISH BALLADS                  47
+
+JACOBITE BALLADS                    66
+
+AN CRAOIBHIN'S POEMS                76
+
+BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND             89
+
+A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND      98
+
+MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY                  104
+
+HERB-HEALING                       111
+
+THE WANDERING TRIBE                121
+
+WORKHOUSE DREAMS                   128
+
+ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD           193
+
+AN CRAOIBHIN'S PLAYS:--            196
+
+    THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE       200
+
+    THE MARRIAGE                   216
+
+    THE LOST SAINT                 236
+
+    THE NATIVITY                   244
+
+
+
+
+POETS AND DREAMERS
+
+
+
+
+RAFTERY
+
+
+I.
+
+One winter afternoon as I sat by the fire in a ward of Gort Workhouse, I
+listened to two old women arguing about the merits of two rival poets
+they had seen and heard in their childhood.
+
+One old woman, who was from Kilchreest, said: 'Raftery hadn't a stim of
+sight; and he travelled the whole nation; and he was the best poet that
+ever was, and the best fiddler. It was always at my father's house,
+opposite the big tree, that he used to stop when he was in Kilchreest. I
+often saw him; but I didn't take much notice of him then, being a child;
+it was after that I used to hear so much about him. Though he was blind,
+he could serve himself with his knife and fork as well as any man with
+his sight. I remember the way he used to cut the meat--across, like
+this. Callinan was nothing to him.'
+
+The other old woman, who was from Craughwell, said: 'Callinan was a
+great deal better than him; and he could make songs in English as well
+as in Irish; Raftery would run from where Callinan was. And he was a
+nice respectable man, too, with cows and sheep, and a kind man. _He_
+would never put anything that wasn't nice into a poem, and _he_ would
+never run anyone down; but if you were the worst in the world, he'd make
+you the best in it; and when his wife lost her beetle, he made a song of
+fifteen verses about it.'
+
+'Well,' the Kilchreest old woman admitted, 'Raftery would run people
+down; he was someway bitter; and if he had anything against a person,
+he'd give him a great lacerating. But there were more for him than for
+Callinan; some used to say Callinan's songs were too long.'
+
+'I tell you,' said the other, 'Callinan was a nice man and a nice
+neighbour. Raftery wasn't fit to put beside him. Callinan was a man that
+would go out of his own back door, and make a poem about the four
+quarters of the earth. I tell you, you would stand in the snow to listen
+to Callinan!' But, just then, a bedridden old woman suddenly sat up and
+began to sing Raftery's 'Bridget Vesach' as long as her breath lasted;
+so the last word was for him after all.
+
+Raftery died over sixty years ago; but there are many old people still
+living, besides those two old women, who have seen him, and who keep his
+songs in their memory. What they tell of him shows how closely he was in
+the old tradition of the bards, the wandering poets of two thousand
+years or more. His satire, his praises, his competitions with other
+poets were the dread and the pride of many Galway and Mayo parishes. And
+now the songs that he never wrote down, being blind, are known, if not
+as our people say, 'all over the world,' at least in all places where
+Irish is spoken.
+
+Raftery's satires, as I have heard them repeated by the country people,
+do not seem, even in their rhymed original--he only composed in
+Irish--to have the 'sharp spur' of some of his predecessors, such as
+O'Higinn, whose tongue was cut out by men from Sligo, who had suffered
+from it, or O'Daly, who criticised the poverty of the Irish chiefs in
+the sixteenth century until the servant of one of them stuck a knife
+into his throat. Yet they were much dreaded. 'He was very sharp with
+anyone that didn't please him,' I have been told; 'and no one would like
+to be put in his songs.' And though it is said of his songs in praise of
+his friends that 'whoever he praised was well praised,' it was thought
+safer that one's own name should not appear in them. The man at whose
+house he died said to me: 'He used often to come and stop with us, but
+he never made a verse about us; my father wouldn't have liked that.
+Someway it doesn't bring luck.' And another man says: 'My father often
+told me about Raftery. He was someway gifted, and people were afraid of
+him. I was often told by men that gave him a lift in their car when they
+overtook him now and again, that if he asked their name, they wouldn't
+give it, for fear he might put it in a song.' And another man says:
+'There was a friend of my father's was driving his car on the road one
+day, and he saw Raftery, but he didn't let on to see him. But when he
+was passing, Raftery said: "There was never a soldier marching but would
+get his billet. But the rabbit has an enemy in the ferret;" so then the
+man said in a hurry, "Oh, Mr. Raftery, I never knew it was you: won't
+you get up and take a seat in the car?"' A girl in whose praise he had
+made a song, Mary Hynes, of Ballylee, died young, and had a troubled
+life; and one of her neighbours says of her: 'No one that has a song
+made about them will ever live long;' and another says: 'She got a great
+tossing up and down; and at last she died in the middle of a bog.' They
+tell, too, of a bush that he once took shelter under from the rain, and
+how he 'praised it first; and then when it let the rain down, he
+dispraised it, and it withered up, and never put out leaf or branch
+after.' I have seen his poem on the bush in a manuscript book, carefully
+written in the beautiful Irish character, and the great treasure of a
+stonecutter's cottage. This is the form of the curse: 'I pronounce
+ugliness upon you. That bloom or leaf may never grow on you, but the
+flame of the mountain fires and of bonfires be upon you. That you may
+get your punishment from Oscar's flail, to hack and to bruise you with
+the big sledge of a forge.'
+
+There are some other verses made by him that have been less legendary in
+their effect. The story is:--'It was Anthony Daly, a carpenter, was
+hanged at Seefin. It was the two Z's got him put away. He was brought
+before a judge in Galway, and accused of being a Captain of Whiteboys,
+and it was sworn against him that he fired at Mr. X. He was a one-eyed
+man; and he said: "If I did, though I have but one eye, I would have hit
+him"--for he was a very good shot; and he asked that some object should
+be put up, and he would show the judge that he would hit it, but he said
+nothing else. Some were afraid he'd give up the names of the other
+Whiteboys; but he did not. There was a gallows put up at Seefin; and he
+was brought there sitting on his coffin in a cart. There were people all
+the way along the road, and they were calling on him to break through
+the crowd, and they'd save him; and some of the soldiers were Irish, and
+they called back that if he did they'd only fire their guns in the air;
+but he made no attempt, but went to the gallows quiet enough. There was
+a man in Gort was telling me he saw it, planting potatoes he was at
+Seefin that day. It was in the year 1820; and Raftery was there at the
+hanging, and he made a song about it. The first verse of the song said:
+"Wasn't that the good tree, that wouldn't let any branch that was on it
+fall to the ground?" He meant by that that he didn't give up the names
+of the other Whiteboys. And at the end he called down judgment from God
+on the two Z's, and, if not on them, on their children. And they that
+had land and farms in all parts, lost it after; and all they had
+vanished; and the most of their children died--only two left, one a
+friar, and the other living in the town.' And quite lately I have been
+told by another neighbour, in corroboration, that a girl of the Z family
+married into a family near his home the other day, and was coldly
+received; and when my neighbour asked one of the family why this was, he
+was told that 'those of her people that went so high ought to have gone
+higher'--meaning that they themselves ought to have been on the gallows;
+and then he knew that Raftery's curse was still having its effect. And
+he had also heard that the grass had never grown again at Seefin.
+
+This is a part of the song:--
+
+     'The evening of Friday of the Crucifixion, the Gael was under the
+     mercy of the Gall. It was as heavy the same day as when the only
+     Son of Mary was on the tree. I have hope in the Son of God, my
+     grief! and it is of no use for me; and it was Conall and his wife
+     hung Daly, and may they be paid for it!
+
+     'But oh! young woman, while I live, I put death on the village
+     where you will be; plague and death on it; and may the flood rise
+     over it; that much is no sin at all, O bright God; and I pray with
+     longing it may fall on the man that hung Daly; that left his people
+     and his children crying.
+
+     'O stretch out your limbs! The air is murky overhead; there is
+     darkness on the sun, and the fish do not leap in the water; there
+     is no dew on the grass, and the birds do not sing sweetly. With
+     sorrow after you, Daly, till death, there never will be fruit on
+     the trees.
+
+     'And that is the true man, that didn't humble himself or lower
+     himself to the Gall; Anthony Daly, O Son of God! He was that with
+     us always, without a lie. But he died a good Irishman; and he never
+     bowed the head to any man; and it was with false swearing that
+     Daly was hung, and with the strength of the Gall.
+
+     'If I were a clerk--kind, light, cheerful with the pen--it is I
+     would write your ways in clear Irish on a flag above your head. A
+     thousand and eight hundred and sixteen, and four put to that, from
+     the coming of the Son of God, to the death of Daly at the Castle of
+     Seefin.'
+
+I have heard, and have also seen in manuscript, a terrible list of
+curses that he hurled at the head of another poet, Seaghan Burke. But
+these were, I think, looked on as a mere professional display, and do
+not seem to have any ill effect.
+
+Here are some of them:--
+
+     'That God may perish you on the mountain-side, without a priest,
+     bishop, or clerk. Seven years may you be senseless and without wit,
+     going from door to door as an unfortunate creature.
+
+     'May you have a mouth that will go back to your ear, and may your
+     lips be turned back like gums; that your legs may lose feeling from
+     the knee down, your eyes lose their sight, and your hands lose
+     their strength.
+
+     'Deformity and lameness and corruption upon you; flight and defeat
+     and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you
+     nine times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,'
+     it is explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death,
+     and it is the time He can best hear the curses of the poor').
+
+     'May a sore heart and cold flesh be upon you; may there be no
+     marrow or moisture in your bones. That clay may never be put over
+     your coffin-boards, but wind and a sharp blast on you from the
+     north.
+
+     'Baldness and nakedness come upon you, judgment from above, and the
+     curses of the crowd. May dragon's gall and poison mixed through it
+     be your best drink at the hour of death.'
+
+Sometimes he left a scathing verse on a place where he was not well
+treated, as: 'Oranmore without merriment. A little town in scarce
+fields--a broken little town, with its back to the water, and with women
+that have no understanding.'
+
+He did not spare persons any more than places, especially if they were
+well-to-do, for his gentleness was for the poor. An old woman who
+remembers him says: 'He didn't care much about big houses. Just if they
+were people he liked, and that he was friendly with them, he would be
+kind enough to go in and see them.' A Mr. Burke, who met him going from
+his house, asked how he had fared, and he said in a scornful verse:--
+
+    'Potatoes that were softer than the fog,
+    And with neither butter nor meat,
+    And milk that was sourer than apples in harvest--
+    That's what Raftery got from Burke of Kilfinn.'
+
+'And Mr. Burke begged him to rhyme no more, but to come back, and he
+would be well taken care of.' I am told of another house he abused and
+that is now deserted: 'Frenchforth of the soot, that was wedded to the
+smoke, that is all that remains of the property.... There were some of
+them on mules, and some of them unruly, and the biggest of them were
+smaller than asses, and the master cracking them with a stick;' 'but he
+went no further than that, because he remembered the good treatment used
+to be there in former times, and he wouldn't have said that much if it
+wasn't for the servants that vexed him.' A satire, that is remembered
+in Aran, was made with the better intention of helping a barefooted
+girl, who had been kept waiting a long time for a pair of shoes she had
+ordered. Raftery came, and sat down before the shoemaker's house, and
+began:--
+
+     'A young little girl without sense, the ground tearing her feet, is
+     not satisfied yet by the lying Peter Glynn. Peter Glynn, the liar,
+     in his little house by the side of the road, is without the
+     strength in his arms to slip together a pair of brogues.'
+
+'And, before he had finished the lines, Peter Glynn ran out and called
+to him to stop, and he set at work on the shoes then and there.' He even
+ventured to poke a little satire at a priest sometimes. 'He went into
+the chapel at Kilchreest one time, and there was some cabbage after
+being stolen from a garden, and the priest was speaking about it.
+Raftery was at the bottom of the chapel, and at last he called out in
+verse:--"What a lot of talk about cabbage! If there was meat with it, it
+would feed the whole parish!" The priest didn't mind, but afterwards he
+came down, and said: "Where is the cabbage man?" and asked him to make
+some more verses about it; but whether he did or not I don't know.' And
+another time, I am told: 'A priest wanted to teach him the rite of lay
+baptism; for there were scattered houses a priest might take a long time
+getting to, away from the roads, and certain persons were authorized to
+give the rite. So the priest put his hat in Raftery's hand, and told him
+the words to say; but it is what he said: "I baptize you without either
+foot or hand, without salt or tow, beer or drink. Your father was a ram
+and your mother was a sheep, and your like never came to be baptized
+before." He was put under a curse, too, one time by a priest, and he
+made a song about him; but he said he put his frock out of the bargain,
+and it was only the priest's own body he would speak about. And the
+priest let him alone after that.' And an old basket-maker, who had told
+me some of these things, said at the end: 'That is why the poets had to
+be banished before in the time of St. Columcill. Sure no one could stand
+the satire of them.'
+
+
+II.
+
+Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great
+extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was
+born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years. It is hard to say
+where history ends in them and religion and politics begin; for history,
+religion, and politics grow on one stem in Ireland, an eternal trefoil.
+'He was a great historian,' it is said; 'for every book he'd get hold
+of, he'd get it read out to him.' And a neighbour tells me: 'He used to
+stop with my uncle that was a hedge schoolmaster in those times in
+Ballylee, and that was very fond of drink; and when he was drunk, he'd
+take his clothes off, and run naked through the country. But at evening
+he'd open the school; and the neighbours that would be working all day
+would gather in to him, and he'd teach them through the night; and there
+Raftery would be in the middle of them.' His chief historical poem is
+the 'Talk with the Bush,' of over three hundred lines. Many of the
+people can repeat it, or a part of it, and some possess it in
+manuscript. The bush, a forerunner of the 'Talking Oak' or the 'Father
+of the Forest,' gives its recollections, which go back to the times of
+the Firbolgs, the Tuatha De Danaan, 'without heart, without humanity';
+the Sons of the Gael; the heroic Fianna, who 'would never put more than
+one man to fight against one'; Cuchulain 'of the Grey Sword, that broke
+every gap'; till at last it comes to 'O'Rourke's wife that brought a
+blow to Ireland': for it was on her account the English were first
+called in. Then come the crimes of the English, made redder by the crime
+of Martin Luther. Henry VIII 'turned his back on God and denied his
+first wife.' Elizabeth 'routed the bishops and the Irish Church. James
+and Charles laid sharp scourges on Ireland.... Then Cromwell and his
+hosts swept through Ireland, cutting before him all he could. He gave
+estates and lands to Cromwellians, and he put those that had a right to
+them on mountains.' Whenever he brings history into his poems, the same
+strings are touched. 'At the great judgment, Cromwell will be hiding,
+and O'Neill in the corner. And I think if William can manage it at all,
+he won't stand his ground against Sarsfield.' And a moral often comes at
+the end, such as: 'Don't be without courage, but join together; God is
+stronger than the Cromwellians, and the cards may turn yet.'
+
+For Raftery had lived through the '98 Rebellion, and the struggle for
+Catholic Emancipation; and he saw the Tithe War, and the Repeal
+movement; and it is natural that his poems, like those of the poets
+before him, should reflect the desire of his people for 'the mayntenance
+of their own lewde libertye,' that had troubled Spenser in his time.
+
+Here are some verses from his '_Cuis da ple_,' 'cause to plead,'
+composed at the time of the Tithe War:--
+
+     'The two provinces of Munster are afoot, and will not stop till
+     tithes are overthrown, and rents accordingly; and if help were
+     given them, and we to stand by Ireland, the English guard would be
+     feeble, and every gap made easy. The Gall (English) will be on
+     their back without ever returning again; and the Orangemen bruised
+     in the borders of every town, a judge and jury in the courthouse
+     for the Catholics, England dead, and the crown upon the Gael....
+
+     'There is many a fine man at this time sentenced, from Cork to
+     Ennis and the town of Roscrea, and fair-haired boys wandering and
+     departing from the streets of Kilkenny to Bantry Bay. But the cards
+     will turn, and we'll have a good hand: the trump shall stand on the
+     board we play at.... Let ye have courage. It is a fine story I
+     have. Ye shall gain the day in every quarter from the Sassanach.
+     Strike ye the board, and the cards will be coming to you. Drink out
+     of hand now a health to Raftery: it is he would put success for you
+     on the _Cuis da ple_.'
+
+This is part of another song:--
+
+     'I have a hope in Christ that a gap will be opened again for us....
+     The day is not far off, the Gall will be stretched without anyone
+     to cry after them; but with us there will be a bonfire lighted up
+     on high.... The music of the world entirely, and Orpheus playing
+     along with it. I'd sooner than all that, the Sassanach to be cut
+     down.'
+
+But with all this, he had plenty of common sense, and an old man at
+Ballylee tells me:--'One time there were a sort of
+nightwalkers--Moonlighters as we'd call them now, Ribbonmen they were
+then--making some plan against the Government; and they asked Raftery to
+come to their meeting. And he went; but what he said was this, in a
+verse, that they should look at the English Government, and think of all
+the soldiers it had, and all the police--no, there were no police in
+those days, but gaugers and such like--and they should think how full up
+England was of guns and arms, so that it could put down Buonaparty; and
+that it had conquered Spain, and took Gibraltar from it; and the same in
+America, fighting for twenty-one years. And he asked them what they had
+to fight with against all those guns and arms?--nothing but a stump of a
+stick that they might cut down below in the wood. So he bid them give up
+their nightwalking, and come out and agitate in the daylight.'
+
+I have been told--but I do not know if it is true--that he was once sent
+to Galway Gaol for three months for a song he made against the
+Protestant Church, 'saying it was like a wall slipping, where it wasn't
+built solid.'
+
+
+III.
+
+When at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the poets O'Lewy and
+O'Clery and their supporters held a 'Contention,' the results were
+written down in a volume containing 7,000 lines. I think the greater
+number of the 'Contentions' between Raftery and his fellow-poets were
+never written down; but the country people still discuss them with all
+the eagerness of partisans. On old man from Athenry says: 'Raftery
+travelled Ireland, challenging all the poets of that time. There were
+hundreds of country poets in those days, and a welcome for them all.
+Raftery had enough to do to beat them, but he was the best; his poetry
+was the gift of God, and his poems are sung as far away as Limerick and
+Dublin.' There is a story of his knocking at a door one night, when he
+was looking for the house of a poet he had heard of and wanted to
+challenge, and saying: 'I am a poet seeing shelter'; and a girl answered
+him from within with a verse, saying he must be a blind man to be out so
+late looking for shelter; and then he knew it was the house he was
+looking for. And it is said that the daughter of another poet was on his
+way to see in Clare, gave him such a sharp answer when he met her
+outside the house that he turned back and would not contend with her
+father at all. And he is said to have 'hunted another poet Daly--hunted
+him all through Ireland.' But these other poets do not seem to have left
+a great name. There was a Connemara poet, Sweeny, that was put under a
+curse by the priests 'because he used to make so much fun at the wakes';
+and in one of Raftery's poems he thanks Sweeny for having come to his
+help in some dispute; and there was 'one John Burke, who was a good
+poet, too; he and Raftery would meet at fairs and weddings, and be
+trying which would put down the other.' I am told of an 'attack' they
+made on each other one day on the fair green of Cappaghtagle. Burke
+said: 'After all your walk of land and callows, Burke is before you at
+the fair of Cappagh.' And Raftery said: 'You are not Burke but a breed
+of _scatties_, That's all over the country gathering _praties_; When I'm
+at the table filling glasses, You are in the corner with your feet in
+the ashes.' Then Burke said: 'Raftery a poet, and he with bracked
+(speckled) shins, And he playing music with catgut; Raftery the poet,
+and his back to the wall, And he playing music for empty pockets.
+There's no one cares for his music at all, but he does be always craving
+money.' For he was sometimes accused of love of money; 'he wouldn't play
+for empty pockets, and he'd make the plate rattle at the end of a
+dance.'
+
+But his most serious rival in his own part of the country was Callinan,
+the well-to-do farmer who lived near Craughwell, of whom the old women
+in the workhouse spoke. I have heard some of Callinan's poems and songs;
+but I do not find the imaginative power of Raftery in them. He seems, in
+distinction to him, to be the poet of the domestic affections, of the
+settled classes. His songs have melody and good sentiments; and they are
+often accompanied by a rhymed English version, made by his brother, a
+lesser poet. The favourite among them is a song on a wooden beetle, lost
+by his wife when washing clothes at the river. She is made to lament the
+loss of 'so good a servant' in a sort of allegory; and then its journey
+is traced from the river to the sea. An old man gives me a little memory
+of him: 'I saw Callinan one time when we went to dig potatoes for him at
+his own place, the other side of Craughwell. We went into the house for
+dinner; and we were in a hurry, and he was sitting by the hearth talking
+all the time; for he was a great talker, so that the veins of his neck
+swelled up. And he was telling us about the song he made about his own
+Missus when she was out washing by the river. He was up to eighty years
+at that time.' And there are accounts of the making of some of his songs
+that show his kindly disposition and amiability. 'One time there was a
+baby in the house, and there was a dance going on near, and Mrs.
+Callinan was a young woman; and she said she'd go for a bit to the
+dance-house; and she bid Callinan rock the cradle till she'd come back.
+But she never came back till morning, and there he was rocking the
+cradle still; and he had a song composed while she was away about the
+time of a man's life, and the hours of the day, and the seasons of the
+year; how when a man is young he is strong, and then he grows old and
+passes away, and goes to the feast of the Saviour; and about the day,
+how bright the morning is, and the birds singing; and a man goes out to
+work, and he comes in tired out, and sits by the fire to talk with his
+neighbour; and the night comes on, and he says his prayers, and thinks
+of the feast of the Saviour; and about the seasons, the spring so nice,
+and the summer for work; and autumn brings the harvest, and winter
+brings Christmas, the feast of the Saviour. In Irish and English he made
+that.' And this is another story: 'A carpenter made a plough for
+Callinan one time, and when it came, it was the worst ever made; and he
+said to his brother: "I'll make a song that will cut him down
+altogether." But his brother said: "Do not, for if you cut him down, it
+will take his means of living from him, but make a song in his praise."
+And he did so, for he wouldn't like to do him any harm.' I have asked if
+he made any love-songs, and was told of one he had made 'about a girl he
+met going to a bog. He praised herself first, and then he said he had
+information as well that she had fifty gold guineas saved up.'
+
+His having been well off seems to make his poetic merit the greater in
+the eyes of farmers; for one says: 'He was as good a poet, for he had a
+plough and horses and a good way of living, and never sang in any
+public-house; but Raftery had no way of living but to go round and to
+mark some house to go to, and then all the neighbours would gather in to
+hear him.' Another says: 'Raftery was the best poet, for he had nothing
+else to do, and laid his mind to it; but Callinan was a strong farmer,
+and had other things to think of;' and another says: 'Callinan was very
+apt: it was all Raftery could do to beat him;' and another sums up by
+saying: 'The both of them was great.' But a supporter of Raftery says:
+'He was the best; he put his words so strong and stiff, following one
+another.'
+
+I had been often told, by supporters of either side, that there was one
+contest between the two, at which Callinan 'made Raftery cry tears
+down;' and I wondered how it was that his wit had so far betrayed him.
+It has been explained to me lately. Raftery had made a long poem, 'The
+Hunt,' in which he puts 'a Writer' in the place of the fox, and calls on
+all the gentlemen of Galway and Mayo, and even on 'Sarsfield from
+Limerick,' to come and hunt him through their respective neighbourhoods
+with a pack of hounds. It contains many verses; and he seems to have
+improvised others in the different places where he sang it. In the
+written copy I have seen, Burke is the 'Writer' who is thus hunted. But
+he probably put in the name of any other rival from time to time. This
+is the story: 'He and the Callinans were sometimes vexed with one
+another, but they'd make friends after; but there was one day he was put
+down by them. There was a funeral going on at Killeenan, and Raftery was
+there; and he was asked into the corpse-house afterwards, and the people
+asked him for the song about Callinan, and he began hunting him all
+through the country, and the people were laughing and making him go on;
+but Callinan's brother had come in, and was listening to him, and
+Raftery didn't see him, being blind; and he brought him to Killeenan at
+last, and he said: "Where can the rogue go now, unless he'll swim the
+turlough?" And at that Callinan's brother stood up and said, "Who is it
+you are calling a rogue?" And Raftery tried to laugh it off, and he
+said, "You mustn't expect poetry and truth to go together." But Callinan
+said: "I'll give you poetry that's truth as well;" and he began to say
+off some verses his brother had made on Raftery; and Raftery was choked
+up that time, and hadn't a word.' This story is corroborated by an
+eye-witness who said to me: 'It was in this house he was on the night
+Callinan made him cry. My father was away at the time; if he had been
+there, he never would have let Callinan come into the house unknown to
+Raftery.' I have not heard all of Callinan's poem, but this is part of
+it:--
+
+     'He left the County Mayo; he was hunted up from the country of the
+     brothons' (thick bed-coverings, then made in Mayo) 'without any for
+     the night, nor any shift for bedding, but with an old yellow
+     blanket with a thousand patches; he had a black trouser down to the
+     ground with two hundred holes and forty pieces; he had long legs
+     like the shank of a pipe, and a long great coat, for it is many the
+     dab he put in his pocket. His coat was greasy, and it was no
+     wonder, and an old grey hat as grey as snuff as it was many the day
+     it was in the dunghill.'
+
+It is said that 'Raftery could have answered that song better, but he
+had no back here; and Callinan was well-to-do, and had so many of his
+family and so many friends.' But others say there were some allusions in
+it to the poverty of his home, that had become known through a servant
+girl from Raftery's birth-place. But I think even Callinan's friends are
+sorry now that Raftery was ever made to 'cry tears down.'
+
+
+IV.
+
+A man near Oranmore says: 'There used to be great talk of the Fianna;
+and everyone had the poems about them till Raftery came, and he put them
+out. For when the people got Raftery's songs in their heads, they could
+think of nothing else: his songs put out everything else. I remember
+when I was a boy of ten, I was so taken up with his rhymes and songs, I
+had them all off. And I heard he was coming one night to a stage he had
+below there where he used to come now and again. And I begged my father
+to bring me with him that night, and he did; but whatever happened,
+Raftery didn't come that time, and the next year he died.'
+
+But it is hard to judge of the quality of Raftery's poems. Some of them
+have probably been lost altogether. There are already different versions
+of those written out in manuscript books, and of these books many have
+disappeared or been destroyed, and some have been taken to America by
+emigrants. It is said that when he was on his deathbed, he was very
+sorry that his songs had not all been taken down; and that he dictated
+one he composed there to a young man who wrote it down in Irish, but
+could not read his own writing when he had done, and that vexed Raftery;
+and then a man came in, and he asked him to take down all his songs, and
+he could have them for himself; but he said, 'If I did, I'd always be
+called Raftery,' and he went out again.
+
+I hear the people say now and then: 'If he had had education, he would
+have been the greatest poet in the world.' I cannot but be sorry that
+his education went so far as it did, for 'he used to carry a book about
+with him--a Pantheon--about the heathen gods and goddesses; and whoever
+he'd get that was able to read, he'd get him to read it to him, and then
+he'd keep them in his mind, and use them as he wanted them.' If he had
+been born a few decades later, he would have been caught, like other
+poets of the time, in the formulas of English verse. As it was, both his
+love poems and his religious poems were caught in the formulas imported
+from Greece and from Rome; and any formula must make a veil between the
+prophet who has been on the mountain top, and the people who are waiting
+at its foot for his message. The dreams of beauty that formed themselves
+in the mind of the blind poet become flat and vapid when he embodies
+them in the well-worn names of Helen and Venus. The truths of God that
+he strove in his last years, as he says, 'to have written in the book of
+the people,' left those unkindled whose ears were already wearied with
+the well-known words 'the keys of Heaven,' 'penance, fasts, and alms,'
+to whom it was an old tale to hear of hell as a furnace, and the grave
+as a dish for worms. When he gets away from the formulas, he has often a
+fine line on death or on judgment; the cheeks of the dead are 'cold as
+the snow that is at the back of the sun;' the careless--those who 'go
+out looking at their sheep on Sunday instead of going to Mass'--are
+warned that 'on the side of the hill of the tears there will be Ochone!'
+
+His love songs are many; and they were not always thought to bring ill
+luck; for I am told of a girl 'that was not handsome at all, but ugly,
+that he made a song about her for civility; for she used to be in a
+house where he used to lodge, and the song got her a husband; and there
+is a son of hers living now down in Clare-Galway.' And an old woman
+tells me, with a sigh of regret for what might have been, that she saw
+Raftery one time at a dance, and he spoke to her and said: 'Well planed
+you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade.' 'And I said:
+"Better than you know yours;" for there were two or three of the strings
+of his fiddle broke. And then he said something about O'Meara, that
+lived near us; and my father got vexed at what he said, and would let
+him speak no more with me. And if it wasn't for him speaking about
+O'Meara, and my father getting vexed, he might have made words about me
+like he did for Mary Hynes and for Mary Brown.'
+
+'Bridget Vesach,' which I have heard in many cottages, as well as from
+the old woman in Gort Workhouse, begins: 'I would wed courteous Bridget
+without coat, shoe, or shirt. Treasure of my heart, if it were possible
+for me, I would fast for you nine meals, without food, without drink,
+without any share of anything, on an island of Lough Erne, with desire
+for you and me to be together till we should settle our case.... My
+heart started with trouble, and I was frightened nine times that morning
+that I heard you were not to be found.... I would sooner be stretched by
+you with nothing under us but heather and rushes, than be listening to
+the cuckoos that are stirring at the break of day.... I am in grief and
+in sorrow since you slipped from me across the mearings.'
+
+Another love poem, 'Mairin Stanton,' shows his habit of mixing
+comparisons drawn from the classics with those drawn from nature:--
+
+     'There's a bright flower by the side of the road, and she beats
+     Deirdre in the beauty of her voice; or I might say Helen, Queen of
+     the Greeks, she for whose sake hundreds died at Troy.
+
+     'There is light and brightness in her as in those others; her
+     little mouth is as sweet as the cuckoo on the branch. You would not
+     find a mind like hers in any woman since the pearl died that was in
+     Ballylee.
+
+     'To see under the sky a woman settled like her walking on the road
+     on a fine sunny day, the light flashing from the whiteness of her
+     breast would give sight to a man without eyes.
+
+     'There is the love of hundreds in her face, and there is the
+     promise of the evening star. If she had been living in the time of
+     the gods, it is not Venus that would have had the apple.
+
+     'Her hair falls down below her knees, waving and winding to the
+     mouth of her shoes; her locks spread out wide and pale like dew,
+     they leave a brightness on the road behind her.
+
+     'She is the girl that has been taught the nicest of all whose eyes
+     still open to the sun; and if the estate of Lord Lucan belonged to
+     me, on the strength of my cause this jewel would be mine.
+
+     'Her slender lime-white shape, her face like flowers, her neck, her
+     cheek, and her amber hair; Virgil, Cicero, and Homer could tell of
+     nothing like her; she is like the dew in the time of harvest.
+
+     'If you could see this plant moving or dancing, you could not but
+     love the flower of the branch. If I cannot get a hundred words with
+     Mairin Stanton, I do not think my life will last long.
+
+     'She said "Good morrow" early and pleasantly; she drank my health,
+     and gave me a stool, and it not in the corner. At the time that I
+     am ready to go on my way I will stay talking and talking with her.'
+
+The 'pearl that was at Ballylee' was poor Mary Hynes, of whom I have
+already spoken. His song on her is very popular; 'a great song, so that
+her name is sung through the three parishes.' She must have been
+beautiful, for many who knew her still speak of her beauty, of her long,
+shining hair, and the 'little blushes in her cheeks.' An old woman says:
+'I never can think of her but I'll get a trembling, she was so nice; and
+if she was to begin talking, she'd keep you laughing till daybreak.'
+But others say: 'It was the poet that made her so handsome'; or,
+'whatever she was, he made twice as much of it.' I give one or two
+verses of the song:--
+
+     'There was no part of Ireland I did not travel: from the rivers to
+     the tops of the mountains, to the edge of Lough Greine, whose mouth
+     is hidden; but I saw no beauty but was behind hers.
+
+     'Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too; her face was
+     like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet. She is the pride, and I
+     give her the branch. She is the shining flower of Ballylee.'
+
+Even many miles from Ballylee, if the _posin glégeal_--the 'shining
+flower'--is spoken of, it is always known that it is Mary Hynes who is
+meant.
+
+Raftery is said to have spent the last seven years of his life praying
+and making religious songs, because death had told him in a vision that
+he had only seven years to live. His own account of the vision was given
+me by the man at whose house he died. 'I heard him telling my father one
+time, that he was sick in Galway, and there was a mug beside the bed,
+and in the night he heard a noise, and he thought it was the cat was on
+the table, and that she'd upset the mug; and he put his hand out, and
+what he felt was the bones and the thinness of death. And his sight came
+to him, and he saw where his wrapper was hanging on the wall. And death
+said he had come to bring him away, or else one of the neighbours that
+lived in such a house. And after they had talked a while, he said he
+would give him a certain time before he'd come for him again, and he
+went away. And in the morning when his wife came in, he asked where did
+she hang his wrapper the night before, and she told him it was in such a
+place, and that was the very place he saw it, so he knew he had had his
+sight. And then he sent to the house that had been spoken of to know how
+was the man of it, and word came back that he was dead. I remember when
+he was dying, a friend of his, one Cooney, came in to see him, and said:
+"Well, Raftery, the time is not up yet that death gave you to live." And
+he said: "The Church and myself have it made out that it was not death
+that was there, but the devil that came to tempt me."
+
+His description of death in his poem on the 'Vision,' is vivid and
+unconventional:--
+
+     'I had a vision in my sleep last night, between sleeping and
+     waking, a figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad, and
+     sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the
+     tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a
+     riddle; his nose thin, that it would go through a cambric needle;
+     his shoulders hard and sharp, that they would cut tobacco; his head
+     dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can
+     liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering;
+     a withered rod in his hand, and he looking in my face. It is not
+     worth my while to be talking about him; I questioned him in the
+     name of God.'
+
+A long conversation follows; Raftery addresses him:--
+
+     'Whatever harbour you came from last night, move up to me and speak
+     if you can.' Death answers: "Put away Hebrew, Greek and Latin,
+     French, and the three sorts of English, and I will speak to you
+     sweetly in Irish, the language that you found your verses in. I am
+     death that has hidden hundreds: Hannibal, Pompey, Julius Cćsar; I
+     was in the way with Queen Helen. I made Hector fall, that conquered
+     the Greeks, and Conchubar, that was king of Ireland; Cuchulain and
+     Goll, Oscar and Diarmuid, and Oisin, that lived after the Fenians;
+     and the children of Usnach that brought away Deirdre from
+     Conchubar; at a touch from me they all fell." But Raftery answers:
+     "O high Prince, without height, without followers, without
+     dwelling, without strength, without hands, without force, without
+     state: all in the world wouldn't make me believe it, that you'd be
+     able to put down the half of them."'
+
+But death speaks solemnly to him then, and warns him that:--
+
+     'Life is not a thing that you get a lease of; there will be stones
+     and a sod over you yet. Your ears that were so quick to hear
+     everything will be closed, deaf, without sound, without hearing;
+     your tongue that was so sweet to make verses will be without a word
+     in the same way.... Whatever store of money or wealth you have, and
+     the great coat up about your ears, death will snap you away from
+     the middle of it.'
+
+And the poem ends at last with the story of the Passion and a prayer for
+mercy.
+
+He was always ready to confess his sins with the passionate exaggeration
+of St. Paul or of Bunyan. In his 'Talk with the Bush,' when a flood is
+threatened, he says:--
+
+     'I was thinking, and no blame to me, that my lease of life wouldn't
+     be long, and that it was bad work my hands had left after them; to
+     be committing sins since I was a child, swearing big oaths and
+     blaspheming. I never think to go to Mass. Confession at Christmas I
+     wouldn't ask to go to. I would laugh at my neighbour's downfall,
+     and I'd make nothing of breaking the Ten Commandments. Gambling and
+     drinking and all sorts of pleasures that would come across me, I'd
+     have my hand in them.'
+
+The poem known as his 'Repentance' is in the same strain. It is said to
+have been composed 'one time he went to confession to Father Bartley
+Kilkelly, and he refused him absolution because he was too much after
+women and drink. And that night he made up his "Repentance"; and the
+next day he went again, and Father Pat Burke, the curate, was with
+Father Bartley, and he said: "Well, Raftery, what have you composed of
+late?" and he said: "This is what I composed," and he said the
+Repentance. And then Father Bartley said to the curate: "You may give
+him absolution, where he has his repentance made before the world."'
+
+It is one of the finest of his poems. It begins:--
+
+     'O King, who art in heaven, ... I scream to Thee again and again
+     aloud, For it is Thy grace I am hoping for.
+
+     'I am in age, and my shape is withered; many a day I have been
+     going astray.... When I was young, my deeds were evil; I delighted
+     greatly in quarrels and rows. I liked much better to be playing or
+     drinking on a Sunday morning than to be going to Mass.... I was
+     given to great oaths, and I did not let lust or drunkenness pass me
+     by.... The day has stolen away, and I have not raised the hedge
+     until the crop in which Thou didst take delight is destroyed.... I
+     am a worthless stake in a corner of a hedge, or I am like a boat
+     that has lost its rudder, that would he broken against a rock in
+     the sea, and that would be drowned in the cold waves.'
+
+But in spite of this self-denunciation, people who knew him say 'there
+was no harm in him'; though it it is added: 'but as to a drop of drink,
+he was fond of that to the end.' And in another mood, in his 'Argument
+with Whisky,' he claims, as an excuse for this weakness, the desire for
+companionship felt by a wanderer. 'And the world knows it's not for love
+of what I drink, but for love of the people that do be near me.' And he
+has always a confident belief in final absolution:--"I pray to you to
+hear me, O Son of God; as you created the moon, the sun, the stars, it
+is no task or trouble for you to ready me."
+
+There are some fine verses in a poem made at the time of an outbreak of
+cholera:--
+
+     'Look at him who was yesterday swift and strong, who would leap
+     stone wall, ditch and gap, who was in the evening walking the
+     street, and is going under the clay on the morrow.
+
+     'Death is quicker than the wave of drowning or than any horse,
+     however fast, on the racecourse. He would strike a goal against the
+     crowd; and no sooner is he there than he is on guard before us.
+
+     'He is changing, hindering, rushing, starting, unloosed; the day is
+     no better to him than the night; when a person thinks there is no
+     fear of him, there he is on the spot laid low with keening.
+
+     'Death is a robber who heaps together kings, high princes, and
+     country lords; he brings with him the great, the young, and the
+     wise, gripping them by the throat before all the people.
+
+     'It is a pity for him who is tempted with the temptations of the
+     world; and the store that will go with him is so weak, and his
+     lease of life no better if he were to live for a thousand years,
+     than just as if he had slipped over on a visit and back again.
+
+     'When you are going to lie down, don't be dumb. Bare your knee and
+     bruise the ground. Think of all the deeds that you put by you, and
+     that you are travelling towards the meadow of the dead.'
+
+Some of his poems of places, usually places in Mayo, the only ones he
+had ever looked on--for smallpox took his sight away in his
+childhood--have much charm. 'Cnocin Saibhir,' 'the Plentiful Little
+Hill,' must have sounded like a dream of Tir-nan-og to many a poor
+farmer in a sodden-thatched cottage:--
+
+     'After the Christmas, with the help of Christ, I will never stop if
+     I am alive; I will go to the sharp-edged little hill; for it is a
+     fine place, without fog falling; a blessed place that the sun
+     shines on, and the wind doesn't rise there or any thing of the
+     sort.
+
+     'And if you were a year there, you would get no rest, only sitting
+     up at night and eternally drinking.
+
+     'The lamb and the sheep are there; the cow and the calf are there;
+     fine lands are there without heath and without bog. Ploughing and
+     seed-sowing in the right month, and plough and harrow prepared and
+     ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to pay
+     it. There is oats and flax and large-eared barley.... There are
+     beautiful valleys with good growth in them, and hay. Rods grow
+     there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there, and respect
+     for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars
+     reading their book; spending and getting is there, and nothing
+     scarce.'
+
+In another song in the same manner on 'Cilleaden,' he says:--
+
+     'I leave it in my will that my heart rises as the wind rises, or as
+     the fog scatters, when I think upon Carra and the two towns below
+     it, on the two-mile bush, and on the plains of Mayo.... And if I
+     were standing in the middle of my people, age would go from me, and
+     I would be young again.'
+
+He writes of friends that he has made in Galway as well as in Mayo, a
+weaver, a carpenter, a priest at Kilcolgan who is 'the good Christian,
+the clean wheat of the Gael, the generous messenger, the standing tree
+of the clergy.' Some of his eulogies both on persons and places are
+somewhat spoiled by grotesque exaggeration. Even Cilleaden has not only
+all sorts of native fishes, 'as plenty as turf,' and all sorts of native
+trees, but is endowed with 'tortoises,' with 'logwood and mahogany.' His
+country weaver must not only have frieze and linen in his loom, but
+satin and cambric. A carpenter near Ardrahan, Seaghan Conroy, is praised
+with more simplicity for his 'quick, lucky work,' and for the pleasure
+he takes in it. 'I never met his master; the trade was in his nature';
+and he gives a long list of all the things he could make: doors and all
+that would be wanted for a big house'; mills and ploughs and
+spinning-wheels 'nicely finished with a clean chisel'; 'all sorts of
+things for the living, and a coffin for the dead. And with all this 'he
+cares little for money, but to spend, as he earns, decently. And if he
+was up for nine nights, you wouldn't see the sign of a drop on him.'
+
+Another of his more simple poems is what Spenser would call an 'elegie
+or friend's passion' on a player on fiddle or pipes, Thomas O'Daly, that
+gives him a touch of kinship with the poets who have mourned their
+Astrophel, their Lycidas, their Adonais, their Thyrsis. This is how I
+have been helped to put it into English by a young working farmer,
+sitting by a turf fire one evening, when his day in the fields was
+over:--
+
+     'It was Thomas O'Daly that roused up young people and scattered
+     them, and since death played on him, may God give him grace. The
+     country is all sorrowful, always talking, since their man of sport
+     died that would win the goal in all parts with his music.
+
+     'The swans on the water are nine times blacker than a blackberry
+     since the man died from us that had pleasantness on the top of his
+     fingers. His two grey eyes were like the dew of the morning that
+     lies on the grass. And since he was laid in the grave, the cold is
+     getting the upper hand.
+
+     'If you travel the five provinces, you would not find his equal for
+     countenance or behaviour, for his equal never walked on land or
+     grass. High King of Nature, you who have all powers in yourself, he
+     that wasn't narrow-hearted, give him shelter in heaven for it.
+
+     'He was the beautiful branch. In every quarter that he ever knew he
+     would scatter his fill and not gather. He would spend the estate of
+     the Dalys, their beer and their wine. And that he may be sitting in
+     the chair of grace, in the middle of Paradise.
+
+     'A sorrowful story on death, it 's he is the ugly chief that did
+     treachery, that didn't give him credit, O strong God, for a little
+     time.
+
+     'There are young women, and not without reason, sorry and
+     heart-broken and withered, since he was left at the church. Their
+     hair thrown down and hanging, turned grey on their head.
+
+     'No flower in any garden, and the leaves of the trees have leave to
+     cry, and they falling on the ground. There is no green flower on
+     the tops of the tufts, since there did a boarded coffin go on Daly.
+
+     'There is sorrow on the men of mirth, a clouding over the day, and
+     no trout swim in the river. Orpheus on the harp, he lifted up
+     everyone out of their habits; and he that stole what Argus was
+     watching the time he took away Io; Apollo, as we read, gave them
+     teaching, and Daly was better than all these musicians.
+
+     'A hundred wouldn't be able to put together his actions and his
+     deeds and his many good works. And Raftery says this much for Daly,
+     because he liked him.'
+
+Though his praises are usually all for the poor, for the people, he has
+left one beautiful lament for a landowner:--
+
+     'There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be
+     seen on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees
+     complaining of the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in
+     the sky, or no light in the stars coming down, with the stretching
+     of O'Kelly in the grave.
+
+     'My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring
+     grief or trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that
+     were down.
+
+     'No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no
+     children on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants
+     don't blossom as they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went
+     away; he that used to forgive us a great share of the rent.
+
+     'Since the children of Usnach and Deirdre went to the grave and
+     Cuchulain, who, as the stories tell us, would gain victory in every
+     step he would take; since he died, such a story never came of
+     sorrow or defeat; since the Gael were sold at Aughrim, and since
+     Owen Roe died, the Branch.'
+
+
+V.
+
+His life was always the wandering, homeless life of the old bards. After
+Cromwell's time, as the houses they went to grew poorer, they had added
+music to their verse-making; and Raftery's little fiddle helped to make
+him welcome in the Ireland which was, in spite of many sorrows, as merry
+and light-hearted up to the time of the great famine as England had been
+up to the time of the Puritans. 'He had no place of his own,' I am told,
+'but to be walking the country. He did well to die before the bad years
+came. He used to play at Kiltartan cross for the dancing of a Sunday
+evening. And when he'd come to any place, the people would gather and
+he'd give them a dance; for there was three times as many people in the
+world then as what there is now. The people would never have let him
+want; but as to money, what could he do with it, and he with no place of
+his own?' An old woman near Craughwell says: 'He used to come here
+often; it was like home to him. He wouldn't have a dance then; my father
+liked better to be sitting listening to his talk and his stories; only
+when we'd come in, he'd take the fiddle and say: "Now we must give the
+youngsters a tune."' And an old man, who is still lamenting the fall in
+prices after the Battle of Waterloo, remembers having seen him 'one time
+at a shebeen house that used to be down there in Clonerle. He was
+playing the fiddle, and there used to be two couples at a time dancing;
+and they would put two halfpence in the plate, and Raftery would rattle
+them and say: "It's good for the two sorts to be together," and there
+would be great laughing.' And it is also said 'there was a welcome
+before him in every house he'd come to; and wherever he went, they'd
+think the time too short he would be with them.' There is a story I
+often hear told about the marriage near Cappaghtagle of a poor servant
+boy and girl, 'that was only a marriage and not a wedding, till Raftery
+chanced to come in; and he made it one. There wasn't a bit but bread and
+herrings in the house; but he made a great song about the grand feast
+they had, and he put every sort of thing into the song--all the beef
+that was in Ireland; and went to the Claddagh, and didn't leave a fish
+in the sea. And there was no one at all at it; but he brought all the
+_bacach_ and poor men in Ireland, and gave them a pound each. He went to
+bed after, without them giving him a drop to drink; but he didn't mind
+that when they hadn't got it to give.'
+
+The wandering, unrestrained life was probably to his mind; and I do not
+think there is a word of discontent or complaint in any of his verses,
+though he was always poor, and must often have known hardship. In the
+'Talk with the Bush,' he describes in his whimsical, exaggerated way, a
+wetting, which must have been one of very many.
+
+     'It chanced that I was travelling and the rain was heavy; I stepped
+     aside, and not without reason, till I'd get a wall or a bush that
+     would shelter me.
+
+     'I didn't meet at the side of a gap only an old, withered,
+     miserable bush by the side of the wall, and it bent with the west
+     wind. I stepped under it, and it was a wet place; torrents of rain
+     coming down from all quarters, east and west and straight
+     downwards; its equal I couldn't see, unless it is seeds winnowed
+     through a riddle. It was sharp, angry, fierce, and stormy, like a
+     deer running and racing past me. The storm was drowning the
+     country, and my case was pitiful, and I suffering without cause.
+
+     'An hour and a quarter it was raining; there isn't a drop that fell
+     but would fill a quart and put a heap on it afterwards; there's not
+     a wheat or rape mill in the neighbourhood but it would set going in
+     the middle of a field.'
+
+At last relief comes:--
+
+     'It was shortly then the rain grew weak, the sun shone, and the
+     wind rose. I moved on, and I smothered and drowned in wet, till I
+     came to a little house, and there was a welcome before me. Many
+     quarts of water I squeezed from my skirt and my cape. I hung my hat
+     on a nail, and I lying in a sweet flowery bed. But I was up again
+     in a little while. We began sports and pleasures; and it was with
+     pride we spent the night.'
+
+But there is a verse in his 'Argument with Whisky' that seems to have a
+wistful thought in it, perhaps of the settled home of his rival,
+Callinan:--
+
+     'Cattle is a nice thing for a man to have, and his share of land to
+     reap wheat and barley. Money in the chest, and a fire in the
+     evening time; and to be able to give shelter to a man on his road;
+     a hat and shoes in the fashion--I think, indeed, that would be much
+     better than to be going from place to place drinking _uisge
+     beatha_.'
+
+And there is a little sadness in the verses he made in some house, when
+a stranger asked who he was:--
+
+     'I am Raftery the poet, full of hope and love; with eyes without
+     light, with gentleness without misery.
+
+     'Going west on my journey with the light of my heart; weak and
+     tired to the end of my road.
+
+     'I am now, and my back to a wall, playing music to empty pockets.'
+
+'He was a thin man,' I am told by one who knew him, 'not very tall, with
+a long frieze coat and corduroy trousers. He was very strong; and he
+told my father there was never any man he wrestled with but he could
+throw him, and that he could lie on his back and throw up a bag with
+four hundred of wheat in it, and take it up again. He couldn't see a
+stim; but he would walk all the roads, and give the right turn, without
+ever touching the wall. My father was wondering at him one time they
+were out together; and he said: "Wait till we come to the turn to
+Athenry, and don't tell me of it, and see if I don't make it out right."
+And sure enough, when they came to it, he gave the right turn, and just
+in the middle.' This is explained by what another man tells me:--'There
+was a blind piper with him one time in Gort, and they set out together
+to go to Ballylee, and it was late, and they couldn't find the stile
+that led down there, near Early's house. And they would have stopped
+there till somebody would come by, but Raftery said he'd go back to Gort
+and step it again; and so he did, turned back a mile to Gort, and
+started from there. He counted every step that he stepped out; and when
+he got to the stile, he stopped straight before it.' And I was told also
+there used to be a flagstone put beside the bog-holes to leap from, and
+Raftery would leap as well as any man. He would count his steps back
+from the flag, and take a run and alight on the other side.
+
+
+VI.
+
+His knowledge and his poetic gift are often supposed to have been given
+to him by the invisible powers, who grow visible to those who have lost
+their earthly sight. An old woman who had often danced to his music,
+said:--'When he went to his rest at night, it's then he'd make the songs
+in the turn of a hand, and you would wonder in the morning where he got
+them.' And a man who 'was too much taken up with sport and hurling when
+he was a boy to think much about him,' says: 'He got the gift. It's said
+he was asked which would he choose, music or the talk. If he chose
+music, he would have been the greatest musician in the world; but he
+chose the talk, and so he was a great poet. Where could he have found
+all the words he put in his songs if it wasn't for that?' An old woman,
+who is more orthodox, says:--'I often used to see him when I was a
+little child, in my father's house at Corker. He'd often come in there,
+and here to Coole House he used to come as well. He couldn't see a
+stim, and that is why he had such great knowledge. God gave it to him.
+And his songs have gone all through the world; and he had a voice that
+was like the wind.'
+
+Legends are already growing up about his death. It has been said that
+'he knew the very day his time would be up; and he went to Galway, and
+brought a plank to the house he was stopping at, and he put it in the
+loft; and he told the people of the house his time was come, and bid
+them make a coffin for him with the plank--and he was dead before
+morning.' And another story says he died alone in an empty house, and
+that flames were seen about the house all night; and 'the flames were
+the angels waking him.' But many told me he had died in the house of a
+man near Craughwell; and one autumn day I went there to look for it, and
+the first person I asked was able to tell me that the house where
+Raftery had died was the other side of Craughwell, a mile and a half
+away. It was a warm, hazy day; and as I walked along the flat, deserted
+road that Raftery had often walked, I could see few landmarks--only a
+few more grey rocks, or a few more stunted hazel bushes in one
+stone-walled field than in another. At last I came to a thatched
+cottage; and when I saw an old man sitting outside it, with hat and coat
+of the old fashion, I felt sure it was he who had been with Raftery at
+the last. He was ready to talk about him, and told me how he had come
+there to die. 'I was a young chap at that time. It must have been in
+the year 1835, for my father died in '36, and I think it was a year
+before him that Raftery died. What did he die of? Of weakness. He had
+been bet up in Galway with some fit of sickness he had; and then he came
+to gather a little money about the country, and when he got here he was
+bet up again. He wasn't an old man--only about seventy years. He was in
+the bed for about a fortnight. When he got bad, my father said it was
+best get a priest for him; but the parish priest was away. But we saw
+Father Nagle passing the road, and I went out and brought him in, and he
+gave him absolution, and anointed him. He had no pain; only his feet
+were cold, and the boys used to be warming a stone in the fire and
+putting it to them in the bed. My mother wanted to send to Galway, where
+his wife and his daughter and his son were stopping, so that they would
+come and care him; but he wouldn't have them. Someway he didn't think
+they treated him well.'
+
+I had been told that the priest had refused him absolution when he was
+dying, until he forgave some enemy; and that he had said afterwards, 'If
+I forgave him with my mouth, I didn't with my heart'; but this was not
+true. 'Father Nagle made no delay in anointing him; but there was a
+carpenter down the road there he said too much to, and annoyed him one
+time; and the carpenter had a touch of the poet too, and was a great
+singer, and he came out and beat him, and broke his fiddle; and I
+remember when he was dying, the priest bringing in the carpenter, and
+making them forgive one another, and shake hands; and the carpenter
+said: "If two brothers were to have a falling out, they'd forgive one
+another--and why wouldn't we?" He was buried in Killeenan; it wasn't a
+very big funeral, but all the people of the village came to it. He used
+often to come and stop with us.... It was of a Christmas Eve he died:
+and he had always said that, if God had a hand in it, it was of a
+Christmas Day he'd die.'
+
+I went to Killeenan to look for his grave. There is nothing to mark it;
+but two old men who had been at his funeral pointed it out to me. There
+is a ruined church in the graveyard, which is crowded; 'there are people
+killing one another now to get a place in it.' I was asked into a house
+close by; and its owner said with almost a touch of jealousy: 'I think
+it was coming in here Raftery was the time he died; but he got bet up,
+and turned in at the house below. It was of a Christmas Eve he died, and
+that shows he was blessed; there's a blessing on them that die at
+Christmas. It was at night he was buried, for Christmas Day no work
+could be done, but my father and a few others made a little gathering to
+pay for a coffin, and it was made by a man in the village on St.
+Stephen's Day; and then he was brought here, and the people from the
+villages followed him, for they all had a wish for Raftery. But night
+was coming on when they got here; and in digging the grave there was a
+big stone in it, and the boys thought they would put him in a barn and
+take the night out of him. But my mother--the Lord have mercy on
+her--had a great veneration for Raftery; and she sent out two mould
+candles lighted; for in those days the women used to have their own
+mould, and to make their own candles for Christmas. And we held the
+candles there where the grave is, near the gable end of the church; and
+my brother went down in the grave and got the stone out, and we buried
+him. And there was a sharp breeze blowing at the time, but it never
+quenched the candles or moved the flame of them, and that shows that the
+Lord had a hand in him.'
+
+He and all the neighbours were glad to hear that there is soon to be a
+stone over the grave. 'He is worthy of it; he is well worthy of it,'
+they kept saying. A man who was digging sand by the roadside, took me to
+his house, and his wife showed me a little book, in which the
+'Repentance' and other poems had been put down for her, in phonetic
+Irish, by a beggar who had once stayed in the house. 'Many who go to
+America hear Raftery's songs sung out there,' they told me with pride.
+
+As I went back along the silent road, there was suddenly a sound of
+horses and a rushing and waving about me, and I found myself in the
+midst of the County Galway Fox Hounds, coming back from cub-hunting. The
+English M.F.H. and his wife rode by; and I wondered if they had ever
+heard of the poet whose last road this had been. Most likely not; for it
+is only among the people that his name has been kept in remembrance.
+
+There is still a peasant poet here and there, making songs in the 'sweet
+Irish tongue,' in which death spoke to Raftery; and I think these will
+be held in greater honour as the time of awakening goes on. But the
+nineteenth century has been a time of swift change in many countries;
+and in looking back on that century in Ireland, there seem to have been
+two great landslips--the breaking of the continuity of the social life
+of the people by the famine, and the breaking of the continuity of their
+intellectual life by the shoving out of the language. It seems as if
+there were no place left now for the wandering versemaker, and that
+Raftery may have closed the long procession that had moved unbroken
+during so many centuries, on its journey to 'the meadow of the dead.'
+
+1900.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was after I had written this that I went to see Raftery's birthplace,
+Cilleaden, in the County Mayo.
+
+A cousin of his came to see me, and some other men, but none of them
+remembered him; but they were very proud of his song on Cilleaden, which
+'is all through the world.' An old woman told me she had heard it in a
+tramcar in America; and an old man said: 'I was coming back from England
+one time, and there were a lot of Irish-speaking boys from Galway on
+board. There was one of them sick all through the night, but he was well
+in the morning; and the others came round him and asked him for a song,
+and the song he gave was 'Cilleaden.'
+
+They did not seem to know many of his other songs, except the
+'Repentance,' which someone remembered having seen sold as a ballad,
+with the English on one side and the Irish on the other. And one man
+told me: 'The first song Raftery wrote was about a hat that was stole
+from a man that was working in that middle field beyond. When the man
+was digging, he used to put his hat on a stick in the field to frighten
+away the crows; and Raftery got someone to bring away the hat, to make
+fun of the man. And then he made a song, making out it was the fairies
+had taken it; and he made the man follow them to Cruachmaa, and from
+that to Roscommon, and tell all that happened him there.'
+
+And one of them told me: 'He was six years old when the smallpox took
+his sight from him; and he was marked very little by the pox, only three
+or four little marks--it seemed to settle in his eyes. His father was a
+cottier--there were many here in those times. His mother was a Brennan.
+There are cousins of his living yet; but in the schools they are
+Englished into Rochford.'
+
+A young man said he had been told Raftery was born in some place beyond,
+at the foot of the mountain, but the others were very indignant; one got
+very angry, and said: 'Don't I know where he was born, and my father was
+the one age with him, and they sisters' sons; and isn't Michael Conroy
+there below his cousin? and it's up in that field was the house he was
+born in, so don't be trying to bring him away to the mountain.'
+
+I went to see the birthplace, a very green field, with two thorn bushes
+growing close together by a stone. The field is called 'Sean
+Straid'--the old street--for a few cottages had stood there. A man who
+lives close by told me he had dug up a blackened stone just there, and a
+stone into which a bar had been let, to hang a pot on; and that may have
+been the very hearth where Raftery had sat as a child.
+
+I found one old man who remembered him. 'He used to come to my father's
+house often, mostly from Easter to Whitsuntide, when the cakes were
+made, and there would be music and dancing. He used to play the fiddle
+for Frank Taafe that lived here, when he would be going out riding, and
+the horse used to prance when he heard it. And he made verses against
+one Seaghan Bradach, that used to be paid thirteen pence for every head
+of cattle he found straying in the Jordan's fields, and used to drive
+them in himself. There was another poet called Devine that praised
+Seaghan Bradach; and a verse was made against him again by a woman-poet
+that lived here at the time.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a stone over Raftery's grave now; and the people about
+Killeenan gather there on a Sunday in August every year to do honour to
+his memory. This year they established a _Feis_; and there were prizes
+given for traditional singing, and for old poems repeated, and old
+stories told, all in the Irish tongue.
+
+And the _Craoibhin Aoibhin_ is printing week by week all of Raftery's
+poems that can be found, with translations, and we shall soon have them
+in a book.
+
+And he has written a little play, having Raftery for its subject; and at
+a Galway Feis this year he himself acted, and took the blind poet's
+part; and he will act it many times again, _le congnamh De_--with the
+help of God.
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+WEST IRISH BALLADS.
+
+
+It was only a few years ago, when Douglas Hyde published his literal
+translations of Connacht Love Songs, that I realized that, while I had
+thought poetry was all but dead in Ireland, the people about me had been
+keeping up the lyrical tradition that existed in Ireland before Chaucer
+lived. While I had been looking in the columns of Nationalist newspapers
+for some word of poetic promise, they had been singing songs of love and
+sorrow in the language that has been pushed nearer and nearer to the
+western seaboard--the edge of the world. 'Eyes have we, but we see not;
+ears have we, but we do not understand.' It does not comfort me to think
+how many besides myself, having spent a lifetime in Ireland, must make
+this confession.
+
+The ballads to be gathered now are a very few out of the great mass of
+traditional poetry that was swept away during the last century in the
+merciless sweeping away of the Irish tongue, and of all that was bound
+up with it, by England's will, by Ireland's need, by official pedantry.
+
+To give an idea of the ballads of to-day, I will not quote from the
+translations of Douglas Hyde or of Dr. Sigerson already published. I
+will rather give a few of the more homely ballads, sung and composed by
+the people, and, as far as I know, not hitherto translated.
+
+Those I have heard since I have begun to look for them in the cottages,
+are, for the most part, sad; but not long ago I heard a girl sing a
+merry one, in a mocking tone, about a boy on the mountain, who neglected
+the girls of his village to run after a strange girl from Galway; and
+the girls of the village were vexed, and they made a song about him; and
+he went to Galway after her, and there she laughed at him, and said he
+had never gone to school or to the priest, and she would have nothing to
+do with him. So then he went back to the village, and asked the smith's
+daughter to marry him; but she said she would not, and that he might go
+back to the strange girl from Galway. Another song I have heard was a
+lament over a boy and girl who had run away to America, and on the way
+the ship went down. And when they were going down, they began to be
+sorry they were not married; and to say that if the priest had been at
+home when they went away, they would have been married; but they hoped
+that when they were drowned, it would be the same with them as if they
+were married. And I heard another lament that had been made for three
+boys that had lately been drowned in Galway Bay. It is the mother who is
+making it; and she tells how she lost her husband, the father of her
+three boys. And then she married again, and they went to sea and were
+drowned; and she wouldn't mind about the others so much, but it is the
+eldest boy, Peter, she is grieving for. And I have heard one song that
+had a great many verses, and was about 'a poet that is dying, and he
+confessing his sins.'
+
+The first ballad I give deals with sorrow and defeat and death; for
+sorrow is never far from song in Ireland; and the names best praised and
+kept in memory are of those--
+
+    'Lonely antagonists of destiny
+    That went down scornful under many spears;
+    Who soon as we are born are straight our friends,
+    And live in simple music, country songs,
+    And mournful ballads by the winter fire.'
+
+In this simple lament, the type of a great many, only the first name of
+the young man it was made for is given: 'Fair-haired Donough.' It is
+likely the people of his own place know still to what family he
+belonged; but I have not heard it sung, and only know that he was 'some
+Connachtman that was hanged in Galway.' And it is clear it was for some
+political crime he was hanged, by the suggestion that if he had been
+tried nearer his own home, 'in the place he had a right to be,' the
+issue would have been different, and by the allusion to the Gall, the
+English:--
+
+    'It was bound fast here you saw him, and you wondered to see him,
+    Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned;
+    There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat,
+    And a hempen rope in the place of a neckcloth.
+
+    'I am after walking here all through the night,
+    Like a young lamb in a great flock of sheep;
+    My breast open, my hair loosened out,
+    And how did I find my brother but stretched before me!
+
+    'The first place I cried my fill was at the top of the lake;
+    The second place was at the foot of the gallows;
+    The third place was at the head of your dead body
+    Among the Gall, and my own head as if cut in two.
+
+    'If you were with me in the place you had a right to be,
+    Down in Sligo or down in Ballinrobe,
+    It is the gallows would be broken, it is the rope would be cut,
+    And fair-haired Donough going home by the path.
+
+    'O fair-haired Donough, it is not the gallows was fit for you;
+    But to be going to the barn, to be threshing out the straw;
+    To be turning the plough to the right hand and to the left,
+    To be putting the red side of the soil uppermost.
+
+    'O fair-haired Donough, O dear brother,
+    It is well I know who it was took you away from me;
+    Drinking from the cup, putting a light to the pipe,
+    And walking in the dew in the cover of the night.
+
+    'O Michael Malley, O scourge of misfortune!
+    My brother was no calf of a vagabond cow;
+    But a well-shaped boy on a height or a hillside,
+    To knock a low pleasant sound out of a hurling-stick.
+
+    'And fair-haired Donough, is not that the pity,
+    You that would carry well a spur or a boot;
+    I would put clothes in the fashion on you from cloth that would be
+        lasting;
+    I would send you out like a gentleman's son.
+
+    'O Michael Malley, may your sons never be in one another's company;
+    May your daughters never ask a marriage portion of you;
+    The two ends of the table are empty, the house is filled,
+    And fair-haired Donough, my brother, is stretched out.
+
+    'There is a marriage portion coming home for Donough,
+    But it is not cattle nor sheep nor horses;
+    But tobacco and pipes and white candles,
+    And it will not be begrudged to them that will use it.'
+
+A very pathetic touch is given by the idea of the 'marriage portion,'
+the provision for the wake, being brought home for the dead boy.
+
+But it is chiefly in Aran, and on the opposite Connemara coast, that
+Irish ballads are still being made as well as sung. The little rock
+islands of Aran are fit strongholds for the threatened language,
+breakwaters of Europe, taking as they do the first onset of the ocean
+'that hath no limits nearer than America.' The fisher-folk go out in
+their canvas curraghs to win a living from the Atlantic, or painfully
+carry loads of sand and seaweed to make the likeness of an earth-plot on
+the bare rock. The Irish coast seems far away; the setting sun very
+near. When a sea-fog blots out the mainland for a day, a feeling grows
+that the island may have slipped anchor, and have drifted into
+unfamiliar seas. The fisher-folk are not the only dwellers upon the
+islands; they are the home, the chosen resting-place, of 'the Others,'
+the Fairies, the Fallen Angels, the mighty Sidhe. From here they sweep
+across the sea, invisible or taking at pleasure the form of a cloud, of
+a full-rigged ship, of a company of policemen, of a flock of gulls.
+Sometimes they only play with mortals; sometimes they help them. But
+often, often, the fatal touch is given to the first-born child, or to
+the young man in his strength, or the girl in her beauty, or the young
+mother in her pride; and the call is heard to leave the familiar
+fireside life for the whirling, vain, unresting life of the irresistible
+host.
+
+It is, perhaps, because of the very mistiness and dreaminess of their
+surroundings, the almost unearthly silences, the fantasy of story and of
+legend that lie about them, that the people of Aran and the Galway coast
+almost shrink from idealism in their fireside songs, and choose rather
+to dwell upon the slight incidents of daily life. It is in the songs of
+the greener plains that the depths of passion and heights of idealism
+have been reached.
+
+It is at weddings that songs are most in use--even the saddest not being
+thought out of place; and at the evening gathering in one cottage or
+another, while the pipe, lighted at the turf-fire, is passed from hand
+to hand. Here is one that is a great favourite, though very simple, and
+somewhat rugged in metre; for it touches on the chief events of an
+islander's life--emigration, loss of life by sea, the land jealousy. It
+is called 'a sorrowful song that Bridget O'Malley made'; and she tells
+in it of her troubles at the Boston factory, of her lasting sorrow for
+her drowned brothers, and her as lasting anger against her sister's
+husband.
+
+     'Do you remember, neighbours, the day I left the white strand? I
+     did not find anyone to give me advice, or to tell me not to go. But
+     with the help of God, as I have my health, and the help of the King
+     of Grace, whichever State I will go to, I will never turn back
+     again.
+
+     'Do you remember, girls, that day long ago when I was sick and when
+     the priest said, and the doctor, that with care I would come
+     through? I got up after; I went to work at the factory, until
+     Sullivan wrote a letter that put me down a step.
+
+     'And Bab O'Donnell rose up and put a shawl about her. She went to
+     the office till she got work for me to do; there was never a woman
+     I was with that would not shake hands with me; now I am at work
+     again, and no thanks to Sullivan.
+
+     'It is a great shame to look down on Ireland, and I think myself it
+     is not right; for the potatoes are growing in the gardens there,
+     and the women milking the cows. That is not the way in Boston, but
+     you may earn it or leave it there; and if the man earns a dollar,
+     the woman will be out drinking it.
+
+     'My curse on the curraghs, and my blessings on the boats; my curse
+     on that hooker that did the treachery; for it was she snapped away
+     my four brothers from me; the best they were that ever could be
+     found. But what does Kelly care, so long as he himself is in their
+     place?
+
+     'My grief on you, my brothers, that did not come again to land; I
+     would have put a boarded coffin on you out of the hand of the
+     carpenter; the young women of the village would have keened you,
+     and your people and your friends; and is it not Bridget O'Malley
+     you left miserable in the world?
+
+     'It is very lonely after Pat and Tom I am, and in great trouble for
+     them, to say nothing of my fair-haired Martin that was drowned long
+     ago; I have no sister, and I have no other brother, no mother; my
+     father weak and bent down; and, O God, what wonder for him!
+
+     'My curse on my sister's husband; for it was he made the boat; my
+     own curse again on himself and on his tribe. He married my sister
+     on me, and he sent my brothers to death on me; and he came himself
+     into the farm that belonged to my father and my mother!
+
+A Connemara schoolmaster tells me: 'At Killery Bay one time, I went into
+a house where there was an old man that had just lost his son by
+drowning. And he was sitting over the fire with his head in his hands,
+making a lament. I remember one verse of it that said: "My curse on the
+man that made the boat, that he did not tell me there was death lurking
+in it." I asked afterwards what the meaning of that was, and they said
+there is a certain board in every boat that the maker gives three blows
+of his hammer on, after he is done making it. And he knows someway by
+the sound of the blows if anyone will lose his life in that boat.' It is
+likely Bridget O'Malley had this idea in her mind when she made her
+lament.
+
+Another little emigration song, very simple and charming, tells of the
+return of a brother from America. He finds his pretty brown sister, his
+'cailin deas donn,' gathering rushes in a field, but she does not know
+him; and after they have exchanged words of greeting, he asks where her
+brother is, and she says 'beyond the sea'; then he asks if she would
+know him again, and she says she she would surely; and he asks by what
+sign, and she tells of a mark on his white neck. When she finds it is
+her brother who is there and speaking to her, she cries out, 'Kill me on
+the moment,' meaning that she is ready to die with joy.
+
+This is the lament of a woman whose bridegroom was drowned as he was
+rowing the priest home, on the wedding day:--
+
+     'I am widow and maid, and I very young; did you hear my great
+     grief, that my treasure was drowned? If I had been in the boat
+     that day, and my hand on the rope, my word to you, O'Reilly, it is
+     I would have saved you sorrow.
+
+     'Do you remember the day the street was full of riders, and of
+     priests and brothers, and all talking of the wedding feast? The
+     fiddle was there in the middle, and the harp answering to it; and
+     twelve mannerly women to bring my love to his bed.
+
+     'But you were of those three that went across to Kilcomin, ferrying
+     Father Peter, who was three-and-eighty years old; if you came back
+     within a month itself, I would be well content; but is it not a
+     pity I to be lonely, and my first love in the waves?
+
+     'I would not begrudge you, O'Reilly, to be kinsman to a king; white
+     bright courts around you, and you lying at your ease; a quiet,
+     well-learned lady to be settling out your pillow; but it is a great
+     thing you to die from me when I had given you my love entirely.
+
+     'It is no wonder a broken heart to be with your father and your
+     mother; the white-breasted mother that crooned you, and you a baby;
+     your wedded wife, O thousand treasures, that never set out your
+     bed; and the day you went to Trabawn, how well it failed you to
+     come home.
+
+     'Your eyes are with the eels, and your lips with the crabs; and
+     your two white hands under the sharp rule of the salmon. Five
+     pounds I would give to him that would find my true love. Ohone! it
+     is you are a sharp grief to young Mary ni-Curtain!'
+
+Some men and women who were drowned in the river Corrib, on their way to
+a fair at Galway, in the year 1820, have still their names kept green in
+a ballad:--
+
+     'Mary Ruane, that you would stand in a fair to look at, the
+     best-dressed woman in the place; John Cosgrave, the best a woman
+     ever reared; your mother thought that if a hundred were drowned,
+     your swimming would take the sway; but the boat went down, and
+     when I got up early on Friday, I heard the keening and the clapping
+     of women's hands, with the women that were drowsy and tired after
+     the night there, without doing anything but laying out the dead.'
+
+There are laments for other things besides death. A man taken up 'not
+for sheep-stealing or any crime, but just for making a drop of
+_poteen_,' tells of his hardships in Galway gaol. A lover who has
+enlisted because he cannot get the girl he loves--'a pity I not to be
+going to Galway with my heart's love on my arm'--tells of his hardships
+in the army: 'The first day I enlisted I was well pleased and satisfied;
+the second day I was vexed and tormented; and the third day I would have
+given a pound if I had it to get my pardon.' And I have heard a song
+'made by a woman out of her wits, that lost her husband and married
+again, and her three sons enlisted,' who cannot forgive herself for
+having driven them from home. 'If it was in Ballinakill I had your
+bones, I would not be half so much tormented after you; but you to be
+standing in the army of the Gall, and getting nothing after it but the
+bit in your mouth.'
+
+Here is a song of daily life, in which a girl laments the wandering and
+covetous appetite of her cow:--
+
+     'It is following after the white cow I spent last night; and,
+     indeed, all I got by it was the bones of an old goose. Do you hear
+     me, Michael Taylor? Give word to your uncle John that, unless he
+     can lay his hand on her, Nancy will lose her wits.
+
+     'It's what she is wanting, is the three islands of Aran for
+     herself; Brisbeg, that is in Maimen, and the glens of Maam Cross;
+     all round about Oughterard, and the hills that are below it; John
+     Blake's farm where she often does be bellowing; and as far as
+     Ballinamuca, where the long grass is growing; and it's in the wood
+     of Barna she'd want to spend her life.
+
+     'And when I was sore with walking through the dark hours of the
+     night, it's the coastguard came crying after her, and he maybe with
+     a bit of her in his mouth.'
+
+The little sarcastic hit at the coastguard, who may himself have stolen
+the cow he joins in the search for, is characteristic of Aran humour.
+The comic song, as we know it, is unknown on the islands; the nearest to
+it I have heard there is about the awkward meeting of two suitors, a
+carpenter and a country lad, at their sweetheart's house, and of the
+clever management of her mother, who promised to give her to the one who
+sang the best song, and how the country lad won her.
+
+Douglas Hyde, who is almost a folk-poet, the people have taken so many
+of his songs to their heart, has caught this sarcastic touch in this
+'love' song:--
+
+     'O sweet queen, to whom I gave my love; O dear queen, the flower of
+     fine women; listen to my keening, and look on my case; as you are
+     the woman I desire, free me from death.
+
+     'He speaks so humbly, humble entirely. Without mercy or pity she
+     looks on him with contempt. She puts mispleading in her cold
+     answer; there is a drop of poison in every quiet word:--
+
+     '"O man, wanting sense, put from you your share of love; it is bold
+     you are entirely to say such a thing as that; you will not get hate
+     from me; you will not get love from me; you will not get anything
+     at all, good or bad, for ever."
+
+     'I was myself the same night at the house of drink; and I saw the
+     man, and he under the table. Laid down by the strength of wine, and
+     without a twist in him itself; it was she did that much with the
+     talk of her mouth.'
+
+There is another that I thought was meant to provoke laughter, the
+lament of a girl for her 'beautiful comb' that had been carried off by
+her lover, whom she had refused to marry, 'until we take a little more
+out of our youth,' and invites instead to 'come with me to Eochaill
+reaping the yellow harvest.' Then he steals the comb, and the mother
+gives her wise advice how to get it back:--
+
+     'He will go this road to-morrow, and let you welcome him; settle
+     down a wooden chair in the middle of the house; snatch the hat from
+     him, and do not give him any ease until you get back the beautiful
+     comb that was high on the back of your head.'
+
+But an Aran man has told me: 'No, this is a very serious song; it was
+meant to praise the girl, and to tell what a loss she had in the comb.'
+
+I am told that the song that makes most mirth in Aran is 'The
+Carrageen'; the day-dream of an old woman, too old to carry out her
+purpose, of all she will buy when she has gathered a harvest of the
+Carrageen moss, used by invalids:--
+
+     'If I had two oars and a little boat of my own, I would go pulling
+     the Carrageen; I would dry it up in the sun; I would bring a load
+     of it to Galway; it would go away in the train, to pay the rent to
+     Robinson, and what is over would be my own.
+
+     'It is long I am hearing talk of the Carrageen, and I never knew
+     what it was. If I spent the last spring-tide at it, and I to take
+     care of myself, I would buy a gown and a long cloak and a wide
+     little shawl; that, and a dress cap, with frills on every side like
+     feathers.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     '(This is what the Calleac said, that was over a hundred years
+     old:--)
+
+     '"I lost the last spring-tide with it, and I went into sharp
+     danger. I did not know what the Carrageen was, or anything at all
+     like it; but I will have tobacco from this out, if I lose the half
+     of my fingers!"'
+
+This is a little song addressed by a fisherman to his little boat, his
+curragh-cin:--
+
+     'There goes my curragh-cin, it is she will get the prize; she will
+     he to-night in America, and back again with the tide....
+
+     'I put pins of oak in her, and oars of red pine; and I made her
+     ready for sailing; for she is the six-oared curragh-cin that never
+     gave heed to the storm; and it is she will be coming to land, when
+     the sailing boats will be lost.
+
+     'There was a man came from England to buy my little boat from me;
+     he offered me twenty guineas for her; there were many looking on.
+     If he would offer me as much again, and a guinea over and above, he
+     would not get my curragh-cin till she goes out and kills the
+     shark.'
+
+For a shark will sometimes flounder into the fishing-nets and tear his
+way out; and even a whale is sometimes seen. I remember an Aran man
+beginning some story he was telling me with: 'I was going down that path
+one time, with the priest and a few others; for a whale had come
+ashore, and the jaw-bones of it were wanted, to make the piers of a
+gate.'
+
+As for the love-songs of our coast and island people, they seem to be
+for the most part a little artificial in method, a little strained in
+metaphor perhaps so giving rise to the Scotch Gaelic saying: 'as
+loveless as an Irishman.' Love of country, _tir-gradh_, is I think the
+real passion; and bound up with it are love of home, of family, love of
+God. Constancy and affection in marriage are the rule; yet marriage 'for
+love' is all but unknown; marriage is a matter of commonsense
+arrangement between the heads of families. As Mr. Yeats puts it, the
+countryman's 'dream has never been entangled by reality.' However this
+may be, my Aran friends tell me: 'The people do not care for love-songs;
+they would rather have any others.'
+
+Yet I have just seen some love-songs, taken down the other day by a
+Kinvara man from a Connemara man, that have some charming lines:--
+
+'Going over the hills after parting from the store of my heart, there is
+a mist on them and the darkness of night.'
+
+'It is my sharp grief, my thousand treasures, my road not to be to the
+door of your house; it is with you I wore out my shoes from the
+beginning of my youth until now.'
+
+'It is not sorry I would be if there was the length of a year in the
+day, and the leaves of the trees dropping honey; I myself on the side
+where the blossoms are falling, my love beside me, and a little green
+branch in her hand.'
+
+    'She goes by me like a little breeze of the wind.'
+
+And this line that in a country of separations is already, they tell me,
+'passing into a proverb':--
+
+     'It is far from one another our rising is every day.'
+
+But the tradition of classical allusions, brought in some centuries ago,
+joined to the exaggeration that has been the breath of Irish poets, from
+the time Naoise called Deirdre 'a woman brighter than the sun,' has
+brought monotony into most of the love-songs.
+
+The ideal country girl, with her dew-grey eye and long amber hair, is
+always likened to Venus, to Juno, to Deirdre. 'I think she is nine times
+nicer than Deirdre,' says Raftery, 'or I may say Helen, the affliction
+of the Greeks'; and he writes of another country girl, that she is
+'beyond Venus, in spite of all Homer wrote on her appearance, and
+Cassandra also, and Io that bewitched Mars; beyond Minerva, and Juno,
+the king's wife'; and he wishes 'they might be brought face to face with
+her, that they might be confused':--
+
+     'She comes to me like a star through the mist; her hair is golden
+     and goes down to her shoes; her breast is the colour of white
+     sugar, or like bleached bone on the card-table; her neck is whiter
+     than the froth of the flood, or the swan coming from swimming....
+     If France and Spain belonged to me, I'd give it up to be along with
+     you.'
+
+And he gives 'a thousand praises to God, that I didn't lose my wits on
+account of her.' Raftery puts distinction into each one of his songs;
+but when lesser poets, echoing the voices of so many generations, bring
+in the same goddesses, and the same exaggerations, and the same amber
+hair, monotony brings weariness at last.
+
+There is an Aran song, 'Brigid na Casad,' that has more originality than
+is usual:--
+
+     'Brigid's kiss was sweeter than the whole of the waters of Lough
+     Erne; or the first wheaten flour, worked with fresh honey into
+     dough; there are streams of bees' honey on every part of the
+     mountain, there is brown sugar thrown on all you take, Brigid, in
+     your hand.
+
+     'It is not more likely for water to change than for the mind of a
+     woman; and is it not a young man without courage will not run the
+     chance nine times? It's not nicer than you the swan is when he
+     comes to the shore swimming; it's not nicer than you the thrush is,
+     and he singing from tree to tree.'
+
+And here is another, homely in the extreme in the beginning, and
+suddenly rising to wild exaggeration:--
+
+     'Late on the evening of last Monday, and it raining, I chanced to
+     come into Seaghan's and I sat down. It is there I saw her near me
+     in the corner of the hearth; and her laugh was better to me than to
+     have her eyes down; her hair was shining like the wool of a sheep,
+     and brighter than the swan swimming. It is then I asked who owned
+     her, and it is with Frank Conneely she was.
+
+     'It is a good house belongs to Frank Conneely, the people say that
+     do be going to it; plenty of whiskey and punch going round, and
+     food without stint for a man to get; and it is what I think the
+     girl is learned, for she has knowledge of books and of the pen,
+     and a schoolmaster coming to teach her every day.
+
+     'The troop is on the sea, sailing eternally, and looking always on
+     my Nora Ban. Is it not a great sin, she to be on a bare mountain,
+     and not to be dressed in white silk, and the king of the French
+     coming to the island for her, from France or from Germany?
+
+     'Is it not nice the jewel looked at the races and at the church in
+     Barna? She took the sway there as far as the big town. Is she not
+     the nice flower with the white breast, the comeliness of a woman?
+     and the sun of summer pleased with her, shining on her at every
+     side, and hundreds of men in love with her.
+
+     'It is I would like to run through the hills with her, and to go
+     the roads with her; and it is I would put a cloak around my Nora
+     Ban.'
+
+The very _naďveté_, the simplicity of these ballads, make one feel that
+the peasants who make and sing them may be trembling on the edge of a
+great discovery; and that some day--perhaps very soon--one born among
+them will put their half-articulate, eternal sorrows and laments and
+yearnings into words that will be their expression for ever, as was done
+for the Hebrew people when the sorrow of exile was put into the hundred
+and thirty-seventh Psalm, and the sorrow of death into the lament for
+Saul and Jonathan, and the yearning of love into what was once known as
+'the ballad of ballads,' the Song of Solomon.
+
+I have one ballad at least to give, that shows, even in my prose
+translation, how near that day may be, if the language that holds the
+soul of our West Irish people can be saved from the 'West Briton'
+destroyer. There are some verses in it that attain to the intensity of
+great poetry, though I think less by the creation of one than by the
+selection of many minds; the peasants who have sung or recited their
+songs from one generation to another, having instinctively sifted away
+by degrees what was trivial, and kept only what was real, for it is in
+this way the foundations of literature are laid. I first heard of this
+ballad from the South; but when I showed it to an Aran man, he said it
+was well known there, and that his mother had often sung it to him when
+he was a child. It is called 'The Grief of a Girl's Heart':--
+
+     'O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and
+     do not forget it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and
+     market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at
+     night.
+
+     'It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was
+     speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird
+     through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you
+     find me.
+
+     'You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be
+     before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three
+     hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating
+     lamb.
+
+     'You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold
+     under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and
+     a fine white court by the side of the sea.
+
+     'You promised me a thing that is not possible, that you would give
+     me gloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of
+     the skin of a bird; and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.
+
+     'O Donall og, it is I would be better to you than a high, proud,
+     spendthrift lady: I would milk the cow; I would bring help to you;
+     and if you were hard pressed, I would strike a blow for you.
+
+     'O, ochone, and it's not with hunger or with wanting food, or
+     drink, or sleep, that I am growing thin, and my life is shortened;
+     but it is the love of a young man has withered me away.
+
+     'It is early in the morning that I saw him coming, going along the
+     road on the back of a horse; he did not come to me; he made nothing
+     of me; and it is on my way home that I cried my fill.
+
+     'When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness, I sit down and I go
+     through my trouble; when I see the world and do not see my boy, he
+     that has an amber shade in his hair.
+
+     'It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you; the Sunday that is
+     last before Easter Sunday. And myself on my knees reading the
+     Passion; and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.
+
+     'O, aya! my mother, give myself to him; and give him all that you
+     have in the world; get out yourself to ask for alms, and do not
+     come back and forward looking for me.
+
+     'My mother said to me not to be talking with you to-day, or
+     to-morrow, or on the Sunday; it was a bad time she took for telling
+     me that; it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
+
+     'My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe, or as the black
+     coal that is on the smith's forge; or as the sole of a shoe left in
+     white halls; it was you put that darkness over my life.
+
+     'You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
+     you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have
+     taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me; and my fear is
+     great that you have taken God from me!
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+JACOBITE BALLADS.
+
+
+I was looking the other day through a collection of poems, lately taken
+down from Irish-speaking country people for the _Oireactas_, the great
+yearly meeting of the Gaelic League; and a line in one of them seemed
+strange to me: '_Prebaim mo chroidhe le mo Stuart glegeal_,' 'my heart
+leaps up with my bright Stuart'; for I did not know there was still a
+memory of James and Charles among the people. The refrain of the poem
+was: 'Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!' and these are some
+of its verses:--
+
+     'There are young girls through the whole country would sit
+     alongside of me through a half-hour, till we would be telling you
+     the story together of what it was put myself under trouble; I make
+     my complaints, wanting my comrade. Och, my grief, my friend stole
+     away from me!
+
+     'Where are my people that were wise and learned? Where is the troop
+     readying their spears, that they do not smooth out this knot for
+     me? Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!
+
+     'I was for a while airy and beautiful, and all my treasure with my
+     pleasant James.... On the top of all, my Stuart to leave me. Och,
+     my grief, my friend stole away from me!
+
+     'It is the truth I cannot sleep in the night, fretting for my
+     comrade; I to be lying down, and he weak under cold. My heart leaps
+     up with my bright Stuart. Och, my grief, my friend stole away from
+     me!
+
+     'It is hard for me to lie down after that; it is an empty thing to
+     be crying the loss of my comrade, and I lying down with the mean
+     people; it is my death the Stuart not to come at all. Och, my
+     grief, my friend stole away from me!'
+
+I had not heard any songs of this sort in Galway, and I remembered that
+our Connaught Raftery, whose poems are still teaching history, dealt
+very shortly with the Royal Stuarts. 'James,' he says, 'was the worst
+man for habits.... He laid chains on our bogs and mountains.... The
+father wasn't worse than the son Charles, that left sharp scourges on
+Ireland. When God and the people thought it time the story to be done,
+he lost his head.... The next James--sharp blame to him--gave his
+daughter to William as woman and wife; made the Irish English, and the
+English Irish, like wheat and oats in the month of harvest. And it was
+at Aughrim on a Monday many a son of Ireland found sorrow, without
+speaking of all that died.'
+
+So I went to ask some of the wise old neighbours, who sit in wide
+chimney-nooks by turf fires, and to whom I go to look for knowledge of
+many things, if they knew of any songs in praise of the Stuarts. But
+they were scornful. 'The Stuarts?' one said; 'no, indeed; they have no
+songs about them here in the West, whatever they may have in the South.
+Why would they, running away and leaving the country? And what good did
+they ever do it?' And another, who lives on the Clare border, said: 'I
+used to hear them singing "The White Cockade" through the country.
+"King James was beaten, and all his well-wishers; my grief, my boy that
+went with them!" But I don't think the people had ever much opinion of
+the Stuarts; but in those days they were all prone to versify. But the
+famine did away with all that.' And then he also was scornful, and said:
+'Sure King James ran all the way from the Boyne to Dublin, after the
+battle. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got
+there; and he told her the battle was lost; and she said: "Faith you
+made good haste; you made no delay on the road." So he said no more
+after that.'
+
+And then he told me of the Battle of Aughrim, that is still such a
+terrible memory; and how the 'Danes'--the De Danaan--the mysterious
+divine race that were conquered by the Gael, and who still hold an
+invisible kingdom--'were dancing in the raths around Aughrim the night
+after the battle. Their ancestors were driven out of Ireland before; and
+they were glad when they saw those that had put them out put out
+themselves, and every one of them skivered.'
+
+And another old man said: 'When I was a young chap knocking about in
+Connemara, I often heard songs about the Stuarts, and talk of them and
+of the blackbird coming over the water. But they found it hard to get
+over James making off after the Battle of the Boyne.' And another says
+of James: 'They liked him well before he ran; they didn't like him after
+that.'
+
+And when I looked through the lately gathered bundle of songs again, and
+through some old collections of Jacobite songs in Irish, I found they
+almost all belonged to Munster. And if they are still sung there, it is
+not, I think, for the sake of the kings, but for the sake of the poets
+who made them--Red-haired Owen O'Sullivan, potato-digger, harvestman,
+hedge-schoolmaster, whose poems are still the joy of the Munster people;
+O'Rahilly, more learned, and as boundlessly redundant; O'Donnell, whose
+heart was set on translating Homer into Irish; O'Heffernan, the blind
+wanderer; and many others. For the Munstermen have always been more
+'prone to versify' than their leaner neighbours on the bogs and stones
+of Connaught.
+
+There is a common formula for most of these songs or 'Visions,'
+_Aislinghe_, as they are called. Just as artists of to-day find no
+monotony in drawing Ireland over and over again with her harp, her
+wolf-dog, and her round tower, so the Munster poets found no monotony in
+representing her as a beautiful woman, white-skinned, with curling hair,
+with cheeks in which 'the lily and the rose were fighting for mastery.'
+The poet asks her if she is Venus, or Helen, or Deirdre, and describes
+her beauty in torrents of alliterative adjectives. Then she makes her
+complaint against England, or her lament for her own sorrows or for the
+loss of her Stuart lover, spoken of sometimes as 'the bricklayer,' or
+'the merchant's son.' The framework is artificial; but the laments are
+often very pathetic the love of Ireland, and the hatred of England born
+of that love, finding expression in them.
+
+John O'Donnell sees her 'like a young queen that is going astray for the
+king being banished from her, that had a right to come and set her
+loose.' O'Rahilly, in one of his poems, shows the beautiful woman held
+to her Saxon lover by some strange enchantment:--
+
+     'I met brightness of brightness upon the path of loneliness;
+     plaiting of plaiting in every lock of her yellow hair. News of news
+     she gave me, and she as lonely as she was; news of the coming back
+     of him that owns the tribute of the king.
+
+     'Folly of follies I to go so near to her; slave I was made by a
+     slave that put me in hard bonds. She made away from me then, and I
+     following after her, till we came to a house of houses made by
+     Druid enchantments.
+
+     'They broke into mocking laughter, a troop of men of enchantments,
+     and a troop of young girls with smooth-plaited hair. They put me up
+     in chains; they made no delay about it; and my love holding to her
+     breast an awkward ugly clown.
+
+     'I told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not
+     right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man
+     that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots,
+     waiting till she would come to him to be his beautiful bride.
+
+     'At the sound of my words her pride set her crying; the tears were
+     running down over the kindling of her cheeks. She sent a lad to
+     bring me safe from the place I was in. She is the brightness of
+     brightness I met in the path of loneliness.'
+
+Sometimes the Stuart is almost forgotten in the story of sorrows and the
+indictment of England. O'Heffernan complains in one of his songs that
+many of the heroes of Ireland have passed away, and their names have
+never been put in a song by the poets; 'and they even leave their verses
+without any account of Charles the wanderer, though I promise you they
+are not satisfied without giving some lines on Seaghan Buidhe' (one of
+the names for England). Yet he himself, when very downhearted, 'on the
+edge of the great wood under a harsh cloak of sorrow,' is cheered by the
+pleasant sound of a swarm of bees in search of their ruler; and with the
+pleasant thought that 'the harvest will be a bad one and with no joy in
+it to Seaghan. George will be sent back over the sea, and the tribe that
+was so high up will be left without gold or townlands; and I not pitying
+their sorrow.' And he winds up: 'In Shronehill, if I were stretched at
+rest under a hard flag, and to hear this story moving about so
+pleasantly, by force and strength of my shoulders I would throw the sod
+off me; and I coming back leaping to hear the news.'
+
+And another writer, Seaghan Clarach, looks forward to seeing 'timid
+George tame upon the road, without wine, without meat, without thread
+for his shoes.' And his last verse, his 'binding,' is, 'I beseech of
+God, I ask and I pray very hard, to cast out the gluttons that tormented
+the generous race of the Gael, from the island of the west, under hard
+bonds, and to banish the foreign devils from us.'
+
+For poets and people found it hard to forget Cromwell; and how 'the sons
+of the Gael are scorched, tormented, pitchforked, put under the yoke, by
+boors that are used to doing treachery.'
+
+When the Stuarts come to mind, they are given fair words enough. 'The
+prince and heart-secret Charles that is sorrowful now and under
+weariness ... will be under esteem; and the Gael pleasant in the
+lime-white house.' ... 'It is friendly, fair bright, companionable,
+loving, brave, Charles will be, with sway, without a mist about him.'
+
+And in one of Red Owen's 'Visions' he is told not to forget James, who
+is 'persevering, well-tempered, affectionate, stout, sweet, kind,
+poetical.'
+
+Yet the Stuart seems to be always a faint and unreal image; a saint by
+whose name a heavy oath is sworn. There are no personal touches such as
+I find in a song taken down from some countryman, on Patrick Sarsfield,
+the brave, handsome fighter, the descendant of Conall Cearnach, the man
+who, after the Boyne, offered to 'change kings and fight the battle
+again.' This ballad seems to have more of Connaught simplicity than of
+Munster luxuriance in it:--
+
+     'O Patrick Sarsfield, health be to you, since you went to France
+     and your camps were loosened; making your sighs along with the
+     king, and you left poor Ireland and the Gael defeated--Och ochone!
+
+     'O Patrick Sarsfield, it is a man with God you are; and blessed is
+     the earth you ever walked on. The blessing of the bright sun and
+     the moon upon you, since you took the day from the hands of King
+     William--Och ochone!
+
+     'O Patrick Sarsfield, the prayer of every person with you; my own
+     prayer and the prayer of the Son of Mary with you, since you took
+     the narrow ford going through Biorra, and since at Cuilenn O'Cuanac
+     you won Limerick--Och ochone!
+
+     'I will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it
+     again. It is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop
+     thinned, not keeping with one another--Och ochone!
+
+     'My five hundred healths to you, halls of Limerick, and to the
+     beautiful troop was in our company; it is bonfires we used to have
+     and playing cards, and the word of God was often with us--Och
+     ochone!
+
+     'There were many soldiers glad and happy that were going the way
+     through seven weeks; but now they are stretched down in
+     Aughrim--Och ochone!
+
+     'They put the first breaking on us at the Bridge of the Boyne; the
+     second breaking on the Bridge of Slaney; the third breaking in
+     Aughrim of O'Kelly; and O sweet Ireland, my five hundred healths to
+     you--Och ochone!
+
+     'O'Kelly has manuring for his land, that is not sand or dung, but
+     ready soldiers doing bravery with pikes, that were left in Aughrim
+     stretched in ridges--Och ochone!
+
+     'Who is that beyond on the hill, Beinn Edair? I a poor soldier with
+     King James. I was last year in arms and in dress, but this year I
+     am asking alms--Och ochone!'
+
+There are other symbolic songs besides the 'Visions.' Mangan's fine
+translation of Kathleen ni Houlihan is well known; and it is likely the
+king is calling to Ireland in '_Ceann dubh deelish_,' that is beautiful
+in all translations. This is _An Craoibhin's_:--
+
+    'The women of the village are in madness and trouble,
+      Pulling their hair and letting it go with the wind;
+    They will not take a boy of the men of the country
+      Till they go into the rout with the boys of the king.
+
+    'Black head, darling, darling, darling,
+      Black head, darling, move over to me;
+    Black head brighter than swan and than seagull,
+      It's a man without heart gives not love to thee.'
+
+But most of the translations have been in the affected style of the
+early part of the last century twisting the sense to give what was
+thought to be a romantic turn. A verse of Seaghan Clarach's, for
+instance, the lament of a farmer 'who has been wrestling with the
+world': 'The two that belong to me are without shelter, and my yoke of
+cattle without grass, without growth; there is misery on my people and
+their elbows without sound clothes,' is turned into:--
+
+    'The loved ones my life would have nourished
+      Are foodless, and bare, and cold.
+    My flocks by their fountain that flourished
+      Decay on the mountain wold.'
+
+But there is one mistranslation for whose sake we must forgive many
+others, for it has given the sad refrain that has often been on Irish
+lips:--
+
+    'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna,
+    We're worsted in the game!'
+
+Here are one or two of the many verses sung to the Little Black Rose by
+her lovers, poor or royal:--
+
+     'There is love through and through me for you all the length of a
+     year; sore love, vexing love, lasting love, love that left me
+     without health, without a road, without running; and for ever,
+     ever, without any sway at all over my Fair Black Rose.
+
+     'I would travel through Munster with you, and the boundaries of the
+     hills, if I thought I could find your secret, or a part of your
+     love. O branch of the tree, it seems to me that you love me; that
+     the flower of kind women is my Fair Black Rose.'
+
+'My heart leaps up with my bright Stuart!' James and Charles are, I
+think, the only English kings whose names, as it were by accident, have
+found their way into Irish song. And it is likely they are the last to
+find a place there, for the imagination of Ireland still tilts the beam
+to the national side; and the loyalty the poets of many hundred years
+have called for, is loyalty to Kathleen ni Houlihan. 'Have they not
+given her their wills, and their hearts, and their dreams? What have
+they left for any less noble Royalty?'
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+_AN CRAOIBHIN'S_ POEMS
+
+
+'"I would much rather (and I take every occasion of making this protest)
+write, so to say, in a dead language and for a dead people, than write
+in those deaf and stammering (_sorde e mute_) tongues, French and
+English, notwithstanding they are the fashion with their rules and
+exercises." This is so with me. Alfieri wrote these words a hundred
+years ago, and they express what is in my own mind. I would like better
+to make even one good verse in the language in which I am now writing,
+than to make a whole book of verses in English. For if there should be
+any good found in my English verses, it would not go to the credit of my
+mother, Ireland, but of my stepmother, England.'
+
+I have translated this from Douglas Hyde's preface to his little book of
+poems, lately published in Dublin, _Ubhla de'n Craoibh_, "Apples from
+the Branch." _An Craoibhin Aoibhin_, "The delightful little branch," is
+the name by which he is called all over Irish-speaking Ireland; and a
+gold branch bearing golden apples is stamped on the cover of his book.
+The poems had already been published, one by one, in a weekly paper; and
+a friend of mine tells me he has heard them sung and repeated by
+country people in many parts of Ireland--in Connemara, in Donegal, in
+Galway, in Kerry, in the Islands of Aran.
+
+Three or four of the thirty-three poems the book holds are, so to speak,
+official, written for the Gaelic League by its president; and these,
+like most official odes, are only for the moment. Some are ballads
+dealing with the old subjects of Irish ballads--emigration, exile,
+defeat, and death; for Douglas Hyde, as may be guessed from his preface,
+has, no less than his fellows--
+
+    'Hidden in his heart the flame out of the eyes
+    Of Kathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.'
+
+But these national ballads, though very popular, are, I think, not so
+good as his more personal poems. I suppose no narrative of what others
+have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from 'that
+little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.' Even
+in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have
+as distinct a quality as that of Villon or of Heine:--
+
+    'There are three fine devils eating my heart--
+    They left me, my grief! without a thing;
+    Sickness wrought, and Love wrought,
+    And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe.
+    Poverty left me without a shirt,
+    Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering;
+    Sickness left me with my head weak
+    And my body miserable, an ugly thing.
+    Love left me like a coal upon the floor,
+    Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out,
+    Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself,
+    Worse than any curse at all under the sun,
+    Worse than the great poverty
+    Is the devil that is called "Love" by the people.
+    And if I were in my young youth again,
+    I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!'
+
+The next, in the form of a little folk-song, expresses the thought of
+the idealist of all time, that makes him cry, as one of the oldest of
+the poets cried long ago, 'Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird;
+the birds round about are against her.' Yet, with its whimsical fancies
+and exaggerations, it could hardly have been written in any but Irish
+air.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not a little white duck,
+    And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain;
+    I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,
+    To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.
+
+    'Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking,
+    Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat,
+    Without high dances, without a big name, without music;
+    There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not an old crow;
+    I would sit for awhile up on the old branch,
+    I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am,
+    With a grain of oats or a white potato.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not a red fox,
+    Leaping strong and swift on the mountains,
+    Eating cocks and hens without pity,
+    Taking ducks and geese as a conqueror.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not a fair salmon,
+    Going through the strong full water,
+    Catching the mayflies by my craft,
+    Swimming at my choice, and swimming with the stream.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am of the race of the poets;
+    It would be better for me to be a high rock,
+    Or a stone or a tree or an herb or a flower
+    Or anything at all, but the thing that I am.'
+
+The sympathy of the moods of nature with the moods of man is a
+traditional heritage that has come to us through the poets, from the old
+time when the three great waves of the sea answered to a cry of distress
+in Ireland, or when, as in Israel, the land mourned and the herbs of
+every field withered, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein. The
+sea, and the winds blowing from the sea, can never be very far from the
+dweller in Ireland; and they echo the loneliness of the lonely listener.
+
+    'Cold, sharp lamentation
+    In the cold bitter winds
+    Ever blowing across the sky;
+    Oh, there was loneliness with me!
+
+    'The loud sounding of the waves
+    Beating against the shore,
+    Their vast, rough, heavy outcry,
+    Oh, there was loneliness with me!
+
+    'The light sea-gulls in the air,
+    Crying sharply through the harbours,
+    The cries and screams of the birds
+    With my own heart! Oh! that was loneliness.
+
+    'The voice of the winds and the tide,
+    And the long battle of the mighty war;
+    The sea, the earth, the skies, the blowing of the winds.
+    Oh! there was loneliness in all of them together.'
+
+Here is a verse from another poem of loneliness:--
+
+    'It is dark the night is; I do not see one star at all;
+    And it is dark and heavy my thoughts are that are scattered and
+        straying.
+    There is no sound about but of the birds going over my head--
+    The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows
+    And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its
+        whistle;
+    And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech.
+    But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases my grief--
+    Not one other cry but the cry and the call of the birds on the bog.'
+
+Here is another, in which the storm outside and the storm within answer
+to one another:--
+
+    'The heavy clouds are threatening,
+    And it's little but they'll take the roof off the house;
+    The heavy thunder is answering
+    To every flash of the yellow fire.
+    I, by myself, within in my room,
+    That is narrow, small, warm, am sitting,
+    I look at the surly skies,
+    And I listen to the wind.
+
+    'I was light, airy, lively,
+    On the young morning of yesterday;
+    But when the evening came,
+    I was like a dead man!
+    I have not one jot of hope
+    But for a bed in the clay;
+    Death is the same as life to me
+    From this out, from a word I heard yesterday.'
+
+The next is very simple, and puts into more homely words the feeling of
+'lonesomeness' that is looked upon as almost the worst of evils by the
+Irish countryman, as we see by his proverb: 'It is better to be
+quarreling than to be lonesome.' 'I would be lonesome in it,' is often
+the reason given for a refusal to go from bog or mountain cabin to some
+crowded place 'where there is not heed for one or love.'
+
+    'Oh! if there were in this world
+          Any nice little place,
+    To be my own, my own for ever,
+          My own only,
+    I would have great joy--great ease--
+          Beyond what I have,
+    Without a place in the world where I can say:
+          "This is my own."
+
+    It's a pity for a man to know,
+          And it's a pain,
+    That there is no place in the world
+          Where there is heed for him or love;
+    That there is not in the world for him
+          A heart or a hand
+    To give help to him
+          To the mering of the next world.
+
+    'It is hard and it is bitter,
+          And a sharp grief,
+    It is woe and it is pity,
+          To be by oneself.
+    It is nothing the way you are,
+          To anyone at all.
+    It is nothing the way you are,
+          To yourself at last!'
+
+I suppose the following may be called a political poem, from its elusive
+reference to Home Rule. I was not sure on the point myself; for I
+thought the wearer of the 'blue cloak and birds' feathers,' must be a
+fine lady, perhaps laying enchantment on the fields. But I heard some
+one ask the _Craoibhin_ who he meant, and his answer was: 'I suppose I
+was thinking of an aide-de-camp':--
+
+    'I am looking at my cows walking,
+    What are you that would put me out of my luck?
+    Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?
+
+    'I will not always be turned backwards.
+    If there is need to be humble to you, great is my grief,
+    If I cannot walk, if I cannot walk, if I cannot walk in my own fields.
+
+    'It's little my respect, and it's little my desire,
+    For your blue cloak, and your birds' feathers.
+    Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?
+
+    'The day is coming as it's easy to see,
+    When there shall not be among us the ugly like of you.
+    And each one shall be walking, and each one shall be walking,
+    Wherever shall be his will and his own desire.'
+
+There are some love songs in the little volume. But their writer has
+had, in his beautiful translations of the 'Love Songs of Connacht,' to
+put such intensity of passion into English, that he must despair of
+putting any new wings to passion, or any new exaggeration into lovers'
+words. In one of these Connacht songs, the lover says: 'Blacker is the
+sun when setting than your features, Mary!' And she answers back:
+'Neither star nor sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!'
+Another lover says of the woman he desires: 'I will write largely of
+her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost;
+and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks
+through love. And I myself am not free, but am a bondsman in bonds.' And
+another boasts of 'a love without littleness, without weakness; love
+from age till death, love from folly growing, love that shall send me
+close beneath the clay, love without a hope of the world, love without
+envy of fortune, love that left me outside in captivity, love of my
+heart beyond women.' Douglas Hyde's own love songs are quiet and staid
+in contrast to these; but nevertheless they have a sober charm. Here are
+the last verses of one of them:--
+
+    'Will you be as hard,
+        Colleen, as you are quiet?
+    Will you be without pity
+        On me for ever?
+
+    'Listen to me, Noireen,
+        Listen, aroon;
+    Put healing on me
+        From your quiet mouth.
+
+    'I am in the little road
+        That is dark and narrow,
+    The little road that has led
+        Thousands to sleep.'
+
+In his preface to the 'Love Songs of Connacht' he says he finds in them
+'more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart,
+than of gaiety or hope'; and he writes: 'Not careless and light-hearted
+alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a
+melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything
+but sport and revelry, there is nothing in it but letting on.' There is
+grief and trouble, as I have shown, in many of his own songs, which the
+people have taken to their hearts so quickly; but there is also a touch
+of hope, of glad belief that, in spite of heavy days of change, all
+things are working for good at the last.
+
+Here are some verses from a poem called 'There is a Change coming':--
+
+    'When that time comes it will come heavily;
+    He will grow fat that was lean;
+    He will grow lean that was fat,
+    Without shelter for the head, without mirth, without help.
+
+    'The low will be raised up, says the poet;
+    The thing that was high will be thrown down again;
+    The world will be changed from end to end:
+    When that time comes it will come heavily.
+
+    'If you yourself see this thing coming,
+    And the country without luck, without law, without authority,
+    Swept with the storm, without knowledge, without strength,
+    Remember my words, and don't let your heart break.
+
+    'This life is like a tree;
+    The top green, branches soft, the bark smooth and shining;
+    But there is a little worm shut up in it
+    Sucking at the sap all through the day.
+
+    'But from this old, cold, withered tree,
+    A new plant will grow up;
+    The old world will die without pity,
+    But the young world will grow up on its grave.'
+
+Here is a fine vision of a battle-field:--
+
+    'The time I think of the cause of Ireland
+    My heart is torn within me.
+
+    'The time I think of the death of the people
+    Who protected Ireland bravely and faithfully.
+
+    'They are stretched on the side of the mountain
+    Very low, one with another.
+
+    'Hidden under grass, or under tall herbs,
+    Far from friends or help or friendship.
+
+    'Not a child or a wife near them;
+    Not a priest to be found there or a friar;
+
+    'But the mountain eagle and the white eagle
+    Moving overhead across the skies.
+
+    'Without a defence against the sun in the daytime;
+    Without a shelter against the skies at night.
+
+    'It's many a good soldier, joyful and pleasant,
+    That has had his laughing mouth closed there.
+
+    'There is many a young breast with a hole through it;
+    The little black hole that is death to a man.
+
+    'There is many a brave man stripped there,
+    His body naked, without vest or shirt.
+
+    'The young man that was proud and beautiful yesterday,
+    When the woman he loved left a kiss on his mouth.
+
+    'There is many a married woman, with the child at her breast,
+    Without her comrade, without a father for her child to-night.
+
+    'There's many a castle without a lord, and many a lord without a house;
+    And little forsaken cabins with no one in them.
+
+    'I saw a fox leaving its den
+    Asking for a body to feed its hunger.
+
+    'There's a fierce wolf at Carrig O'Neill;
+    There is blood on his tongue and blood on his mouth.
+
+    'I saw them, and I heard the cries
+    Of kites and of black crows.
+
+    'Ochone! Is not the only Son of God angry;
+    Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'
+
+I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is
+about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the
+emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is
+not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only
+looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the
+people:--
+
+    'I am lying in prison,
+        I am in bonds;
+    To-morrow I will be hanged,
+    Who am to-night so quiet,
+          So quiet;
+    Who am to-night so quiet.
+
+    'I am in prison,
+        My heart is cold and heavy;
+    To-morrow I will be hanged,
+    And there is no help for me,
+          My grief;
+    Och! there is no help for me.
+
+    'I am in prison,
+        And I did no wrong;
+    I only did the work
+    Was just, was right, was good,
+          I did,
+    Oh, I did the thing was good.
+
+    'It is with the people I was,
+        It is not with the law I was;
+    But they took me in my sleep,
+    On the side of Cnoc-na-Feigh;
+          And so
+    To-morrow they will hang me.'
+
+    'I am weak in my body,
+        I am vexed in my heart,
+    And to-morrow I will be hanged;
+    Lying beneath the clay,
+          My sorrow,
+    Lying beneath the clay.
+
+    'May God give pardon
+        To my vexed, sorrowful soul;
+    May God give mercy
+    To me now and forever,
+          Amen!
+    To me now and forever.'
+
+But translation is poor work. Even if it gives a glimpse of the heart of
+a poem, too much is lost in losing the outward likeness. Here are the
+last lines of the lament of a felon's brother:--
+
+    'Now that you are stretched in the cold grave
+        May God set you free:
+    It's vexed and sorry and pitiful are my thoughts;
+        It's sorrowful I am to-day!'
+
+I look at them and read them; and wonder why when I first read them,
+their sound had hung about me for days like a sobbing wind; but when I
+look at them in their own form, the sob is in them still:
+
+    Nois ann san uaigh fhuair ó tá tu sínte
+        Go saoraigh Dia thu
+    Is buaidhcartha, brónach bocht atá mo smaointe
+        Is bronach mé andhiú.
+
+
+
+
+BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND
+
+
+Yesterday I asked a woman on the Echtge hills, if any of her neighbours
+had gone to the war. She said: 'No; but I know a great many that went to
+America when the war began--even boys that had business to do at home;
+they were afraid of being brought away by the Press.' On another part of
+the Echtge hills, where a rumour had come that the police were to be
+sent to the war, an old woman said to a policeman I know: 'When you go
+out there, don't be killing the people of my religion.' He said: 'The
+Boers are not of your religion'; but she said: 'They are; I know they
+must be Catholics, or the English would not be against them.' Others on
+that wild range think that this is the beginning of the great war that
+will end in the final rout of the enemies of Ireland. Old prophecies say
+this war is to come at the meeting of these centuries; and there is an
+old Irish verse which seems to allude to this, and which has been thus
+translated:--
+
+    'When the Lion shall lose its strength,
+        And the bracket Thistle begin to pine,
+    The Harp shall sound sweet, sweet, at length,
+        Between the eight and the nine.'
+
+Lonely Echtge still keeps old prophecies and old songs and some of the
+old speech, and but few newspapers are seen there; but on the lowland,
+sympathy with the Boers, and prophecies of their victory, are put into
+the doggerel English verse that must be poor in form, because a ballad,
+more than another song, must have a long tradition of folk-thought and
+folk-expression behind it; and in Ireland this tradition does not belong
+to the English language. Even the beautiful air of 'The Wearing of the
+Green' cannot give poetic charm to such verses as these, which, like the
+others that follow, have been sung and sold by ballad-singers in
+market-towns and at fairs, and at country race-meetings, during the last
+year:--
+
+    'Oh! Paddy dear, and did ye hear
+      The news that's going round?
+    No cheers for brave Paul Kruger
+      Must be heard on Irish ground.
+    No more the English tourist at
+      Killarney will be seen,
+    Unless you join the pirate's cause,
+      And chant "God save the Queen."'
+
+Or this other, sung during the siege of Ladysmith:--
+
+    'And I met with White the General,
+      And he's looking thin enough;
+    And he says the boys in Ladysmith
+      Are running short of stuff.
+    Faith, the dishes need no washing,
+      Now they're left so nice and clean;
+    Oh! it's anything but pleasant
+      To be starving for the Queen!'
+
+The defender of Ladysmith is treated with greater courtesy than some
+other generals, for, in spite of sympathy with the besiegers, the singer
+says:--
+
+    'But if he gave in to-morrow,
+      I would not think it right
+    To throw the least disparagement
+      On a man like General White.
+    He is making a bold resistance,
+      As great as could be made,
+    Against their deadly Mauser rifles,
+      And their tremendous cannonade.'
+
+The 'Song of the Transvaal Irish Brigade' has more literary quality:--
+
+    'The Cross swings low; the morn is near--
+      Now, comrades, fill up high;
+    The cannon's voice will ring out clear
+      When morning lights the sky.
+    A toast we'll drink together, boys,
+      Ere dawns the battle's grey,
+    A toast to Ireland, dear old Ireland!
+          Ireland far away!
+    Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
+      Health to Ireland, strength to Ireland!
+          Ireland, boys, hurrah!
+
+    'Who told us that her cause was dead?
+      Who bade us bend the knee?
+    The slaves! Again she lifts her head--
+      Again she dares be free!
+    With gun in hand, we take our stand,
+      For Ireland in the fray:
+    We fight for Ireland, dear old Ireland!
+          Ireland far away!
+    Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
+      We fight for Ireland, die for Ireland--
+          Ireland, boys, hurrah!
+
+    'Oh, mother of the wounded breast!
+      Oh, mother of the tears!
+    The sons you loved, and trusted best,
+      Have grasped their battle spears.
+    From Shannon, Lagan, Liffey, Lee,
+      On Afric's soil to-day,
+    We strike for Ireland, brave old Ireland!
+          Ireland far away!
+    Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
+      We smite for Ireland, brave old Ireland!
+          Ireland, boys, hurrah!'
+
+'The Irish Boy,' which is sung to the air of 'The Minstrel Boy,' is also
+in honour of the Irish Brigade:--
+
+    'While the Irish boy is on the shore,
+      He'll help to crush the stranger;
+    He'll sweep them hence for evermore,
+      And free thy land from danger.
+    And then he'll pray to God above,
+      That his courage ne'er shall falter,
+    To guard him to the land he loves--
+      To Ireland o'er the water.'
+
+Mayo is the county to which John MacBride, the leader of the Irish
+Brigade, belongs; but I heard of a ballad-singer at Ballindereen, near
+my Galway home, the other day, whose refrain was:--
+
+    'And Erin watches from afar, with joy and hope and pride,
+    Her sons who strike for liberty, led on by John MacBride!'
+
+At Galway Railway Station, whence the Connaught Rangers set out for the
+war, I have heard that wives, saying good-bye, begged their husbands
+'not to be too hard on the Boers.' Anyhow, a 'Mother's lament for her
+son gone to the war,' that was sung at Galway Races the other day, shows
+more impartiality than most of the ballads:--
+
+    'When the battle rages fiercely, our boys are in the van;
+    How I do wish the blows they struck were for dear Ireland!
+    But duty calls, they must obey, and fight against the Boer,
+    And many a cheerful Irish lad will fall to rise no more.
+
+    'I wish my boy was home again! Oh! how I'd welcome him,
+    With sorrow I'm broken-hearted, my eyes are growing dim;
+    The war is dark and cruel, but whoever wins the fight,
+    I pray to save my noble lad, and God defend the right!'
+
+But it is the small farmers of Ireland who look with special sympathy on
+their fellows in the Transvaal. They give them a warning:--
+
+    'England sends her grabbers,
+      From far across the sea,
+    To rob you of your friends and home,
+      Likewise your liberty.'
+
+And the Boers say in answer:--
+
+    'When we came to this country,
+      'Twas but a barren plain;
+    But the honest hand of labour
+      Was rewarded for its pain.
+    We found the precious metal,
+      And of it we have great store;
+    But Britain came to rob us
+      As she often done before.
+        As she thought to do before,
+        As she thought to do before;
+    But Britain comes to rob us,
+      As she often done before.'
+
+Another ballad explains:--
+
+    'Those Boers can't be blamed, as you might understand;
+    They are trying to free their own native land,
+    Where they toil night and day by the sweat of their brow,
+    Like the farmers in Ireland that follow the plough.
+    Farewell to Old Ireland, we are now going away,
+    To fight the brave Boers in South Africa;
+    To fight those poor farmers we are not inclined:
+    God be with you, Old Ireland, we are leaving behind.'
+
+Some verses--'The Boer's Prayer'--that I have not seen on a
+ballad-sheet, but in a weekly paper, give better expression to this
+feeling of farmer sympathy:--
+
+    'My back is to the wall;
+      Lo! here I stand.
+    O Lord, whate'er befall,
+      I love this land!
+
+    'This land that I have tilled,
+      This land is mine;
+    Would, Lord, that Thou hadst willed,
+      This heart were Thine!
+
+    'This land to us Thou gave
+      In days of old;
+    They seek to make a grave
+      Or field of gold!
+
+    'To us, O Lord, Thy hand,
+      Put forth to save!
+    Give us, O Lord, this land
+      Or give a grave!'
+
+'A New Song for the Boers' says:--
+
+    'Hark! to the curses ringing
+      From all smitten lands;
+    In sob and wail, they tell the tale
+      Of England's blood-red hands.
+
+    'And wheresoe'er her standard flings
+      Forth its folds of shame,
+    A people's cries to heaven arise
+      For vengeance on her name!'
+
+But for passionate expression, one cannot, as I have already said, look
+to the comparatively new and artificial English ballad form; one must go
+to the Irish, with its long tradition. Here is a poem, 'The Curse of the
+Boers on England,' which I have translated literally from the Irish:--
+
+    'O God, we call to Thee,
+      This hour and this day,
+    Look down on this England
+      That has come down in our midst.
+
+    'O God, we call to Thee,
+      This day and this hour,
+    Look down on England,
+      And her cold, cold heart.
+
+    'It is she was a Queen,
+      A Queen without sorrow;
+    But we will take from her,
+      Quietly, her Crown.
+
+    'That Queen that was beautiful
+      Will be tormented and darkened,
+    For she will get her reward
+      In that day, and her wage.
+
+    'Her wage for the blood
+      She poured out on the streams;
+    Blood of the white man,
+      Blood of the black man.
+
+    'Her wage for those hearts
+      That she broke in the end;
+    Hearts of the white man,
+      Hearts of the black man.
+
+    'Her wage for the bones
+      That are whitening to-day;
+    Bones of the white man,
+      Bones of the black man.
+
+    'Her wage for the hunger
+      That she put on foot;
+    Her wage for the fever,
+      That is an old tale with her.
+
+    'Her wage for the white villages
+      She has left without men;
+    Her wage for the brave men
+      She has put to the sword.
+
+    'Her wage for the orphans
+      She has left under pain;
+    Her wage for the exiles
+      She has spent with wandering.
+
+    'For the people of India
+      (Pitiful is their case);
+    For the people of Africa
+      She has put to death.
+
+    'For the people of Ireland,
+      Nailed to the cross;
+    Wage for each people
+      Her hand has destroyed.
+
+    'Her wage for the thousands
+      She deceived and she broke;
+    Her wage for the thousands
+      Finding death at this hour.
+
+    'O Lord, let there fall
+      Straight down on her head
+    The curse of the peoples
+      That have fallen with us.
+
+    'The curse of the mean,
+      And the curse of the small,
+    The curse of the weak,
+      And the curse of the low.
+
+    'The Lord does not listen
+      To the curse of the strong,
+    But He will listen
+      To sighs and to tears.
+
+    'He will always listen
+      To the crying of the poor,
+    And the crying of thousands
+      Is abroad to-night.
+
+    'That crying will rise up
+      To God that is above;
+    It is not long till every curse
+      Comes to His ears.
+
+    'The crying will be put away;
+      Tears will be put away,
+    When they come to God,
+      These prayers to His kingdom.
+
+    'He will make for England
+      Strong chains, very heavy;
+    He will pay her wages
+      With strong, heavy chains.
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND
+
+
+The Irish poem I give this translation of was printed in the _Revue
+Celtique_ some years ago, and lately in _An Fior Clairseach na
+h-Eireann_, where a note tells us it was taken from a manuscript in the
+Gottingen Library, and was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan,
+who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for
+its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish
+writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the
+horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which
+the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable
+than the people of a country that has kept its own settled rule.
+
+
+A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND.
+
+    My thoughts, alas! are without strength;
+    My spirit is journeying towards death;
+    My eyes are as a frozen sea;
+    My tears my daily food;
+    There is nothing in my life but only misery;
+    My poor heart is torn,
+    And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
+    Mourning the miserable state of Ireland,
+    Without ease, without mirth for any person
+    That is born on the plains of Emer.
+    And here I give you the heavy story,
+    And the tale of all the remnant of her deeds.
+
+      She lost her pomp and her strength together
+    When her strong men were banished across the sea;
+    Her churches are as holds of pain,
+    Without altars, without Mass, without bowing of knees;
+    Stables for horses--this story is pitiful--
+    Or without a stone of their stones together.
+
+      Since the children of Israel were in Egypt
+    Under bondage, and scarcity along with that,
+    There was never written in a book or never seen
+    Hardship like the hardships in Ireland.
+    They parted from us the shepherds of the flock
+    That is the flock that is astray and is wounded,
+    Left to be torn by wild dogs,
+    And no healing for it from the hand of anyone.
+    Unless God will look down on our distress
+    Ireland will indeed be lost for ever!
+    Every old man, every strong man, every child,
+    Our young men and our well-dressed women,
+    Keening, complaining, and reproaching;
+    Going under the power of the Gall or going across the sea.
+    Our dear country without any ears of corn,
+    Without store, without cattle, but only the green grass;
+    Our fatherless children are wasted and weak,
+    Famine and sickness travelling over Ireland,
+    And every other scourge that was ever known,
+    And the rest of her pain has not yet been told.
+
+      Nevertheless, my sharp woe! I see with my eyes
+    That the High King has a bow ready in His hand,
+    And His quiver is full of arrows with sharp points,
+    And every arrow of them for our sore wounding,
+    From the sole of our feet to the top of our head,
+    To bruise our hearts and to tear our sinews;
+    There is no spot of our limbs but is scarred;
+    Misfortune has come upon us all together--
+    The poor and the rich, the weak and the strong;
+    The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained;
+    The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;
+    And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.
+
+      I do not know of anything under the sky
+    That is friendly or favourable to the Gael,
+    But only the sea that our need brings us to,
+    Or the wind that blows to the harbour
+    The ship that is bearing us away from Ireland;
+    And there is reason that these are reconciled with us,
+    For we increase the sea with our tears,
+    And the wandering wind with our sighs.
+
+      We do not see heaven look kindly upon us;
+    We do not see our complaint being listened to;
+    Even the earth refuses us shelter
+    And the wood that gives protection to the birds;
+    Every cliff, every cave, every mountain-top,
+    Every hill, every lough, and every meadow.
+
+      Our feasts are without any voice of priests,
+    And none at them but women lamenting,
+    Tearing their hair, with troubled minds,
+    Keening pitifully after the Fenians.
+    The pipes of our organs are broken;
+    Our harps have lost their strings that were tuned
+    That might have made the great lamentations of Ireland;
+    Until the strong men come back across the sea,
+    There is no help for us but bitter crying,
+    Screams, and beating of hands, and calling out.
+
+      It is not strength of hosts, not loss of food,
+    Not the horsemen of the Gall coming from Britain,
+    Nor want of power, nor want of calling to war,
+    That has put defeat upon the armies of Ireland,
+    And has filled the cities with a sad multitude,
+    Alas! alas! but the greatness of our sins.
+
+      See, we are now put in the crucible
+    In which every worthless metal is tried,
+    In which gold is cleansed from every tarnish;
+    The Scripture is true in everything it says;
+    It says we must suffer before we can be cured;
+    It is through repentance we shall find forgiveness,
+    And the restoring of all that we have lost.
+
+      Let us put down the sum of our sins;
+    Oppression of the poor, thieving, robbery,
+    Great vows held in light esteem;
+    Giving our soul to the man that is the worst;
+    The strength of our pride was greater than our life,
+    The strength of our debts was more than we could pay.
+
+      It was with treachery Ireland was lost,
+    And the ill-will of men one to another.
+    There was no judge that would give a hearing
+    To the oppressed people whose life was under hardship.
+    Outcasts and widows crying aloud
+    Without right judgment to be had or punishment.
+
+      We were never agreed together,
+    But as one ox bound and one free from the yoke;
+    No right humility to be found.
+    All trying for the headship of Ireland
+    At the time when her enemies were doing their work.
+    No settlement to be made of any quarrel,
+    The share of the wheat-ear for the man that was strongest;
+    It is long that this has been the hurt of Ireland;
+    It is thus that the battle ended with the Gael.
+
+      Let us turn now and change our manners,
+    Let us make repentance of our sins together--
+    It is thus that the Israelites came out of Egypt;
+    Nineveh was given pardon for all its sins,
+    And even Peter for denying Christ.
+
+      O saints of Ireland, arise now together;
+    O Patrick, who hast care of us, bless this flock;
+    We who are exiled, we who are forsaken,
+    This sod is gone out unless thou blow upon it;
+    Is thy sleep heavy or is thy hearing slow
+    That thou dost not give an answer to us?
+    Awake quickly; let it not be as a tale with thee
+    That there is no help for the fate of the Gael.
+
+      This, Patrick, is my own quarrel with thee
+    That every enemy of thy flock is saying
+    That thy ears are not ears that listen,
+    That thou art not troubled by the sight of thy people,
+    That if they did trouble thee thou wouldst not deny them.
+    Be with us nevertheless with thy strong power.
+    Make our enemies to quit Ireland for ever.
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+
+MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY
+
+
+Mary Glyn lives under Slieve-nan-Or, the Golden Mountain, where the last
+battle will be fought in the last great war of the world; so that the
+sides of Gortaveha, a lesser mountain, will stream with blood. But she
+and her friends are not afraid of this; for an old weaver from the
+north, who knew all things, told them long ago that there is a place
+near Turloughmore where war will never come, because St. Columcill used
+to live there. So they will make use of this knowledge, and seek a
+refuge there, if, indeed, there is room enough for them all. There is a
+river by her house that marks the boundary between Galway and Clare; and
+there are stepping-stones in the river, so that she can cross from
+Connaught to Munster when she has a mind. But she cannot do her
+marketing when she has a mind; for the nearest town, Gort, is ten miles
+away. The roof of her little cabin is thatched with rushes, and a garden
+of weeds grows on it, and the rain comes through. But she is soon to
+have a new thatch; for she thinks she won't live long, and she wouldn't
+like the rain to be coming down on her when she is dead and laid out.
+There is heather in blow on the hills about her home, and foxglove
+reddens the clay-banks, and loosetrife the marshy hollows; and
+rush-cotton waves its little white flags over the bogs. Mary Glyn's
+neighbours come to see her sometimes, when the sun is going down, and
+the hurry of the day is over. Old Mr. Saggarton is one of them; he had
+his learning from a hedge-schoolmaster in the old times; and he looks
+down on the narrow teaching of the National Schools; and he was once in
+jail for nine months, having been taken in the very act of making
+_poteen_. And Mrs. Casey comes and looks at the stepping-stones now and
+again, for she is a Clare woman; and though she has lived fifty years in
+Connaught, she is not yet quite reconciled to it, and would never have
+made it her home if she could have seen it before she came. And some who
+do not live among the bogs and the heather, but among the green pastures
+and the grey stones of Aidne, come to Slieve Echtge and learn unwritten
+truths from the lips of Mary and her friends.
+
+The duty of giving is taught as well as practised by these poor
+hill-people. 'For,' says Mary Glyn, 'the best road to heaven is to be
+charitable to the poor.' And old Mrs. Casey agrees, and says: 'There was
+a poor girl walking the road one night with no place to stop; and the
+Saviour met her on the road, and He said: "Go up to the house you see a
+light in; there's a woman dead there, and they'll let you in." So she
+went and she found the woman laid out, and the husband and other
+people; but she worked harder than they all, and she stopped in the
+house after; and after two quarters the man married her. And one day she
+was sitting outside the door, picking over a bag of wheat, and the
+Saviour came again, with the appearance of a poor man, and He asked her
+for a few grains of the wheat. And she said: "Wouldn't potatoes be good
+enough for you?" and she called to the girl within to bring out a few
+potatoes. But He took nine grains of the wheat in His hand and went
+away; and there wasn't a grain of wheat left in the bag, but all gone.
+So she ran after Him then to ask Him to forgive her; and she overtook
+Him on the road, and she asked forgiveness. And He said: "Don't you
+remember the time you had no house to go to, and I met you on the road,
+and sent you to a house where you'd live in plenty? and now you wouldn't
+give Me a few grains of wheat." And she said: "But why didn't You give
+me a heart that would like to divide it?" That is how she came round on
+Him. And He said: "From this out, whenever you have plenty in your
+hands, divide it freely for My sake."'
+
+And this is a marvel that might occur again at any time; for Mary Glyn
+says further:--
+
+'There was a woman I knew was very charitable to the poor; and she'd
+give them the full of her apron of bread, or of potatoes or anything she
+had. And she was only lately married; and one day, a poor woman came to
+the door with her children and she brought them to the fire, and warmed
+them, and gave them a drink of milk; and she sent out to the barn for a
+bag of potatoes for them. And the husband came in, and he said: "Kitty,
+if you go on this way, you won't leave much for ourselves." And she
+said: "He that gave us what we have, can give more." And the next day
+when they went out to the barn, it was full of potatoes--more than were
+ever in it before. And when she was dying, and her children about her,
+the priest said to her: "Mrs. Gallagher, it's in heaven you'll be at 12
+o'clock to-morrow."'
+
+But when death comes, it is not enough to have been charitable; and it
+is not right to touch the body or lay it out for a couple of hours; for
+the soul should be given time to fight for itself, and to go up to
+judgment. And sometimes it is not willing to go; for Mrs. Casey says:--
+
+'The Saviour, one time, told St. Patrick to go and prepare a man that
+was going to die. And St. Patrick said: "I'd sooner not go; for I never
+yet saw the soul depart from the body." But then he went, and he
+prepared the man. And when he was lying there dead, he saw the soul go
+from the body; and three times it went to the door, and three times it
+came back and kissed the body. And St. Patrick asked the Saviour why it
+did that: and He said: "That soul was sorry to part from the body,
+because it had held it so clean and so honest."'
+
+When the hill-people talk of 'the time of the war,' it is the war that
+once took place in heaven that is understood. And when '_Those_' are
+spoken of, the fallen angels are understood, the cloud of witness, the
+whirling invisible host; and it is only to a stranger that an
+explanation need be given.
+
+'They were in heaven once,' Mary Glyn says 'and heaven is the first
+place there was war; and they were all to be done away with; and it was
+St. Peter asked the Saviour to help them, when he saw Him going to empty
+the heavens. So He turned His hand like this; and the earth and the sky
+and the sea were full of them, and they are in every place, and you know
+that better than I do, because you read books. Resting they do be in the
+daytime, and going about at night. And their music is the finest you
+ever heard, like all the fifers, and all the instruments, and all the
+tunes of the world. I heard it sometimes myself, and there is no music
+in the world like it; but not all can hear it. Round the hill it comes,
+and you going in at the door. And they are quiet neighbours if you treat
+them well. God bless them, and bring them all to heaven.'
+
+And then, having mentioned Monday (a spell against unseen listeners),
+and said, 'God bless the hearers, and the place it is told in'--and her
+niece, Mary Irwin, having said, 'God bless all we see, and those we
+don't see,' they tell--first one speaking and then the other--that: 'One
+night there were _banabhs_ in the house; and there was a man coming to
+dig the potato-garden in the morning--and so late at night, Mary Glyn
+was making stirabout, and a cake to have ready for the breakfast of the
+_banabhs_ and the man; and Mary's brother Micky was asleep within on the
+bed. And there came the sound of the grandest music you ever heard from
+beyond the stream, and it stopped there. And Micky awoke in the bed, and
+was afraid, and said: "Shut up the door and quench the light," and so we
+did.' 'It's likely,' Mary says, 'they wanted to come into the house, and
+they wouldn't when they saw me up and the lights about.' But one time
+when there were potatoes in the loft, Mary and her brothers were pelted
+with the potatoes when they sat down to supper. And Mary Irwin got a
+blow on the side of the face, from one of them, one night in the bed.
+'And they have the hope of heaven, and God grant it to them.' 'And one
+day, there was a priest and his servant riding along the road, and there
+was a hurling of them going on in the field. And a man of them came out
+and stood in the road, and said to the priest: "Tell me this, for you
+know it, have we a chance of heaven?" "You have not," said the priest.
+("God forgive him," says Mary Irwin, "a priest to say that!") And the
+man that was of them said: "Put your fingers in your ears, till you have
+travelled two miles of the road; for when I go back and tell what you
+are after telling me to the rest, the crying and the bawling and the
+roaring will be so great that, if you hear it, you'll never hear a noise
+again in this world." So they put their fingers then in their ears; but
+after a while the servant said to the priest: "Let me take out my
+fingers now." And the priest said: "Do not." And then the servant said
+again: "I think I might take one finger out." And the priest said:
+"Since you are so persevering, you may take it out." So he did, and the
+noise of the crying and the roaring and the bawling was so great, that
+he never had the use of that ear again.'
+
+Old Mr. Saggarton confirms the story of the fall of the angels and their
+presence about us, but goes deeper into theology. 'The soul,' he says,
+'was the breath of God, breathed into Adam, and it is the possession of
+God ever since. And I could never have believed there was so much power
+in the shadow of a soul, till I saw _them_ one night hurling. They tempt
+us sometimes in dreams--may God forgive me for saying He would allow
+power to any to tempt to evil. And they would destroy the world but for
+the hope they have of being saved. Every Monday morning they think the
+day of judgment may be coming, and that they will see heaven.
+
+'Half the world is with them. And when you see a blast of wind, and it
+comes sudden and carries the dust with it, you should say, "God bless
+them," and throw something after them. For how do you know but one of
+our own may be in it?
+
+'There never was a funeral they were not at, walking after the other
+people. And you can see them if you know the way--that is, to take a
+green rush and to twist it into a ring, and to look through it. But if
+you do, you'll never have a stim of sight in the eye again.'
+
+
+
+
+HERB-HEALING
+
+
+     _September 28th, 1899._
+
+     'HONOURABLE LADY GREGORY,
+
+     'I, Bridget Ruane, wish to inform you that there is in the Oratory
+     in London one of the Fathers, a Saint. I do not know his name; but
+     there was a young woman of the name of Meara; she got two falls and
+     could get no cure. She went to London and found this holy man; and
+     he sent her back to Gort, here to me, and I cured her. If your
+     honourable Ladyship could make him out, it would be a wonderful
+     thing, and a great happiness to many a weary heart, and the great
+     God would have it in store for you and your son. May you enjoy many
+     happy days together is the prayer of your humble servant,
+
+     'BRIDGET RUANE.'
+
+This letter was brought to me one morning; and I went down to see the
+writer, a respectable-looking old woman, dressed in the red petticoat
+and blue cloak of the country-people. She repeated what she had said in
+her note, and added: 'Now if you could find out the name of that Saint
+through the press, he'd tell me his remedies; and between us, all the
+world would be cured. For I can't do all cures, though there are a great
+many I can do. I cured Michael Miscail when the doctor couldn't do it,
+and a woman in Gort that was paralyzed, and her two sons that were
+stretched. For I can bring back the dead with some of the herbs our Lord
+was brought back with, the _Garblus_ and the _Slanlus_. But there are
+some things I can't do. I can't help anyone that has got a stroke from
+the Queen or the Fool of the Forth.
+
+'It was my brother got the knowledge of cures from a book that was
+thrown down before him on the road. What language was it written in?
+What language would it be but Irish? May be it was God gave it to him,
+and may be it was the _other people_. He was a fine strong man; and he
+weighed fifteen stone; and he went to England, and there he cured all
+the world, so that the doctors had no way of living. So one time he got
+in a ship to go to America; and the doctors had bad men engaged to
+shipwreck him out of the ship; he wasn't drowned, but he was broken to
+pieces on the rocks, and the book was lost along with him. But he taught
+me a good deal out of it. So I know all herbs, and I do a good many
+cures; and I have brought a good many children home to the world, and
+never lost one, or one of the women that bore them.'
+
+I asked her to teach me some of her fragments of Druids' wisdom, the
+healing power of herbs. So she came another day, and brought some herbs,
+and sorted them out on a table, and said: 'This is _Dwareen_
+(knapweed); and what you have to do with this, is to put it down with
+other herbs, and with a bit of threepenny sugar, and to boil it, and to
+drink it, for pains in the bones; and don't be afraid but it will cure
+you. Sure the Lord put it in the world for curing.
+
+'And this is _Corn-corn_ [tansy]; it s very good for the heart--boiled
+like the others.
+
+'This is _Athair-talav_, the father of all herbs (wild camomile). This
+is very hard to pull; and when you go for it, you must have a
+black-handled knife. And whatever way the wind is when you begin to cut
+it, if it changes while you're cutting it, you'll lose your mind. And if
+you are paid for cutting it, you can do it when you like; but if not,
+_they_ mightn't like it. I knew a woman was cutting at one time, and a
+voice, an enchanted voice, called out: "Don't cut that if you are not
+paid, or you'll be sorry." But if you put a bit of this with every other
+herb you drink, you'll live for ever. My grandmother used to put a bit
+with everything she took, and she lived to be over a hundred.
+
+'And this is _Camal buidhe_ (loose-strife), that will keep all bad
+things away.
+
+'This is _Cuineal Muire_ (mullein), the blessed candle of our Lady.
+
+'This is the _Fearaban_ (water-buttercup); and it's good for every bone
+of your body.
+
+'This is _Dub-cosac_ (trichomanes), that's good for the heart; very good
+for a sore heart.
+
+'Here are the _Slanlus_ (plantain) and the _Garblus_ (dandelion); and
+these would cure the wide world; and it was these brought our Lord from
+the Cross, after the ruffians that were with the Jews did all the harm
+to Him. And not one could be got to pierce His heart till a dark man
+came; and he said: "Give me the spear and I'll do it." And the blood
+that sprang out touched his eyes and they got their sight. And it was
+after that, His Mother and Mary and Joseph gathered these herbs and
+cured His wounds.
+
+'These are the best of the herbs; but they are all good, and there isn't
+one among them but would cure seven diseases. I'm all the days of my
+life gathering them, and I know them all; but it isn't easy to make them
+out. Sunday afternoon is the best time to get them, and I was never
+interfered with. Seven Hail Marys I say when I'm gathering them; and I
+pray to our Lord, and to St. Joseph and St. Colman. And there may be
+_some_ watching me; but they never meddled with me at all.'
+
+A neighbour whom I asked about Bridget Ruane and her brother
+said:--'Some people call her "Biddy Early" (after a famous
+witch-doctor). She has done a good many cures. Her brother was _away_
+for a while, and it is from him she got her knowledge. I believe it's
+before sunrise she gathers the herbs; any way no one ever saw her
+gathering them. She has saved many a woman from being brought away when
+her child was born by whatever she does; and she told me herself that
+one night when she was going to the lodge gate to attend the woman
+there, three magpies came before her and began roaring into her mouth to
+try and drive her back.
+
+Another neighbour, who has herself some reputation as an herb-doctor,
+says:--'Monday is a good day for pulling herbs, or Tuesday--not Sunday:
+a Sunday cure is no cure. The _Cosac_ is good for the heart. There was
+Mahon in Gort--one time his heart was wore to a silk thread, and it
+cured him. And the _Slanugad_ (ribgrass) is very good: it will take away
+lumps. You must go down where it is growing on the scraws, and pull it
+with three pulls; and mind would the wind change when you are pulling
+it, or your head will be gone. Warm it on the tongs when you bring it
+in, and put it on the lump. The _Lus-mor_ is the only one that's good to
+bring back children that are "_away_."'
+
+Another authority says:--'Dandelion is good for the heart; and when
+Father Quinn was curate here, he had it rooted up in all the fields
+about to drink it; and see what a fine man he is. The wild parsnip
+(_Meacan-buidhe_) is good for the gravel; and for heart-beat there's
+nothing so good as dandelion. There was a woman I knew used to boil it
+down; and she'd throw out what was left on the grass. And there was a
+fleet of turkeys about the house, and they used to be picking it up. At
+Christmas they killed one of them; and when it was cut open, they found
+a new heart growing in it with the dint of the dandelion.'
+
+But an old man says there are no such healers now as there were in his
+youth:--'The best herb-doctor I ever knew was Connolly up at Kilbecanty.
+He knew every herb that grew in the earth. It is said he was away with
+the fairies one time; and when I saw him he had the two thumbs turned
+in; and it was said it was the sign they left on him. I had a lump on
+the thigh one time, and my father went to him, and he gave him an herb
+for it; but he told him not to come into the house by the door the wind
+would be blowing in at. They thought it was the evil I had--that is
+given by _them_ by a touch; and that is why he said about the wind; for
+if it was the evil there would be a worm in it, and if it smelled the
+herb that was brought in at the door, it might change to another place.
+I don't know what the herb was; but I would have been dead if I had it
+on another hour--it burned so much--and I had to get the lump lanced
+after, for it wasn't the evil I had.
+
+'Connolly cured many a one; Jack Hall, that fell into a pot of water
+they were after boiling potatoes in, and had the skin scalded off him,
+and that Dr. Lynch could do nothing for, he cured. He boiled down herbs
+with a bit of lard, and after that was rubbed in three times, he was
+well.
+
+'And Cahill that was deaf, he cured with the _Riv mar seala_, that herb
+in the potatoes that milk comes out of.'
+
+Farrell says:--'The _Bainne bo blathan_ (primrose) is good for the
+headache, if you put the leaves of it on your head. But as for the
+_Lus-mor_, it's best not to have anything to do with that.' For the
+_Lus-mor_ is good to bring back children that are 'away,' and belongs to
+the class of herbs consecrated to the uses of magic, apart from any
+natural healing power. The Druids are said to have taken their knowledge
+of these properties from the magical teachers of the Chaldeans; but
+anyhow the belief in them lives on in Ireland and in other Celtic
+countries to this day.
+
+A man from East Galway says: 'To bring anyone back from being with the
+fairies, you should get the leaves of the _Lus-mor_, and give them to
+him to drink. And if he only got a little touch from them, and had some
+complaint in him at the same time, that makes him sick like, that will
+bring him back. But if he is altogether in the fairies, then it won't
+bring him back, for he'll know what it is, and he'll refuse to drink it.
+
+'There was a man I know, Andy Hegarty, had a little chap--a little
+_summach_ of four years--and one day Andy was away to sell a pig in the
+market at Mount Bellew, and the mother was away some place with the
+dinner for the men in the field; and the little chap was in the house
+with the grandmother, and he sitting by the fire. And he said to the
+grandmother: "Put down a skillet of potatoes for me, and an egg." And
+she said: "I will not; for what do you want with them? you're just after
+eating." And he said: "Take care but I'll throw you over the roof of
+that house." And then he said: "Andy"--that was his father--"is after
+selling the pig to a jobber, and the jobber has given it back to him
+again; and he'll be at no loss by that, for he'll get a half-a-crown
+more at the end." So when the grandmother heard that, she wouldn't stop
+in the house with him, but ran out--and he only four years old. When the
+mother came back, and was told about it, she went out and got some of
+the leaves of the _Lus-mor_, and she brought them in and put them on the
+child; and he went away, and their own child came back again. They
+didn't see him going, or the other coming; but they knew it by him.'
+
+And a Galway woman, who has been in England says: 'I was delicate one
+time myself, and I lost my walk; and one of the neighbours told my
+mother it wasn't myself that was there. But my mother said she'd soon
+find that out; for she'd tell me she was going to get a herb that would
+cure me; and if it was myself, I'd want it; but if it was another, I'd
+be against it. So she came in and said she to me: "I'm going to Dangan
+to look for the _Lus-mor_, that will soon cure you." And from that day I
+gave her no peace till she'd go to Dangan and get it; so she knew I was
+all right. She told me all this afterwards.'
+
+The man from East Galway says: 'The herbs they cure with, there's some
+that's natural, and you could pick them at all times of the day.'
+
+'Sea-grass' is sometimes useful as a natural and sometimes as an occult
+cure. One who has tried it and other herbs, says: 'Indeed the porter did
+me good, and good that I'd hardly like to tell you, not to make a
+scandal. Did I drink too much of it? Not at all. But this long time I am
+feeling a worm in my side that is as big as an eel, and there's more of
+them in it than that. And I was told to put seagrass to it; and I put it
+to the side the other day; and whether it was that or the porter I don't
+know, but there's some of them gone out of it.
+
+'_Garblus_--how did you hear of that? That is the herb for things that
+have to do with the fairies. And when you drink it for anything of that
+sort, if it doesn't cure you, it will kill you then and there. There was
+a fine young man I used to know, and he got his death on the head of a
+pig that came at himself and another man at the gate of Ramore, and that
+never left them, but was with them all the time, till they came to a
+stream of water. And when he got home, he took to his bed with a
+headache. And at last he was brought a drink of the _Garblus_, and no
+sooner did he drink it than he was dead. I remember him well.
+
+'There is something in flax, for no priest would anoint you without a
+bit of tow. And if a woman that was carrying was to put a basket of
+green flax on her back, the child would go from her; and if a mare that
+was in foal had a load of flax on her, the foal would go the same way.'
+
+And a neighbour of hers confirms this, and says: 'There's something in
+green flax, I know; for my mother often told me about one night she was
+spinning flax before she was married, and she was up late. And a man of
+the fairies came in--she had no right to be sitting up so late: they
+don't like that--and he told her it was time to go to bed; for he wanted
+to kill her, and he couldn't touch her while she was handling the flax.
+And every time he'd tell her to go to bed, she'd give him some answer,
+and she'd go on pulling a thread of the flax, or mending a broken one;
+for she was wise, and she knew that at the crowing of the cock he'd have
+to go. So at last the cock crowed, and she was safe, for the cock is
+blessed.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Old Bridget Ruane will not do any more cures by charms or by simples, or
+'bring children home to the world' any more. For she died last winter;
+and we may be sure that among the green herbs that cover her grave,
+there are some that are 'good for every bone in the body,' and that are
+'very good for a sore heart.'
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+
+THE WANDERING TRIBE
+
+
+When poor Paul Ruttledge made his great effort to escape from the
+doorsteps of law and order--from the world, the flesh, and the
+newspaper--and fell among tinkers, I looked with more interest than
+before at the little camps that one sees every now and then by the
+roadside for a few days or weeks. And I wondered why our country
+people--who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that
+they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop:
+'Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ'--speak of a visit of the
+tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest. I asked why they
+were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange
+customs and of their unbelief.
+
+'They come mostly from the County Mayo,' I am told; 'and, indeed, they
+have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to
+marry a man and woman of them for nothing. But after he had them
+married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.
+
+'The people wouldn't like to let them into their house; for if you would
+let one man in, maybe twelve families would follow them and take
+possession of the whole place.
+
+'Some of them that do smiths' work are middling decent. They will sit
+there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that
+belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going
+to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of
+you with games. Indeed the most of them are no better than
+pickpockets--"newks" they are called. And they never go to Mass; and, as
+to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it's more
+likely they have no marriage at all.
+
+'They never go in lodgings; but they'll tilt up the cart, and put a bit
+of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it. Or if a man
+is alone, he'll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there.
+They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the
+hardiest people in the world.
+
+'And they make sport and fun sometimes. I used to see them dancing at
+Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among
+themselves they would have it. And they sing songs too--"The sweet boy
+of Milltown" I heard them singing.
+
+'There was a sweep in Gort joined them. Charlie his name was. He went
+into Greely's shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and
+bid him give him five pounds and he'd make his fortune. And he was
+afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was
+never seen there again.
+
+'He died after that in hospital. He slept out one night and the frost
+went through his body. There was another of them stole two of old Quin's
+geese at Ballylee one night, and sold them to him again next day. After
+he had them bought, Mrs. Quin came down and when she looked at them she
+knew them to be her own geese. "Give me back the money," she said. "I'd
+be a fool if I did," said he, and he went away.'
+
+Another neighbour says: 'They often made their camp in the boreen near
+my house; but one of them never came into the house, and I never saw one
+of them at Mass. One very hard morning I passed by them as I was
+bringing in pigs to the fair of Gort. There they were, sleeping under an
+ass-cart, quite happy and satisfied. They fight at night and make
+friends again in the daytime; and they sell their wives to one another;
+I've seen that myself.'
+
+And an old man says: 'I think the tinkers are not the same as the rest
+of us; I think they originated in themselves. They are very mirthful,
+and they have no control; but sometimes there will be a tyrant among
+them that is a good fighter, and they will obey him.
+
+'They have no religion; and it might be true they don't believe in the
+devil--but what of that? Aren't there many on your side and our own that
+think there is no resurrection, but that we go straight to heaven at the
+minute of death?
+
+'They never go into any house; and there's a great many of them
+wouldn't go in a house if they were asked. My father went one time from
+Ballylee to Limerick; and there was a tinker at that time the Government
+wanted to get information from; something about Bonaparte it was. And
+they offered him a good lodging with a feather-bed in it to sleep on;
+and he said if he slept one night on a feather-bed, he'd never be any
+good after; that it was more wholesome to sleep outside on a bed of
+rushes. They didn't get any information out of him after; though they
+offered him good reward, he wouldn't give it to them.
+
+'They have no marriage at all; but their women might be ten times better
+than the rural women for all that, and true to their men. The women are
+very smart at cooking. You'll see them make a fire by the roadside with
+a bundle of straw and a bit of wood, and they'll put the pot down. What
+goes into the pot? Well, how would I know? but the men are very handy,
+and when they put their hand in the pot, believe me it doesn't go in
+empty.
+
+'They used to be prone to coining at one time; but the law of
+transportation stopped that. And there's few of the police would like to
+grabble with them. I saw four of the police trying to take one the other
+day, and he bet them all; and it was a countryman got a hold of him in
+the end.'
+
+And a woman whose house they have often made their camp near, says:
+'They are bad, and we don't like them to be coming near us. There was a
+little lad of them came running to the door one night, and he called to
+us to come; for there was a man killing his mother. But we drove him
+away and didn't go; for we knew her to be a bad woman.' And another
+woman says: 'If they have a religion, it's a wandering one; wandering
+like themselves.'
+
+And a farmer living by the roadside says: 'A bad class they are, indeed,
+sleeping out under a little bit of cloth, and hardy for all that. Wild
+beasts they are, stealing turf from the banks.'
+
+But an old man from Slieve Echtge takes a more kindly view of them.
+'There are very nice men among them,' he says; 'and they are as hardy as
+goats or as Connemara sheep. They go about to fairs and deal in asses
+and in horses, and sometimes they are rich. There was one I knew, a
+sieve-maker--they are of the same class--and that married a tinker's
+daughter; they were in here two or three times. I told him I wondered
+they wouldn't settle down in one place; for if I knew the way to make
+money, I said, I'd make plenty--for they are said to coin money. But he
+said it made no difference if they had money; they couldn't stop in one
+place; they must be walking always and going through the whole country.'
+
+And then we got to the reason of their wandering.
+
+'It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time. For he was a slave in
+Ireland after he was brought out of France, and it would take a hundred
+pounds to buy his freedom. And he found a lump of gold or of silver in
+a field one day, where he was minding sheep; and he brought it to a
+tinker and asked the value of it. "It's nothing at all but a bit of
+solder," says the tinker. "Give it here to me." But St. Patrick brought
+it to a smith then, and he told him the value of it. And then St.
+Patrick put a curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with
+every man's face against them, and their face against every man; and
+that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.
+
+'And there are some say that when our Lord was on the cross there could
+be no tradesman found to drive the nails in His hands and His feet till
+a tinker was brought, and he did it; and that is why they have to walk
+the world; and I never met anyone that had seen a tinker's funeral.
+
+'But they may believe some things. For there was a woman of them told me
+one time they were camping near the railway bridge that in the
+night-time she saw the whole wall beside her falling down and shattered;
+but in the morning it was standing as it did before. "And we'll get out
+of this place as fast as we can," she said.'
+
+'They are a class of themselves,' says another man, 'and they have been
+there ever since the world began. I often heard it said that our Lord
+asked a tinker one time to make Him some vessel He wanted, and he
+refused Him. He went then to a smith, and he did what was wanted. And
+from that time the tinkers have been wandering on the roads; but they
+wouldn't have refused Him if they had known He was God. I never saw them
+at Mass; but I am sure they believe in God. It was here in Ireland they
+refused our Lord, the time He walked the whole world after the
+Crucifixion.'
+
+'To be sure they are under a curse,' said another, 'like the Jews, to be
+wandering always; and they have some religion of their own, but it's a
+bad one. It's likely St. Patrick put the curse on them; for a fleet of
+children of tinkers went after him one time, mocking at him, and he
+turned one of them into a pillar of stone.'
+
+And that is their story as I have heard it so far.
+
+
+
+
+WORKHOUSE DREAMS
+
+
+Last June I had a few free days, and I chose to spend them among the
+imaginative class, the holders of the traditions of Ireland, country
+people in thatched houses, workers in fields and bogs.
+
+I was looking for legends of those shadow-heroes, Finn and his men, to
+help me in writing their story; and I heard many tales and long poems
+about fair-haired Finn, who 'had all the wisdom of a little child'; and
+Conan of the sharp tongue, who was 'some way cross in himself,' and who
+had a briar on his shield; and their adventures beyond sea, and their
+hunting after deer that were 'as joyful as the leaves of a tree in
+summer time.' But some of the people repeated verses by Raftery and
+Callinan and Sweeny, and some told stories of the kingdom of the Sidhe.
+
+I spent three happy afternoons in a workhouse in my own county, but not
+in my own parish; and after we had spoken of the Fianna for a while, the
+old men began to tell me these long, rambling stories I am about to
+repeat.
+
+We sat in a gravelled yard, where only the leaves of a few young
+sycamores told that spring had come. Some of the old men sat on a bench
+against the whitewashed wall of a shed, in their rough frieze clothes
+and round grey caps, and others stood round, pressing closer and closer
+as their interest in the story grew.
+
+Some of the stories were new to me; some I had heard in other versions;
+but all--even those like the 'Taming of the Shrew,' which have, one must
+believe, been brought in from other countries--have taken an Irish
+colouring. I began to listen, half interested and half impatient; for I
+had never cared much for this particular kind of tale.
+
+But as I listened, I was moved by the strange contrast between the
+poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tales. These men who
+had failed in life, and were old and withered, or sickly, or crippled,
+had not laid up dreams of good houses and fields and sheep and cattle;
+for they had never possessed enough to think of the possession of more
+as a possibility. It seemed as if their lives had been so poor and rigid
+in circumstance that they did not fix their minds, as more prosperous
+people might do, on thoughts of customary pleasure. The stories that
+they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings'
+daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and lovers'
+flights on the backs of eagles, and music-loving water-witches, and
+journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for seven hundred
+years.
+
+I think it has always been to such poor people, with little of wealth or
+comfort to keep their thoughts bound to the things about them, that
+dreams and visions have been given. It is from a deep narrow well the
+stars can be seen at noonday; it was one left on a bare rocky island who
+saw the pearl gates and the golden streets that lead to the Tree of
+Life.
+
+One of the old men told me a story in Irish--another translating it as
+he went on; for my ear was not practised enough to follow it
+well:--'There was a farmer one time had one son only, and the son died,
+and the father wouldn't go to the funeral, where he had had some dispute
+with him.
+
+'And, after a while, a neighbour died, and he went to his funeral. And a
+while after that he was in the churchyard looking at the grave. And he
+took up a skull that was lying there--one of four--and he said: "It's a
+handsome man you may have been when you were young; and I'd like to know
+something about you," he said. And the skull spoke, and it is what it
+said: "I'll go spend to-morrow night with you, if you'll come and spend
+another night with me." "I will do that," said the farmer.
+
+'And on the way home he met with the priest, and he told him what had
+happened. "I would never believe that a skull spoke," said the priest.
+"Come to my house to-morrow night, and you'll hear him speak," said the
+farmer.
+
+'So the next night they were sitting together in the house, and they had
+dinner set out on the table. And after a while they heard something
+come to the door; and the skull came in, and it got up on the table, and
+it ate all the dinner that was there; and after that it went out again.
+"Why didn't you speak to it?" said the farmer to the priest. "Why didn't
+you speak to it yourself?" said the priest. "What will it do to me at
+all when I go to see it to-morrow night?" said the farmer; "but I must
+hold to my promise when it came here first."
+
+'So the next evening he set out for the churchyard, and he could see
+nothing at all in it. And then he went down three steps that were beside
+the church; and presently he was in a field, and it full of men fighting
+one against the other with spades and reaping-hooks. "Is it looking for
+a head you are?" they said; "it's gone into that field beyond."
+
+'So he went on into the other field; and it was full of men and women,
+all of them fighting one against the other. "Are you looking for a
+head?" they said; "it's after going into that field beyond."
+
+'So he went into the third field; and there he saw a big house, and he
+went into it. And he saw a fire on the hearth, and a lady in the room,
+and a serving-girl. And the lady was walking up and down the room; and
+whenever she would go near to the fire to warm herself, the serving-girl
+would put her away from it.
+
+'Then they said: "If it's for a head you're looking, it's within in the
+room."
+
+'So he went into the room; and the head was there before him, and it
+asked him would he have some dinner; and he said he would, and it
+brought him into a kitchen; and there were three women in it, and the
+head bade one of them to give the man his dinner; and what she put
+before him was a bit of brown bread and a jug of water, and he did not
+think it worth his while to eat that; and then the head bade the second
+woman to give him his dinner, and she gave him a worse dinner again; and
+then the third woman was told to give it to him, and she spread a nice
+table, and put the best of everything on it, and he ate and drank; and
+then he asked the head what was the meaning of all he saw.
+
+'And the head said: "The men you saw in the first field used to be
+fighting when they were in life, because they had land near to one
+another, and they used to be for moving the merings, and now they have
+to be fighting with one another for ever and always. And the men and the
+women you saw, they were married people that used to be fighting with
+one another, and they must go on fighting for ever now. And the lady you
+saw in the house, when she was in life, she usedn't to let the
+serving-girl near to the fire when she would come in wet and cold, and
+would want to warm herself; and now the serving-girl is doing the same
+to her, and that will go on to the Day of Judgment.
+
+'"And as to the three women in the kitchen," he said, "those were my own
+three wives. And when I asked the first wife for my dinner, she gave me
+nothing but brown bread and a jug of water. And when I asked the second
+wife for my dinner, she gave me a worse dinner again. But the third wife
+when I asked her, set out a grand table, and a white cloth on it, and
+gave me the best of food and drink.
+
+'"And as for yourself," he said, "the reason you were brought here is,
+that you wouldn't go to your son's funeral, because you had a falling
+out one day when you were ploughing the field together, but you went to
+a stranger's funeral. And go back now," he said, "to where your son was
+buried, and make your repentance there, and maybe you'll get forgiveness
+at the last. And how long is it since you left your home?" he said. "I
+left it on the afternoon of yesterday," said the farmer. "It is seven
+hundred years you are here," said the head. Isn't that a long time he
+was in it, and he thinking it was only a few hours?
+
+'So he went back to where his own son was buried; and he knelt down
+there, and made his repentance, and asked forgiveness and his son's
+forgiveness. And at last a hand came up out of the grave and took his
+hand; and then he and the son went up to heaven together.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man says: 'There was a Protestant and a Catholic one time;
+and the Protestant said if the Catholic would come to his church one
+Sunday, he'd go to his the next.
+
+'So the Catholic went first to the Protestant church for one day, and
+it seemed to him as if it was a week he was in it.
+
+'And the next Sunday the Protestant went into the Catholic church; and
+there he stopped for a year and a day, and he thought it was only a few
+hours he was in it.
+
+'And at the end of that time he died, and he went up before our Lord.
+And he had done some things that were not good in his life, and our Lord
+said: "I will give you as many years of heaven as there are penfuls of
+water in the sea, and hell at the end of that." "That is not enough of
+heaven," said the man. Then our Lord said: "I will give you as many
+years of heaven as there are grains in the sand, and hell after that."
+"That is not enough of heaven," said the man. Then our Lord said: "I
+will give you as many years of heaven as there are blades of grass on
+the earth, and hell after that." "That is not enough of heaven," said
+the man. "And I will ask you for this," he said; "give me a year of hell
+for all these things you have spoken of: the drops in the sea, and the
+blades of grass, and the grains of the sand, and give me heaven in the
+end."
+
+'And when the Lord heard that, He said, "I will give you heaven first
+and last."
+
+'That is how the Catholic had him saved.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man says: 'There was a king one time that had a daughter;
+and she went out one day in the garden, and there she saw a bird--a
+jackdaw it was--and she thought it very nice, and she followed it on.
+And at last it spoke to her, and it said: "Will you give me your promise
+to marry me at the end of a year and a day?" "I will not," she said; and
+she went into the house again.
+
+'After that the king's younger daughter went out, and she saw the bird
+and followed it, and it asked her the same thing. And she gave her
+promise to marry it at the end of a year and a day.
+
+'And at the end of that time a great coach and horses came up to the
+door of the king's house; and the jackdaw came in, and he took the edge
+of the young girl's dress in his beak to draw her out of the house. And
+she went away in the carriage with him, and they came to a sort of a
+castle, and went into it. And there was no one in it; but no sooner did
+they come in, than there was a table set out before them, with every
+sort of food and drink, and beautiful gold cups and everything grand.
+And when they had eaten enough, the bird said, "Don't be frightened at
+anything you may see; and whatever happens, don't say one word; for if
+you do, you will lose me for ever."
+
+'And then some sort of people came in, and began hitting at the bird and
+attacking him, and he keeping out of their way. And at last they got to
+him, and began to knock feathers from him. And when the young girl saw
+that, she cried out, "Oh, they are destroying you, my poor jackdaw!"
+"Oh!" he said, "why did you say that? If you had not spoken," he said:
+"I would be all right; but now I must leave you for ever. And here is a
+ring I will leave with you," he said: "and whatever desire you have, you
+will get it when you rub the ring."
+
+'He went away then, and there was no one left in the house but the young
+girl; and all was darkness around her. And she went up the stairs; and
+at last she saw a little sign of light through a hole in the roof; and
+she rubbed the ring, and she said: "I wish that hole to be made bigger."
+And so it was on the moment, and more light came in.
+
+'And then she wished she could be up on the roof, and so she was. And
+from the roof she could see the sea, and there was a ship on it in the
+distance; and she said: "I wish I could be on the deck of that vessel."
+And there she was on the deck, and the sailors not knowing where did she
+come from. And she said to the captain: "Can you give me something to
+eat?" And he said: "That is what I cannot do, for the harness casks are
+empty, we are so long at sea; and we have not as much meat in them as
+would go on the point of a knife." So she rubbed the ring then; and
+there was a table before them, set out with every sort of food and
+drink, and they all had enough.
+
+'And then they came to a strange country; and she said to the captain to
+leave her on land. And she went up to a big house, where some great man
+lived, and she asked for employment as a sewing-maid. And they said:
+"You may sew one of those dresses that is for the master's daughter
+that is going to be married to-morrow. And mind you do it well," they
+said.
+
+'So she brought away the dress to her room, and she wished it to be the
+best dress, and the best-sewed, that would be seen on the morrow. And
+when the morrow came, so it was.
+
+'Then she went out into the garden, where there were beautiful flowers
+and trees; and she fastened a thread of silk from one tree to another,
+to make a swing-swong, and she began swinging on it. And the young lady
+that was going to be married, came down the steps into the garden, and
+she wanted to go on the swing-swong. And the other said she had best not
+go on it where she was not used to it, and she might get a fall. But she
+said she would; and the other warned her secondly not to go on it. But
+up she got, and the thread broke, and she fell and was killed on the
+spot.
+
+'Then all the people came out; and when they saw her dead, they had a
+court-martial on the strange girl, and they were going to put her to
+death; but she told them how it all happened. And when the jury heard
+it, they said there was no blame on her, where she had given two
+warnings.
+
+'That's a closure now.'
+
+'And what happened her after that?'
+
+'I don't know what happened her; they let her off that time anyhow.'
+
+'And what became of the bird?'
+
+'How would I know? Didn't I say that's the closure?'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then a young man said: 'I'll tell you a folk-tale:--
+
+'It was in the good old time when Ireland was paved with penny loaves
+and the houses thatched with pancakes; and there was a king had a son,
+and the mother died, and he married another wife; and she had three
+daughters, and their names were Catherine Snowflake, and Broad Bridget,
+and Mary Anne Bold-eyes, that had two eyes in the front of her head, and
+another eye in the back of her poll.
+
+'And the stepmother got to be very wicked to the son then; and she used
+to be giving everything to the daughters; but he had nothing but
+hardship, and all they would give him to eat was stirabout.
+
+'He was out on the fields one day with the cattle, and there was a
+little Black Bull there, and it said to him: "I know the way you are
+treated," it said, "and the sort of food they are giving you. And
+unscrew now my left horn," he said, "and take what you will find out of
+it."
+
+'So the young man unscrewed the left horn; and the first thing he took
+out was a napkin, and he spread it out on the grass; and then he took
+out cups and plates, and every sort of food, and he sat down and ate and
+drank his fill. And then he put back the napkin and all into the horn
+again, and screwed it on.
+
+'That was going on every day, and he used to be throwing his stirabout
+away into the ash-bin; and the servants found it, and they told the
+queen that he was throwing away what they gave him, and getting fat all
+the same.
+
+'The queen noticed then that he used to be going every day into the
+field with the cattle; and she bade her daughter, Catherine Snowflake,
+to go and to watch him there to see what would he be doing.
+
+'But that day when he went up to the little Black Bull, it said: "Your
+step-sister will be coming to-day to watch you," he said: "and unscrew
+now my right horn, and take out a pin of slumber you will find under it,
+and when you see her coming, go and play with her for a bit, and then
+put the pin of slumber to her ear, and she will fall asleep." So he did
+as the Bull told him; and when he put the pin of slumber to Catherine
+Snowflake's ear, she fell into a deep sleep in the grass, and never woke
+till evening.
+
+'The next day the queen sent Broad Bridget, that was a great big woman,
+to watch the step-brother; but the Bull warned him as before; and he put
+the pin of slumber to her ear, and she fell into a deep sleep, and saw
+nothing.
+
+'The third day Mary Anne Bold-eyes was sent out, and the brother put her
+to sleep the same as he did the others. But if the two front eyes were
+shut, the eye at the back of her poll was open; and she saw all that
+happened, and she went back that evening and told her mother the way her
+step-brother got all he would want out of the Bull's horn.
+
+'The queen sent out then and gathered all her fighting men together to
+kill the Bull. And they all surrounded the field where the Bull was; but
+there were two or three hundred more cattle in it; and the Bull was
+running here and there between them, the way they could not get near
+him. And at the end of the second day he made for a gap and broke
+through it, and came to where the queen was, and he took her on his
+horns and tossed her as high as her own castle. He called to Jack then;
+and Jack put a halter on him, and they rode away together where winds
+never blew and the cocks never crew, and the old boy himself never
+sounded his horn. And they overtook the wind that was before them, and
+the wind that was after them couldn't overtake them.
+
+'They came then to a great wood, and the Black Bull said to Jack: "Get
+up, now, into the highest tree you can find, and stop there through the
+day, for I have to fight with the Red Bull that is coming against me.
+And unscrew my right horn," he said; "and take out the little bottle
+that is in it, and keep it with you; and if I am well at the end of the
+day," he said, "it will be white as it is now."
+
+'The Red Bull came to meet him then, and his head was as big as
+another's body would be; and he and the little Black Bull went to fight
+together; and Jack stopped up in the tree.
+
+'And in the evening he looked at the little bottle; and what was in it
+was as white as before. So he came down, and he found the Black Bull,
+and got up on his back again; and they went off the same as before.
+
+'They came then to the wood where the White Bull was, and he came out to
+fight the Black; and all happened the same as the first day.
+
+'And Jack came down from his tree and got on his back again; and they
+went on to another wood. And the Green Bull came to meet him this time;
+and Jack went up in a tree. And at evening he looked at the little
+bottle, and it was red up to the cork.
+
+'He got down then, and went to look for the little Black Bull, and he
+found him lying on the ground at the point of death; and the Green Bull
+gave a great bellow, and made away and left him there.
+
+'And the Black Bull said: "I am going from you now, Jack; but I won't go
+without leaving you something," he said. "When I am dead, cut three
+strips of hide off me from the nape of the neck to the root of the tail,
+and put them about your body; and they'll give you the strength of six
+hundred men."'
+
+Jack had many adventures after this; he killed three giants, rescued a
+princess from a dragon, and married her. These were told with dramatic
+effect; and the other men, young and old, who had gathered round the
+teller, cried out at each new splendid adventure: 'Good boy, Peter;
+that's it; bring it out.' And the last words, telling how Jack and his
+Princess 'put on the kettle and made the tea,' were drowned in applause
+and laughter, and clapping of hands.
+
+But I had already heard that part of the story, in almost the same
+words, in Gort Workhouse; and had given it to Mr. Yeats for his 'Celtic
+Twilight,' so I need not put it down here.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then an old man said: 'There was a young man one time was out hunting;
+and as he was going home, he heard the cry of a child beside a sand-pit.
+And he got off his horse to look what was it; and it was a young little
+child was there, a girl. And he took her up on the horse and wrapped her
+up, and brought her home to his mother. And they reared her up, and she
+grew to be a beautiful young girl; and the young man thought the world
+and all of her.
+
+'But he got some sickness and died. And the mother was fretting for him
+always; and she shut up his room and locked it, that no one could go in.
+And she did not like to be looking at the young girl, because of the son
+being so fond of her; and she looked for a way to get rid of her.
+
+'So she sent her out on a message into a wood that had wild beasts in
+it, and she thought they would make an end of her. And the girl went
+astray there, and lay down and slept for the night. And the beasts came
+and lay down beside her, and did her no harm at all. And there she was
+found in the morning, asleep among them.
+
+'Then the mother thought of another way to get rid of her; and she bade
+her to go to the son's grave and to spend the night there. So she went
+as she was told; and she was crying on the grass. And then the young
+man came up out of it, and it is what he said: "My mother thought I
+would harm you if you came here, but I will not harm you; I will help
+you. And take these three gray hairs from my head," he said, "and bring
+them back with you. And for every one of them my mother will have to
+grant you a request. And it is what you will ask her, to open my room
+that she has locked up for a day and a night. And at the end of a year,
+you will ask the same thing of her, and again at the end of another
+year."
+
+'So the girl went back, and she asked to have the door opened, and she
+went in and stopped there for a day and a night. And at the end of the
+year she did the same, and again at the end of the third year.
+
+'And after a while the mother said one day: "I wonder what she wanted in
+that room, and what she was doing in it." And she opened the door, and
+there she saw a fire on the hearth, and the girl sitting one side of it,
+and a child in her lap, and the son sitting the other side, and two
+children in his lap. For she had brought him back from the grave.
+
+'And the son said: "What is wanting to me now is someone that will go
+and spend seven years in hell for my sake, to save my soul." "I will do
+that for you," said the mother. "It would be no use you going," he said.
+"I will do it," said the girl.
+
+'So he said she might go; and he gave a spoon that would give her drink,
+and a ring that would give her food, so long as she would keep them.
+
+'So she went down to hell, and she stopped there seven years; and
+through all that time she got no rest, only on Sundays.
+
+'And at the end of the seven years, she was going out, and she heard a
+voice saying: "Will you stop another seven years to save your father's
+soul?" "I will do that," she said. "Do not," they said; "for your father
+gave you no care, and did nothing for you." "No matter," she said; "I
+will give another seven years to save his soul."
+
+'And at the end of the second seven years she was going out; and her
+mother, that had done nothing for her, asked her to stop another seven
+years for her soul; and she did that. And at the end of the twenty-one
+years, they gave her the three souls in a napkin, and she went out.
+
+'And as she was going home, she met with an old man, and he said: "Give
+me what you have there." "Who are you?" "I am Almighty God," he said. "I
+will not give them to you," said the girl. And after a little time she
+met with another old man, and he said: "Give me what you have there."
+"Who are you?" she said. "I am Jesus Christ." "I will not give them to
+you;" and she went on. Then the third time she met with an old man, and
+he asked for what she had in the napkin. "Who are you?" she asked. "I am
+the King of Sunday." "Then I will give them to you," she said; "for in
+all the twenty-one years I went through, I got no rest at all but on the
+Sunday."
+
+'She went home then; and at first they didn't know her, where she was so
+long away; and when the children came down to see her in the kitchen,
+they didn't know her.
+
+'But when the man of the house knew she was in it, he went down and gave
+her a great welcome back to himself and the children again.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then another old man said: 'There was a king that used to make rules and
+to break rules, and that was very cunning; and he wanted to get a good
+wife for his son. So he sent him out one day to look for a girl that he
+would fancy, and he brought one in. And the old king showed her a whole
+lot of gold and of treasures; and he said: "What would you do if all
+this was yours?" "I would sit down and do nothing else but enjoy it,"
+she said.
+
+'So the king said to his son that she wouldn't suit, and that he should
+go look for another girl, rich or poor. So he brought in a poor girl;
+and the king showed her the treasure, and he said: "What would you do if
+all this belonged to you?" And she said: "Whenever I would take a
+sovereign out of it, I would try to put back two."
+
+'So he said she would do, and that the son might marry her. But the girl
+said: "I will be well treated while you are in it; but some day you
+might be gone, and my husband mightn't treat me so well. And make him
+give me his promise now," she said, "that if ever he turns me out of the
+house, I may bring three ass-loads of whatever I myself will choose
+along with me." So he gave her his promise she might do that.
+
+'Then the old king died; and the young one was, like himself, a
+law-maker and a law-breaker. And he thought a great deal of his own
+wisdom, and of the judgments he would give.
+
+'Now, at that time there was a man had a mare that had a foal in a
+field; and in the field next it there was an old _garran_; and there was
+a little stream that made the mering between the two fields. And the
+foal took a habit of crossing over the stream to the other field where
+the _garran_ was; and it got to be so friendly with him, and so fond of
+him, that at last it was hardly it would come back at all. And the man
+the other field belonged to laid a claim to it, where it was always in
+his ground.
+
+'So the case was brought before the king; and he thought a long time,
+and at last he said to put the foal in a house that had two doors, one
+on each side, and to put the _garran_ outside one door and the mare
+outside the other, and to see which would the foal follow. And they did
+that, and the foal followed the _garran_, and it was given to the owner.
+
+'And the man it was taken from was vexed; and he went to the queen, and
+he told the injustice that was done to him. And she bade him to get a
+fishing-rod, and to go fishing in the river; and when the king would go
+by, to turn and to be fishing on the dry land.
+
+'So he did that; and when the king was coming by, he turned and began
+fishing on the dry land. And the king stopped and asked why was he doing
+that. And the answer he gave was: "I think it no more foolish to be
+fishing on dry land than to believe that a foal would belong to a
+_garran_."
+
+'When the king heard that, he guessed it was his own wife had given the
+answer to the man; and he went back and asked was it true she had put
+the man up to do what he had done. "It is true," she said. "Then you may
+clear out of this," he said, "and go back to your own place; for I won't
+keep a wife in the house that will be upsetting my judgments." "I must
+go if you bid me to," she said; "but do you remember your promise to me,
+to bring away three ass-loads with me of whatever I would choose?" "You
+may do that," he said. So she got the three asses, and on the first she
+put her clothes and some money. And on the second she put her two
+children. And then she came back to her husband and stooped down before
+him. "Get up on my back," she said, "till I put you on the ass, for it
+is yourself I choose to bring along with me for my third load. So long
+as I have you and the children with me, what do I care where I go?" "If
+that is so," said the king, "you may as well bring in your things again
+and stop with me. And I will never drive you away again," he said.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another man said: 'There was a man in Ballinasloe Asylum that was not
+very mad--just a little mad--and he used to be raking about the gate.
+And there was a clock over the gate; and one day the doctor was going
+out, and he took his watch out and looked up, and he said to himself,
+"That clock is not right." "If it was right, it wouldn't be in here,"
+said the man that was raking.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'I have a sorrowful story,' says another man. 'I am blind, and I hurt my
+hip. And I have a brother fighting for the Queen and for the King, and a
+son fighting against the Boers, and neither of them ever sent me
+anything.' (But this was received without much sympathy, and with what I
+imagine to represent derisive cheers.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A very wild-looking man told 'on behalf of a poor man inside'--to get
+him a bit of tobacco--a long story about a farmer who worked hard
+himself, to give his sons time for schooling.
+
+'One of them made money in the West Indies by teaching, and he came
+back; and his mother was in the house, and she didn't know him; and he
+asked might he stop the night. "Indeed, I can't give you leave to do
+that," she said; "for a travelling man stopped for a night not long ago;
+and when he went away in the morning, he brought with him the flannel
+bawneen and the pants of the man of the house, that were hanging on the
+hedge to dry. But stop here for a while," she said, "and rest yourself."
+
+'Presently the father came in, and didn't know him; and when he heard
+what the wife had said, he was vexed, and said: "A thousand men might
+come the road, and not one of them do what that travelling man did. And
+I am sorry, sir," he said, "that my wife gave you such a reason."
+
+'Then the potatoes were ready, and they were put on a skip for the
+dinner; and they asked the gentleman to help himself; and they gave him
+a knife but it had but half a blade; and they said they were sorry to
+have no better a one to give him. But he peeled his potatoes with that.
+
+'And then some one came in and asked would the young people come in and
+join a dance, for there was a piper in the next house. And the stranger
+asked to go with them. But at every dance-house there is a blackguard,
+and there was one there; and he began to mock at the strange gentleman.
+And one of his brothers that didn't know he was his brother, said to the
+blackguard: "It's a very mean thing of you to mock at a stranger." But
+he went on doing it.
+
+'Then the stranger got up and went over to where his sister was, and
+slipped a letter into her apron that told who he was. And then he
+quenched the dip-candle over her, that was lighting the house, and he
+made for the man that mocked him, and gave him a blow that sent him into
+the hearth, and then he made away.
+
+'And it was a long time before they could find the candle; and when it
+was lighted, the man was found dead on the hearth. And the sister read
+the letter; but she did not tell it was her own brother had come home.
+
+'But after that he got a good place in the West Indies, and sent for
+them all there.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then an old man said: 'I was minding a man in the hospital one time, and
+he was lying quiet in the bed; and the priest came in to see him, Father
+Kearns. And all of a sudden he made one leap, and was out of the bed,
+and bade the priest to be off out of that. And the priest made for the
+door; and I stood in the way of the man till he got out; and then I got
+out myself, and shut the door. He was brought away to Ballinasloe Asylum
+after. But if it wasn't for me, Father Kearns wouldn't have got safe
+out.
+
+'That's my story.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first old man said: 'There was a man one time went to the market to
+sell a cow; and he sold her, and he took a drop of drink after; and
+instead of going home, he went into a sort of a barn where there was
+straw stored, and he fell asleep there.
+
+'And in the night some men came in, and he heard them talking. And they
+had a lot of silver plate with them, they were after stealing from some
+house in the town, and they were hiding it in the straw till they would
+come and bring it away again.
+
+'And he said nothing, and kept quiet till morning; and then he went out;
+and the people in the town were talking of nothing else but the great
+robbery of silver plate in the night. And no one knew who had done it;
+and the man came forward, and told them where the silver plate was, and
+who the men were that stole it; and the things were found, and the men
+convicted. But he did not let on how he had come to know it, or that he
+had slept in the barn.
+
+'So he got a great name; and when he went home, his landlord heard of
+it; and he sent for him, and he said: "I am missing things this good
+while, and the last thing I lost was a diamond ring. Tell me who was it
+stole that," he said. "I can't tell you," said the man. "Well," said the
+landlord, "I will lock you up in a room for three days; and if you can't
+tell me by the end of that time who stole the ring, I'll put you to
+death."
+
+'So he was locked up; and in the evening the butler brought him in his
+supper. And when he saw evening was come, he said: "There's one of
+them," meaning there was one of the three days gone.
+
+'But the butler went down stairs in a great fright; for he was one of
+the servants that had stolen the ring, and he said to the others: "He
+knew me, and he said, 'There's one of them.' And I won't go near him
+again," he said; "but let one of you go."
+
+'So the next evening the cook went up with the supper, and when she came
+in, he said the same way as before: "There's two of them," meaning there
+was another day gone. And the cook went down like the butler had gone,
+making sure he knew that she had a share in the robbery.
+
+'The next day the third of the servants--that was the housemaid--brought
+him his supper; and he gave a great sigh, and said: "There's the third
+of them." So she went down and told the others; and they agreed it was
+best to make a confession to him; and they went and told him of their
+robberies; and they brought him the diamond ring; and they asked him to
+try and screen them some way; so he said he would do his best for them,
+and he said: "I see a big turkey-gobbler out in the yard; and what you
+had best do is to open his mouth," he said, "and to force the ring down
+it."
+
+'So they did that. And then the landlord came up and asked could he tell
+him where the thief was to be found. "Kill that turkey-gobbler in the
+yard," he said, "and see what can you find in him." So they killed the
+turkey-gobbler, and cut him open, and there they found the diamond ring.
+
+'Then the landlord gave him great rewards, and everyone in the country
+heard of him.
+
+'And a neighbouring gentleman that heard of him said to the landlord:
+"I'll make a bet with you that if you bring him to dinner at my house,
+he won't be able to tell what is under a cover on the table." So the
+landlord brought him; and when he was brought in, they asked him what
+was in the dish with the cover; and he thought he was done for, and he
+said: "The fox is caught at last." And what was under the cover but a
+fox! So whatever name he had before, he got a three times greater name
+now.
+
+'But another gentleman made the same bet with the landlord; and when
+they came into the dinner, there was a dish with a cover, and the man
+had no notion what was under it; and he said: "Robin's done this
+time"--his own name being Robin. And what was there under the cover but
+a robin! So he got great rewards after that, and he settled down and
+lived happy ever after.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then a red-faced young man said: 'There was a young man one time, and
+his name was Stepney St. George, and his people said it was time for him
+to get married; and they brought twelve young ladies to stop in the
+house, the way he would make a choice among them. And he used to be
+talking with them and walking in the garden; and there was one of them
+he got to like better than the rest, and the others got jealous of her,
+and used to be picking at her. And when Stepney saw that, he brought her
+out one day into a field where there was a bull, and he covered with
+rings and bells of gold, and a golden door in his side. And he opened
+the door and bade her to go in there, where she would be safe from the
+other eleven women.
+
+'So she went in and he shut the door; and the others did not know where
+was she gone, and they were looking for her in every place. And they
+came to where the bull was; and they began looking at him and touching
+him, and just by chance one of them touched a bell, and the door opened,
+and there was the young lady inside. And they took her out, and brought
+her into the house; and she was sitting on the window-seat looking out
+at the river. And they pushed her over, and she fell into the water and
+was swept away.
+
+'As to Stepney St. George, he was looking for her everywhere, but he
+could not find her. And one day he saw a poor travelling woman trying to
+cross the river, and she fell into it. And he thought it might be that
+way his own young lady was lost.
+
+'And that put it in his mind to build a bridge across the river, and he
+got all the men that could be got, and they set to work. And they had a
+good bit of it made before night. But in the night all they had made of
+it was swept away. And the next day they were building again, and they
+sat up to watch it that night. But all the same it was all gone before
+morning, and they did not see anyone near it.
+
+'The third night, Stepney St. George himself sat up to watch. And at
+last he saw a great black eagle, and it came flying towards the bridge;
+and, when it saw him, it called out: "What are you doing building this
+bridge to be in my way? I swept it away the last two nights, and I'll
+sweep it away again now." "If you do, I'll get satisfaction from you,"
+said Stepney. "You will have to find me for that," she said. "And my
+name is Mother Longfield, and my house is at the other end of the
+world." And with that she went away; and Stepney followed everywhere
+looking for her; and at last he came to a house, and an old witch came
+out, and she told him her name was Mother Longfield. "And I've got you
+here now in my power," she said, "and you will have to do all the work I
+will give you to do."
+
+'So she brought him out then to a stable; and she gave him a fork, and
+bade him clear out all the dung and litter that was in it. So he began
+the work; but for every forkful he would throw out, two would come in
+its place, so that at last there was no room for him in the stable, and
+he had to go outside.
+
+'A young girl came up to him then, and she asked what was the matter.
+And he told her all that had happened; and she said, "I will help you."
+So she took out a little fork, and she went into the stable; and it
+wasn't long before she had it sweet and clean, that you could eat your
+dinner off the floor.
+
+'He went back then to the house, and the witch was at the door, and she
+asked how did he get on. "Very well," he said. "I have the whole stable
+cleaned out, sweet and clean." She looked very sharp at him then; and
+she said: "Take care did Lanka Pera help you?" But he let on not to hear
+her, and made no answer.
+
+'The next day she gave him a hatchet that was as blunt as a blunt knife;
+and she told him there was a forest he should cut down before night, or
+she would make an end of him. So he went to the forest and began to cut;
+but as he cut, it grew thicker and thicker, and the trees that were
+saplings in the morning were large trees before afternoon. So when he
+saw there was no use going on, he stopped. And then he saw the young
+girl again, and she said: "I am come to help you." And she took out a
+small hatchet, and began to cut, and before long the whole forest was
+levelled down.
+
+'He went back to the house whistling and singing; and he told the witch
+he had cut down the forest, and she asked did Lanka Pera help him. But
+he said she did not--for she had told him not to let on he had seen her
+at all.
+
+'The third day the witch showed him a hill a good way off, and a wild
+horse on it; and she said what he had to do was to catch the horse, and
+if he did not do that, it was his last day to live.
+
+'So he began hunting the horse, and trying to catch it; but he could
+never get near it at all. Then the girl came to him, and she said: "You
+will never be able to catch it without my help. And I will turn myself
+into a mare," she said; "and you can get on my back. But remember," she
+said, "not to put the spurs into me whatever may happen." She turned
+herself into a mare then, and he got on her back. And the old witch came
+out then and she called to Stepney: "Don't spare the spurs."
+
+'They galloped off then after the wild horse, but they never could come
+up with it. And at last, in the heat of the race, Stepney forgot what
+the girl had said, and he pressed the spurs into the side of the mare
+till the blood came down.'
+
+('Oh murder!' and a groan of pity from all the old men.)
+
+'Then the mare fell, and the mare was gone; and it was the girl he saw
+before him, and her sides bleeding. And it is then he knew she was the
+young girl had been stolen from him at his own place after he shutting
+her up in the bull.
+
+'She went then and called to the wild horse, and he came to her; and
+they both of them got up on him, and they went back to the witch's
+house. And when they got near it, the girl got up and turned herself
+into a mare again. And the witch came out to meet them, and she said: "I
+see you didn't spare the spur."
+
+'And the witch said Stepney might have the girl if he could choose her
+out of thirteen. And he did that. And the witch wanted to keep her from
+him yet, but he wouldn't give her up; and he brought her to a house that
+was close by; and they made a plan to escape in the night; and they made
+the two horses ready to bring them away. And the girl made two cakes;
+and she left them with some of the servants, and she said: "The witch
+will be coming in to watch us for the night, and she will ask for a
+story; and stick a knife into one of the cakes when she asks that," she
+said.
+
+'So they made off then by the back door; and the witch came to watch the
+house; and she said to the maid: "Tell me a story now while I'm
+waiting." So she stuck a knife in one of the cakes, and it began to
+tell a story; and the witch sat there listening to it.
+
+'And when it was done, she asked for another story; and the maid stuck a
+knife in another of the cakes, and it began to tell a story. And when
+that was done, the witch asked for another story, and the maid stuck a
+knife in the third cake, and it is what it said: "The two you think you
+are watching are off, and are on the way back to their own home."
+
+'When the witch heard that, she took the shape of an eagle on her; and
+she flew out after them, and she came in sight of them. And they looked
+back, and saw her coming like a big black cloud in the air; and the girl
+said to Stepney: "Take the bit of wood you'll find in the horse's ear,
+and throw it behind you." And he did that, and a great forest grew up
+behind them; and it is hardly the eagle could fly over it.
+
+'Then they saw her coming again; and the girl said: "Take the drop of
+water you will find in the horse's other ear, and throw it down behind
+you." And when he did that, there was a great sea behind them; and the
+eagle found it hard to pass it, but it did at last.
+
+'And when she was coming up with them again, the girl took a bit of
+stone was in her own horse's ear, and threw it behind them. And a great
+mountain rose up, that kept back the eagle for a time. And then she took
+a brass ball out of the other ear, and she gave it to Stepney; and bade
+him to throw it at a white mole that was on the eagle's breast. So he
+made a shot with it, and hit the eagle, and it fell dead there and then.
+
+'Then the girl said to Stepney: "There is no danger now between us and
+home. But have a care," she said, "when you get home not to let a dog
+touch your face in any way, or you will forget me and all that has
+happened."
+
+'So he said he would remember that. But when he got home and sat down in
+the house, his little lap-dog jumped up on him and licked his face. And
+on the moment he forgot all that had happened, and the girl he had
+brought home.
+
+'And after a while he was going to be married to another lady, and all
+was ready for the wedding; and a poor-looking girl came to the door. And
+the servants bade her to go away, for the grand people in the house
+would not want her. "I think I have something would amuse them," she
+said. "I have a cock and a hen that can talk the same as living people."
+
+'So when the company heard that, they sent for her; and she went up, and
+she put out the cock and the hen on the table, and she threw down a few
+grains of oats; and when the hen was going to pick at it, the cock drove
+her away. And the hen said then: "You should not do that, after the way
+I helped you, cleaning out the stable you were not able to clean by
+yourself." But Stepney took no notice of what she was saying.
+
+'Then she threw a little more oats, and the cock was taking it all for
+himself. And the hen said again: "You should not do that, when you
+remember how I helped you to cut down the forest." But still Stepney
+took no notice of what was being said. Then she threw a little more
+oats, and the cock was shoving the hen away, and the hen said: "You
+would not have treated me this way the time I caught the horse for you,
+after you driving the spurs into my side."
+
+'And with that Stepney remembered all; and he jumped up, and drove all
+the others away, and took her for his wife, and they lived happy ever
+after.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man said: 'There was a mouse one time said to a robin, that
+they would lay up a store of provisions together against the winter. And
+he bade the robin to go up in the hedges and to be picking berries, and
+he would have the hole ready to put them in. And then he said: "Let you
+go to where they are threshing wheat; for if they saw me there, they
+would kill me; but if they see you, they'll be throwing grains to you."
+
+'So the robin went and brought back the grains; and when the hole was
+full, the mouse said: "I have enough for myself now, and go and look
+after your own house-keeping for the winter."
+
+'So the robin was vexed; and they agreed to go fight it out. And when
+the day came, all the animals came together, and all the birds of the
+air. And the place they fought was in a field before a big house. And
+they fought till all were dead but one eagle.
+
+'And the young man of the house came out and looked at the field; and he
+saw the eagle moving, and it said to him: "Go in now, and bring me out
+three sheaves of wheat." So he did that; and the eagle nicked the grain
+off two of the sheaves, and then he was strong. And he said: "I will
+bring you now on a voyage if you will come with me. But go in first to
+the house and bring me out a bit of yellow soap." So he got the bit of
+soap; and the eagle took him and the soap and the sheaf on its back, and
+flew away. And at last it began to get tired and to droop; and the place
+where it dropped was in the middle of the sea. And the young man said:
+"I don't like this, to be left down into the sea." Then the eagle bade
+him to throw away the bit of yellow soap, and where he threw it there
+came a green island. And they rested on it, and eat the grain from the
+sheaf they had with them.
+
+'Then the eagle took him up again; and when they came to land, it threw
+him down. And there was a house near, and a giant came out of it; and he
+brought him in, and said to his servant: "Give him barley bread to
+fatten him, and when he is fat enough, I will eat him."'
+
+(Then he was given tasks to do, and a girl came to help him, much as
+Lanka Pera helped Stepney St. George in the other story.)
+
+'And afterwards the girl said to him that they would make their escape;
+and they got into a boat; and what she brought with her was the three
+young pups of the dog that minded the giant's house.
+
+'And when they had gone a little way on the sea, the giant missed them;
+and he sent the dog after them to bring the girl back. But as soon as
+the dog came close to them, and opened its mouth to take hold of her,
+she put one of the pups into it, and it turned back to the shore again
+to bring the pup safe to land. And the giant was very angry when he saw
+it coming without the girl, and he sent it after them again. And the
+girl did the same thing as before, and put the second pup into its
+mouth, that it turned back again. And the giant sent it back the third
+time, and gave it great abuse for coming to shore without her. And the
+third time she dropped the pup into the water, for she was vexed, the
+dog to come so often. And the dog would not pick it up at first, for he
+was afraid to pick it up again after all the abuse he got from the
+giant. But when he saw it going to drown, he took it up and turned back,
+and they were free of him then.
+
+'And they came to land; and the young man left the girl down by a
+shoemaker's house while he went on to make all ready for her at his own
+house. But she bade him not to let a dog lick his face or touch it, or
+he would forget all about her. But when he went in, his dog jumped up
+and licked his face; and he forgot the girl or that he ever had seen
+her.
+
+'And as for her, she waited; and he did not come back, and she knew no
+one in the place; and she went up in a tree that was over the well in
+the shoemaker's garden to hide herself. And after a while the shoemaker
+sent out one of his daughters to the well to bring in water. And when
+she stooped down, she saw the shadow of the girl in the tree, and she
+thought it was herself, and she said: "My father should not be sending
+such a handsome girl as that to be bringing in water;" and she threw the
+tin can down against a wall and broke it, and went in.
+
+'Then the shoemaker sent out the second daughter for water; and she
+stooped down; and she thought it was her own face she saw; and she no
+better-looking than myself, and that's not saying much.' (Applause from
+all the old men.) 'So she wouldn't bring the water, but went in without
+it.
+
+'Then he sent his missus out, that was the ugliest you ever saw--old and
+withered. But that did not hinder her from thinking the shadow she saw
+was herself; and it is proud she was going into the house again.
+
+'So at last the shoemaker himself went out, and when he stooped and saw
+the shadow, he looked up in the tree, and he said: "Come down out of
+that, for you have given me trouble enough." So she came down, and told
+him her story; and he brought her to the young man's house.' (The cock
+and hen now come in as in Lanka Pera.) 'And they lived happily ever
+after.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another says: 'There was a young man killed a deer one time he was out
+hunting. And a lion and a hound and a hawk came by, and they asked a
+share of it. And he gave the flesh to the lion, and the bones to the
+dog, and the guts to the hawk. And they thanked him; and they said from
+that time he would have the strength of a lion, and the quickness of a
+hound, and the lightness of a hawk.
+
+'It was a good while after that he fell in love with a young girl; and
+her father said that before he could marry her he must go out and see
+who was it was stealing his cows; for there were some of them stolen
+every night.
+
+'So he watched, and he saw a witch coming and driving them away. And he
+attacked her, and fought with her, and beat her by his strength, and she
+made off. And he went to the place she had driven the cows, that was
+underground, and he found the cows belonging to the whole neighbourhood.
+And he drove them all out, and gave them to the owners.
+
+'And after a little time the father said to him, that there was a fox in
+the country, that no hound could catch, and that it was to be hunted
+again on the next day. So the young man went out, and when he saw the
+fox, he took the shape of a hound and followed it. And he was gaining on
+it, and it took to a lake, and he went in after it, and it turned to its
+own shape of a witch, and dragged him down.
+
+'The girl used to go and be looking at the lake every day, but she never
+got a sight of him. And at last, someone told her those water-witches
+were very fond of music, and to get a musical instrument. So she brought
+a musical instrument to the side of the lake, and she was playing it;
+and the witch put up her hand out of the water. "What will you take for
+that?" she said. "I will give it to you," the girl said, "if you will
+let me see my husband's head above the water." "I will do that much for
+you," said the witch.
+
+'Then the young man put up his head above the water, and she could see
+his face; but she could not touch him, and she went away.
+
+'The next day she came again with a musical instrument that was better
+again than the first, and she began to play it. The witch put up her
+hand, and asked what would she take for it. "Let me see my husband to
+his waist this time," she said. So the young man was let up out of the
+water as far as his waist, and then he disappeared again.
+
+'The next day she came again, and the musical instrument she brought
+with her was seven times better than the other two. "What will you take
+for that?" said the witch. "Let my husband stand up on your shoulders,
+clear and clean out of the water," she said. So the witch put him up on
+her shoulder; and when she did, he took the shape of a hawk on the
+moment, and away with him through the air, back to his own home again.
+
+'The witch followed him then; and when he was in a field, she came to
+fight him, and they fought the whole day, and they were both tired, and
+they stopped to rest. "Oh, if I had three drops of sea-water and a
+crumb of wheaten bread!" said the witch. "Oh, if I had three drops of
+fresh water and a crumb of barley bread!" said the young man.
+
+'And a fairy brought the witch the three drops of sea-water and the
+crumb of bread. And a little serving-girl from the farm brought the
+young man the three drops of fresh water and the crumb of bread. And
+then they fought together again; and he having the strength of a lion,
+he killed her in the end.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man said: 'There was a young man looking for service one
+time; and a farmer said he would take him to mind his cattle. For a
+great many of his cattle had died with the herds he had, and he didn't
+know what the reason was.
+
+So the first morning the young man led them up as he was told, to the
+green grassy place on the top of Cruachmaa. And when he looked about him
+there, he noticed it to be very dirty and trampled by the cattle. So he
+brought them to graze in the fields at the side of the hill; and he came
+back, and cleared all the dirt from that field till it was green and
+smooth. And no more of the cattle died.
+
+'He was up in the field one day, and he saw a great hurling match going
+on; and one side had a young man at the head of it, and it was beating
+the other. So the next day he went to the wood, and he cut a hurl; and
+he was all that day and the next shaping it; and his mother asked was
+he going to a match, and he said he was only amusing himself with it.
+
+'The next night he went up to the field to give a hand; and the king of
+the fairies came up to him, and asked would he join his side that was
+the weakest, and he said he would. And he drove the ball to the goal
+every time, and they gave the other side a great beating. And the king
+of the fairies thanked him, and said they had been able to do nothing
+till they had a living person along with them.
+
+'Then the king asked would he come along with him to bring away the King
+of Spain's daughter that he wanted for a wife. And the young man agreed
+to that. And the king raised them both into the air as if they were a
+wisp of straw; and they flew away on the air like two feathers.
+
+'When they came to the court of the King of Spain, there was a great
+ball going on; and they went in, but no one could see them. And the
+fairy king said to the young man that he would know which was the
+princess by hearing her sneeze. And presently the most beautiful young
+lady that was there gave a sneeze; and the young man said, "God bless
+her." "Don't say that again," said the fairy king, "or she'll be lost to
+us." So she sneezed twice after that, and he said nothing. And then the
+fairy king said: "Let you take hold of her now and bring her out, and I
+will make something in her own shape to put in her place, the way they
+won't miss her." So the young man took a hold of her and brought her
+outside; and then the fairy king came out, and they went away like
+feathers in the air.
+
+'And when they came to Irish land, the fairy king said: "Now you may
+give her to me." "Indeed I will not," said the young man, "after all the
+trouble I went through; but I will keep her for myself to be my own
+wife." "If you do," said the fairy king "you will have nothing better
+than a stone, for she will have no speech."
+
+'But the young man brought her to his own house; and his mother seeing
+her in her ball dress, thought it was one of the ladies from Castle
+Hacket come for a visit, and she was astonished when the son said she
+was to be his wife. But all the time she could not speak; and at last
+the young man went up to the field on the hill, and he brought a
+tar-barrel with him, and he gathered sticks and ferns, and put them all
+around, and began to set fire to them.
+
+'Then the fairy king came and asked what was he doing. "I am burning you
+out of the place," he said, "till you give back speech to my wife." So
+the king agreed to that, and they made friends again; and the young man
+went home, and found his wife speaking. And she wrote a letter then to
+her father and mother, the King and Queen of Spain; and they were very
+glad to hear that she was well, and they sent her money and clothes of
+all sorts.
+
+'Then the fairy king came and asked the young man to go with him to
+Germany to help him to bring back a wife for himself from the king's
+court there. So he agreed to go; and before he went, the wife said:
+"When you come back, you will bring a title for yourself and put an O to
+your name. And it is what you must do," she said, "when you are near the
+land, cut off your hand, and throw it on the shore, and bring it back to
+me after."
+
+'So they went to Germany, and brought away a wife for the fairy king.
+And when they were coming home and were near the strand, the young man
+cut off his hand, and threw it on the land.
+
+'And his wife put the hand on to him again after; and he was O'Connor
+from that time, that was the first of all; and the fairy king put an O
+to his name, and he was O'Neill, that was second.
+
+'But now at this time, there isn't a Tom, Dick, or John, but puts an O
+before his name.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An old one-eyed man gave me a new version of Deirdre's story. He said:
+'The King of Ulster and his men were out hunting one time; and they met
+with the fairy king, Mannanan of the Hill. They sat down with him; and
+himself and the King of Ulster began to play cards together, and
+whichever of them won could put some command upon the other. It was
+Mannanan won; and what he put on the King of Ulster was to follow after
+him to whatever place he would go.
+
+'With that he changed into the shape of a hare, and away with him, and
+the hounds after him, and the king and his men after them again; but
+they lost sight of him. But the hounds followed on till they came to a
+hill, and an old stump of a tree on top of it; and they began scratching
+at the stump where it was rotten. And when there was a hole scratched in
+it, the king looked down; and he saw steps; and he and his men went down
+the steps; and they passed through gardens and beside a pond with
+flowers about it; and then they came to a big house, and in it an old
+man sitting on a chair reading a book; and they knew him to be Mannanan
+that they were looking for.
+
+'And he rose up and bade them welcome; and there was a feast spread out
+before them, with every sort of food and drink. And while they were at
+the feast they heard something like the cry of a child from an inner
+room. And the King of Ulster rose up, and he said: "I will go see what
+is in there; for that is the cry of a child."
+
+'So he went in; and he came back again, bringing a baby in his arms, the
+most beautiful that was ever seen, and her hair like gold. "I will bring
+away this child with me, and rear her up," he said. "Do not," said
+Mannanan; "for if you do, your country will be destroyed, and your
+throne will be lost through her, and there will be a great many killed
+for her sake."
+
+'But the king would not mind him; but he brought her away, and he had a
+house made for her, and she was reared up in it. And she grew to be a
+nice young girl, and there were women about her to care her and to
+attend on her; but she never saw a man but the king himself, that used
+to come and see her every week. And he had great love for her; and he
+thought she loved him.'
+
+The account of Deirdre's meeting with Naoise, and their flight to
+Scotland, and the king's message bringing them back, was much the same
+as in some of the printed versions; but Mannanan's part at the end was
+new to me. The old man went on: 'When they came to Ulster, the king made
+an attack on them, to bring away Deirdre from them; but they killed all
+that came near them, and drove the whole army back.
+
+'Then the king went to Mannanan of the Hill, and he said: "Come and give
+me your help against these men, or they will kill the whole army of
+Ulster." And Mannanan said: "I will give you no help; for I told you all
+this would come on you if you brought the girl away the time she was a
+baby in this place." But the king pressed him, and said: "Put blindness
+on them, the way they will not be able to kill my people."
+
+'So Mannanan agreed to do that, and he put blindness on the three
+brothers. And when they went out next time to fight against the army,
+they could not see who was before them; and it was at each other they
+were striking; and at last all of them fell by each other's hand.
+
+'And when Deirdre saw they were dead, she took up a sword or a dagger
+that was lying on the ground, and she put it through her own body, and
+she fell dead along with them.
+
+'And she was buried on one side of a dry stone wall, and her husband on
+the other side. And a briar grew up on his grave, and a briar on hers;
+and they met over the wall, and joined with one another.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A young man, narrow-chested and consumptive-looking, but with fun in his
+eyes, said then: 'There were three Irishmen joined the English army, and
+they didn't like it. And they were brought to India; and when they were
+there, they agreed to make away. So they went into a forest, where they
+would not be found. And they made a little cabin for themselves there;
+and two of them used to go hunting every day, and the other would stop
+at home to make ready the dinner.
+
+'One day when the pot was on the fire, a little old man came into the
+house. "Bum-bum," he said; "give me something to eat out of the pot."
+
+'So the soldier gave him a rabbit out of the pot. "Give me another," he
+said then. "I will not," said the soldier; "for there would not be
+enough for my friends' dinner when they come home from hunting." With
+that the little man took hold of the pot, and threw the scalding broth
+over the soldier, and made off, leaving nothing in the pot after him.
+
+'And when the others came home, they found their comrade lying there on
+the ground, scalded, and he told them what had happened.
+
+'The next day the second of them said he would watch the pot. And all
+happened the same as the first day; and they found him scalded and the
+pot empty when they came back.
+
+'The third day the third of them said he would keep a watch, and that
+they might be sure they would get their dinner that evening.
+
+'He put down the pot, and he put the tongs to redden in the fire; and
+when the pot was boiling, the little man came in. "Bum-bum," he said;
+"give me a bit from the pot." So the soldier gave him a bit. "Give me
+more now," he said, when he had the rabbit eaten. "I will not; I will
+keep it for my comrades," said the soldier. With that the little man
+took a hold of the pot; but if he did, the soldier took up the tongs
+that he was after making red-hot in the fire; and the little man made
+off, and the pot in his arms, and the soldier after him with the tongs.
+Then the little man dropped the pot; but the soldier took no notice, but
+followed after him till he went down a hole into the ground. Then he
+took a sapling, and tied his handkerchief on it, and stuck it where the
+hole was, and went back again to the cabin.
+
+'When his comrades came back, he told them all that happened; and they
+all set out to where the hole was. And they looked down, and it was very
+deep; and they could see no end to it. So the third man said to the
+others: "One of you is a rope-maker, and the other is a cooper; and let
+you make a rope and a bucket now."
+
+'So they made the rope and the bucket, and fastened one to the other;
+and the first man was let down. But after he went a good way, the rope
+came to an end, and there was no sign of a bottom; and he called to them
+to pull him up again. It happened the same with the second man; and he
+was pulled up again. Then the third said he would go, and that if the
+rope would not reach to the bottom, he would take a leap the rest of the
+way.
+
+'So when the rope was all given out, he made a leap and came safe to the
+bottom. And it was in a hole he found himself; and he went through a
+great many rooms from that, till he came to where the little man was
+sitting by himself.
+
+'And he gave him a welcome, and said: "You had good courage to get here.
+And have you enough courage now," he said, "to go straight before you
+for three hundred miles, to set free the King of Spain's three daughters
+that are in the power of three giants?" "I will do that," said the
+soldier.
+
+'So the little man gave him directions what to do. "But when you are
+going to fight the giants," he said, "take no weapon but the little
+rusty sword you'll find at the back of their own door."
+
+'The soldier set out then; and after he had gone a hundred miles in a
+straight line, he came to the first castle, and there was a copper crown
+over it.' (At this, we all looked up at the whitewashed boards of the
+shed, as if we expected to see the copper crown.) 'And there was a young
+lady looking out of the window, and she saw him coming. "You'd best not
+come here," she said: "or the giant that owns the castle will make an
+end of you." "It's to make an end of himself, I am come," says he, "and
+to set you free." "And do you think the like of you could stand against
+him?" says she; "it's what he's gone out for now," says she, "is for
+seven bullocks to make his dinner of." "I'm ready for him whenever he
+comes," says the soldier.
+
+'Presently the giant came back, bringing the seven bullocks on his back.
+"It is to fight me you are come," says he. "Wait till I have my dinner
+eat, and I'll make a quick end of you."
+
+'So he sat down and had his dinner off the seven bullocks, and then he
+got up to fight. "What weapons will you fight with?" he says, throwing
+down a brace of swords. "Is it one of these you will have?" "It is not,"
+said the soldier; "but the little rusty sword that is behind the door."
+
+'So he went in and got that; and the giant began to hit and to strike at
+him; and he began to tickle the giant's ankles and his calves. And at
+last the giant stooped down to scratch his ankle; and when he did, the
+soldier struck off his head.
+
+'He let the princess out then, and bade her to go where the little man
+was waiting at the bottom of the hole, till he would come to her.'
+
+'He went then to the second castle, that had a silver crown over the
+door; and then he went on to the third castle, that had a golden crown
+over the door; and the same thing happened as before, except that the
+second giant had fourteen bullocks and third giant twenty-one bullocks
+for his dinner.
+
+'Then he brought the third princess back to the house, at the bottom of
+the hole, where the little man was sitting. And the little man gave him
+a whistle, and he blew it; and his comrades came and called down the
+hole that they were at the top, and he bade them to let the bucket down.
+And when they did, he put the first of the three princesses in it. They
+drew her up then; and when they saw so nice a girl come up, they began
+to quarrel which of them would have her for his wife. "Oh, don't quarrel
+about me," says she; "for there is a girl much handsomer than myself
+below yet." So they let the bucket down again, and she made off.
+
+'Then the second princess came up in the bucket, and they began to
+quarrel for her, and she said: "You may let me go, for I am nothing at
+all beside the girl that is below in the hole yet."
+
+'So they let her go; and then the third princess that was the most
+beautiful came up, and they began to quarrel for her. "You need not be
+quarrelling for me," says she; "for it is your comrade that is at the
+bottom of the hole yet, I am going to marry."
+
+'So when they heard that, they let the bucket down again. But when the
+soldier below was going to get into it, the little man said: "Don't get
+in," he said; "but put stones in it; for your comrades will cut the rope
+when it is half way up."
+
+'So he filled it with stones, and sure enough, when it was half way up,
+his comrades cut the rope, and the bucket fell to the bottom.'
+
+('Oh! oh! oh!' There were indignant murmurs among the old men at this.)
+
+'The soldier did not know then what way he would make his escape. But
+the little old man took his whistle, and blew on it; and presently a
+great big eagle came down the hole.
+
+'The little man bade the soldier get on its back till it would bring him
+across the world; and he put seven bullocks on its back along with him.
+
+'They set out then; and the soldier was cutting a bit off the bullocks
+and putting it into the eagle's beak whenever he would say "Quawk." But
+they were only a third of the way when all was gone, and they had to
+turn back again.
+
+'He took fourteen bullocks the next time, but they gave out. But the
+third time the little old man gave twenty-one bullocks.
+
+'So this time the eagle brought him to Spain, and left him down there.
+And at that time the King of Spain was making a great feast for the
+marriage of his eldest daughter that was the most beautiful. And when
+the soldier saw her, he knew she was the third of the princesses he had
+set free from the giant, and the other two were her two sisters.
+
+'It was given out then that the princess would not marry anyone but the
+man that would bring her a golden crown, the same as the one that was
+hung over the castle where the giant had kept her. And all the
+goldsmiths were very busy, everyone employing them to make crowns. But
+they could not make the right one.
+
+'Now the little man had given the soldier a ring before they parted, and
+had bade him rub it if he would want anything from him. So he rubbed it
+and a genii appeared before him. "Master, master, best master, what is
+your will?" "Bring me the golden crown from the third castle where I
+killed the giant," says the soldier.
+
+'So the genii brought it; and Jack went to the king's court and put it
+down; and the princess said it was just the very same crown that was
+over the castle; and she knew it was the soldier had freed her, and she
+was willing to marry him.
+
+'But the king was not pleased to see such a poor-looking husband coming
+for his daughter; and he said he would give her to no one but a man that
+would bring a coach for her.
+
+'So the soldier went away, and he rubbed the ring, and the genii
+appeared; and it is what he bade him, to get him a coach that would be
+filled full up of mud. So the coach went up to the king's door, and the
+king himself came out to open it; and when he did, out came all the mud
+over him that he was near choked. And he filled it a second and a third
+time with pebbles and with stones, and the same thing happened.
+
+'Then the soldier bade the genii to bring him a fine empty coach, and
+he got into it. And when he was in it, it is what he wished, to have the
+princess sitting beside him.
+
+'And there she was on the minute, and they went away together. But the
+king gave his consent then, and a great deal of money and treasure.
+
+'And they put down the teapot, and if they didn't live happy'--the end
+was lost in applause.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And when the applause had died away, an old, bright-eyed wrinkled man,
+said: 'There was a King of Leinster one time, and there was a lake
+beside his house. And every now and again twelve swans used to come to
+the lake; and they had been coming there for seven generations.
+
+'And the king's son that was away came home. And one day he saw the
+swans coming to the lake; and he said: "I wonder I never heard any talk
+of these swans before, for they are the most beautiful I ever saw." And
+his people said: "They are coming here for seven generations, and no one
+ever took notice of them before."
+
+'The next morning early the king's son went down and hid himself in the
+flags and the rushes by the lake. And after he had watched for a while,
+he saw the swans come flying to the edge of the lake. And then they took
+off their flying habits, and went bathing in the water; and they were
+not swans but beautiful young women; and there was one among them that
+was the most beautiful of all.
+
+'After the king's son had watched for a while, he went to where they had
+left their flying habits; and he brought away the one that belonged to
+the most beautiful of the women. After a while they came to shore, and
+began to look for their flying habits, and when she could not find hers,
+she made great laments.
+
+'The king's son came out to her then; and he asked her would she stop
+with him and be his wife. "I cannot do that," she said; "but give me
+back my wings now, and if you will come to the shore at such a place
+to-morrow, I will bring a ship, and you can come away with me." So he
+gave her back her habit, and she took the form of a swan again and flew
+away.
+
+'The next day he was making ready for his journey before he would go to
+meet her; and the old woman that was in the house, and that was over
+eighty years old, came and asked could she go with him. So at last he
+gave her leave, and they went down to the shore to wait. And the nurse
+said: "Lie down now and put your head in my lap and rest awhile." So he
+laid his head in her lap; and when he did that, she took a sleeping-pin
+and put it in his ear, and he fell into a heavy sleep.
+
+'And when he was asleep, the ship came over the sea, with music and
+playing in it, and came near the land. And when there was no one to meet
+it there, it went away again.
+
+'The king's son awoke then, and the nurse said: "It is making a fool of
+you she was, for we have waited here all the day, and there has no ship
+come."
+
+'So they went back home; but the next day he went down to the shore
+again, and the same thing happened. The young man lay down to rest, and
+the nurse put a sleeping-pin in his ear, and the ship came when he was
+asleep, and it went away again.
+
+'But this time the lady in the ship wrote a letter and left it on the
+strand; and when the king's son awoke, and that the nurse told him there
+had no ship come, he was distracted, and went wandering about on the
+strand, and there he found the letter; and it told him what to do, and
+the way the nurse had deceived him.
+
+'So the next day when he went to the shore and the nurse followed him,
+he brought her where there was a well, and put a stone about her neck
+and pushed her in, and she was seen no more.
+
+'Then he went down to the shore, and he met the lady; but she said: "I
+cannot bring you with me now, but I will leave the ship with you, and
+you must follow till you find me."
+
+'And he took the ship, and she gave him directions; and he went on till
+he came to a country a long way off, and a wood in it, and a house in
+the wood, and an old man sitting in it.
+
+'And he told the old man all that had happened, and how he was looking
+for the lady. And the old man gave him clothes to put on, and a place to
+wash himself, till he was as fresh and fair as before he set out.
+
+'And then he sent for a pony, and he said: "I will give you this pony
+that will bring you where she is; and when you get there, you must put
+the bridle on his neck, and put the saddle cross-ways, and turn his head
+back here again."
+
+'So then he got on the pony's back; and it flew away with him through
+the air, till at last it put him down on land, near a great castle. And
+he turned the saddle cross-ways, and put the bridle on the pony's neck,
+and turned its head, and it went back to where it came from.
+
+'Then he went on to the castle; and he went in and asked the Master to
+take him as a serving-man. And the Master said he would, and he said:
+"The work you have to do to-night is to attend to the horse that is in
+the stable, and that belongs to my daughter."
+
+'But before the young man did that, he went to look for the young lady,
+and he saw her looking out of a window; and he went up to her, and she
+knew him, and gave him a welcome. And she said: "The Master of the house
+knows well who you are, and that it is to bring me away you are come;
+and that is the reason he bade you go to clean and to attend to the
+horse in the stable; for it is wicked, and it would make an end of you.
+But," says she, "take these brushes and these shammys and bring them
+along with you into the stable, and the horse will be as quiet as a
+lamb; and in place of wanting to kill you, he will love you. And when
+night comes," says she, "he will come to us, and we will get on his
+back, and he will bring us away."
+
+'So all happened as she said, and the horse came at night, and they both
+of them got on his back; and away with him, and never stopped till he
+brought them back to Ireland, and to this country.
+
+'And it was in this country they settled down; and some of their
+descendants are living in it yet.'
+
+'What is their name?'
+
+'Well, I think they, are the Persses of Roxborough; or maybe they are
+the Gregorys of Coole.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A red-faced, farmer-like man says: 'There was a poor man one time--Jack
+Murphy his name was; and rent day came, and he hadn't enough to pay his
+rent. And he went to the landlord, and asked would he give him time. And
+the landlord asked when would he pay him; and he said he didn't know
+that. And the landlord said: "Well, if you can answer three questions
+I'll put to you, I'll let you off the rent altogether. But if you don't
+answer them, you will have to pay it at once, or to leave your farm. And
+the three questions are these:--How much does the moon weigh? How many
+stars are there in the sky? What is it I am thinking?" And he said he
+would give him till the next day to think of the answers.
+
+'And Jack was walking along, very downhearted; and he met with a friend
+of his, one Tim Daly; and he asked what was on him; and he told him how
+he must answer the landlord's three questions on to-morrow, or to lose
+his farm. "And I see no use in going to him to-morrow," says he; "for
+I'm sure I will not be able to answer his questions right." "Let me go
+in your place," says Tim Daly; "for the landlord will not know one of us
+from the other; and I'm a good hand at answering questions, and I'll
+engage I'll get you through."
+
+'So he agreed to that; and the next day Tim Daly went in to the
+landlord, and says he: "I'm come now to answer your three questions."
+
+'Well, the first question the landlord put was: "What does the moon
+weigh?" And Tim Daly says: "It weighs four quarters."
+
+'Then the landlord asked: "How many stars are in the sky?" "Nine
+thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine," says Tim. "How do you know
+that?" says the landlord. "Well," says Tim, "if you don't believe me, go
+out yourself to-night and count them."
+
+'Then the landlord asked him the third question: "What am I thinking
+now?" "You are thinking it's to Jack Murphy you're talking, and it is
+not, but to Tim Daly."
+
+'So the landlord gave in then; and Jack had the farm free from that
+out.'
+
+There was great laughter and applause at this story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then someone told this version of the _Taming of the Shrew_. I heard it
+told in Irish afterwards by an Aran girl at the Galway Feis:
+
+'There was a farmer one time had three daughters; and two of them were
+very nice and civil, but the third had a very hot temper. And the two
+civil ones were married first; and then a gentleman came and asked for
+the third. So after the wedding they started for home; and the farmer
+said to his son-in-law: "God speed you--yourself and your Fireball."
+
+'Well, on the way home, a hare started up; and the gentleman had a white
+hound, and it followed the hare; and he called to it to leave following
+it, but it would not till it had it killed. And it came back then, and
+the gentleman took out his pistol and shot the hound dead. "I did that
+because it would not obey me," he said.
+
+'And after a little time they came to a stone wall that was very high;
+and he put the white horse he was riding at it, and the horse refused
+it, and he shot it dead. "I did that because he would not take the wall
+when I bade him," he said.
+
+'They came home then; and there was a good deal of feasting made, and of
+good treatment for all the servants in the house; but as to the wife she
+got hardly enough given her, and that of the worst. She was angry then;
+and she said to the husband: "Why am I badly treated this way, and your
+servants are well treated?" "I have a good reason for that," says he;
+"for my servants are working hard for me, and doing all they can for
+me, and you are doing nothing at all."
+
+'Well, whatever happened after that, all the daughters and the
+sons-in-law came back one time to the father's house to see him. And
+after the dinner, the daughters were playing cards together, and the
+sons-in-law were in another room with the father. And he asked the first
+of them how did he like his wife. "Very well," says he, "I have no fault
+to find with her, a very civil, obedient girl." The second son-in-law
+said the same; and then the father said to the man that married the
+hot-tempered one: "And what sort of an account have you to give of your
+missus?" "Very good," he said. "If her sisters are civil and obedient,
+she is three times more civil and obedient."
+
+'They were surprised to hear him say that; and they said they would put
+it to the proof. And the first husband went to the door and called to
+his wife, "Come here a minute." "I can't come," says she; "I'm dealing
+the cards." Then the second husband went and called to his wife that he
+wanted her. "I can't come," says she; "I'm playing the game." Then the
+third went and called to his wife; and she rose up and put down the
+cards, and came out to him on the moment. "What were you doing when I
+called you?" says he. "I was playing the game," says she.
+
+'They all wondered when they heard that, and they asked what made her,
+that was so hard to manage before, so quiet now.
+
+'"I will tell you that," she said. And she told them the whole story of
+the horse and the hound being shot, and the servants being treated
+better than herself.
+
+'And that's the end of my story.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then a young red-faced, one-eyed man was dragged forward, and he said:
+
+'There was a farmer one time had met with great misfortunes; and at last
+of all his stock he had nothing left but one cow. And when he saw his
+children starving with the hunger, he made up his mind to sell the cow,
+and he set out with her to the fair.
+
+'And on the road he met a man that asked would he sell the cow. "I will
+indeed; it's for that I'm going to the fair," says he. "Will you give
+her to me for this bottle?" says the man, holding out a bottle to him.
+"Do you know what my wife would do if I brought her home that bottle in
+place of the cow?" said the farmer. "I do not," said the man. "She'd
+break it on my head," said the farmer.
+
+'Well, the man pressed him for a while; and at last he said the fair
+might be a bad one, and maybe he might as well chance the bottle and go
+home. So he took the bottle and gave the cow in place of it, and went
+home.
+
+'When his wife knew what he had done, she went near losing her wits; and
+she called him all the names; and the children were crying with the
+hunger. And the poor man didn't know what to do; and he sat down, and he
+put the bottle on the table and opened it.
+
+'And as soon as he did that, two men came out of it, and they began to
+lay a cloth, and to set out every sort of food on it. And the man and
+his wife and the children sat down and eat their fill.
+
+'And everything the farmer would wish for after that, he had but to open
+the bottle and the two men would come out, and would bring him what he
+wanted. So he grew to be rich, and the neighbours heard how he came by
+his money. And his landlord got word of it, and he came and asked would
+he sell the bottle to him.
+
+'But he refused to part with it; but after a while the landlord got him
+to his own house, and gave him drink; and, not being in his clear
+senses, he consented to give up the bottle for four acres of good land.
+
+'But after a while he had all his riches spent, and someway nothing went
+well with him; and at last he found himself the same way he was before,
+with but one cow left of all his stock, and the children crying with
+hunger.
+
+'So he set off with the one cow; and he went to the same place he met
+with the man with the bottle before, and he was there before him. And he
+told him all that had happened, and the way it was with him now; and the
+man gave him another bottle, and brought away the cow.
+
+'So he hurried back home with the bottle, and set it on the table and
+drew the cork, and the children were waiting round the table for the
+good dinner they would have. But when the bottle was opened, two men
+came out with blackthorns in their hands, and they began to beat the
+farmer and his wife and all about them; and it was blows the poor
+children got in place of food.
+
+'Well, as soon as the men went into the bottle again, the farmer put in
+the cork, and he went away to the landlord's house. And there was a
+great ball going on there; and the farmer asked could he see the
+landlord.
+
+'So he came down to him, and the farmer said he had got a new bottle,
+and that maybe the ladies and gentlemen would like to see all it would
+do. So the landlord agreed, and brought him up to the ballroom, and he
+put down the bottle and opened the cork. And when it was open, the two
+men came out with their blackthorns, and they began to hit at the ladies
+and gentlemen near them, and to beat them, till they ran to hide in
+every corner. And the landlord called out for them to stop, but the
+farmer said they would not till he would get his own bottle again.
+
+'So they gave it to him then, and he went home bringing the two bottles
+with him. And he lived in plenty ever after till he died.
+
+'But someway at his wake, with all that was going on there, the two
+bottles got broken, or if they did not they were lost.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then another said: 'There was a servant-girl left to mind her master's
+house one time. And she heard a noise below the window, and she opened
+it to look out. And she saw the hand of a man on the window ledge, that
+was climbing up to rob the house. And when he put his hand up, she took
+a little hatchet she had and cut his hand off.
+
+'The same thing happened with another man and another after him again,
+till she had killed six. But when she was striking at the seventh, he
+drew back, and all she cut off was his finger.
+
+'When the master came back, she got great praise and great reward, so
+that she had plenty of money. And one day a man came to ask her in
+marriage; and she did not know him to be the robber that escaped, and
+she married him.
+
+'But after a while he brought her out through the fields to where there
+was a little bridge over the river. And when they got to it, he told her
+he was the man she had cut the finger off, and that he had brought her
+there to kill her.
+
+'"Give me time to say my prayers first," she said. So he gave her time
+for that, and she knelt down; and presently she turned round and he was
+on the bridge beside her, and she gave him a push into the water. And
+that was the end of the seventh of the robbers.
+
+'And then she went home again. That's my story.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then the old man, whose brother has fought for the king, and hasn't
+sent him anything, said:
+
+'Peace is made. That's my story. Will you give me tobacco for that?'
+
+But this being the last day, they all had tobacco--story-tellers and
+all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here is the last story: 'There was a steward one time in the
+employment of a gentleman; and he was a good, honourable man. And he
+used to make the Sunday begin at twelve o'clock on Saturday; and to ring
+the bell then for the workmen to go home.
+
+'He got sick at last, and his death was drawing near; and he asked one
+request of his master, and that was, that after his death he would put
+his body on a car, but not direct it anywhere; but to let it go what way
+the horse would bring it.
+
+'So the master did that; and they put the body on a car, and the carman
+went along with it; but he did not direct the horse, but let it go what
+way it liked.
+
+'And it went on a long way; and then they came to a path that was all
+full of spearheads sticking up through the ground. But the horse went
+on; and wherever it went, the spearheads would sink away before it.
+
+'They came at last to a house, and the horse stopped at the door; and
+the people of the house came out and brought in the body; and the carman
+went along with it, and he lay down and slept awhile.
+
+'And when he rose up, he said he would go back to his friends. But the
+people of the house said: "You can go back if you like, but you will
+find none of your friends before you; for your sleep has lasted for
+seven hundred years."
+
+'So he went back; and there was nothing but grass and bushes in the
+village he came from. And he knelt down and made his repentance; and he
+was let up to heaven for the sake of the steward that was so good, and
+that made the Sunday begin at noon on Saturday.'
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
+
+
+Just where the road that runs by the bay turns northward to run by the
+Atlantic, a few white houses on either side turn it for a moment into a
+street. The grey road was not all grey yesterday, in spite of stones,
+and sea, and clouds, and a mist that blotted out the hills; for July had
+edged it with yellow rag-weed, the horses of the Sidhe, and with purple
+heather; and besides the tireless turf-laden donkeys, there were men in
+white and women in crimson flannel going towards the village. One woman
+sitting in a donkey-cart was chanting a song in Irish about a voyage
+across the sea; and when someone asked her if she was to try for a prize
+at the _Feis_, the Irish festival going on in the village, she only
+answered that she was 'lonesome after the old times.'
+
+At the _Feis_, in the white schoolhouse, some boys and girls from
+schools and convents at the 'big town' many miles away were singing; and
+now and then a little bare-footed boy from close by would go up on the
+platform and sing the _Paistin Fionn_, or _Is truag gan Peata_. People
+from the scattered houses and villages about had gathered to listen;
+some had come in turf-boats from Aran, Irish-speakers, proud to show
+that the language that has been called dead has never died; and glad at
+the new life that is coming into it. Men in loose flannel-jackets sang
+old songs, many sad ones, but not all; for one that was addressed to a
+mother, who had broken off her daughter's marriage with the maker of the
+song, turned more to anger than to grief; and there was the love song,
+'Courteous Bridget,' made perhaps a hundred years ago, by wandering
+Raftery.
+
+A woman with madder-dyed petticoat sang the lament of an emigrant going
+across the great sea, telling how she got up at daybreak to look at the
+places she was going to leave, Ballinrobe and the rest; and how she
+envied the birds that were free of the air, and the beasts that were
+free of the mountain, and were not forced to go away. Another song that
+was sung was the Jacobite one, with the refrain that has been put into
+English--'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna, we're worsted in the game!'
+
+Some poems were repeated also: Raftery's 'Argument with whiskey,' in
+which he puts the joys and sorrows of its lovers only too impartially.
+Another 'Argument' was between two men, herds, I think; each counting up
+the virtues of his own province, Connaught or Munster. An old man gave a
+long poem, a recital of Bible history; but the judges rang their bell
+when he had got to the parable of the Prodigal Son, and was telling how
+'the poor foolish boy went away from his home and from his father to
+some far country'; and he left the platform saying indignantly: 'You
+might have left me time to bring him back again.' And there was a poem
+on 'The rising again of Ireland,' telling how, when she has risen,
+'ships will be coming to her from France and from Spain, and from all
+the countries; and there will be no rent on the land; and every poet
+will be given a fee of twenty-one pounds.'
+
+In the evening there were people waiting round the door to hear the
+songs and the pipes again. An old man among them was speaking with many
+gestures, his voice rising, and a crowd gathering about him. '_Tha se
+beo, tha se beo_'--'he is living, he is living,' I heard him say over
+and over again. I asked what he was saying, and was told: 'He says that
+Parnell is alive yet.' I was pushed away from him by the crowd to where
+a policeman was looking on. 'He says that Parnell is alive still,' I
+said. 'There are many say that,' he answered. 'And, after all, no one
+ever saw the body that was buried.'
+
+The rising again of Ireland, of her old speech, of her last leader,
+dreams all, as we are told. But here, on the edge of the world, dreams
+are real things, and every heart is watching for the opening of one or
+another grave.
+
+
+
+
+_AN CRAOIBHIN'S_ PLAYS
+
+
+I hold that the beginning of modern Irish drama was in the winter of
+1898, at a school feast at Coole, when Douglas Hyde and Miss Norma
+Borthwick acted in Irish in a Punch and Judy show; and the delighted
+children went back to tell their parents what grand curses _An
+Craoibhin_ had put on the baby and the policeman.
+
+A little time after that, when a play was wanted for our Literary
+Theatre, Dr. Hyde wrote, and then acted in, 'The Twisting of the Rope,'
+the first Irish play ever given in a Dublin theatre.
+
+It has been acted many times since then, in Dublin, in London, in
+Galway, in Galway Workhouse, in Cornamona, Ballaghaderreen, Ballymoe,
+and other places. It has always given great delight, and its success is
+very natural; for the Irish-speakers, who are its audience, have an
+inborn love of drama, as is shown by their handing down of such long
+dramatic dialogues as those between Oisin and St. Patrick, from century
+to century. At country gatherings, those old dialogues, and the newer
+ones between Death and Raftery, or between the farmers of two
+provinces, are followed with a patient joy; and the creation of acting
+plays is the natural outcome of this living tradition. And Douglas
+Hyde's dramas grow directly from the folk-memory. The tradition and the
+beautiful old air, and the song of 'The Twisting of the Rope,' are very
+well known:--
+
+    'What was the dead cat that put me in this place,
+    And all the pretty young girls I left after me?
+    I came into the house where was the bright love of my heart,
+    And the old hag put me out by the Twisting of the Rope.
+
+    'If you are mine, be mine by day and by night;
+    If you are mine, be mine before the world;
+    If you are mine, be mine with every inch of your heart;
+    It is my grief you are not with me as a wife this evening.
+
+    'It is down in Sligo I got knowledge of my love;
+    It is up in Galway I drank my fill with her.
+    By the strength of my hands, if they do not leave me as I am,
+    I will do a trick will set these women walking.'
+
+Mr. Yeats made Red Hanrahan the hero of this song in a story in 'The
+Secret Rose'; and it is Hanrahan Douglas Hyde has kept in the play, with
+his passion, his exaggerations, his wheedling tongue, his roving heart,
+that all but coax the girl from her mother and her sweetheart; but that
+fail after all in their attack on the settled order of things, and leave
+their owner homeless and restless, and angry and chiding, like the
+stormy west wind outside the door.
+
+'The Marriage' is founded on the story of Raftery at the poor wedding at
+Cappaghtagle. It was acted in Galway, at the _Feis_, last summer. There
+had been some delay or misunderstanding in the giving of parts; and on
+the morning of the _Feis_, it was announced that the play would not be
+given. But the disappointment was so great, that we all begged _An
+Craoibhin_ to take the chief part himself, as he had done in 'The
+Twisting of the Rope'; and when his kindness made him agree to this, we
+went in search of the other players. They were all at work in shops or
+stores, one wheeling sacks on a barrow; and it was a busy market-day,
+and it was hard for them to get away for a rehearsal. But, for all that,
+the play was given in the evening; in the very town where some still
+remember Raftery, and where he and Death had their first talk together.
+
+It will be hard to forget the blind poet, as he was represented on the
+stage by the living poet, so full of kindly humour, of humorous malice,
+of dignity under his poor clothing, or the wistful, ghostly sigh with
+which he went out of the door at the end. 'Is fear marbh do bhi
+ann'--'It is a dead man was in it.'
+
+It has been acted in Dublin since then; and many places are asking for
+the loan of the one manuscript in which it exists; but I am glad
+Connacht had it first.
+
+'The Lost Saint' was written last summer. _An Craoibhin_ was staying
+with us at Coole; and one morning I went for a long drive to the sea,
+leaving him with a bundle of blank paper before him. When I came back
+at evening, I was told that Dr. Hyde had finished his play, and was out
+shooting wild duck. The hymn, however, was not quite ready, and was put
+into rhyme next day, while he was again watching for wild duck beside
+Inchy marsh.
+
+When he read it to us in the evening, we were all left with a feeling as
+if some beautiful white blossom had suddenly fallen at our feet.
+
+It was acted the other day at Ballaghaderreen; and, at the end, a very
+little girl, who wanted to let the author know how much she had liked
+his play, put out her hand, and put a piece of toffee into his.
+
+The 'Nativity' did not appear in time for Christmas acting; but Ireland,
+which now and then finds herself possessed of some accidental freedom,
+has no censor; and a play so beautiful and reverent, and so much in the
+tradition of the people, is sure to be acted and received reverently.
+
+_An Craoibhin_ has written other plays besides these--a pastoral play
+which has been acted in Dublin and Belfast, a match-making comedy, a
+satire on Trinity College.
+
+Other Irish plays have been acted here and there through the country
+during the last year or two, some written by priests; the last I saw in
+manuscript was by a workhouse schoolmaster; and all have had their share
+of success. But it is to the poet-scholar who has become actor-dramatist
+that we must still, as Raftery would put it, 'give the branch.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE
+
+
+HANRAHAN. _A wandering poet._
+
+SHEAMUS O'HERAN. _Engaged to_ OONA.
+
+MAURYA. _The woman of the house._
+
+SHEELA. _A neighbour._
+
+OONA. _Maurya's daughter._
+
+_Neighbours and a piper who have come to Maurya's house for a dance_.
+
+
+SCENE. _A farmer's house in Munster a hundred years ago. Men
+and women moving about and standing round the walls as if they had just
+finished a dance._ HANRAHAN, _in the foreground, talking to_
+OONA.
+
+_The piper is beginning a preparatory drone for another dance, but_
+SHEAMUS _brings him a drink and he stops. A man has come and
+holds out his hand to_ OONA, _as if to lead her out, but she
+pushes him away._
+
+
+OONA. Don't be bothering me now; don't you see I'm listening to
+what he is saying? (_To_ HANRAHAN) Go on with what you were
+saying just now.
+
+HANRAHAN. What did that fellow want of you?
+
+OONA. He wanted the next dance with me, but I wouldn't give it
+to him.
+
+HANRAHAN. And why would you give it to him? Do you think I'd
+let you dance with anyone but myself, and I here? I had no comfort or
+satisfaction this long time until I came here to-night, and till I saw
+yourself.
+
+OONA. What comfort am I to you?
+
+HANRAHAN. When a stick is half burned in the fire, does it not
+get comfort when water is poured on it?
+
+OONA. But, sure, you are not half burned.
+
+HANRAHAN. I am; and three-quarters of my heart is burned, and
+scorched and consumed, struggling with the world, and the world
+struggling with me.
+
+OONA. You don't look that bad.
+
+HANRAHAN. O, Oona ni Regaun, you have not knowledge of the life
+of a poor bard, without house or home or havings, but he going and ever
+going a drifting through the wide world, without a person with him but
+himself. There is not a morning in the week when I rise up that I do not
+say to myself that it would be better to be in the grave than to be
+wandering. There is nothing standing to me but the gift I got from God,
+my share of songs; when I begin upon them, my grief and my trouble go
+from me; I forget my persecution and my ill luck; and now since I saw
+you, Oona, I see there is something that is better even than the songs.
+
+OONA. Poetry is a wonderful gift from God; and as long as you
+have that, you are richer than the people of stock and store, the people
+of cows and cattle.
+
+HANRAHAN. Ah, Oona, it is a great blessing, but it is a great
+curse as well for a man, he to be a poet. Look at me: have I a friend in
+this world? Is there a man alive that has a wish for me? is there the
+love of anyone at all on me? I am going like a poor lonely barnacle
+goose throughout the world; like Oisin after the Fenians; every person
+hates me: you do not hate me, Oona?
+
+OONA. Do not say a thing like that; it is impossible that
+anyone would hate you.
+
+HANRAHAN. Come and we will sit in the corner of the room
+together; and I will tell you the little song I made for you; it is for
+you I made it. (_They go to a corner and sit down together._
+SHEELA _comes in at the door._)
+
+SHEELA. I came to you as quick as I could.
+
+MAURYA. And a hundred welcomes to you.
+
+SHEELA. What have you going on now?
+
+MAURYA. Beginning we are; we had one jig, and now the piper is
+drinking a glass. They'll begin dancing again in a minute when the piper
+is ready.
+
+SHEELA. There are a good many people gathering in to you
+to-night. We will have a fine dance.
+
+MAURYA. Maybe so, Sheela; but there's a man of them there, and
+I'd sooner him out than in.
+
+SHEELA. It's about the long red man you are talking, isn't
+it--the man that is in close talk with Oona in the corner? Where is he
+from, and who is he himself?
+
+MAURYA. That's the greatest vagabond ever came into Ireland;
+Tumaus Hanrahan they call him; but it's Hanrahan the rogue he ought to
+have been christened by right. Aurah, wasn't there the misfortune on me,
+him to come in to us at all to-night?
+
+SHEELA. What sort of a person is he? Isn't he a man that makes
+songs, out of Connacht? I heard talk of him before; and they say there
+is not another dancer in Ireland so good as him. I would like to see him
+dance.
+
+MAURYA. Bad luck to the vagabond! It is well I know what sort
+he is; because there was a kind of friendship between himself and the
+first husband I had; and it is often I heard from poor Diarmuid--the
+Lord have mercy on him!--what sort of person he was. He was a
+schoolmaster down in Connacht; but he used to have every trick worse
+than another; ever making songs he used to be, and drinking whiskey and
+setting quarrels afoot among the neighbours with his share of talk. They
+say there isn't a woman in the five provinces that he wouldn't deceive.
+He is worse than Donal na Greina long ago. But the end of the story is
+that the priest routed him out of the parish altogether; he got another
+place then, and followed on at the same tricks until he was routed out
+again, and another again with it. Now he has neither place nor house nor
+anything, but he to be going the country, making songs and getting a
+night's lodging from the people; nobody will refuse him, because they
+are afraid of him. He's a great poet, and maybe he'd make a rann on you
+that would stick to you for ever, if you were to anger him.
+
+SHEELA. God preserve us; but what brought him in to-night?
+
+MAURYA. He was travelling the country and he heard there was to
+be a dance here, and he came in because he knew us; he was rather great
+with my first husband. It is wonderful how he is making out his way of
+life at all, and he with nothing but his share of songs. They say there
+is no place that he'll go to, that the women don't love him, and that
+the men don't hate him.
+
+SHEELA (_catching_ MAURYA _by the shoulder_). Turn
+your head, Maurya; look at him now, himself and your daughter, and their
+heads together; he's whispering in her ear; he's after making a poem for
+her and he's whispering it in her ear. Oh, the villain, he'll be putting
+his spells on her now.
+
+MAURYA. Ohone, go deo! isn't it a misfortune that he came? He's
+talking every moment with Oona since he came in three hours ago. I did
+my best to separate them from one another, but it failed me. Poor Oona
+is given up to every sort of old songs and old made-up stories; and she
+thinks it sweet to be listening to him. The marriage is settled between
+herself and Sheamus O'Herin there, a quarter from to-day. Look at poor
+Sheamus at the door, and he watching them. There is grief and hanging
+of the head on him; it's easy to see that he'd like to choke the
+vagabond this minute. I am greatly afraid that the head will be turned
+on Oona with his share of blathering. As sure as I am alive there will
+come evil out of this night.
+
+SHEELA. And couldn't you put him out?
+
+MAURYA. I could. There's no person here to help him unless
+there would be a woman or two; but he is a great poet, and he has a
+curse that would split the trees, and that would burst the stones. They
+say the seed will rot in the ground and the milk go from the cows when a
+poet like him makes a curse, if a person routed him out of the house;
+but if he was once out, I'll go bail I wouldn't let him in again.
+
+SHEELA. If himself were to go out willingly, there would be no
+virtue in his curse then.
+
+MAURYA. There would not, but he will not go out willingly, and
+I cannot rout him out myself for fear of his curse.
+
+SHEELA. Look at poor Sheamus. He is going over to her.
+(SHEAMUS _gets up and goes over to her._)
+
+SHEAMUS. Will you dance this reel with me, Oona, as soon as the
+piper is ready?
+
+HANRAHAN (_rising up_). I am Tumaus Hanrahan, and I am speaking
+now to Oona ni Regaun; and as she is willing to be talking to me, I will
+allow no living person to come between us.
+
+SHEAMUS (_without heeding_ HANRAHAN). Will you not
+dance with me, Oona?
+
+HANRAHAN (_savagely_). Didn't I tell you now that it was to me
+Oona ni Regaun was talking? Leave that on the spot, you clown, and do
+not raise a disturbance here.
+
+SHEAMUS. Oona----
+
+HANRAHAN (_shouting_). Leave that! (SHEAMUS _goes
+away, and comes over to the two old women._)
+
+SHEAMUS. Maurya Regaun, I am asking leave of you to throw that
+ill-mannerly, drunken vagabond out of the house. Myself and my two
+brothers will put him out if you will allow us; and when he's outside
+I'll settle with him.
+
+MAURYA. Sheamus, do not; I am afraid of him. That man has a
+curse they say that would split the trees.
+
+SHEAMUS. I don't care if he had a curse that would overthrow
+the heavens; it is on me it will fall, and I defy him! If he were to
+kill me on the moment, I will not allow him to put his spells on Oona.
+Give me leave, Maurya.
+
+SHEELA. Do not, Sheamus. I have a better advice than that.
+
+SHEAMUS. What advice is that?
+
+SHEELA. I have a way in my head to put him out. If you follow
+my advice, he will go out himself as quiet as a lamb; and when you get
+him out, slap the door on him, and never let him in again.
+
+MAURYA. Luck from God on you, Sheela, and tell us what's in
+your head.
+
+SHEELA. We will do it as nice and easy as you ever saw. We will
+put him to twist a hay-rope till he is outside, and then we will shut
+the door on him.
+
+SHEAMUS. It's easy to say, but not easy to do. He will say to
+you, "Make a hay-rope yourself."
+
+SHEELA. We will say then that no one ever saw a hay-rope made,
+that there is no one at all in the house to make the beginning of it.
+
+SHEAMUS. But will _he_ believe that we never saw a hay-rope?
+
+SHEELA. He believe it, is it? He'd believe anything; he'd
+believe that himself is king over Ireland when he has a glass taken, as
+he has now.
+
+SHEAMUS. But what excuse can we make for saying we want a
+hay-rope?
+
+MAURYA. Can't you think of something yourself, Sheamus?
+
+SHEAMUS. Sure, I can say the wind is rising, and I must bind
+the thatch, or it will be off the house.
+
+SHEELA. But he'll know the wind is not rising if he does but
+listen at the door. You must think of some other excuse, Sheamus.
+
+SHEAMUS. Wait, I have a good idea now; say there is a coach
+upset at the bottom of the hill, and that they are asking for a hay-rope
+to mend it with. He can't see as far as that from the door, and he won't
+know it's not true it is.
+
+MAURYA. That's the story, Sheela. Now, Sheamus, go among the
+people and tell them the secret. Tell them what they have to say, that
+no one at all in this country ever saw a hay-rope, and put a good skin
+on the lie yourself. (SHEAMUS _goes from person to person
+whispering to them, and some of them begin laughing._ _The piper has
+begun playing. Three or four couples rise up._)
+
+HANRAHAN (_after looking at them for a couple of minutes_).
+Whisht! Let ye sit down! Do ye call that dragging, dancing? You are
+tramping the floor like so many cattle. You are as heavy as bullocks, as
+awkward as asses. May my throat be choked if I would not sooner be
+looking at as many lame ducks hopping on one leg through the house.
+Leave the floor to Oona ni Regaun and to me.
+
+ONE OF THE MEN GOING TO DANCE. And for what would we leave the
+floor to you?
+
+HANRAHAN. The swan of the brink of the waves, the royal
+phoenix, the pearl of the white breast, the Venus amongst the women,
+Oona ni Regaun, is standing up with me, and any place she rises up, the
+sun and the moon bow to her, and so shall ye yet. She is too handsome,
+too sky-like for any other woman to be near her. But wait a while!
+Before I'll show you how the Connacht boy can dance, I will give you the
+poem I made on the star of the province of Munster, on Oona ni Regaun.
+Get up, O sun among women, and we will sing the song together, verse
+about, and then we'll show them what right dancing is! (OONA
+_rises._)
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    She is white Oona of the yellow hair,
+    The Coolin that was destroying my heart inside me;
+    She is my secret love and my lasting affection;
+    I care not for ever for any woman but her.
+
+OONA.
+
+    O bard of the black eye, it is you
+    Who have found victory in the world and fame;
+    I call on yourself and I praise your mouth;
+    You have set my heart in my breast astray.
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    O fair Oona of the golden hair,
+    My desire, my affection, my love and my store,
+    Herself will go with her bard afar;
+    She has hurt his heart in his breast greatly.
+
+OONA.
+
+    I would not think the night long nor the day,
+    Listening to your fine discourse;
+    More melodious is your mouth than the singing of the birds;
+    From my heart in my breast you have found love.
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    I walked myself the entire world,
+    England, Ireland, France, and Spain;
+    I never saw at home or afar
+    Any girl under the sun like fair Oona.
+
+OONA.
+
+    I have heard the melodious harp
+    On the streets of Cork playing to us;
+    More melodious by far I thought your voice,
+    More melodious by far your mouth than that.
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    I was myself one time a poor barnacle goose;
+    The night was not plain to me more than the day
+    Till I got sight of her; she is the love of my heart
+    That banished from me my grief and my misery.
+
+OONA.
+
+    I was myself on the morning of yesterday
+    Walking beside the wood at the break of day;
+    There was a bird there was singing sweetly,
+    How I love love, and is it not beautiful?
+
+(_A shout and a noise, and_ SHEAMUS O'HERAN _rushes in._)
+
+SHEAMUS. Ububu! Ohone-y-o, go deo! The big coach is overthrown
+at the foot of the hill! The bag in which the letters of the country are
+is bursted; and there is neither tie, nor cord, nor rope, nor anything
+to bind it up. They are calling out now for a hay sugaun--whatever kind
+of thing that is; the letters and the coach will be lost for want of a
+hay sugaun to bind them.
+
+HANRAHAN. Do not be bothering us; we have our poem done, and we
+are going to dance. The coach does not come this way at all.
+
+SHEAMUS. The coach does come this way now; but sure you're a
+stranger, and you don't know. Doesn't the coach come over the hill now,
+neighbours?
+
+ALL. It does, it does, surely.
+
+HANRAHAN. I don't care whether it does come or whether it
+doesn't. I would sooner twenty coaches to be overthrown on the road than
+the pearl of the white breast to be stopped from dancing to us. Tell the
+coachman to twist a rope for himself.
+
+SHEAMUS. Oh! murder! he can't. There's that much vigour, and
+fire, and activity, and courage in the horses, that my poor coachman
+must take them by the heads; it's on the pinch of his life he's able to
+control them; he's afraid of his soul they'll go from him of a rout.
+They are neighing like anything; you never saw the like of them for wild
+horses.
+
+HANRAHAN. Are there no other people in the coach that will make
+a rope, if the coachman has to be at the horses' heads? Leave that, and
+let us dance.
+
+SHEAMUS. There are three others in it; but as to one of them,
+he is one-handed, and another man of them, he's shaking and trembling
+with the fright he got; it's not in him now to stand up on his two feet
+with the fear that's on him; and as for the third man, there isn't a
+person in this country would speak to him about a rope at all, for his
+own father was hanged with a rope last year for stealing sheep.
+
+HANRAHAN. Then let one of yourselves twist a rope so, and leave
+the floor to us. (_To_ OONA.) Now, O star of women, show me how
+Juno goes among the gods, or Helen for whom Troy was destroyed. By my
+word, since Deirdre died, for whom Naoise son of Usnech, was put to
+death, her heir is not in Ireland to-day but yourself. Let us begin.
+
+SHEAMUS. Do not begin until we have a rope; we are not able to
+twist a rope; there's nobody here can twist a rope.
+
+HANRAHAN. There's nobody here is able to twist a rope?
+
+ALL. Nobody at all.
+
+SHEELA. And that's true; nobody in this place ever made a hay
+sugaun. I don't believe there's a person in this house who ever saw one
+itself but me. It's well I remember when I was a little girsha that I
+saw one of them on a goat that my grandfather brought with him out of
+Connacht. All the people used to be saying: "Aurah, what sort of a thing
+is that at all?" And he said that it was a sugaun that was in it; and
+that people used to make the like of that down in Connacht. He said that
+one man would go holding the hay, and another man twisting it. I'll hold
+the hay now; and you'll go twisting it.
+
+SHEAMUS. I'll bring in a lock of hay. (_He goes out._)
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    I will make a dispraising of the province of Munster
+    They do not leave the floor to us;
+    It isn't in them to twist even a sugaun;
+    The province of Munster without nicety, without prosperity.
+
+    Disgust for ever on the province of Munster,
+    That they do not leave us the floor;
+    The province of Munster of the foul clumsy people.
+    They cannot even twist a sugaun!
+
+SHEAMUS (_coming back_). Here's the hay now.
+
+HANRAHAN. Give it here to me; I'll show ye what the
+well-learned, hardy, honest, clever, sensible Connachtman will do, that
+has activity and full deftness in his hands, and sense in his head, and
+courage in his heart; but that the misfortune and the great trouble of
+the world directed him among the _lebidins_ of the province of Munster,
+without honour, without nobility, without knowledge of the swan beyond
+the duck, or of the gold beyond the brass, or of the lily beyond the
+thistle, or of the star of young women, and the pearl of the white
+breast, beyond their own share of sluts and slatterns. Give me a
+kippeen. (_A man hands him a stick; he puts a wisp of hay round it, and
+begins twisting it; and_ SHEELA _giving him out the hay._)
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    There is a pearl of a woman giving light to us;
+    She is my love; she is my desire;
+    She is fair Oona, the gentle queen-woman.
+    And the Munstermen do not understand half her courtesy.
+
+    These Munstermen are blinded by God;
+    They do not recognise the swan beyond the grey duck;
+    But she will come with me, my fine Helen,
+    Where her person and her beauty shall be praised for ever.
+
+Arrah, wisha, wisha, wisha! isn't this the fine village? isn't this the
+exceeding village? The village where there be that many rogues hanged
+that the people have no want of ropes with all the ropes that they steal
+from the hangman!
+
+    The sensible Connachtman makes
+      A rope for himself;
+    But the Munsterman steals it
+      From the hangman;
+    That I may see a fine rope,
+      A rope of hemp yet,
+    A stretching on the throats
+      Of every person here!
+
+On account of one woman only the Greeks departed, and they never
+stopped, and they never greatly stayed, till they destroyed Troy; and on
+account of one woman only this village shall be damned; _go deo, ma
+neoir_, and to the womb of judgment, by God of the graces, eternally and
+everlastingly, because they did not understand that Oona ni Regaun is
+the second Helen, who was born in their midst, and that she overcame in
+beauty Deirdre and Venus, and all that came before or that will come
+after her!
+
+    But she will come with me, my pearl of a woman,
+    To the province of Connacht of the fine people;
+    She will receive feasts, wine, and meat,
+    High dances, sport, and music!
+
+Oh, wisha, wisha! that the sun may never rise upon this village; and
+that the stars may never shine on it and that----. (_He is by this time
+outside the door. All the men make a rush at the door and shut it._
+OONA _runs towards the door, but the women seize her._ SHEAMUS _goes
+over to her._)
+
+OONA. Oh! oh! oh! do not put him out; let him back; that is
+Tumaus Hanrahan--he is a poet--he is a bard--he is a wonderful man. O,
+let him back; do not do that to him!
+
+SHEAMUS. O Oona _bán, acushla dílis_, let him be; he is gone
+now, and his share of spells with him! He will be gone out of your head
+to-morrow; and you will be gone out of his head. Don't you know that I
+like you better than a hundred thousand Deirdres, and that you are my
+one pearl of a woman in the world?
+
+HANRAHAN (_outside, beating on the door_). Open, open, open;
+let me in! Oh, my seven hundred thousand curses on you--the curse of the
+weak and of the strong--the curse of the poets and of the bards upon
+you! The curse of the priests on you and the friars! The curse of the
+bishops upon you, and the Pope! The curse of the widows on you, and the
+children! Open! (_He beats on the door again and again._)
+
+SHEAMUS. I am thankful to ye, neighbours; and Oona will be
+thankful to ye to-morrow. Beat away, you vagabond! Do your dancing out
+there with yourself now! Isn't it a fine thing for a man to be listening
+to the storm outside, and himself quiet and easy beside the fire? Beat
+away, beat away! Where's Connacht now?
+
+
+
+
+THE MARRIAGE
+
+
+MARTIN, _a young man._
+
+MARY. _His newly married wife._
+
+A BLIND FIDDLER.
+
+NEIGHBOURS.
+
+
+SCENE.--_A cottage kitchen. A table poorly set out, with two
+cups, a jug of milk, and a cake of bread._ MARTIN _and_
+MARY _sitting down to it._
+
+
+MARTIN. This is a poor wedding dinner I have for you, Mary; and
+a poor house I brought you to. I wish it was seven thousand times better
+for your sake.
+
+MARY. Only we have to part again, there wouldn't be in the
+world a pair happier than myself and yourself; but where's the good of
+fretting when there's no help for it?
+
+MARTIN. If I had but a couple of pounds, I could buy a little
+ass and earn a share of money bringing turf to the big town; or I could
+job at the fairs. But, my grief, we haven't it, or ten shillings.
+
+MARY. And if I could get but a few hens, and what would feed
+them, I could be selling the eggs or rearing chickens. But unless God
+would work a miracle for us, there's no chance of that itself. (_She
+wipes her eyes with her apron._)
+
+MARTIN. Don't be crying, Mary. You belong to me now; am I not
+rich so long as you belong to me? Whatever place I will go to I will
+know you are thinking of me.
+
+MARY. That is a true word you say, Martin; I will never be poor
+so long as I know you to be thinking of me. No riches at all would be so
+good as that. There's a line my poor father used to be saying:--
+
+    'Cattle and gold, store and goods,
+    They pass away like the high floods.'
+
+It was Raftery, the blind man, said that. I never saw him; but my father
+used to be talking of him.
+
+MARTIN. I don't care what he said. I wish we had goods and
+store. He said the exact contrary another time:--
+
+    'Brogues in the fashion, a good house,
+    Are better than the bare sky over us.'
+
+MARY. Poor Raftery! he'd give us all that if he had the chance.
+He was always a good friend to the poor. I heard them saying the other
+day he was lying in his sickness at some place near Killeenan, and near
+his death. The Lord have mercy on him!
+
+MARTIN. The Lord have mercy on him, indeed. Come now, Mary,
+eat the first bit in your own house. I'll take the eggs off the fire.
+
+(_He gets up and goes to the fire. There is a knock at the half-door,
+and an old ragged, patched fiddler puts in his head._)
+
+FIDDLER. God save all here!
+
+MARY (_standing up_). Aurah, the poor man, bring him in.
+
+MARTIN. Let there be sense on you, Mary; we have not anything
+at all to give him. I will tell him the way to the Brennans' house:
+there will be plenty to find there.
+
+MARY. Indeed and surely I will not put him from this door. This
+is the first time I ever had a house of my own; and I will not send
+anyone at all from my own door this day.
+
+MARTIN. Do as you think well yourself. (MARY _goes to
+the door and opens it._) Come in, honest man, and sit down, and a
+hundred welcomes before you. (_The old man comes in, feeling about him
+as if blind._)
+
+MARY. O Martin, he is blind. May God preserve him!
+
+OLD MAN. That is so, acushla; I am in my blindness; and it is a
+tired, vexed, blind man I am. I am going and ever going since morning,
+and I never found a bit to eat since I rose.
+
+MARY. You did not find a bit to eat since morning! Are you
+starving?
+
+OLD MAN. Oh, indeed, there was food to be got if I would take
+it; but the bit that does not come from a willing heart, there would be
+no taste on it; and that is what I did not get since morning; but people
+putting a potato or a bit of bread out of the door to me, as if I was a
+dog, with the hope I would not stop, but would go away.
+
+MARY. Oh, sit down with us now, and eat with us. Bring him to
+the table, Martin. (MARTIN _gives his hand to the old man, and
+gives him a chair, and puts him sitting at the table with themselves. He
+makes two halves of the cake, and gives a half to the blind man, and one
+of the eggs. The old man eats eagerly._)
+
+OLD MAN. I leave my seven hundred thousand blessings on the
+people of this house. The blessing of God and Mary on them.
+
+MARY. That it may be well with you. O Martin, that is the first
+blessing I got in my own house. That blessing is better to me than gold.
+
+OLD MAN. Aurah, is it not beautiful for people to have a house
+of their own, and to have eyes to look about with?
+
+MARTIN. May God preserve you, right man; it is likely it is a
+poor thing to be without sight.
+
+OLD MAN. You do not understand, nor any person that has his
+sight, what it is to be blind and dark the way I am. Not to have before
+you and behind you but the night. Oh, darkness, darkness! No shape or
+form in anything; not to see the bird you hear singing in the tree over
+your head; nor the flower you smell on the bush, or the child, and he
+laughing in his mother's breast. The morning and the evening the day
+and the night, only the same thing to you Oh, it is a poor thing to be
+blind! (MARTIN _puts over the other half of the cake and the
+egg to_ MARY, _and makes a sign to her to eat. She makes a sign
+to him to take a share of them. The blind man stretches his hand over
+the table to try for a crumb of bread, for he has eaten his own share;
+and he gets hold of the other half cake and takes it._)
+
+MARY. Eat that, poor man, it is likely there is hunger on you.
+Here is another egg for you. (_She puts the other egg in his hand._)
+
+BLIND MAN. The blessing of the Only Son and of the Holy Mother
+on the hand that gives it. (MARTIN _puts up his two hands as if
+dissatisfied; and he is going to say something when_ MARY
+_takes the words from his mouth, laughing at his gloomy face._)
+
+BLIND MAN. _Maisead_, my blessing on the mouth that laughter
+came from, and my blessing on the light heart that let it out of the
+mouth.
+
+MARTIN. A light heart, is it! There is not a light heart with
+Mary to-night, my grief!
+
+BLIND MAN. Mary is your wife?
+
+MARTIN. She is. I made her my wife three hours ago.
+
+BLIND MAN. Three hours ago?
+
+MARTIN (_bitterly_).--That is so. We were married to-day; and
+it is at our wedding dinner you are sitting.
+
+BLIND MAN. Your wedding dinner! Do not be mocking me! There is
+no company here.
+
+MARY. Oh, he is not mocking you; he would not do a thing like
+that. There is no company here; for we have nothing in the house to give
+them.
+
+BLIND MAN. But you gave it to me! Is it the truth you are
+speaking? Am I the only person that was asked to your wedding?
+
+MARY. You are. But that is to the honour of God; and we would
+never have told you that, but Martin let slip the word from his mouth.
+
+BLIND MAN. Oh, and I eat your little feast on you, and without
+knowing it.
+
+MARY. It is not without a welcome you eat it.
+
+MARTIN. I am well pleased you came in; you were more in want of
+it than ourselves. If we have a bare house now, we might have a full
+house yet; and a good dinner on the table to share with those in need of
+it. I'd be better off now; but all the little money I had I laid it out
+on the house, and the little patch of land. I thought I was wise at the
+time; but now we have the house, and we haven't what will keep us alive
+in it. I have the potatoes set in the garden; but I haven't so much as a
+potato to eat. We are left bare, and I am guilty of it.
+
+MARY. If there is any fault, it is on me it is; coming maybe to
+be a drag on Martin, where I have no fortune at all. The little money I
+gained in service, I lost it all on my poor father, when he took sick.
+And I went back into service; and the mistress I had was a cross woman;
+and when Martin saw the way she was treating me, he wouldn't let me
+stop with her any more, but he made me his wife. And now I will have
+great courage, when I have to go out to service again.
+
+BLIND MAN. Will you have to be parted again?
+
+MARTIN. We will, indeed; I must go as a _spailpin fanac_, to
+reap and to dig the harvest in some other place. But Mary and myself
+have it settled we'll meet again at this house on a certain day, with
+the blessing of God. I'll have the key in my pocket; and we'll come in,
+with a better chance of stopping in it. You'll have your own cows yet,
+Mary; and your calves and your firkins of butter, with the help of God.
+
+MARY. I think I hear carts on the road. (_She gets up, and goes
+to the door._)
+
+MARTIN. It's the people coming back from the fair. Shut the
+door, Mary; I wouldn't like them to see how bare the house is; and I'll
+put a smear of ashes on the window, the way they won't see we're here at
+all.
+
+BLIND MAN (_raising his head suddenly_). Do not do that; but
+open the door wide, and let the blessing of God come in on you.
+(MARY _opens the door again. He takes up his fiddle, and begins
+to play on it. A little boy puts in his head at the door; and then
+another head is seen, and another with that again._)
+
+BLIND MAN. Who is that at the door?
+
+MARY. Little boys that came to listen to you.
+
+BLIND MAN. Come in, boys. (_Three or four come inside._)
+
+BLIND MAN. Boys, I am listening to the carts coming home from
+the fair. Let you go out, and stop the people; tell them they must come
+in: there is a wedding-dance here this evening.
+
+BOY. The people are going home. They wouldn't stop for us.
+
+BLIND MAN. Tell them to come in; and there will be as fine a
+dance as ever they saw. But they must all give a present to the man and
+woman that are newly married.
+
+ANOTHER BOY. Why would they come in? They can have a dance of
+their own at any time. There is a piper in the big town.
+
+BLIND MAN. Say to them that _I myself_ tell them to come in;
+and to bring every one a present to the newly-married woman.
+
+BOY. And who are you yourself?
+
+BLIND MAN. Tell them it is Raftery the poet is here, and that
+is calling to them.
+
+(_The boys run out, tumbling over one another._)
+
+MARTIN. Are you Raftery, the great poet I heard talk of since I
+was born! (_taking his hand_). Seven hundred thousand welcomes before
+you; and it is a great honour to us you to be here.
+
+MARY. Raftery the poet! Now there is luck on us! The first man
+that brought us his blessing, and that eat food in my own house, he to
+be Raftery the poet! And I hearing the other day you were sick and near
+your death. And I see no sign of sickness on you now.
+
+BLIND MAN. I am well, I am well now, the Lord be praised for
+it.
+
+MARTIN. I heard talk of you as often as there are fingers on my
+hands, and toes on my feet. But indeed I never thought to have the luck
+of seeing you.
+
+MARY. And it is you that made 'County Mayo,' and the
+'Repentance,' and 'The Weaver,' and the 'Shining Flower.' It is often I
+thought there should be no woman in the world so proud as Mary Hynes,
+with the way you praised her.
+
+BLIND MAN. O my poor Mary Hynes, without luck! (_They hear the
+wheels of a cart outside the house, and an old farmer comes in, a frieze
+coat on him._)
+
+OLD FARMER. God save you, Martin; and is this your wife? God be
+with you, woman of the house. And, O Raftery, seven hundred thousand
+welcomes before you to this country. I would sooner see you than King
+George. When they told me you were here, I said to myself I would not go
+past without seeing you, if I didn't get home till morning.
+
+BLIND MAN. But didn't you get my message?
+
+OLD FARMER. What message is that?
+
+BLIND MAN. Didn't they tell you to bring a present to the
+new-married woman and her husband. What have you got for them?
+
+OLD FARMER. Wait till I see; I have something in the cart. (_He
+goes out._)
+
+MARTIN. O Raftery, you see now what a great name you have here.
+(_Old farmer comes in again_ _with a bag of meal on his shoulders. He
+throws it on the floor._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Four bags of meal I was bringing from the mill; and
+there is one of them for the woman of the house.
+
+MARY. A thousand thanks to God and you. (MARTIN
+_carries the bag to other side of table._)
+
+BLIND MAN. Now don't forget the fiddler. (_He takes a plate and
+holds it out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. I'll not break my word, Raftery, the first time you
+came to this country. There is two shillings for you in the plate. (_He
+throws the money into it._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    This is a man has love to God,
+    Opening his hand to give out food;
+    Better a small house filled with wheat,
+    Than a big house that's bare of meat.
+
+OLD FARMER. _Maisead_, long life to you, Raftery.
+
+BLIND MAN. Are you there, boy?
+
+BOY. I am.
+
+BLIND MAN. I hear more wheels coming. Go out, and tell the
+people Raftery will let no person come in here without a present for the
+woman of the house.
+
+BOY. I am going. (_He goes out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. They say there was not the like of you for a poet
+in Connacht these hundred years back.
+
+(_A middle-aged woman comes in, a pound of tea and a parcel of sugar in
+her hand._)
+
+WOMAN. God save all here! I heard Raftery the poet was in it;
+and I brought this little present to the woman of the house. (_Puts them
+into_ MARY'S _hands._) I would sooner see Raftery than be out
+there in the cart.
+
+BLIND MAN. Don't forget the fiddler, O right woman.
+
+WOMAN. And are you Raftery?
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I am Raftery the poet,
+      Full of gentleness and love;
+    With eyes without light,
+      With quietness, without misery.
+
+WOMAN. Good the man.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Quick, quick, quick, for no man
+    Need speak twice to a handy woman;
+    I'll praise you when I hear the clatter
+    Of your shilling on my platter.
+
+(_A young man comes in with a side of bacon in his arms, and stands
+waiting._)
+
+WOMAN. Indeed, I would not begrudge it to you if it was a piece
+of gold I had (_puts shilling in plate_). The 'Repentance' you made is
+at the end of my fingers. Here's another customer for you now. (_The
+young man comes forward, and gives the bacon to_ MARTIN, _who
+puts it with the meal._)
+
+MARY. I thank you kindly. Oh, it's like the miracle worked for
+Saint Colman, sending him his dinner in the bare hills!
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    May that young man with yellow hair
+    Find yellow money everywhere!
+
+FAIR YOUNG MAN. I heard the world and his wife were stopping at
+the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be
+behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (_puts money in the
+plate_). I would sooner see that fiddler than any other fiddler in the
+world.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    May that young man with yellow hair
+    Buy cheap, sell dear, in every fair.
+
+FAIR YOUNG MAN (_to_ MARTIN). How does he know I have
+yellow hair and he blind? How does he know that?
+
+MARTIN. Hush, my head is going round with the wonder is on me.
+
+MARY. No wonder at all in that. Maybe it is dreaming we all
+are.
+
+(_A grey-haired man and two girls come in._)
+
+GREY-HAIRED MAN (_laying down a sack_). The blessing of God
+here! I heard Raftery was here in the wedding-house, and that he would
+let no one in without a present. There was nothing in the cart with us
+but a sack of potatoes, and there it is for you, ma'am.
+
+MARY. Oh, it's too good you all are to me. Whether it's asleep
+or awake I am, I thank you kindly.
+
+BLIND MAN. Don't forget the fiddler.
+
+GREY-HAIRED MAN. Are you Raftery?
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Who will give Raftery a shilling?
+    Here is his platter: who is willing?
+    Who will give honour to the poet?
+    Here is his platter: show it, show it.
+
+GREY-HAIRED FARMER. You're welcome; you're welcome! That is
+Raftery, anyhow! (_Puts money in the plate._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Come hither, girls, give what you can
+    To the poor old travelling man.
+
+GREY-HAIRED MAN. Aurah Susan, aurah Oona, are you looking at
+who is before you, the greatest poet in Ireland? That is Raftery
+himself. It is often you heard talk of the girl that got a husband with
+the praises he gave her. If he gives you the same, maybe you'll get
+husbands with it.
+
+FIRST GIRL. I often heard talk of Raftery.
+
+THE OTHER GIRL. There was always a great name on Raftery.
+(_They put some money in the plate shyly._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Before you go, give what you can
+    To this young girl and this young man.
+
+FIRST GIRL (_to_ MARY). Here's a couple of dozen of
+eggs, and welcome.
+
+THE OTHER GIRL. O woman of the house! I have nothing with me
+here; but I have a good clucking hen at home, and I'll bring her to you
+to-morrow; our house is close by.
+
+MARY. Indeed, that's good news to me; such nice neighbours to
+be at hand. (_Several men and women come into the house together, every
+one of them carrying something._)
+
+SEVERAL (_together_). Welcome, Raftery!
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    If ye have hearts are worth a mouse,
+    Welcome the bride into her house.
+
+(_They laugh and greet_ MARY, _and put down gifts--a roll of
+butter, rolls of woollen thread, and many other things._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Ha, ha! That's right. They are coming in now. Now,
+Raftery; isn't it generous and open-handed and liberal this country is?
+Isn't it better than the County Mayo?
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I'd say all Galway was rich land,
+    If I'd your shillings in my hand.
+
+(_Holds out his plate to them._)
+
+OLD FARMER (_laughing_). Now, neighbours, down with it! My
+conscience! Raftery knows how to get hold of the money.
+
+A MAN OF THEM. _Maisead_, he doesn't own much riches; and there
+is pride on us all to see him in this country. (_Puts money in the
+plate, and all the others do the same. A lean old man comes in._)
+
+MARTIN (_to_ MARY). That is John the Miser, or Seagan
+na Stucaire, as they call him. That is the man that is hardest in this
+country. He never gave a penny to any person since he was born.
+
+MISER. God save all here! Oh, is that Raftery? Ho, ho! God save
+you, Raftery, and a hundred thousand welcomes before you to this
+country. There is pride on us all to see you. There is gladness on the
+whole country, you to be here in our midst. If you will believe me,
+neighbours, I saw with my own eyes the bush Raftery put his curse on;
+and as sure as I'm living, it was withered away. There is nothing of it
+but a couple of old twigs now.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I've heard a voice like his before,
+    And liked some little voice the more;
+    I'd sooner have, if I'd my choice,
+    A big heart and a small voice.
+
+MISER. Ho! ho! Raftery, making poems as usual. Well, there is
+great joy on us, indeed, to see you in our midst.
+
+BLIND MAN. What is the present you have brought to the
+new-married woman?
+
+MISER. What is the present I brought? O _maisead_! the times
+are too bad on a poor man. I brought a few fleeces of wool I had to the
+market to-day, and I couldn't sell it; I had to bring it home again. And
+calves I had there, I couldn't get any buyer for at all. There is
+misfortune on these times.
+
+BLIND MAN. Every person that came in brought his own present
+with him. There is the new-married woman, and let you put down a good
+present.
+
+MISER. O _maisead_, much good may it do her! (_He takes out of
+his pocket a small parcel of snuff; takes a_ _piece of paper from the
+floor, and pours into it, slowly and carefully, a little of the snuff,
+and puts it on the table._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Look at the gifts of every kind
+    Were given with a willing mind;
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a pinch of snuff!
+
+OLD FARMER. _Maisead_, long life to you, Raftery; that your
+tongue may never lose its edge. That is a man of cows certainly; I
+myself am a man of sheep.
+
+BLIND MAN. A bag of meal from the man of sheep.
+
+FAIR YOUNG MAN. And I am a man of pigs.
+
+BLIND MAN. A side of meat from the man of pigs.
+
+MARTIN. Don't forget the woman of hens.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    A pound of tea from the woman of hens.
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a pinch of snuff!
+
+ALL.
+
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a pinch of snuff!
+
+OLD FARMER. The devil the like of such fun have we had this
+year!
+
+MISER. Oh, indeed, I was only keeping a little grain for
+myself; but it's likely they may want it all. (_He takes the paper out,
+and lays it on the table._)
+
+BLIND MAN. A bag of meal from the man of sheep.
+
+ALL.
+
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a half-ounce of snuff!
+
+(_One of the girls hands the snuff round; they laugh and sneeze, taking
+pinches of it._)
+
+OLD FARMER. My soul to the devil, Seagan, do the thing
+decently. Give out one of those fleeces you have in the cart with you.
+
+MISER. I never saw the like of you for fools since I was born.
+Is it mad you are?
+
+ALL. From the man of cows, a half-ounce of snuff!
+
+MISER. Oh, _maisead_, if there must be a present put down, take
+the fleece, and my share of misfortune on you! (_Three or four of the
+boys run out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Aurah, Seagan, what is your opinion of Raftery now?
+He has you destroyed worse than the bush! (_The boys come back, a fleece
+with them._)
+
+BOY. Here is the fleece, and it's very heavy it is. (_They put
+it down, and there falls a little bag out of it that bursts and scatters
+the money here and there on the floor._)
+
+MISER. Ub-ub-bu! That is my share of money scattered on me that
+I got for my calves. (_He stoops down to gather it together. All the
+people burst out laughing again._)
+
+OLD FARMER. _Maisead_, Seagan, where did you get the money? You
+told us you didn't sell your share of calves.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    He that got good gold
+    For calves he never sold
+    Must put good money down
+    With a laugh, without a frown;
+    Or I'll destroy that man
+    With a bone-breaking rann.
+    I'll rhyme him by the book
+    To a blue-watery look.
+
+MISER. Oh, Raftery, don't do that. I tasted enough of your
+ranns just now, and I don't want another taste of them. There's
+threepence for you. (_He puts three pennies in the plate._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I'll put a new name upon
+    This strong farmer, of Thrippeny John.
+    He'll be called, without a doubt,
+    Thrippeny John from this time out.
+    Put your sovereign on my plate,
+    Or that and worse will be your fate.
+
+MISER. O, in the name of God, Raftery, stop your mouth and let
+me go! Here is the sovereign for you; and indeed it's not with my
+blessing I give it.
+
+(BLIND MAN _plays on the fiddle. They all stand up and dance
+but_ SEAGAN NA STUCIARE, _who shakes his fist in_ BLIND
+MAN'S _face, and goes out._
+
+_When they have danced for a minute or two_, BLIND MAN _stops
+fiddling and stands up._)
+
+BLIND MAN. I was near forgetting: I am the only person here
+gave nothing to the woman of the house. (_Hands the plate of money to_
+MARY.) Take that and my seven hundred blessings along with it,
+and that you may be as well as I wish you to the end of life and time.
+Count the money now, and see what the neighbours did for you.
+
+MARY. That is too much indeed.
+
+MARTIN. You have too much done for us already.
+
+BLIND MAN. Count it, count it; while I go over and try can I
+hear what sort of blessings Seagan na Stucaire is leaving after him.
+
+(_Neighbours all crowd round counting the money._ BLIND MAN
+_goes to the door, looks back with a sigh, and goes quietly out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Well, you have enough to set you up altogether,
+Martin. You'll be buying us all up within the next six months.
+
+MARTIN. Indeed I don't think I'll be going digging potatoes for
+other men this year, but to be working for myself at home.
+
+(_The sound of horse's steps are heard. A young man comes into the
+house._)
+
+YOUNG MAN. What is going on here at all? All the cars in the
+country gathered at the door, and Seagan na Stucaire going swearing down
+the road.
+
+OLD FARMER. Oh, this is the great wedding was made by
+Raftery.--Where is Raftery? Where is he gone?
+
+MARTIN (_going to the door_). He's not here. I don't see him on
+the road. (_Turns to young farmer._) Did you meet a blind fiddler going
+out the door--the poet Raftery?
+
+YOUNG MAN. The poet Raftery? I did not; but I stood by his
+grave at Killeenan three days ago.
+
+MARY. His grave? Oh, Martin, it was a dead man was in it!
+
+MARTIN. Whoever it was, it was a man sent by God was in it.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST SAINT
+
+
+AN OLD MAN.
+
+A TEACHER.
+
+CONALL AND OTHER CHILDREN.
+
+
+SCENE.--_A large room as it was in the old time. A long table
+in it. A troop of children, a share of them eating their dinner, another
+share of them sitting after eating. There is a teacher stooping over a
+book in the other part of the room._
+
+
+A CHILD (_standing up_). Come out, Felim, till we see the new
+hound.
+
+ANOTHER CHILD. We can't. The master told us not to go out till
+we would learn this poem, the poem he was teaching us to-day.
+
+ANOTHER CHILD. He won't let anyone at all go out till he can
+say it.
+
+ANOTHER CHILD. _Maisead_, disgust for ever on the same old
+poem; but there is no fear for myself--I'll get out, never fear; I'll
+remember it well enough. But I don't think you will get out, Conall. Oh,
+there is the master ready to begin.
+
+TEACHER (_lifting up his head_). Now, children, have you
+finished your dinner?
+
+CHILDREN. Not yet. (_A poor-looking, grey old man comes to the
+door._)
+
+A CHILD. Oh, that is old Cormacin that grinds the meal for us,
+and minds the oven.
+
+OLD MAN. The blessing of God here! Master, will you give me
+leave to gather up the scraps, and to bring them out with me?
+
+MASTER. You may do that. (_To the children._) Come here now,
+till I see if you have that poem right, and I will let you go out when
+you have it said.
+
+FEARALL. We are coming; but wait a minute till I ask old
+Cormacin what is he going to do with the leavings he has there.
+
+OLD MAN. I am gathering them to give to the birds, avourneen.
+
+TEACHER. We will do it now; come over here. (_The children
+stand together in a row._)
+
+TEACHER. Now I will tell you who made the poem you are going to
+say to me: There was a holy, saintly man in Ireland some years ago.
+Aongus Ceile Dé was the name he had. There was no man in Ireland had
+greater humility than he. He did not like the people to be giving honour
+to him, or to be saying he was a great saint, or that he made fine
+poems. It was because of his humility he stole away one night, and put a
+disguise on himself; and he went like a poor man through the country,
+working for his own living without anyone knowing him. He is gone away
+out of knowledge now, without anyone at all knowing where he is. Maybe
+he is feeding pigs or grinding meal now like any other poor person.
+
+A CHILD. Grinding meal like old Cormacin here.
+
+TEACHER. Exactly. But before he went away, it is many fine
+sweet poems he made in the praise of God and the angels; and it was one
+of those I was teaching you to-day.
+
+A CHILD. What is the name you said he had?
+
+TEACHER. Aongus Ceile Dé, the servant of God. They gave him
+that name because he was so holy. Now, Felim, say the first two lines
+you; and Art will say the two next lines; and Aodh the two lines after
+that, and so on to the end.
+
+FELIM.
+
+    Up in the kingdom of God, there are
+    Archangels for every single day.
+
+ART.
+
+    And it is they certainly
+    That steer the entire week.
+
+AODH.
+
+    The first day is holy;
+    Sunday belongs to God.
+
+FERGUS.
+
+    Gabriel watches constantly
+    Every week over Monday.
+
+CONALL.
+
+    Gabriel watches constantly--
+
+TEACHER. That's not it, Conall; Fergus said that.
+
+CONALL. It is to God Sunday belongs----
+
+TEACHER. That's not it; that was said before. It is at Tuesday
+we are now. Who is it has Tuesday? (_The little boy does not answer._)
+Who is it has Tuesday? Don't be a fool, now.
+
+CONALL (_putting the joint of his finger in his eye_). I don't
+know.
+
+TEACHER. Oh, my shame you are! Look now; go in the place
+Fearall is, and he will go in your place. Now, Fearall.
+
+FEARALL.
+
+    It is true that Tuesday is kept
+    By Michael in his full strength.
+
+TEACHER. That's it. Now, Conall, say who has Monday.
+
+CONALL. I can't.
+
+TEACHER. Say the two lines before that and I will be satisfied.
+Who has Monday?
+
+CONALL (_crying_). I don't know.
+
+TEACHER. Oh, aren't you the little amadan! I will never put
+anything at all in your head. I will not let you go out till you know
+that poem. Now, boys, run out with you; and we will leave Conall Amadan
+here. (_The_ TEACHER _and all the other scholars go out._)
+
+THE OLD MAN. Don't be crying, avourneen; I will teach the poem
+to you; I know it myself.
+
+CONALL. Aurah, Cormacin, I cannot learn it. I am not clever or
+quick like the other boys. I can't put anything in my head (_bursts
+into crying again_). I have no memory for anything.
+
+OLD MAN (_laying his hand on his head_). Take courage, astore.
+You will be a wise man yet, with the help of God. Come with me now, and
+help me to divide these scraps. (_The child gets up._) That's it now;
+dry your eyes and don't be discouraged.
+
+CONALL (_wiping his eyes_). What are you making three shares of
+the scraps for?
+
+THE OLD MAN. I am going to give the first share to the geese; I
+am putting all the cabbage on this dish for them; and when I go out, I
+will put a grain of meal on it, and it will feed them finely. I have
+scraps of meat here, and old broken bread, and I will give that to the
+hens; they will lay their eggs better when they will get food like that.
+These little crumbs are for the little birds that do be singing to me in
+the morning, and that awaken me with their share of music. I have oaten
+meal for them. (_Sweeps the floor, and gathers little crumbs of bread._)
+I have a great wish for the little birds. (_The old man looks up; he
+sees the little boy lying on a cushion, and he asleep. He stands a
+little while looking at him. Tears gather in his eyes; then he goes down
+on his knees._)
+
+OLD MAN. O Lord, O God, take pity on this little soft child.
+Put wisdom in his head, cleanse his heart, scatter the mist from his
+mind, and let him learn his lesson like the other boys. O Lord, Thou
+wert Thyself young one time: take pity on youth. O Lord, Thou Thyself
+shed tears: dry the tears of this little lad. Listen, O Lord, to the
+prayer of Thy servant, and do not keep from him this little thing he is
+asking of Thee. O Lord, bitter are the tears of a child, sweeten them;
+deep are the thoughts of a child, quiet them; sharp is the grief of a
+child, take it from him; soft is the heart of a child, do not harden it.
+
+(_While the old man is praying, the_ TEACHER _comes in. He
+makes a sign to the children outside; they come in and gather about him.
+The old man notices the children; he starts up, and shame burns on
+him._)
+
+TEACHER. I heard your prayer, old man; but there is no good in
+it. I praise you greatly for it, but that child is half-witted. I prayed
+to God myself once or twice on his account, but there was no good in it.
+
+THE OLD MAN. Perhaps God heard me. God is for the most part
+ready to hear. The time we ourselves are empty without anything, God
+listens to us; and He does not think on the thing we are without, but
+gives us our fill.
+
+TEACHER. It is the truth you are speaking; but there is no good
+in praying this time. This boy is very ignorant. (_He and the old man go
+over to the child, who is still asleep, and signs of tears on his
+cheeks._) He must work hard, and very hard; and maybe with the dint of
+work, he will get a little learning some time. (_He puts his hand on the
+cheek of the little boy, and he starts up, and wonder on him when he
+sees them all about him._)
+
+THE OLD MAN. Ask it to him now.
+
+TEACHER. DO you remember the poem now, Conall?
+
+CONALL.
+
+    Up in the heaven of God, there are
+    Archangels for every day.
+
+    And it is they certainly
+    That steer the entire week.
+
+    The first day is holy;
+    Sunday belongs to God.
+
+    Gabriel watches constantly
+    Every week over Monday.
+
+    It is true that Tuesday is kept
+    By Michael in his full strength.
+
+    Rafael, honest and kind and gentle,
+    It is to him Wednesday belongs.
+
+    To Sachiel, that is without crookedness,
+    Thursday belongs every week.
+
+    Haniel, the Archangel of God,
+    It is he has Friday.
+
+    Bright Cassiel, of the blue eyes,
+    It is he directs Saturday.
+
+TEACHER. That is a great wonder, not a word failed on him. But
+tell me, Conall astore, how did you learn that poem since?
+
+CONALL. When I was sleeping, just now, there came an old man to
+me, and I thought there was every colour that is in the rainbow upon
+him. And he took hold of my shirt, and he tore it; and then he opened
+my breast, and he put the poem within in my heart.
+
+OLD MAN. It is God that sent that dream to you. I have no doubt
+you will not be hard to teach from this out.
+
+CONALL. And the man that came to me, I thought it was old
+Cormacin that was in it.
+
+FEARALL. Maybe it was Aongus Ceile Dé himself that was in it.
+
+AODH. Maybe Cormacin is Aongus.
+
+TEACHER. Are you Aongus Ceile Dé? I desire you in the name of
+God to tell me.
+
+THE OLD MAN (_bowing his head_). Oh, you have found it out now!
+Oh, I thought no one at all would ever know me. My grief that you have
+found me out!
+
+TEACHER (_going on his knees_). O holy Aongus, forgive me; give
+me your blessing. O holy man, give your blessing to these children.
+(_The children fall on their knees round him._)
+
+THE OLD MAN (_stretching out his hand_). The blessing of God on
+you. The blessing of Christ and His Holy Mother on you. My own blessing
+on you.
+
+
+
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+
+TWO WOMEN.
+
+SHEPHERDS.
+
+KINGS.
+
+CHILD ANGELS.
+
+THE HOLY FAMILY.
+
+
+SCENE.--_A stable. The door shut on it. The dawn of day is
+rising, and the colours of morning coming. Two women come in--a woman of
+them from the east, and a woman from the west, and they tired from the
+journey. There is a branch of a cherry tree in the hand of one of them,
+and a flock of flax in the hand of the other of them._
+
+
+THE FIRST WOMAN. God be with you!
+
+THE SECOND WOMAN. God be with yourself!
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Where are you going?
+
+SECOND WOMAN. In search of a woman I am.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. And myself as well as you.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is strange. What woman is that?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. A woman that is about to give birth to a child;
+and I think it would be well for her, another woman to be giving care to
+her.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is the same woman I am in search of in the
+same way.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. I did an unkindness to her, and grief and shame
+came on me after, and I thought to make up for it if I could.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Oh, that is just the same thing I myself did.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is a wonder. I will tell you how it happened
+with me; and you will tell me your story after that.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. I will tell it.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is good. I was one evening a while ago
+getting ready the supper for my husband and my children, when there came
+a man and a young woman to the door, and the woman riding an ass. They
+asked a night's lodging of me. They said it was up to Jerusalem they
+were going. But, my grief! the husband I have is a rough man, and there
+was fear on me to let them in; I was afraid he would do something to me,
+and I refused them. They said to me they were very tired; and they
+pressed so hard on me that I told them at last to go out and sleep in
+the barn, in the place the flax was, and my husband would not have
+knowledge of it. But about midnight my husband was struck with sickness,
+and a great pain came on him of a sudden, as if his death was near. When
+I thought him to be dying, I was in dread; and I ran out to the people I
+had put in the barn, asking help from them.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. God help us!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. God help us, indeed! And when the woman that was
+lying on the stalks of flax heard my story, it is what she did: she took
+a flock of the husks of the flax that were on the floor, and said to me:
+'Lay that,' she said, 'on the place the pain is, and it will cure him.'
+Out with me as quick as I could, and the husks in my hand, the same as
+they are now. My husband was on the point of death at that time; but, as
+sure as I am alive, when I put the husks on him, the pain went away, and
+he was as well as ever he was.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. That is a great story!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. And when I ran out again to bring the woman in
+with me, she was gone; and I heard a voice, as I thought, saying these
+two lines:--
+
+    'A meek woman and a rough man;
+    The Son of God lying in husks.'
+
+FIRST WOMAN. You heard that said?
+
+SECOND WOMAN. There was grief and shame on me then, letting her
+from me like that, without giving her thanks, or anything at all; and I
+followed her on the morrow, for I said to myself that she was blessed. I
+heard she was gone to Bethlehem; and I followed her to this stable; for
+I thought I could be helpful to her, and she in that state. They told me
+she was not in the inn; and that there was no place at all for her to
+get, till she came to this stable.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Is not that wonderful? You said the truth when
+you said it was a blessed woman that was in it.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. How do you know that?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Because she did a great marvel under my own eyes.
+My sorrow and my bitter grief! I did a thing seven times worse than what
+you did. It was fear before your husband was on you when you refused her
+the night's lodging; but the hardness and the misery in my own heart
+made me refuse her fruit she asked of me. She herself and the man that
+was with her were going by; and the day came close on her and hot, and
+there was a large tree of cherries in my garden. She looked up then, and
+she took a longing for them. 'O right woman!' she said; 'there is a
+desire come on me to have a few of your cherries; maybe you will give me
+a share of them.' 'I will not give them,' said I, 'to any stranger at
+all travelling the road like yourself.' 'Give them to me, if it is your
+will,' says she, quiet, and nice, and gentle, 'for I am not far from the
+birth of my child; and I have a great longing for them.'
+
+I don't know what was the bad thing was in my heart; but I refused her
+again. No sooner was the word out of my mouth than the big tree bent
+down of itself to her, and laid its twigs across the wall, and out on
+the road, till she could put out her hand and take her fill of the
+cherries.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That was a great miracle, without doubt.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. It was so; and grief came to me after that for
+refusing her; for I knew by it that God had a hand in her. And I took
+this branch in my hand, and I followed her to the stable to ask pardon
+of her.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. Is it not a wonder how we came here together on
+the same search?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. I think she will be wanting help, for they said to
+me in the inn she was not far from the birth of her child; and I made as
+good haste as I could. Maybe we are in time to give her help yet.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. I will knock at the door.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Do so.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. Wait a while; there are strangers coming up this
+road from the west.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. That is so; and look on the other side: there are
+great people coming from the east. We must wait till they go past.
+(_They sit down on either side of the door. Kings, finely dressed, come
+in at the east side; and herds and shepherds on the west side._)
+
+A KING (_pointing upwards with his hand_). Kings and friends,
+it is not possible I am mistaken. Is not the wonderful star we followed
+as far as this standing now without stirring over this place?
+
+A SHEPHERD. O friends, look up. There is not a bird in the sky
+that is not gathered above this house.
+
+A KING. We are come from the east, from the rising of the sun,
+a long, long way off from this country, following the star that is
+standing still over us now. Where are you come from, shepherds?
+
+A SHEPHERD. We are come from the west, from the setting of the
+sun, a long way off from this country.
+
+KING. And what is it brought you here? I dare say it is not
+without cause yourselves and ourselves are met at the door of this
+house.
+
+SHEPHERD. We were sitting one evening quiet and satisfied on a
+grassy hill watching our flocks; and we saw all of a sudden a thing that
+put wonder on us. The lambs that were sucking at the ewes left off
+sucking, and they looked up in the sky; and the kids that were drinking
+at the pool stopped drinking and looked up. It would put wonder on any
+person at all to see the little kids looking up as wise as ourselves. We
+looked up then, and we saw a beautiful bright angel over our heads; and
+fear came on us; but the angel spoke, and he said to us that some great
+joy was coming into the world, and he said: 'Set out now in search of
+it, and go to Bethlehem.' 'Where is that?' we asked. 'In a country that
+is called Judea,' said the angel, 'a long, long way from you to the
+east.' We made ourselves ready on the morrow; and there was every sort
+of bird that was in the sky going before us. Look at them all now, a
+share of them sitting on the roof of the house, and thousands of others
+above in a great cloud. We are all simple people, poor shepherds, it is
+not fitting for us to be coming here; but there was fear on us when we
+heard the angel speak.
+
+KING. It is great powerful kings we are. We come from far off,
+from the rising of the sun. There is not a king or a prince in these
+parts is fit to be put beside the lowest steward we have. And we are
+wise. There is no knowledge or learning to be had under the sun that we
+have not got. But now we are brought by the guidance of that star to the
+Master and the Teacher that will teach us all the knowledge and wisdom
+of the whole world. It is in that hope we are come following this star.
+And now, shepherds, tell us what is it you want here.
+
+SHEPHERD. We cannot say rightly what we want here. But the
+angel told us there was some great joy coming into the world; and we
+followed the birds in search of that joy, and the birds came to this
+place.
+
+KING. It is likely, since the star of knowledge led us, and the
+birds led you, to the one place, that there is some wonderful thing in
+it. O friends, whatever thing is in this closed stable, it is certain it
+will put great fear or great joy, or maybe great sorrow, on these
+shepherds and on ourselves.
+
+SHEPHERD. You who are noble and great, and rich and wise, and
+learned in all things, tell us what is in this stable.
+
+KING. It is true we are noble and honourable, and learned and
+powerful, and wise and prudent, but we cannot tell you that. We do not
+know ourselves what is the thing that is in it.
+
+SHEPHERD. Tell us this much anyway, is it sorrow or joy, grief
+or gladness, courage or fear, it will put on us? Will you not tell us
+that before we knock at the closed door?
+
+KING. It is certain there are no other persons in the world so
+learned as ourselves. We are astronomers to tell of the coming and going
+of the stars, and the ways of the heavens, and everything that is on the
+earth and in the clouds and under the earth. But for all that we cannot
+tell you this thing.
+
+SHEPHERD. Who will knock at the door?
+
+KING. It is my advice to you now: the king that is youngest of
+us, and the shepherd that is youngest of you, to go to the door and to
+knock together.
+
+SHEPHERD. Why do you say the youngest king and the youngest
+shepherd?
+
+KING. Do you not know there is no person free from sin but only
+infants that have never found occasion of doing it? The man that is
+youngest of us, it is he found least occasion to do wrong; and he is the
+best fitted to knock at this door, whatever there may be inside it.
+
+SHEPHERD (_leading out another shepherd_). This is the man that
+is youngest among us.
+
+KING (_leading out another king_). This is the youngest king in
+our company.
+
+(_The two go to the door together and knock at it. The door is opened by
+St. Joseph, and the manger is seen, and Mary Mother kneeling beside the
+manger on her two knees, her hands crossed on her breast, and she
+praying._)
+
+KING. We are come to this door to do honour to God, and to Him
+that God has sent. It is here all the people of the whole world will be
+taught, and will be put on the road that is best. Show Him to us; and we
+will proclaim Him to all the people of knowledge, and the learned people
+of the world.
+
+SHEPERD. We are come in search of Him who is come to put joy in
+the world, and to put gladness in the hearts of the people. Show Him to
+us; and we will give news of Him to the herds and the shepherds, and the
+simple people of the whole world.
+
+ST. JOSEPH. It is great my gladness is to see you here. A
+hundred welcomes before you, both gentle and simple. Come in, and I will
+show you Him you are in search of. Look at this baby in the manger. It
+is He is King of the World, and He will put all the countries of the
+world under His feet.
+
+MARY MOTHER. He is the Son of God.
+
+(_They all go on their knees._)
+
+KING. We have brought gifts and offerings with us. Let us show
+them to you.
+
+MARY MOTHER. Walk softly and quietly, that you may not awake
+the Child.
+
+A KING. I am the king is oldest in our company. I will walk
+softly, and I will not awake the Child.
+
+A SHEPHERD. I am the man is oldest among us; let us give our
+poor gifts to you like the others. I will walk softly; I will not awake
+the little One.
+
+KING. We have brought from the rising of the sun, gold, and
+frankincense, and myrrh, and a share of every noble precious treasure
+there is in the world. It is not possible for the whole world to give a
+thing we have not with us; and we have brought another thing the world
+has not to give, the knowledge and sense and wisdom of our own hearts.
+We have been gathering it through the years, from youth to old age; and
+we put it first of all these things. (_They lay gold and spices, and
+other treasures before the Child._)
+
+SHEPHERD. We have brought fleeces, and cheeses, and a little
+lamb with us as an offering. We have no other thing to give. We are old
+now, and we have got this wisdom from God, that there is nothing better
+worth giving than the things God has given to us. (_They put down their
+own offerings. The two women come round to the front._)
+
+THE FIRST WOMAN. Oh, do you see that?
+
+SECOND WOMAN. King of the World, he said! Oh, are we not the
+unhappy sinners?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. My bitter grief for myself and yourself!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. I am lost for ever. There is no forgiveness for
+me to find for the thing I did!
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Nor for myself.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. You were not so guilty as I was.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Let us go; and let us hide ourselves under some
+scalp of a rock, in a hole in the earth, or in the middle of the woods!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. Let us then hasten that we may hide ourselves.
+
+MARY MOTHER (_rises up and stretches out her hands, beckoning
+to the women_). Come over here. Come to this cradle. The Son of God is
+in this cradle, and His cradle is nothing but a manger. But yet He is
+King of the World. There is a welcome before the whole world coming to
+this cradle; but it is those that are asking forgiveness will get the
+greatest welcome.
+
+(_The two women fall on their knees._
+
+_Child angels come and stand on the rising ground at each side of the
+stable, and shining clothes on them like the colours of the morning.
+They lift their trumpets and blow them softly._)
+
+MARY MOTHER. Listen to the angels, the angels of God!
+
+AN ANGEL OF THEM. A hundred welcomes before the whole world to
+this cradle. We give out peace; we give out goodwill; we give out joy to
+the whole world! (_They take their share of trumpets up again, and blow
+them long and very sweetly._)
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+Printed by PONSONBY & GIBBS at the University Press, Dublin
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poets and Dreamers, by 
+Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Poets and Dreamers, by Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poets and Dreamers
+       Studies and translations from the Irish
+
+Author: Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
+
+Translator: Lady Augusta Gregory
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2006 [EBook #18070]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETS AND DREAMERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>POETS AND DREAMERS:<br />
+STUDIES &amp; TRANSLATIONS FROM<br />
+THE IRISH, BY LADY GREGORY.</h1>
+
+
+
+<h4>DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, &amp; CO., LTD.<br />
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.<br />
+1903.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO SOME UNDERGRADUATES OF TRINITY COLLEGE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happiness, knowledge not in another place, but this place&mdash;not for another hour but this hour.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="right">WALT WHITMAN.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='right'>PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>RAFTERY</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>WEST IRISH BALLADS</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_47'>47</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>JACOBITE BALLADS</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>AN CRAOIBHIN'S POEMS</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_76'>76</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_89'>89</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_98'>98</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>HERB-HEALING</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_111'>111</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>THE WANDERING TRIBE</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_121'>121</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>WORKHOUSE DREAMS</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_128'>128</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_193'>193</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>AN CRAOIBHIN'S PLAYS:&mdash;</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_196'>196</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 4em;">THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_200'>200</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 4em;">THE MARRIAGE</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_216'>216</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 4em;">THE LOST SAINT</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_236'>236</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 4em;">THE NATIVITY</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_244'>244</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>POETS AND DREAMERS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>RAFTERY</h2>
+
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<p>One winter afternoon as I sat by the fire in a ward of Gort Workhouse, I
+listened to two old women arguing about the merits of two rival poets
+they had seen and heard in their childhood.</p>
+
+<p>One old woman, who was from Kilchreest, said: 'Raftery hadn't a stim of
+sight; and he travelled the whole nation; and he was the best poet that
+ever was, and the best fiddler. It was always at my father's house,
+opposite the big tree, that he used to stop when he was in Kilchreest. I
+often saw him; but I didn't take much notice of him then, being a child;
+it was after that I used to hear so much about him. Though he was blind,
+he could serve himself with his knife and fork as well as any man with
+his sight. I remember the way he used to cut the meat&mdash;across, like
+this. Callinan was nothing to him.'</p>
+
+<p>The other old woman, who was from Craughwell, said: 'Callinan was a
+great deal better than him; and he could make songs in English as well
+as in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> Irish; Raftery would run from where Callinan was. And he was a
+nice respectable man, too, with cows and sheep, and a kind man. <i>He</i>
+would never put anything that wasn't nice into a poem, and <i>he</i> would
+never run anyone down; but if you were the worst in the world, he'd make
+you the best in it; and when his wife lost her beetle, he made a song of
+fifteen verses about it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' the Kilchreest old woman admitted, 'Raftery would run people
+down; he was someway bitter; and if he had anything against a person,
+he'd give him a great lacerating. But there were more for him than for
+Callinan; some used to say Callinan's songs were too long.'</p>
+
+<p>'I tell you,' said the other, 'Callinan was a nice man and a nice
+neighbour. Raftery wasn't fit to put beside him. Callinan was a man that
+would go out of his own back door, and make a poem about the four
+quarters of the earth. I tell you, you would stand in the snow to listen
+to Callinan!' But, just then, a bedridden old woman suddenly sat up and
+began to sing Raftery's 'Bridget Vesach' as long as her breath lasted;
+so the last word was for him after all.</p>
+
+<p>Raftery died over sixty years ago; but there are many old people still
+living, besides those two old women, who have seen him, and who keep his
+songs in their memory. What they tell of him shows how closely he was in
+the old tradition of the bards, the wandering poets of two thousand
+years or more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> His satire, his praises, his competitions with other
+poets were the dread and the pride of many Galway and Mayo parishes. And
+now the songs that he never wrote down, being blind, are known, if not
+as our people say, 'all over the world,' at least in all places where
+Irish is spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Raftery's satires, as I have heard them repeated by the country people,
+do not seem, even in their rhymed original&mdash;he only composed in
+Irish&mdash;to have the 'sharp spur' of some of his predecessors, such as
+O'Higinn, whose tongue was cut out by men from Sligo, who had suffered
+from it, or O'Daly, who criticised the poverty of the Irish chiefs in
+the sixteenth century until the servant of one of them stuck a knife
+into his throat. Yet they were much dreaded. 'He was very sharp with
+anyone that didn't please him,' I have been told; 'and no one would like
+to be put in his songs.' And though it is said of his songs in praise of
+his friends that 'whoever he praised was well praised,' it was thought
+safer that one's own name should not appear in them. The man at whose
+house he died said to me: 'He used often to come and stop with us, but
+he never made a verse about us; my father wouldn't have liked that.
+Someway it doesn't bring luck.' And another man says: 'My father often
+told me about Raftery. He was someway gifted, and people were afraid of
+him. I was often told by men that gave him a lift in their car when they
+overtook him now and again, that if he asked their name, they wouldn't
+give it, for fear he might put it in a song.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> And another man says:
+'There was a friend of my father's was driving his car on the road one
+day, and he saw Raftery, but he didn't let on to see him. But when he
+was passing, Raftery said: "There was never a soldier marching but would
+get his billet. But the rabbit has an enemy in the ferret;" so then the
+man said in a hurry, "Oh, Mr. Raftery, I never knew it was you: won't
+you get up and take a seat in the car?"' A girl in whose praise he had
+made a song, Mary Hynes, of Ballylee, died young, and had a troubled
+life; and one of her neighbours says of her: 'No one that has a song
+made about them will ever live long;' and another says: 'She got a great
+tossing up and down; and at last she died in the middle of a bog.' They
+tell, too, of a bush that he once took shelter under from the rain, and
+how he 'praised it first; and then when it let the rain down, he
+dispraised it, and it withered up, and never put out leaf or branch
+after.' I have seen his poem on the bush in a manuscript book, carefully
+written in the beautiful Irish character, and the great treasure of a
+stonecutter's cottage. This is the form of the curse: 'I pronounce
+ugliness upon you. That bloom or leaf may never grow on you, but the
+flame of the mountain fires and of bonfires be upon you. That you may
+get your punishment from Oscar's flail, to hack and to bruise you with
+the big sledge of a forge.'</p>
+
+<p>There are some other verses made by him that have been less legendary in
+their effect. The story is:&mdash;'It was Anthony Daly, a carpenter, was
+hanged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> at Seefin. It was the two Z's got him put away. He was brought
+before a judge in Galway, and accused of being a Captain of Whiteboys,
+and it was sworn against him that he fired at Mr. X. He was a one-eyed
+man; and he said: "If I did, though I have but one eye, I would have hit
+him"&mdash;for he was a very good shot; and he asked that some object should
+be put up, and he would show the judge that he would hit it, but he said
+nothing else. Some were afraid he'd give up the names of the other
+Whiteboys; but he did not. There was a gallows put up at Seefin; and he
+was brought there sitting on his coffin in a cart. There were people all
+the way along the road, and they were calling on him to break through
+the crowd, and they'd save him; and some of the soldiers were Irish, and
+they called back that if he did they'd only fire their guns in the air;
+but he made no attempt, but went to the gallows quiet enough. There was
+a man in Gort was telling me he saw it, planting potatoes he was at
+Seefin that day. It was in the year 1820; and Raftery was there at the
+hanging, and he made a song about it. The first verse of the song said:
+"Wasn't that the good tree, that wouldn't let any branch that was on it
+fall to the ground?" He meant by that that he didn't give up the names
+of the other Whiteboys. And at the end he called down judgment from God
+on the two Z's, and, if not on them, on their children. And they that
+had land and farms in all parts, lost it after; and all they had
+vanished; and the most of their children died<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>&mdash;only two left, one a
+friar, and the other living in the town.' And quite lately I have been
+told by another neighbour, in corroboration, that a girl of the Z family
+married into a family near his home the other day, and was coldly
+received; and when my neighbour asked one of the family why this was, he
+was told that 'those of her people that went so high ought to have gone
+higher'&mdash;meaning that they themselves ought to have been on the gallows;
+and then he knew that Raftery's curse was still having its effect. And
+he had also heard that the grass had never grown again at Seefin.</p>
+
+<p>This is a part of the song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The evening of Friday of the Crucifixion, the Gael was under the
+mercy of the Gall. It was as heavy the same day as when the only
+Son of Mary was on the tree. I have hope in the Son of God, my
+grief! and it is of no use for me; and it was Conall and his wife
+hung Daly, and may they be paid for it!</p>
+
+<p>'But oh! young woman, while I live, I put death on the village
+where you will be; plague and death on it; and may the flood rise
+over it; that much is no sin at all, O bright God; and I pray with
+longing it may fall on the man that hung Daly; that left his people
+and his children crying.</p>
+
+<p>'O stretch out your limbs! The air is murky overhead; there is
+darkness on the sun, and the fish do not leap in the water; there
+is no dew on the grass, and the birds do not sing sweetly. With
+sorrow after you, Daly, till death, there never will be fruit on
+the trees.</p>
+
+<p>'And that is the true man, that didn't humble himself or lower
+himself to the Gall; Anthony Daly, O Son of God! He was that with
+us always, without a lie. But he died a good Irishman; and he never
+bowed the head to any man;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> and it was with false swearing that
+Daly was hung, and with the strength of the Gall.</p>
+
+<p>'If I were a clerk&mdash;kind, light, cheerful with the pen&mdash;it is I
+would write your ways in clear Irish on a flag above your head. A
+thousand and eight hundred and sixteen, and four put to that, from
+the coming of the Son of God, to the death of Daly at the Castle of
+Seefin.'</p></div>
+
+<p>I have heard, and have also seen in manuscript, a terrible list of
+curses that he hurled at the head of another poet, Seaghan Burke. But
+these were, I think, looked on as a mere professional display, and do
+not seem to have any ill effect.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some of them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'That God may perish you on the mountain-side, without a priest,
+bishop, or clerk. Seven years may you be senseless and without wit,
+going from door to door as an unfortunate creature.</p>
+
+<p>'May you have a mouth that will go back to your ear, and may your
+lips be turned back like gums; that your legs may lose feeling from
+the knee down, your eyes lose their sight, and your hands lose
+their strength.</p>
+
+<p>'Deformity and lameness and corruption upon you; flight and defeat
+and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you
+nine times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,'
+it is explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death,
+and it is the time He can best hear the curses of the poor').</p>
+
+<p>'May a sore heart and cold flesh be upon you; may there be no
+marrow or moisture in your bones. That clay may never be put over
+your coffin-boards, but wind and a sharp blast on you from the
+north.</p>
+
+<p>'Baldness and nakedness come upon you, judgment from above, and the
+curses of the crowd. May dragon's gall and poison mixed through it
+be your best drink at the hour of death.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he left a scathing verse on a place where he was not well
+treated, as: 'Oranmore without merriment. A little town in scarce
+fields&mdash;a broken little town, with its back to the water, and with women
+that have no understanding.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not spare persons any more than places, especially if they were
+well-to-do, for his gentleness was for the poor. An old woman who
+remembers him says: 'He didn't care much about big houses. Just if they
+were people he liked, and that he was friendly with them, he would be
+kind enough to go in and see them.' A Mr. Burke, who met him going from
+his house, asked how he had fared, and he said in a scornful verse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Potatoes that were softer than the fog,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with neither butter nor meat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And milk that was sourer than apples in harvest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's what Raftery got from Burke of Kilfinn.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'And Mr. Burke begged him to rhyme no more, but to come back, and he
+would be well taken care of.' I am told of another house he abused and
+that is now deserted: 'Frenchforth of the soot, that was wedded to the
+smoke, that is all that remains of the property.... There were some of
+them on mules, and some of them unruly, and the biggest of them were
+smaller than asses, and the master cracking them with a stick;' 'but he
+went no further than that, because he remembered the good treatment used
+to be there in former times, and he wouldn't have said that much if it
+wasn't for the servants that vexed him.' A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> satire, that is remembered
+in Aran, was made with the better intention of helping a barefooted
+girl, who had been kept waiting a long time for a pair of shoes she had
+ordered. Raftery came, and sat down before the shoemaker's house, and
+began:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'A young little girl without sense, the ground tearing her feet, is
+not satisfied yet by the lying Peter Glynn. Peter Glynn, the liar,
+in his little house by the side of the road, is without the
+strength in his arms to slip together a pair of brogues.'</p></div>
+
+<p>'And, before he had finished the lines, Peter Glynn ran out and called
+to him to stop, and he set at work on the shoes then and there.' He even
+ventured to poke a little satire at a priest sometimes. 'He went into
+the chapel at Kilchreest one time, and there was some cabbage after
+being stolen from a garden, and the priest was speaking about it.
+Raftery was at the bottom of the chapel, and at last he called out in
+verse:&mdash;"What a lot of talk about cabbage! If there was meat with it, it
+would feed the whole parish!" The priest didn't mind, but afterwards he
+came down, and said: "Where is the cabbage man?" and asked him to make
+some more verses about it; but whether he did or not I don't know.' And
+another time, I am told: 'A priest wanted to teach him the rite of lay
+baptism; for there were scattered houses a priest might take a long time
+getting to, away from the roads, and certain persons were authorized to
+give the rite. So the priest put his hat in Raftery's hand, and told him
+the words to say; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> it is what he said: "I baptize you without either
+foot or hand, without salt or tow, beer or drink. Your father was a ram
+and your mother was a sheep, and your like never came to be baptized
+before." He was put under a curse, too, one time by a priest, and he
+made a song about him; but he said he put his frock out of the bargain,
+and it was only the priest's own body he would speak about. And the
+priest let him alone after that.' And an old basket-maker, who had told
+me some of these things, said at the end: 'That is why the poets had to
+be banished before in the time of St. Columcill. Sure no one could stand
+the satire of them.'</p>
+
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<p>Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great
+extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was
+born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years. It is hard to say
+where history ends in them and religion and politics begin; for history,
+religion, and politics grow on one stem in Ireland, an eternal trefoil.
+'He was a great historian,' it is said; 'for every book he'd get hold
+of, he'd get it read out to him.' And a neighbour tells me: 'He used to
+stop with my uncle that was a hedge schoolmaster in those times in
+Ballylee, and that was very fond of drink; and when he was drunk, he'd
+take his clothes off, and run naked through the country. But at evening
+he'd open the school; and the neighbours that would be working all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> day
+would gather in to him, and he'd teach them through the night; and there
+Raftery would be in the middle of them.' His chief historical poem is
+the 'Talk with the Bush,' of over three hundred lines. Many of the
+people can repeat it, or a part of it, and some possess it in
+manuscript. The bush, a forerunner of the 'Talking Oak' or the 'Father
+of the Forest,' gives its recollections, which go back to the times of
+the Firbolgs, the Tuatha De Danaan, 'without heart, without humanity';
+the Sons of the Gael; the heroic Fianna, who 'would never put more than
+one man to fight against one'; Cuchulain 'of the Grey Sword, that broke
+every gap'; till at last it comes to 'O'Rourke's wife that brought a
+blow to Ireland': for it was on her account the English were first
+called in. Then come the crimes of the English, made redder by the crime
+of Martin Luther. Henry VIII 'turned his back on God and denied his
+first wife.' Elizabeth 'routed the bishops and the Irish Church. James
+and Charles laid sharp scourges on Ireland.... Then Cromwell and his
+hosts swept through Ireland, cutting before him all he could. He gave
+estates and lands to Cromwellians, and he put those that had a right to
+them on mountains.' Whenever he brings history into his poems, the same
+strings are touched. 'At the great judgment, Cromwell will be hiding,
+and O'Neill in the corner. And I think if William can manage it at all,
+he won't stand his ground against Sarsfield.' And a moral often comes at
+the end, such as: 'Don't be without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> courage, but join together; God is
+stronger than the Cromwellians, and the cards may turn yet.'</p>
+
+<p>For Raftery had lived through the '98 Rebellion, and the struggle for
+Catholic Emancipation; and he saw the Tithe War, and the Repeal
+movement; and it is natural that his poems, like those of the poets
+before him, should reflect the desire of his people for 'the mayntenance
+of their own lewde libertye,' that had troubled Spenser in his time.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some verses from his '<i>Cuis da ple</i>,' 'cause to plead,'
+composed at the time of the Tithe War:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The two provinces of Munster are afoot, and will not stop till
+tithes are overthrown, and rents accordingly; and if help were
+given them, and we to stand by Ireland, the English guard would be
+feeble, and every gap made easy. The Gall (English) will be on
+their back without ever returning again; and the Orangemen bruised
+in the borders of every town, a judge and jury in the courthouse
+for the Catholics, England dead, and the crown upon the Gael....</p>
+
+<p>'There is many a fine man at this time sentenced, from Cork to
+Ennis and the town of Roscrea, and fair-haired boys wandering and
+departing from the streets of Kilkenny to Bantry Bay. But the cards
+will turn, and we'll have a good hand: the trump shall stand on the
+board we play at.... Let ye have courage. It is a fine story I
+have. Ye shall gain the day in every quarter from the Sassanach.
+Strike ye the board, and the cards will be coming to you. Drink out
+of hand now a health to Raftery: it is he would put success for you
+on the <i>Cuis da ple</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This is part of another song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I have a hope in Christ that a gap will be opened again for us....
+The day is not far off, the Gall will be stretched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> without anyone
+to cry after them; but with us there will be a bonfire lighted up
+on high.... The music of the world entirely, and Orpheus playing
+along with it. I'd sooner than all that, the Sassanach to be cut
+down.'</p></div>
+
+<p>But with all this, he had plenty of common sense, and an old man at
+Ballylee tells me:&mdash;'One time there were a sort of
+nightwalkers&mdash;Moonlighters as we'd call them now, Ribbonmen they were
+then&mdash;making some plan against the Government; and they asked Raftery to
+come to their meeting. And he went; but what he said was this, in a
+verse, that they should look at the English Government, and think of all
+the soldiers it had, and all the police&mdash;no, there were no police in
+those days, but gaugers and such like&mdash;and they should think how full up
+England was of guns and arms, so that it could put down Buonaparty; and
+that it had conquered Spain, and took Gibraltar from it; and the same in
+America, fighting for twenty-one years. And he asked them what they had
+to fight with against all those guns and arms?&mdash;nothing but a stump of a
+stick that they might cut down below in the wood. So he bid them give up
+their nightwalking, and come out and agitate in the daylight.'</p>
+
+<p>I have been told&mdash;but I do not know if it is true&mdash;that he was once sent
+to Galway Gaol for three months for a song he made against the
+Protestant Church, 'saying it was like a wall slipping, where it wasn't
+built solid.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>III.</h4>
+
+<p>When at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the poets O'Lewy and
+O'Clery and their supporters held a 'Contention,' the results were
+written down in a volume containing 7,000 lines. I think the greater
+number of the 'Contentions' between Raftery and his fellow-poets were
+never written down; but the country people still discuss them with all
+the eagerness of partisans. On old man from Athenry says: 'Raftery
+travelled Ireland, challenging all the poets of that time. There were
+hundreds of country poets in those days, and a welcome for them all.
+Raftery had enough to do to beat them, but he was the best; his poetry
+was the gift of God, and his poems are sung as far away as Limerick and
+Dublin.' There is a story of his knocking at a door one night, when he
+was looking for the house of a poet he had heard of and wanted to
+challenge, and saying: 'I am a poet seeing shelter'; and a girl answered
+him from within with a verse, saying he must be a blind man to be out so
+late looking for shelter; and then he knew it was the house he was
+looking for. And it is said that the daughter of another poet was on his
+way to see in Clare, gave him such a sharp answer when he met her
+outside the house that he turned back and would not contend with her
+father at all. And he is said to have 'hunted another poet Daly&mdash;hunted
+him all through Ireland.' But these other poets do not seem to have left
+a great name. There was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> Connemara poet, Sweeny, that was put under a
+curse by the priests 'because he used to make so much fun at the wakes';
+and in one of Raftery's poems he thanks Sweeny for having come to his
+help in some dispute; and there was 'one John Burke, who was a good
+poet, too; he and Raftery would meet at fairs and weddings, and be
+trying which would put down the other.' I am told of an 'attack' they
+made on each other one day on the fair green of Cappaghtagle. Burke
+said: 'After all your walk of land and callows, Burke is before you at
+the fair of Cappagh.' And Raftery said: 'You are not Burke but a breed
+of <i>scatties</i>, That's all over the country gathering <i>praties</i>; When I'm
+at the table filling glasses, You are in the corner with your feet in
+the ashes.' Then Burke said: 'Raftery a poet, and he with bracked
+(speckled) shins, And he playing music with catgut; Raftery the poet,
+and his back to the wall, And he playing music for empty pockets.
+There's no one cares for his music at all, but he does be always craving
+money.' For he was sometimes accused of love of money; 'he wouldn't play
+for empty pockets, and he'd make the plate rattle at the end of a
+dance.'</p>
+
+<p>But his most serious rival in his own part of the country was Callinan,
+the well-to-do farmer who lived near Craughwell, of whom the old women
+in the workhouse spoke. I have heard some of Callinan's poems and songs;
+but I do not find the imaginative power of Raftery in them. He seems, in
+distinction to him, to be the poet of the domestic affections, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> the
+settled classes. His songs have melody and good sentiments; and they are
+often accompanied by a rhymed English version, made by his brother, a
+lesser poet. The favourite among them is a song on a wooden beetle, lost
+by his wife when washing clothes at the river. She is made to lament the
+loss of 'so good a servant' in a sort of allegory; and then its journey
+is traced from the river to the sea. An old man gives me a little memory
+of him: 'I saw Callinan one time when we went to dig potatoes for him at
+his own place, the other side of Craughwell. We went into the house for
+dinner; and we were in a hurry, and he was sitting by the hearth talking
+all the time; for he was a great talker, so that the veins of his neck
+swelled up. And he was telling us about the song he made about his own
+Missus when she was out washing by the river. He was up to eighty years
+at that time.' And there are accounts of the making of some of his songs
+that show his kindly disposition and amiability. 'One time there was a
+baby in the house, and there was a dance going on near, and Mrs.
+Callinan was a young woman; and she said she'd go for a bit to the
+dance-house; and she bid Callinan rock the cradle till she'd come back.
+But she never came back till morning, and there he was rocking the
+cradle still; and he had a song composed while she was away about the
+time of a man's life, and the hours of the day, and the seasons of the
+year; how when a man is young he is strong, and then he grows old and
+passes away, and goes to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> feast of the Saviour; and about the day,
+how bright the morning is, and the birds singing; and a man goes out to
+work, and he comes in tired out, and sits by the fire to talk with his
+neighbour; and the night comes on, and he says his prayers, and thinks
+of the feast of the Saviour; and about the seasons, the spring so nice,
+and the summer for work; and autumn brings the harvest, and winter
+brings Christmas, the feast of the Saviour. In Irish and English he made
+that.' And this is another story: 'A carpenter made a plough for
+Callinan one time, and when it came, it was the worst ever made; and he
+said to his brother: "I'll make a song that will cut him down
+altogether." But his brother said: "Do not, for if you cut him down, it
+will take his means of living from him, but make a song in his praise."
+And he did so, for he wouldn't like to do him any harm.' I have asked if
+he made any love-songs, and was told of one he had made 'about a girl he
+met going to a bog. He praised herself first, and then he said he had
+information as well that she had fifty gold guineas saved up.'</p>
+
+<p>His having been well off seems to make his poetic merit the greater in
+the eyes of farmers; for one says: 'He was as good a poet, for he had a
+plough and horses and a good way of living, and never sang in any
+public-house; but Raftery had no way of living but to go round and to
+mark some house to go to, and then all the neighbours would gather in to
+hear him.' Another says: 'Raftery was the best poet, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> he had nothing
+else to do, and laid his mind to it; but Callinan was a strong farmer,
+and had other things to think of;' and another says: 'Callinan was very
+apt: it was all Raftery could do to beat him;' and another sums up by
+saying: 'The both of them was great.' But a supporter of Raftery says:
+'He was the best; he put his words so strong and stiff, following one
+another.'</p>
+
+<p>I had been often told, by supporters of either side, that there was one
+contest between the two, at which Callinan 'made Raftery cry tears
+down;' and I wondered how it was that his wit had so far betrayed him.
+It has been explained to me lately. Raftery had made a long poem, 'The
+Hunt,' in which he puts 'a Writer' in the place of the fox, and calls on
+all the gentlemen of Galway and Mayo, and even on 'Sarsfield from
+Limerick,' to come and hunt him through their respective neighbourhoods
+with a pack of hounds. It contains many verses; and he seems to have
+improvised others in the different places where he sang it. In the
+written copy I have seen, Burke is the 'Writer' who is thus hunted. But
+he probably put in the name of any other rival from time to time. This
+is the story: 'He and the Callinans were sometimes vexed with one
+another, but they'd make friends after; but there was one day he was put
+down by them. There was a funeral going on at Killeenan, and Raftery was
+there; and he was asked into the corpse-house afterwards, and the people
+asked him for the song about Callinan, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> began hunting him all
+through the country, and the people were laughing and making him go on;
+but Callinan's brother had come in, and was listening to him, and
+Raftery didn't see him, being blind; and he brought him to Killeenan at
+last, and he said: "Where can the rogue go now, unless he'll swim the
+turlough?" And at that Callinan's brother stood up and said, "Who is it
+you are calling a rogue?" And Raftery tried to laugh it off, and he
+said, "You mustn't expect poetry and truth to go together." But Callinan
+said: "I'll give you poetry that's truth as well;" and he began to say
+off some verses his brother had made on Raftery; and Raftery was choked
+up that time, and hadn't a word.' This story is corroborated by an
+eye-witness who said to me: 'It was in this house he was on the night
+Callinan made him cry. My father was away at the time; if he had been
+there, he never would have let Callinan come into the house unknown to
+Raftery.' I have not heard all of Callinan's poem, but this is part of
+it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'He left the County Mayo; he was hunted up from the country of the
+brothons' (thick bed-coverings, then made in Mayo) 'without any for
+the night, nor any shift for bedding, but with an old yellow
+blanket with a thousand patches; he had a black trouser down to the
+ground with two hundred holes and forty pieces; he had long legs
+like the shank of a pipe, and a long great coat, for it is many the
+dab he put in his pocket. His coat was greasy, and it was no
+wonder, and an old grey hat as grey as snuff as it was many the day
+it was in the dunghill.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is said that 'Raftery could have answered that song better, but he
+had no back here; and Callinan was well-to-do, and had so many of his
+family and so many friends.' But others say there were some allusions in
+it to the poverty of his home, that had become known through a servant
+girl from Raftery's birth-place. But I think even Callinan's friends are
+sorry now that Raftery was ever made to 'cry tears down.'</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV.</h4>
+
+<p>A man near Oranmore says: 'There used to be great talk of the Fianna;
+and everyone had the poems about them till Raftery came, and he put them
+out. For when the people got Raftery's songs in their heads, they could
+think of nothing else: his songs put out everything else. I remember
+when I was a boy of ten, I was so taken up with his rhymes and songs, I
+had them all off. And I heard he was coming one night to a stage he had
+below there where he used to come now and again. And I begged my father
+to bring me with him that night, and he did; but whatever happened,
+Raftery didn't come that time, and the next year he died.'</p>
+
+<p>But it is hard to judge of the quality of Raftery's poems. Some of them
+have probably been lost altogether. There are already different versions
+of those written out in manuscript books, and of these books many have
+disappeared or been destroyed, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> some have been taken to America by
+emigrants. It is said that when he was on his deathbed, he was very
+sorry that his songs had not all been taken down; and that he dictated
+one he composed there to a young man who wrote it down in Irish, but
+could not read his own writing when he had done, and that vexed Raftery;
+and then a man came in, and he asked him to take down all his songs, and
+he could have them for himself; but he said, 'If I did, I'd always be
+called Raftery,' and he went out again.</p>
+
+<p>I hear the people say now and then: 'If he had had education, he would
+have been the greatest poet in the world.' I cannot but be sorry that
+his education went so far as it did, for 'he used to carry a book about
+with him&mdash;a Pantheon&mdash;about the heathen gods and goddesses; and whoever
+he'd get that was able to read, he'd get him to read it to him, and then
+he'd keep them in his mind, and use them as he wanted them.' If he had
+been born a few decades later, he would have been caught, like other
+poets of the time, in the formulas of English verse. As it was, both his
+love poems and his religious poems were caught in the formulas imported
+from Greece and from Rome; and any formula must make a veil between the
+prophet who has been on the mountain top, and the people who are waiting
+at its foot for his message. The dreams of beauty that formed themselves
+in the mind of the blind poet become flat and vapid when he embodies
+them in the well-worn names of Helen and Venus. The truths of God that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+he strove in his last years, as he says, 'to have written in the book of
+the people,' left those unkindled whose ears were already wearied with
+the well-known words 'the keys of Heaven,' 'penance, fasts, and alms,'
+to whom it was an old tale to hear of hell as a furnace, and the grave
+as a dish for worms. When he gets away from the formulas, he has often a
+fine line on death or on judgment; the cheeks of the dead are 'cold as
+the snow that is at the back of the sun;' the careless&mdash;those who 'go
+out looking at their sheep on Sunday instead of going to Mass'&mdash;are
+warned that 'on the side of the hill of the tears there will be Ochone!'</p>
+
+<p>His love songs are many; and they were not always thought to bring ill
+luck; for I am told of a girl 'that was not handsome at all, but ugly,
+that he made a song about her for civility; for she used to be in a
+house where he used to lodge, and the song got her a husband; and there
+is a son of hers living now down in Clare-Galway.' And an old woman
+tells me, with a sigh of regret for what might have been, that she saw
+Raftery one time at a dance, and he spoke to her and said: 'Well planed
+you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade.' 'And I said:
+"Better than you know yours;" for there were two or three of the strings
+of his fiddle broke. And then he said something about O'Meara, that
+lived near us; and my father got vexed at what he said, and would let
+him speak no more with me. And if it wasn't for him speaking about
+O'Meara, and my father getting vexed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> he might have made words about me
+like he did for Mary Hynes and for Mary Brown.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bridget Vesach,' which I have heard in many cottages, as well as from
+the old woman in Gort Workhouse, begins: 'I would wed courteous Bridget
+without coat, shoe, or shirt. Treasure of my heart, if it were possible
+for me, I would fast for you nine meals, without food, without drink,
+without any share of anything, on an island of Lough Erne, with desire
+for you and me to be together till we should settle our case.... My
+heart started with trouble, and I was frightened nine times that morning
+that I heard you were not to be found.... I would sooner be stretched by
+you with nothing under us but heather and rushes, than be listening to
+the cuckoos that are stirring at the break of day.... I am in grief and
+in sorrow since you slipped from me across the mearings.'</p>
+
+<p>Another love poem, 'Mairin Stanton,' shows his habit of mixing
+comparisons drawn from the classics with those drawn from nature:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'There's a bright flower by the side of the road, and she beats
+Deirdre in the beauty of her voice; or I might say Helen, Queen of
+the Greeks, she for whose sake hundreds died at Troy.</p>
+
+<p>'There is light and brightness in her as in those others; her
+little mouth is as sweet as the cuckoo on the branch. You would not
+find a mind like hers in any woman since the pearl died that was in
+Ballylee.</p>
+
+<p>'To see under the sky a woman settled like her walking on the road
+on a fine sunny day, the light flashing from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> whiteness of her
+breast would give sight to a man without eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'There is the love of hundreds in her face, and there is the
+promise of the evening star. If she had been living in the time of
+the gods, it is not Venus that would have had the apple.</p>
+
+<p>'Her hair falls down below her knees, waving and winding to the
+mouth of her shoes; her locks spread out wide and pale like dew,
+they leave a brightness on the road behind her.</p>
+
+<p>'She is the girl that has been taught the nicest of all whose eyes
+still open to the sun; and if the estate of Lord Lucan belonged to
+me, on the strength of my cause this jewel would be mine.</p>
+
+<p>'Her slender lime-white shape, her face like flowers, her neck, her
+cheek, and her amber hair; Virgil, Cicero, and Homer could tell of
+nothing like her; she is like the dew in the time of harvest.</p>
+
+<p>'If you could see this plant moving or dancing, you could not but
+love the flower of the branch. If I cannot get a hundred words with
+Mairin Stanton, I do not think my life will last long.</p>
+
+<p>'She said "Good morrow" early and pleasantly; she drank my health,
+and gave me a stool, and it not in the corner. At the time that I
+am ready to go on my way I will stay talking and talking with her.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The 'pearl that was at Ballylee' was poor Mary Hynes, of whom I have
+already spoken. His song on her is very popular; 'a great song, so that
+her name is sung through the three parishes.' She must have been
+beautiful, for many who knew her still speak of her beauty, of her long,
+shining hair, and the 'little blushes in her cheeks.' An old woman says:
+'I never can think of her but I'll get a trembling, she was so nice; and
+if she was to begin talking, she'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> keep you laughing till daybreak.'
+But others say: 'It was the poet that made her so handsome'; or,
+'whatever she was, he made twice as much of it.' I give one or two
+verses of the song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'There was no part of Ireland I did not travel: from the rivers to
+the tops of the mountains, to the edge of Lough Greine, whose mouth
+is hidden; but I saw no beauty but was behind hers.</p>
+
+<p>'Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too; her face was
+like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet. She is the pride, and I
+give her the branch. She is the shining flower of Ballylee.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Even many miles from Ballylee, if the <i>posin gl&eacute;geal</i>&mdash;the 'shining
+flower'&mdash;is spoken of, it is always known that it is Mary Hynes who is
+meant.</p>
+
+<p>Raftery is said to have spent the last seven years of his life praying
+and making religious songs, because death had told him in a vision that
+he had only seven years to live. His own account of the vision was given
+me by the man at whose house he died. 'I heard him telling my father one
+time, that he was sick in Galway, and there was a mug beside the bed,
+and in the night he heard a noise, and he thought it was the cat was on
+the table, and that she'd upset the mug; and he put his hand out, and
+what he felt was the bones and the thinness of death. And his sight came
+to him, and he saw where his wrapper was hanging on the wall. And death
+said he had come to bring him away, or else one of the neighbours that
+lived in such a house. And after they had talked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> a while, he said he
+would give him a certain time before he'd come for him again, and he
+went away. And in the morning when his wife came in, he asked where did
+she hang his wrapper the night before, and she told him it was in such a
+place, and that was the very place he saw it, so he knew he had had his
+sight. And then he sent to the house that had been spoken of to know how
+was the man of it, and word came back that he was dead. I remember when
+he was dying, a friend of his, one Cooney, came in to see him, and said:
+"Well, Raftery, the time is not up yet that death gave you to live." And
+he said: "The Church and myself have it made out that it was not death
+that was there, but the devil that came to tempt me."</p>
+
+<p>His description of death in his poem on the 'Vision,' is vivid and
+unconventional:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I had a vision in my sleep last night, between sleeping and
+waking, a figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad, and
+sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the
+tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a
+riddle; his nose thin, that it would go through a cambric needle;
+his shoulders hard and sharp, that they would cut tobacco; his head
+dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can
+liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering;
+a withered rod in his hand, and he looking in my face. It is not
+worth my while to be talking about him; I questioned him in the
+name of God.'</p></div>
+
+<p>A long conversation follows; Raftery addresses him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Whatever harbour you came from last night, move up to me and speak
+if you can.' Death answers: "Put away Hebrew,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Greek and Latin,
+French, and the three sorts of English, and I will speak to you
+sweetly in Irish, the language that you found your verses in. I am
+death that has hidden hundreds: Hannibal, Pompey, Julius C&aelig;sar; I
+was in the way with Queen Helen. I made Hector fall, that conquered
+the Greeks, and Conchubar, that was king of Ireland; Cuchulain and
+Goll, Oscar and Diarmuid, and Oisin, that lived after the Fenians;
+and the children of Usnach that brought away Deirdre from
+Conchubar; at a touch from me they all fell." But Raftery answers:
+"O high Prince, without height, without followers, without
+dwelling, without strength, without hands, without force, without
+state: all in the world wouldn't make me believe it, that you'd be
+able to put down the half of them."'</p></div>
+
+<p>But death speaks solemnly to him then, and warns him that:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Life is not a thing that you get a lease of; there will be stones
+and a sod over you yet. Your ears that were so quick to hear
+everything will be closed, deaf, without sound, without hearing;
+your tongue that was so sweet to make verses will be without a word
+in the same way.... Whatever store of money or wealth you have, and
+the great coat up about your ears, death will snap you away from
+the middle of it.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And the poem ends at last with the story of the Passion and a prayer for
+mercy.</p>
+
+<p>He was always ready to confess his sins with the passionate exaggeration
+of St. Paul or of Bunyan. In his 'Talk with the Bush,' when a flood is
+threatened, he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I was thinking, and no blame to me, that my lease of life wouldn't
+be long, and that it was bad work my hands had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> left after them; to
+be committing sins since I was a child, swearing big oaths and
+blaspheming. I never think to go to Mass. Confession at Christmas I
+wouldn't ask to go to. I would laugh at my neighbour's downfall,
+and I'd make nothing of breaking the Ten Commandments. Gambling and
+drinking and all sorts of pleasures that would come across me, I'd
+have my hand in them.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The poem known as his 'Repentance' is in the same strain. It is said to
+have been composed 'one time he went to confession to Father Bartley
+Kilkelly, and he refused him absolution because he was too much after
+women and drink. And that night he made up his "Repentance"; and the
+next day he went again, and Father Pat Burke, the curate, was with
+Father Bartley, and he said: "Well, Raftery, what have you composed of
+late?" and he said: "This is what I composed," and he said the
+Repentance. And then Father Bartley said to the curate: "You may give
+him absolution, where he has his repentance made before the world."'</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the finest of his poems. It begins:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'O King, who art in heaven, ... I scream to Thee again and again
+aloud, For it is Thy grace I am hoping for.</p>
+
+<p>'I am in age, and my shape is withered; many a day I have been
+going astray.... When I was young, my deeds were evil; I delighted
+greatly in quarrels and rows. I liked much better to be playing or
+drinking on a Sunday morning than to be going to Mass.... I was
+given to great oaths, and I did not let lust or drunkenness pass me
+by.... The day has stolen away, and I have not raised the hedge
+until the crop in which Thou didst take delight is destroyed.... I
+am a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> worthless stake in a corner of a hedge, or I am like a boat
+that has lost its rudder, that would he broken against a rock in
+the sea, and that would be drowned in the cold waves.'</p></div>
+
+<p>But in spite of this self-denunciation, people who knew him say 'there
+was no harm in him'; though it it is added: 'but as to a drop of drink,
+he was fond of that to the end.' And in another mood, in his 'Argument
+with Whisky,' he claims, as an excuse for this weakness, the desire for
+companionship felt by a wanderer. 'And the world knows it's not for love
+of what I drink, but for love of the people that do be near me.' And he
+has always a confident belief in final absolution:&mdash;"I pray to you to
+hear me, O Son of God; as you created the moon, the sun, the stars, it
+is no task or trouble for you to ready me."</p>
+
+<p>There are some fine verses in a poem made at the time of an outbreak of
+cholera:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Look at him who was yesterday swift and strong, who would leap
+stone wall, ditch and gap, who was in the evening walking the
+street, and is going under the clay on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>'Death is quicker than the wave of drowning or than any horse,
+however fast, on the racecourse. He would strike a goal against the
+crowd; and no sooner is he there than he is on guard before us.</p>
+
+<p>'He is changing, hindering, rushing, starting, unloosed; the day is
+no better to him than the night; when a person thinks there is no
+fear of him, there he is on the spot laid low with keening.</p>
+
+<p>'Death is a robber who heaps together kings, high princes, and
+country lords; he brings with him the great, the young, and the
+wise, gripping them by the throat before all the people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'It is a pity for him who is tempted with the temptations of the
+world; and the store that will go with him is so weak, and his
+lease of life no better if he were to live for a thousand years,
+than just as if he had slipped over on a visit and back again.</p>
+
+<p>'When you are going to lie down, don't be dumb. Bare your knee and
+bruise the ground. Think of all the deeds that you put by you, and
+that you are travelling towards the meadow of the dead.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Some of his poems of places, usually places in Mayo, the only ones he
+had ever looked on&mdash;for smallpox took his sight away in his
+childhood&mdash;have much charm. 'Cnocin Saibhir,' 'the Plentiful Little
+Hill,' must have sounded like a dream of Tir-nan-og to many a poor
+farmer in a sodden-thatched cottage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'After the Christmas, with the help of Christ, I will never stop if
+I am alive; I will go to the sharp-edged little hill; for it is a
+fine place, without fog falling; a blessed place that the sun
+shines on, and the wind doesn't rise there or any thing of the
+sort.</p>
+
+<p>'And if you were a year there, you would get no rest, only sitting
+up at night and eternally drinking.</p>
+
+<p>'The lamb and the sheep are there; the cow and the calf are there;
+fine lands are there without heath and without bog. Ploughing and
+seed-sowing in the right month, and plough and harrow prepared and
+ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to pay
+it. There is oats and flax and large-eared barley.... There are
+beautiful valleys with good growth in them, and hay. Rods grow
+there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there, and respect
+for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars
+reading their book; spending and getting is there, and nothing
+scarce.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In another song in the same manner on 'Cilleaden,' he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I leave it in my will that my heart rises as the wind rises, or as
+the fog scatters, when I think upon Carra and the two towns below
+it, on the two-mile bush, and on the plains of Mayo.... And if I
+were standing in the middle of my people, age would go from me, and
+I would be young again.'</p></div>
+
+<p>He writes of friends that he has made in Galway as well as in Mayo, a
+weaver, a carpenter, a priest at Kilcolgan who is 'the good Christian,
+the clean wheat of the Gael, the generous messenger, the standing tree
+of the clergy.' Some of his eulogies both on persons and places are
+somewhat spoiled by grotesque exaggeration. Even Cilleaden has not only
+all sorts of native fishes, 'as plenty as turf,' and all sorts of native
+trees, but is endowed with 'tortoises,' with 'logwood and mahogany.' His
+country weaver must not only have frieze and linen in his loom, but
+satin and cambric. A carpenter near Ardrahan, Seaghan Conroy, is praised
+with more simplicity for his 'quick, lucky work,' and for the pleasure
+he takes in it. 'I never met his master; the trade was in his nature';
+and he gives a long list of all the things he could make: doors and all
+that would be wanted for a big house'; mills and ploughs and
+spinning-wheels 'nicely finished with a clean chisel'; 'all sorts of
+things for the living, and a coffin for the dead. And with all this 'he
+cares little for money, but to spend, as he earns, decently. And if he
+was up for nine nights, you wouldn't see the sign of a drop on him.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another of his more simple poems is what Spenser would call an 'elegie
+or friend's passion' on a player on fiddle or pipes, Thomas O'Daly, that
+gives him a touch of kinship with the poets who have mourned their
+Astrophel, their Lycidas, their Adonais, their Thyrsis. This is how I
+have been helped to put it into English by a young working farmer,
+sitting by a turf fire one evening, when his day in the fields was
+over:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It was Thomas O'Daly that roused up young people and scattered
+them, and since death played on him, may God give him grace. The
+country is all sorrowful, always talking, since their man of sport
+died that would win the goal in all parts with his music.</p>
+
+<p>'The swans on the water are nine times blacker than a blackberry
+since the man died from us that had pleasantness on the top of his
+fingers. His two grey eyes were like the dew of the morning that
+lies on the grass. And since he was laid in the grave, the cold is
+getting the upper hand.</p>
+
+<p>'If you travel the five provinces, you would not find his equal for
+countenance or behaviour, for his equal never walked on land or
+grass. High King of Nature, you who have all powers in yourself, he
+that wasn't narrow-hearted, give him shelter in heaven for it.</p>
+
+<p>'He was the beautiful branch. In every quarter that he ever knew he
+would scatter his fill and not gather. He would spend the estate of
+the Dalys, their beer and their wine. And that he may be sitting in
+the chair of grace, in the middle of Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>'A sorrowful story on death, it 's he is the ugly chief that did
+treachery, that didn't give him credit, O strong God, for a little
+time.</p>
+
+<p>'There are young women, and not without reason, sorry and
+heart-broken and withered, since he was left at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> church. Their
+hair thrown down and hanging, turned grey on their head.</p>
+
+<p>'No flower in any garden, and the leaves of the trees have leave to
+cry, and they falling on the ground. There is no green flower on
+the tops of the tufts, since there did a boarded coffin go on Daly.</p>
+
+<p>'There is sorrow on the men of mirth, a clouding over the day, and
+no trout swim in the river. Orpheus on the harp, he lifted up
+everyone out of their habits; and he that stole what Argus was
+watching the time he took away Io; Apollo, as we read, gave them
+teaching, and Daly was better than all these musicians.</p>
+
+<p>'A hundred wouldn't be able to put together his actions and his
+deeds and his many good works. And Raftery says this much for Daly,
+because he liked him.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Though his praises are usually all for the poor, for the people, he has
+left one beautiful lament for a landowner:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be
+seen on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees
+complaining of the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in
+the sky, or no light in the stars coming down, with the stretching
+of O'Kelly in the grave.</p>
+
+<p>'My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring
+grief or trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that
+were down.</p>
+
+<p>'No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no
+children on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants
+don't blossom as they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went
+away; he that used to forgive us a great share of the rent.</p>
+
+<p>'Since the children of Usnach and Deirdre went to the grave and
+Cuchulain, who, as the stories tell us, would gain victory in every
+step he would take; since he died, such a story never came of
+sorrow or defeat; since the Gael were sold at Aughrim, and since
+Owen Roe died, the Branch.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>V.</h4>
+
+<p>His life was always the wandering, homeless life of the old bards. After
+Cromwell's time, as the houses they went to grew poorer, they had added
+music to their verse-making; and Raftery's little fiddle helped to make
+him welcome in the Ireland which was, in spite of many sorrows, as merry
+and light-hearted up to the time of the great famine as England had been
+up to the time of the Puritans. 'He had no place of his own,' I am told,
+'but to be walking the country. He did well to die before the bad years
+came. He used to play at Kiltartan cross for the dancing of a Sunday
+evening. And when he'd come to any place, the people would gather and
+he'd give them a dance; for there was three times as many people in the
+world then as what there is now. The people would never have let him
+want; but as to money, what could he do with it, and he with no place of
+his own?' An old woman near Craughwell says: 'He used to come here
+often; it was like home to him. He wouldn't have a dance then; my father
+liked better to be sitting listening to his talk and his stories; only
+when we'd come in, he'd take the fiddle and say: "Now we must give the
+youngsters a tune."' And an old man, who is still lamenting the fall in
+prices after the Battle of Waterloo, remembers having seen him 'one time
+at a shebeen house that used to be down there in Clonerle. He was
+playing the fiddle, and there used to be two couples at a time dancing;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+and they would put two halfpence in the plate, and Raftery would rattle
+them and say: "It's good for the two sorts to be together," and there
+would be great laughing.' And it is also said 'there was a welcome
+before him in every house he'd come to; and wherever he went, they'd
+think the time too short he would be with them.' There is a story I
+often hear told about the marriage near Cappaghtagle of a poor servant
+boy and girl, 'that was only a marriage and not a wedding, till Raftery
+chanced to come in; and he made it one. There wasn't a bit but bread and
+herrings in the house; but he made a great song about the grand feast
+they had, and he put every sort of thing into the song&mdash;all the beef
+that was in Ireland; and went to the Claddagh, and didn't leave a fish
+in the sea. And there was no one at all at it; but he brought all the
+<i>bacach</i> and poor men in Ireland, and gave them a pound each. He went to
+bed after, without them giving him a drop to drink; but he didn't mind
+that when they hadn't got it to give.'</p>
+
+<p>The wandering, unrestrained life was probably to his mind; and I do not
+think there is a word of discontent or complaint in any of his verses,
+though he was always poor, and must often have known hardship. In the
+'Talk with the Bush,' he describes in his whimsical, exaggerated way, a
+wetting, which must have been one of very many.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It chanced that I was travelling and the rain was heavy; I stepped
+aside, and not without reason, till I'd get a wall or a bush that
+would shelter me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I didn't meet at the side of a gap only an old, withered,
+miserable bush by the side of the wall, and it bent with the west
+wind. I stepped under it, and it was a wet place; torrents of rain
+coming down from all quarters, east and west and straight
+downwards; its equal I couldn't see, unless it is seeds winnowed
+through a riddle. It was sharp, angry, fierce, and stormy, like a
+deer running and racing past me. The storm was drowning the
+country, and my case was pitiful, and I suffering without cause.</p>
+
+<p>'An hour and a quarter it was raining; there isn't a drop that fell
+but would fill a quart and put a heap on it afterwards; there's not
+a wheat or rape mill in the neighbourhood but it would set going in
+the middle of a field.'</p></div>
+
+<p>At last relief comes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It was shortly then the rain grew weak, the sun shone, and the
+wind rose. I moved on, and I smothered and drowned in wet, till I
+came to a little house, and there was a welcome before me. Many
+quarts of water I squeezed from my skirt and my cape. I hung my hat
+on a nail, and I lying in a sweet flowery bed. But I was up again
+in a little while. We began sports and pleasures; and it was with
+pride we spent the night.'</p></div>
+
+<p>But there is a verse in his 'Argument with Whisky' that seems to have a
+wistful thought in it, perhaps of the settled home of his rival,
+Callinan:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Cattle is a nice thing for a man to have, and his share of land to
+reap wheat and barley. Money in the chest, and a fire in the
+evening time; and to be able to give shelter to a man on his road;
+a hat and shoes in the fashion&mdash;I think, indeed, that would be much
+better than to be going from place to place drinking <i>uisge
+beatha</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And there is a little sadness in the verses he made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> in some house, when
+a stranger asked who he was:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I am Raftery the poet, full of hope and love; with eyes without
+light, with gentleness without misery.</p>
+
+<p>'Going west on my journey with the light of my heart; weak and
+tired to the end of my road.</p>
+
+<p>'I am now, and my back to a wall, playing music to empty pockets.'</p></div>
+
+<p>'He was a thin man,' I am told by one who knew him, 'not very tall, with
+a long frieze coat and corduroy trousers. He was very strong; and he
+told my father there was never any man he wrestled with but he could
+throw him, and that he could lie on his back and throw up a bag with
+four hundred of wheat in it, and take it up again. He couldn't see a
+stim; but he would walk all the roads, and give the right turn, without
+ever touching the wall. My father was wondering at him one time they
+were out together; and he said: "Wait till we come to the turn to
+Athenry, and don't tell me of it, and see if I don't make it out right."
+And sure enough, when they came to it, he gave the right turn, and just
+in the middle.' This is explained by what another man tells me:&mdash;'There
+was a blind piper with him one time in Gort, and they set out together
+to go to Ballylee, and it was late, and they couldn't find the stile
+that led down there, near Early's house. And they would have stopped
+there till somebody would come by, but Raftery said he'd go back to Gort
+and step it again; and so he did, turned back a mile to Gort, and
+started from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> there. He counted every step that he stepped out; and when
+he got to the stile, he stopped straight before it.' And I was told also
+there used to be a flagstone put beside the bog-holes to leap from, and
+Raftery would leap as well as any man. He would count his steps back
+from the flag, and take a run and alight on the other side.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI.</h4>
+
+<p>His knowledge and his poetic gift are often supposed to have been given
+to him by the invisible powers, who grow visible to those who have lost
+their earthly sight. An old woman who had often danced to his music,
+said:&mdash;'When he went to his rest at night, it's then he'd make the songs
+in the turn of a hand, and you would wonder in the morning where he got
+them.' And a man who 'was too much taken up with sport and hurling when
+he was a boy to think much about him,' says: 'He got the gift. It's said
+he was asked which would he choose, music or the talk. If he chose
+music, he would have been the greatest musician in the world; but he
+chose the talk, and so he was a great poet. Where could he have found
+all the words he put in his songs if it wasn't for that?' An old woman,
+who is more orthodox, says:&mdash;'I often used to see him when I was a
+little child, in my father's house at Corker. He'd often come in there,
+and here to Coole House he used to come as well. He couldn't see a
+stim,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> and that is why he had such great knowledge. God gave it to him.
+And his songs have gone all through the world; and he had a voice that
+was like the wind.'</p>
+
+<p>Legends are already growing up about his death. It has been said that
+'he knew the very day his time would be up; and he went to Galway, and
+brought a plank to the house he was stopping at, and he put it in the
+loft; and he told the people of the house his time was come, and bid
+them make a coffin for him with the plank&mdash;and he was dead before
+morning.' And another story says he died alone in an empty house, and
+that flames were seen about the house all night; and 'the flames were
+the angels waking him.' But many told me he had died in the house of a
+man near Craughwell; and one autumn day I went there to look for it, and
+the first person I asked was able to tell me that the house where
+Raftery had died was the other side of Craughwell, a mile and a half
+away. It was a warm, hazy day; and as I walked along the flat, deserted
+road that Raftery had often walked, I could see few landmarks&mdash;only a
+few more grey rocks, or a few more stunted hazel bushes in one
+stone-walled field than in another. At last I came to a thatched
+cottage; and when I saw an old man sitting outside it, with hat and coat
+of the old fashion, I felt sure it was he who had been with Raftery at
+the last. He was ready to talk about him, and told me how he had come
+there to die. 'I was a young chap at that time. It must have been in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> year 1835, for my father died in '36, and I think it was a year
+before him that Raftery died. What did he die of? Of weakness. He had
+been bet up in Galway with some fit of sickness he had; and then he came
+to gather a little money about the country, and when he got here he was
+bet up again. He wasn't an old man&mdash;only about seventy years. He was in
+the bed for about a fortnight. When he got bad, my father said it was
+best get a priest for him; but the parish priest was away. But we saw
+Father Nagle passing the road, and I went out and brought him in, and he
+gave him absolution, and anointed him. He had no pain; only his feet
+were cold, and the boys used to be warming a stone in the fire and
+putting it to them in the bed. My mother wanted to send to Galway, where
+his wife and his daughter and his son were stopping, so that they would
+come and care him; but he wouldn't have them. Someway he didn't think
+they treated him well.'</p>
+
+<p>I had been told that the priest had refused him absolution when he was
+dying, until he forgave some enemy; and that he had said afterwards, 'If
+I forgave him with my mouth, I didn't with my heart'; but this was not
+true. 'Father Nagle made no delay in anointing him; but there was a
+carpenter down the road there he said too much to, and annoyed him one
+time; and the carpenter had a touch of the poet too, and was a great
+singer, and he came out and beat him, and broke his fiddle; and I
+remember when he was dying, the priest bringing in the carpenter, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+making them forgive one another, and shake hands; and the carpenter
+said: "If two brothers were to have a falling out, they'd forgive one
+another&mdash;and why wouldn't we?" He was buried in Killeenan; it wasn't a
+very big funeral, but all the people of the village came to it. He used
+often to come and stop with us.... It was of a Christmas Eve he died:
+and he had always said that, if God had a hand in it, it was of a
+Christmas Day he'd die.'</p>
+
+<p>I went to Killeenan to look for his grave. There is nothing to mark it;
+but two old men who had been at his funeral pointed it out to me. There
+is a ruined church in the graveyard, which is crowded; 'there are people
+killing one another now to get a place in it.' I was asked into a house
+close by; and its owner said with almost a touch of jealousy: 'I think
+it was coming in here Raftery was the time he died; but he got bet up,
+and turned in at the house below. It was of a Christmas Eve he died, and
+that shows he was blessed; there's a blessing on them that die at
+Christmas. It was at night he was buried, for Christmas Day no work
+could be done, but my father and a few others made a little gathering to
+pay for a coffin, and it was made by a man in the village on St.
+Stephen's Day; and then he was brought here, and the people from the
+villages followed him, for they all had a wish for Raftery. But night
+was coming on when they got here; and in digging the grave there was a
+big stone in it, and the boys thought they would put him in a barn and
+take the night out of him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> But my mother&mdash;the Lord have mercy on
+her&mdash;had a great veneration for Raftery; and she sent out two mould
+candles lighted; for in those days the women used to have their own
+mould, and to make their own candles for Christmas. And we held the
+candles there where the grave is, near the gable end of the church; and
+my brother went down in the grave and got the stone out, and we buried
+him. And there was a sharp breeze blowing at the time, but it never
+quenched the candles or moved the flame of them, and that shows that the
+Lord had a hand in him.'</p>
+
+<p>He and all the neighbours were glad to hear that there is soon to be a
+stone over the grave. 'He is worthy of it; he is well worthy of it,'
+they kept saying. A man who was digging sand by the roadside, took me to
+his house, and his wife showed me a little book, in which the
+'Repentance' and other poems had been put down for her, in phonetic
+Irish, by a beggar who had once stayed in the house. 'Many who go to
+America hear Raftery's songs sung out there,' they told me with pride.</p>
+
+<p>As I went back along the silent road, there was suddenly a sound of
+horses and a rushing and waving about me, and I found myself in the
+midst of the County Galway Fox Hounds, coming back from cub-hunting. The
+English M.F.H. and his wife rode by; and I wondered if they had ever
+heard of the poet whose last road this had been. Most likely not; for it
+is only among the people that his name has been kept in remembrance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is still a peasant poet here and there, making songs in the 'sweet
+Irish tongue,' in which death spoke to Raftery; and I think these will
+be held in greater honour as the time of awakening goes on. But the
+nineteenth century has been a time of swift change in many countries;
+and in looking back on that century in Ireland, there seem to have been
+two great landslips&mdash;the breaking of the continuity of the social life
+of the people by the famine, and the breaking of the continuity of their
+intellectual life by the shoving out of the language. It seems as if
+there were no place left now for the wandering versemaker, and that
+Raftery may have closed the long procession that had moved unbroken
+during so many centuries, on its journey to 'the meadow of the dead.'</p>
+
+<p>1900.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was after I had written this that I went to see Raftery's birthplace,
+Cilleaden, in the County Mayo.</p>
+
+<p>A cousin of his came to see me, and some other men, but none of them
+remembered him; but they were very proud of his song on Cilleaden, which
+'is all through the world.' An old woman told me she had heard it in a
+tramcar in America; and an old man said: 'I was coming back from England
+one time, and there were a lot of Irish-speaking boys from Galway on
+board. There was one of them sick all through the night, but he was well
+in the morning; and the others came round him and asked him for a song,
+and the song he gave was 'Cilleaden.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They did not seem to know many of his other songs, except the
+'Repentance,' which someone remembered having seen sold as a ballad,
+with the English on one side and the Irish on the other. And one man
+told me: 'The first song Raftery wrote was about a hat that was stole
+from a man that was working in that middle field beyond. When the man
+was digging, he used to put his hat on a stick in the field to frighten
+away the crows; and Raftery got someone to bring away the hat, to make
+fun of the man. And then he made a song, making out it was the fairies
+had taken it; and he made the man follow them to Cruachmaa, and from
+that to Roscommon, and tell all that happened him there.'</p>
+
+<p>And one of them told me: 'He was six years old when the smallpox took
+his sight from him; and he was marked very little by the pox, only three
+or four little marks&mdash;it seemed to settle in his eyes. His father was a
+cottier&mdash;there were many here in those times. His mother was a Brennan.
+There are cousins of his living yet; but in the schools they are
+Englished into Rochford.'</p>
+
+<p>A young man said he had been told Raftery was born in some place beyond,
+at the foot of the mountain, but the others were very indignant; one got
+very angry, and said: 'Don't I know where he was born, and my father was
+the one age with him, and they sisters' sons; and isn't Michael Conroy
+there below his cousin? and it's up in that field was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> house he was
+born in, so don't be trying to bring him away to the mountain.'</p>
+
+<p>I went to see the birthplace, a very green field, with two thorn bushes
+growing close together by a stone. The field is called 'Sean
+Straid'&mdash;the old street&mdash;for a few cottages had stood there. A man who
+lives close by told me he had dug up a blackened stone just there, and a
+stone into which a bar had been let, to hang a pot on; and that may have
+been the very hearth where Raftery had sat as a child.</p>
+
+<p>I found one old man who remembered him. 'He used to come to my father's
+house often, mostly from Easter to Whitsuntide, when the cakes were
+made, and there would be music and dancing. He used to play the fiddle
+for Frank Taafe that lived here, when he would be going out riding, and
+the horse used to prance when he heard it. And he made verses against
+one Seaghan Bradach, that used to be paid thirteen pence for every head
+of cattle he found straying in the Jordan's fields, and used to drive
+them in himself. There was another poet called Devine that praised
+Seaghan Bradach; and a verse was made against him again by a woman-poet
+that lived here at the time.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There is a stone over Raftery's grave now; and the people about
+Killeenan gather there on a Sunday in August every year to do honour to
+his memory. This year they established a <i>Feis</i>; and there were prizes
+given for traditional singing, and for old poems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> repeated, and old
+stories told, all in the Irish tongue.</p>
+
+<p>And the <i>Craoibhin Aoibhin</i> is printing week by week all of Raftery's
+poems that can be found, with translations, and we shall soon have them
+in a book.</p>
+
+<p>And he has written a little play, having Raftery for its subject; and at
+a Galway Feis this year he himself acted, and took the blind poet's
+part; and he will act it many times again, <i>le congnamh De</i>&mdash;with the
+help of God.</p>
+
+<p>1902.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+<h2>WEST IRISH BALLADS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was only a few years ago, when Douglas Hyde published his literal
+translations of Connacht Love Songs, that I realized that, while I had
+thought poetry was all but dead in Ireland, the people about me had been
+keeping up the lyrical tradition that existed in Ireland before Chaucer
+lived. While I had been looking in the columns of Nationalist newspapers
+for some word of poetic promise, they had been singing songs of love and
+sorrow in the language that has been pushed nearer and nearer to the
+western seaboard&mdash;the edge of the world. 'Eyes have we, but we see not;
+ears have we, but we do not understand.' It does not comfort me to think
+how many besides myself, having spent a lifetime in Ireland, must make
+this confession.</p>
+
+<p>The ballads to be gathered now are a very few out of the great mass of
+traditional poetry that was swept away during the last century in the
+merciless sweeping away of the Irish tongue, and of all that was bound
+up with it, by England's will, by Ireland's need, by official pedantry.</p>
+
+<p>To give an idea of the ballads of to-day, I will not quote from the
+translations of Douglas Hyde or of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> Dr. Sigerson already published. I
+will rather give a few of the more homely ballads, sung and composed by
+the people, and, as far as I know, not hitherto translated.</p>
+
+<p>Those I have heard since I have begun to look for them in the cottages,
+are, for the most part, sad; but not long ago I heard a girl sing a
+merry one, in a mocking tone, about a boy on the mountain, who neglected
+the girls of his village to run after a strange girl from Galway; and
+the girls of the village were vexed, and they made a song about him; and
+he went to Galway after her, and there she laughed at him, and said he
+had never gone to school or to the priest, and she would have nothing to
+do with him. So then he went back to the village, and asked the smith's
+daughter to marry him; but she said she would not, and that he might go
+back to the strange girl from Galway. Another song I have heard was a
+lament over a boy and girl who had run away to America, and on the way
+the ship went down. And when they were going down, they began to be
+sorry they were not married; and to say that if the priest had been at
+home when they went away, they would have been married; but they hoped
+that when they were drowned, it would be the same with them as if they
+were married. And I heard another lament that had been made for three
+boys that had lately been drowned in Galway Bay. It is the mother who is
+making it; and she tells how she lost her husband, the father of her
+three boys. And then she married<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> again, and they went to sea and were
+drowned; and she wouldn't mind about the others so much, but it is the
+eldest boy, Peter, she is grieving for. And I have heard one song that
+had a great many verses, and was about 'a poet that is dying, and he
+confessing his sins.'</p>
+
+<p>The first ballad I give deals with sorrow and defeat and death; for
+sorrow is never far from song in Ireland; and the names best praised and
+kept in memory are of those&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Lonely antagonists of destiny<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That went down scornful under many spears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who soon as we are born are straight our friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And live in simple music, country songs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mournful ballads by the winter fire.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In this simple lament, the type of a great many, only the first name of
+the young man it was made for is given: 'Fair-haired Donough.' It is
+likely the people of his own place know still to what family he
+belonged; but I have not heard it sung, and only know that he was 'some
+Connachtman that was hanged in Galway.' And it is clear it was for some
+political crime he was hanged, by the suggestion that if he had been
+tried nearer his own home, 'in the place he had a right to be,' the
+issue would have been different, and by the allusion to the Gall, the
+English:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It was bound fast here you saw him, and you wondered to see him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a hempen rope in the place of a neckcloth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span><span class="i0">'I am after walking here all through the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a young lamb in a great flock of sheep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My breast open, my hair loosened out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how did I find my brother but stretched before me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The first place I cried my fill was at the top of the lake;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The second place was at the foot of the gallows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The third place was at the head of your dead body<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the Gall, and my own head as if cut in two.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If you were with me in the place you had a right to be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down in Sligo or down in Ballinrobe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is the gallows would be broken, it is the rope would be cut,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fair-haired Donough going home by the path.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O fair-haired Donough, it is not the gallows was fit for you;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But to be going to the barn, to be threshing out the straw;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be turning the plough to the right hand and to the left,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be putting the red side of the soil uppermost.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O fair-haired Donough, O dear brother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is well I know who it was took you away from me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drinking from the cup, putting a light to the pipe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And walking in the dew in the cover of the night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O Michael Malley, O scourge of misfortune!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My brother was no calf of a vagabond cow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But a well-shaped boy on a height or a hillside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To knock a low pleasant sound out of a hurling-stick.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And fair-haired Donough, is not that the pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You that would carry well a spur or a boot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would put clothes in the fashion on you from cloth that would be lasting;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would send you out like a gentleman's son.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O Michael Malley, may your sons never be in one another's company;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May your daughters never ask a marriage portion of you;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The two ends of the table are empty, the house is filled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fair-haired Donough, my brother, is stretched out.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span><span class="i0">'There is a marriage portion coming home for Donough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But it is not cattle nor sheep nor horses;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But tobacco and pipes and white candles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it will not be begrudged to them that will use it.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A very pathetic touch is given by the idea of the 'marriage portion,'
+the provision for the wake, being brought home for the dead boy.</p>
+
+<p>But it is chiefly in Aran, and on the opposite Connemara coast, that
+Irish ballads are still being made as well as sung. The little rock
+islands of Aran are fit strongholds for the threatened language,
+breakwaters of Europe, taking as they do the first onset of the ocean
+'that hath no limits nearer than America.' The fisher-folk go out in
+their canvas curraghs to win a living from the Atlantic, or painfully
+carry loads of sand and seaweed to make the likeness of an earth-plot on
+the bare rock. The Irish coast seems far away; the setting sun very
+near. When a sea-fog blots out the mainland for a day, a feeling grows
+that the island may have slipped anchor, and have drifted into
+unfamiliar seas. The fisher-folk are not the only dwellers upon the
+islands; they are the home, the chosen resting-place, of 'the Others,'
+the Fairies, the Fallen Angels, the mighty Sidhe. From here they sweep
+across the sea, invisible or taking at pleasure the form of a cloud, of
+a full-rigged ship, of a company of policemen, of a flock of gulls.
+Sometimes they only play with mortals; sometimes they help them. But
+often, often, the fatal touch is given to the first-born child,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> or to
+the young man in his strength, or the girl in her beauty, or the young
+mother in her pride; and the call is heard to leave the familiar
+fireside life for the whirling, vain, unresting life of the irresistible
+host.</p>
+
+<p>It is, perhaps, because of the very mistiness and dreaminess of their
+surroundings, the almost unearthly silences, the fantasy of story and of
+legend that lie about them, that the people of Aran and the Galway coast
+almost shrink from idealism in their fireside songs, and choose rather
+to dwell upon the slight incidents of daily life. It is in the songs of
+the greener plains that the depths of passion and heights of idealism
+have been reached.</p>
+
+<p>It is at weddings that songs are most in use&mdash;even the saddest not being
+thought out of place; and at the evening gathering in one cottage or
+another, while the pipe, lighted at the turf-fire, is passed from hand
+to hand. Here is one that is a great favourite, though very simple, and
+somewhat rugged in metre; for it touches on the chief events of an
+islander's life&mdash;emigration, loss of life by sea, the land jealousy. It
+is called 'a sorrowful song that Bridget O'Malley made'; and she tells
+in it of her troubles at the Boston factory, of her lasting sorrow for
+her drowned brothers, and her as lasting anger against her sister's
+husband.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Do you remember, neighbours, the day I left the white strand? I
+did not find anyone to give me advice, or to tell me not to go. But
+with the help of God, as I have my health, and the help of the King
+of Grace, whichever State I will go to, I will never turn back
+again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember, girls, that day long ago when I was sick and when
+the priest said, and the doctor, that with care I would come
+through? I got up after; I went to work at the factory, until
+Sullivan wrote a letter that put me down a step.</p>
+
+<p>'And Bab O'Donnell rose up and put a shawl about her. She went to
+the office till she got work for me to do; there was never a woman
+I was with that would not shake hands with me; now I am at work
+again, and no thanks to Sullivan.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a great shame to look down on Ireland, and I think myself it
+is not right; for the potatoes are growing in the gardens there,
+and the women milking the cows. That is not the way in Boston, but
+you may earn it or leave it there; and if the man earns a dollar,
+the woman will be out drinking it.</p>
+
+<p>'My curse on the curraghs, and my blessings on the boats; my curse
+on that hooker that did the treachery; for it was she snapped away
+my four brothers from me; the best they were that ever could be
+found. But what does Kelly care, so long as he himself is in their
+place?</p>
+
+<p>'My grief on you, my brothers, that did not come again to land; I
+would have put a boarded coffin on you out of the hand of the
+carpenter; the young women of the village would have keened you,
+and your people and your friends; and is it not Bridget O'Malley
+you left miserable in the world?</p>
+
+<p>'It is very lonely after Pat and Tom I am, and in great trouble for
+them, to say nothing of my fair-haired Martin that was drowned long
+ago; I have no sister, and I have no other brother, no mother; my
+father weak and bent down; and, O God, what wonder for him!</p>
+
+<p>'My curse on my sister's husband; for it was he made the boat; my
+own curse again on himself and on his tribe. He married my sister
+on me, and he sent my brothers to death on me; and he came himself
+into the farm that belonged to my father and my mother!</p></div>
+
+<p>A Connemara schoolmaster tells me: 'At Killery Bay one time, I went into
+a house where there was an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> old man that had just lost his son by
+drowning. And he was sitting over the fire with his head in his hands,
+making a lament. I remember one verse of it that said: "My curse on the
+man that made the boat, that he did not tell me there was death lurking
+in it." I asked afterwards what the meaning of that was, and they said
+there is a certain board in every boat that the maker gives three blows
+of his hammer on, after he is done making it. And he knows someway by
+the sound of the blows if anyone will lose his life in that boat.' It is
+likely Bridget O'Malley had this idea in her mind when she made her
+lament.</p>
+
+<p>Another little emigration song, very simple and charming, tells of the
+return of a brother from America. He finds his pretty brown sister, his
+'cailin deas donn,' gathering rushes in a field, but she does not know
+him; and after they have exchanged words of greeting, he asks where her
+brother is, and she says 'beyond the sea'; then he asks if she would
+know him again, and she says she she would surely; and he asks by what
+sign, and she tells of a mark on his white neck. When she finds it is
+her brother who is there and speaking to her, she cries out, 'Kill me on
+the moment,' meaning that she is ready to die with joy.</p>
+
+<p>This is the lament of a woman whose bridegroom was drowned as he was
+rowing the priest home, on the wedding day:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I am widow and maid, and I very young; did you hear my great
+grief, that my treasure was drowned? If I had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> been in the boat
+that day, and my hand on the rope, my word to you, O'Reilly, it is
+I would have saved you sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember the day the street was full of riders, and of
+priests and brothers, and all talking of the wedding feast? The
+fiddle was there in the middle, and the harp answering to it; and
+twelve mannerly women to bring my love to his bed.</p>
+
+<p>'But you were of those three that went across to Kilcomin, ferrying
+Father Peter, who was three-and-eighty years old; if you came back
+within a month itself, I would be well content; but is it not a
+pity I to be lonely, and my first love in the waves?</p>
+
+<p>'I would not begrudge you, O'Reilly, to be kinsman to a king; white
+bright courts around you, and you lying at your ease; a quiet,
+well-learned lady to be settling out your pillow; but it is a great
+thing you to die from me when I had given you my love entirely.</p>
+
+<p>'It is no wonder a broken heart to be with your father and your
+mother; the white-breasted mother that crooned you, and you a baby;
+your wedded wife, O thousand treasures, that never set out your
+bed; and the day you went to Trabawn, how well it failed you to
+come home.</p>
+
+<p>'Your eyes are with the eels, and your lips with the crabs; and
+your two white hands under the sharp rule of the salmon. Five
+pounds I would give to him that would find my true love. Ohone! it
+is you are a sharp grief to young Mary ni-Curtain!'</p></div>
+
+<p>Some men and women who were drowned in the river Corrib, on their way to
+a fair at Galway, in the year 1820, have still their names kept green in
+a ballad:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Mary Ruane, that you would stand in a fair to look at, the
+best-dressed woman in the place; John Cosgrave, the best a woman
+ever reared; your mother thought that if a hundred were drowned,
+your swimming would take the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> sway; but the boat went down, and
+when I got up early on Friday, I heard the keening and the clapping
+of women's hands, with the women that were drowsy and tired after
+the night there, without doing anything but laying out the dead.'</p></div>
+
+<p>There are laments for other things besides death. A man taken up 'not
+for sheep-stealing or any crime, but just for making a drop of
+<i>poteen</i>,' tells of his hardships in Galway gaol. A lover who has
+enlisted because he cannot get the girl he loves&mdash;'a pity I not to be
+going to Galway with my heart's love on my arm'&mdash;tells of his hardships
+in the army: 'The first day I enlisted I was well pleased and satisfied;
+the second day I was vexed and tormented; and the third day I would have
+given a pound if I had it to get my pardon.' And I have heard a song
+'made by a woman out of her wits, that lost her husband and married
+again, and her three sons enlisted,' who cannot forgive herself for
+having driven them from home. 'If it was in Ballinakill I had your
+bones, I would not be half so much tormented after you; but you to be
+standing in the army of the Gall, and getting nothing after it but the
+bit in your mouth.'</p>
+
+<p>Here is a song of daily life, in which a girl laments the wandering and
+covetous appetite of her cow:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It is following after the white cow I spent last night; and,
+indeed, all I got by it was the bones of an old goose. Do you hear
+me, Michael Taylor? Give word to your uncle John that, unless he
+can lay his hand on her, Nancy will lose her wits.</p>
+
+<p>'It's what she is wanting, is the three islands of Aran for
+herself; Brisbeg, that is in Maimen, and the glens of Maam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> Cross;
+all round about Oughterard, and the hills that are below it; John
+Blake's farm where she often does be bellowing; and as far as
+Ballinamuca, where the long grass is growing; and it's in the wood
+of Barna she'd want to spend her life.</p>
+
+<p>'And when I was sore with walking through the dark hours of the
+night, it's the coastguard came crying after her, and he maybe with
+a bit of her in his mouth.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The little sarcastic hit at the coastguard, who may himself have stolen
+the cow he joins in the search for, is characteristic of Aran humour.
+The comic song, as we know it, is unknown on the islands; the nearest to
+it I have heard there is about the awkward meeting of two suitors, a
+carpenter and a country lad, at their sweetheart's house, and of the
+clever management of her mother, who promised to give her to the one who
+sang the best song, and how the country lad won her.</p>
+
+<p>Douglas Hyde, who is almost a folk-poet, the people have taken so many
+of his songs to their heart, has caught this sarcastic touch in this
+'love' song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'O sweet queen, to whom I gave my love; O dear queen, the flower of
+fine women; listen to my keening, and look on my case; as you are
+the woman I desire, free me from death.</p>
+
+<p>'He speaks so humbly, humble entirely. Without mercy or pity she
+looks on him with contempt. She puts mispleading in her cold
+answer; there is a drop of poison in every quiet word:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'"O man, wanting sense, put from you your share of love; it is bold
+you are entirely to say such a thing as that; you will not get hate
+from me; you will not get love from me; you will not get anything
+at all, good or bad, for ever."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I was myself the same night at the house of drink; and I saw the
+man, and he under the table. Laid down by the strength of wine, and
+without a twist in him itself; it was she did that much with the
+talk of her mouth.'</p></div>
+
+<p>There is another that I thought was meant to provoke laughter, the
+lament of a girl for her 'beautiful comb' that had been carried off by
+her lover, whom she had refused to marry, 'until we take a little more
+out of our youth,' and invites instead to 'come with me to Eochaill
+reaping the yellow harvest.' Then he steals the comb, and the mother
+gives her wise advice how to get it back:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'He will go this road to-morrow, and let you welcome him; settle
+down a wooden chair in the middle of the house; snatch the hat from
+him, and do not give him any ease until you get back the beautiful
+comb that was high on the back of your head.'</p></div>
+
+<p>But an Aran man has told me: 'No, this is a very serious song; it was
+meant to praise the girl, and to tell what a loss she had in the comb.'</p>
+
+<p>I am told that the song that makes most mirth in Aran is 'The
+Carrageen'; the day-dream of an old woman, too old to carry out her
+purpose, of all she will buy when she has gathered a harvest of the
+Carrageen moss, used by invalids:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If I had two oars and a little boat of my own, I would go pulling
+the Carrageen; I would dry it up in the sun; I would bring a load
+of it to Galway; it would go away in the train, to pay the rent to
+Robinson, and what is over would be my own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'It is long I am hearing talk of the Carrageen, and I never knew
+what it was. If I spent the last spring-tide at it, and I to take
+care of myself, I would buy a gown and a long cloak and a wide
+little shawl; that, and a dress cap, with frills on every side like
+feathers.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 25%;' />
+
+<p>'(This is what the Calleac said, that was over a hundred years
+old:&mdash;)</p>
+
+<p>'"I lost the last spring-tide with it, and I went into sharp
+danger. I did not know what the Carrageen was, or anything at all
+like it; but I will have tobacco from this out, if I lose the half
+of my fingers!"'</p></div>
+
+<p>This is a little song addressed by a fisherman to his little boat, his
+curragh-cin:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'There goes my curragh-cin, it is she will get the prize; she will
+he to-night in America, and back again with the tide....</p>
+
+<p>'I put pins of oak in her, and oars of red pine; and I made her
+ready for sailing; for she is the six-oared curragh-cin that never
+gave heed to the storm; and it is she will be coming to land, when
+the sailing boats will be lost.</p>
+
+<p>'There was a man came from England to buy my little boat from me;
+he offered me twenty guineas for her; there were many looking on.
+If he would offer me as much again, and a guinea over and above, he
+would not get my curragh-cin till she goes out and kills the
+shark.'</p></div>
+
+<p>For a shark will sometimes flounder into the fishing-nets and tear his
+way out; and even a whale is sometimes seen. I remember an Aran man
+beginning some story he was telling me with: 'I was going down that path
+one time, with the priest and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> few others; for a whale had come
+ashore, and the jaw-bones of it were wanted, to make the piers of a
+gate.'</p>
+
+<p>As for the love-songs of our coast and island people, they seem to be
+for the most part a little artificial in method, a little strained in
+metaphor perhaps so giving rise to the Scotch Gaelic saying: 'as
+loveless as an Irishman.' Love of country, <i>tir-gradh</i>, is I think the
+real passion; and bound up with it are love of home, of family, love of
+God. Constancy and affection in marriage are the rule; yet marriage 'for
+love' is all but unknown; marriage is a matter of commonsense
+arrangement between the heads of families. As Mr. Yeats puts it, the
+countryman's 'dream has never been entangled by reality.' However this
+may be, my Aran friends tell me: 'The people do not care for love-songs;
+they would rather have any others.'</p>
+
+<p>Yet I have just seen some love-songs, taken down the other day by a
+Kinvara man from a Connemara man, that have some charming lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Going over the hills after parting from the store of my heart, there is
+a mist on them and the darkness of night.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is my sharp grief, my thousand treasures, my road not to be to the
+door of your house; it is with you I wore out my shoes from the
+beginning of my youth until now.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is not sorry I would be if there was the length of a year in the
+day, and the leaves of the trees dropping honey; I myself on the side
+where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> blossoms are falling, my love beside me, and a little green
+branch in her hand.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'She goes by me like a little breeze of the wind.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this line that in a country of separations is already, they tell me,
+'passing into a proverb':&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It is far from one another our rising is every day.'</p></div>
+
+<p>But the tradition of classical allusions, brought in some centuries ago,
+joined to the exaggeration that has been the breath of Irish poets, from
+the time Naoise called Deirdre 'a woman brighter than the sun,' has
+brought monotony into most of the love-songs.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal country girl, with her dew-grey eye and long amber hair, is
+always likened to Venus, to Juno, to Deirdre. 'I think she is nine times
+nicer than Deirdre,' says Raftery, 'or I may say Helen, the affliction
+of the Greeks'; and he writes of another country girl, that she is
+'beyond Venus, in spite of all Homer wrote on her appearance, and
+Cassandra also, and Io that bewitched Mars; beyond Minerva, and Juno,
+the king's wife'; and he wishes 'they might be brought face to face with
+her, that they might be confused':&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'She comes to me like a star through the mist; her hair is golden
+and goes down to her shoes; her breast is the colour of white
+sugar, or like bleached bone on the card-table; her neck is whiter
+than the froth of the flood, or the swan coming from swimming....
+If France and Spain belonged to me, I'd give it up to be along with
+you.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And he gives 'a thousand praises to God, that I didn't lose my wits on
+account of her.' Raftery puts distinction into each one of his songs;
+but when lesser poets, echoing the voices of so many generations, bring
+in the same goddesses, and the same exaggerations, and the same amber
+hair, monotony brings weariness at last.</p>
+
+<p>There is an Aran song, 'Brigid na Casad,' that has more originality than
+is usual:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Brigid's kiss was sweeter than the whole of the waters of Lough
+Erne; or the first wheaten flour, worked with fresh honey into
+dough; there are streams of bees' honey on every part of the
+mountain, there is brown sugar thrown on all you take, Brigid, in
+your hand.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not more likely for water to change than for the mind of a
+woman; and is it not a young man without courage will not run the
+chance nine times? It's not nicer than you the swan is when he
+comes to the shore swimming; it's not nicer than you the thrush is,
+and he singing from tree to tree.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And here is another, homely in the extreme in the beginning, and
+suddenly rising to wild exaggeration:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Late on the evening of last Monday, and it raining, I chanced to
+come into Seaghan's and I sat down. It is there I saw her near me
+in the corner of the hearth; and her laugh was better to me than to
+have her eyes down; her hair was shining like the wool of a sheep,
+and brighter than the swan swimming. It is then I asked who owned
+her, and it is with Frank Conneely she was.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a good house belongs to Frank Conneely, the people say that
+do be going to it; plenty of whiskey and punch going round, and
+food without stint for a man to get; and it is what I think the
+girl is learned, for she has knowledge of books<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> and of the pen,
+and a schoolmaster coming to teach her every day.</p>
+
+<p>'The troop is on the sea, sailing eternally, and looking always on
+my Nora Ban. Is it not a great sin, she to be on a bare mountain,
+and not to be dressed in white silk, and the king of the French
+coming to the island for her, from France or from Germany?</p>
+
+<p>'Is it not nice the jewel looked at the races and at the church in
+Barna? She took the sway there as far as the big town. Is she not
+the nice flower with the white breast, the comeliness of a woman?
+and the sun of summer pleased with her, shining on her at every
+side, and hundreds of men in love with her.</p>
+
+<p>'It is I would like to run through the hills with her, and to go
+the roads with her; and it is I would put a cloak around my Nora
+Ban.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The very <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>, the simplicity of these ballads, make one feel that
+the peasants who make and sing them may be trembling on the edge of a
+great discovery; and that some day&mdash;perhaps very soon&mdash;one born among
+them will put their half-articulate, eternal sorrows and laments and
+yearnings into words that will be their expression for ever, as was done
+for the Hebrew people when the sorrow of exile was put into the hundred
+and thirty-seventh Psalm, and the sorrow of death into the lament for
+Saul and Jonathan, and the yearning of love into what was once known as
+'the ballad of ballads,' the Song of Solomon.</p>
+
+<p>I have one ballad at least to give, that shows, even in my prose
+translation, how near that day may be, if the language that holds the
+soul of our West Irish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> people can be saved from the 'West Briton'
+destroyer. There are some verses in it that attain to the intensity of
+great poetry, though I think less by the creation of one than by the
+selection of many minds; the peasants who have sung or recited their
+songs from one generation to another, having instinctively sifted away
+by degrees what was trivial, and kept only what was real, for it is in
+this way the foundations of literature are laid. I first heard of this
+ballad from the South; but when I showed it to an Aran man, he said it
+was well known there, and that his mother had often sung it to him when
+he was a child. It is called 'The Grief of a Girl's Heart':&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and
+do not forget it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and
+market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at
+night.</p>
+
+<p>'It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was
+speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird
+through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you
+find me.</p>
+
+<p>'You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be
+before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three
+hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating
+lamb.</p>
+
+<p>'You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold
+under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and
+a fine white court by the side of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>'You promised me a thing that is not possible, that you would give
+me gloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of
+the skin of a bird; and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>'O Donall og, it is I would be better to you than a high,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> proud,
+spendthrift lady: I would milk the cow; I would bring help to you;
+and if you were hard pressed, I would strike a blow for you.</p>
+
+<p>'O, ochone, and it's not with hunger or with wanting food, or
+drink, or sleep, that I am growing thin, and my life is shortened;
+but it is the love of a young man has withered me away.</p>
+
+<p>'It is early in the morning that I saw him coming, going along the
+road on the back of a horse; he did not come to me; he made nothing
+of me; and it is on my way home that I cried my fill.</p>
+
+<p>'When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness, I sit down and I go
+through my trouble; when I see the world and do not see my boy, he
+that has an amber shade in his hair.</p>
+
+<p>'It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you; the Sunday that is
+last before Easter Sunday. And myself on my knees reading the
+Passion; and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.</p>
+
+<p>'O, aya! my mother, give myself to him; and give him all that you
+have in the world; get out yourself to ask for alms, and do not
+come back and forward looking for me.</p>
+
+<p>'My mother said to me not to be talking with you to-day, or
+to-morrow, or on the Sunday; it was a bad time she took for telling
+me that; it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.</p>
+
+<p>'My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe, or as the black
+coal that is on the smith's forge; or as the sole of a shoe left in
+white halls; it was you put that darkness over my life.</p>
+
+<p>'You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
+you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have
+taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me; and my fear is
+great that you have taken God from me!</p></div>
+
+<p>1901.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+<h2>JACOBITE BALLADS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I was looking the other day through a collection of poems, lately taken
+down from Irish-speaking country people for the <i>Oireactas</i>, the great
+yearly meeting of the Gaelic League; and a line in one of them seemed
+strange to me: '<i>Prebaim mo chroidhe le mo Stuart glegeal</i>,' 'my heart
+leaps up with my bright Stuart'; for I did not know there was still a
+memory of James and Charles among the people. The refrain of the poem
+was: 'Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!' and these are some
+of its verses:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'There are young girls through the whole country would sit
+alongside of me through a half-hour, till we would be telling you
+the story together of what it was put myself under trouble; I make
+my complaints, wanting my comrade. Och, my grief, my friend stole
+away from me!</p>
+
+<p>'Where are my people that were wise and learned? Where is the troop
+readying their spears, that they do not smooth out this knot for
+me? Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!</p>
+
+<p>'I was for a while airy and beautiful, and all my treasure with my
+pleasant James.... On the top of all, my Stuart to leave me. Och,
+my grief, my friend stole away from me!</p>
+
+<p>'It is the truth I cannot sleep in the night, fretting for my
+comrade; I to be lying down, and he weak under cold. My heart leaps
+up with my bright Stuart. Och, my grief, my friend stole away from
+me!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'It is hard for me to lie down after that; it is an empty thing to
+be crying the loss of my comrade, and I lying down with the mean
+people; it is my death the Stuart not to come at all. Och, my
+grief, my friend stole away from me!'</p></div>
+
+<p>I had not heard any songs of this sort in Galway, and I remembered that
+our Connaught Raftery, whose poems are still teaching history, dealt
+very shortly with the Royal Stuarts. 'James,' he says, 'was the worst
+man for habits.... He laid chains on our bogs and mountains.... The
+father wasn't worse than the son Charles, that left sharp scourges on
+Ireland. When God and the people thought it time the story to be done,
+he lost his head.... The next James&mdash;sharp blame to him&mdash;gave his
+daughter to William as woman and wife; made the Irish English, and the
+English Irish, like wheat and oats in the month of harvest. And it was
+at Aughrim on a Monday many a son of Ireland found sorrow, without
+speaking of all that died.'</p>
+
+<p>So I went to ask some of the wise old neighbours, who sit in wide
+chimney-nooks by turf fires, and to whom I go to look for knowledge of
+many things, if they knew of any songs in praise of the Stuarts. But
+they were scornful. 'The Stuarts?' one said; 'no, indeed; they have no
+songs about them here in the West, whatever they may have in the South.
+Why would they, running away and leaving the country? And what good did
+they ever do it?' And another, who lives on the Clare border, said: 'I
+used to hear them singing "The White Cockade" through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> country.
+"King James was beaten, and all his well-wishers; my grief, my boy that
+went with them!" But I don't think the people had ever much opinion of
+the Stuarts; but in those days they were all prone to versify. But the
+famine did away with all that.' And then he also was scornful, and said:
+'Sure King James ran all the way from the Boyne to Dublin, after the
+battle. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got
+there; and he told her the battle was lost; and she said: "Faith you
+made good haste; you made no delay on the road." So he said no more
+after that.'</p>
+
+<p>And then he told me of the Battle of Aughrim, that is still such a
+terrible memory; and how the 'Danes'&mdash;the De Danaan&mdash;the mysterious
+divine race that were conquered by the Gael, and who still hold an
+invisible kingdom&mdash;'were dancing in the raths around Aughrim the night
+after the battle. Their ancestors were driven out of Ireland before; and
+they were glad when they saw those that had put them out put out
+themselves, and every one of them skivered.'</p>
+
+<p>And another old man said: 'When I was a young chap knocking about in
+Connemara, I often heard songs about the Stuarts, and talk of them and
+of the blackbird coming over the water. But they found it hard to get
+over James making off after the Battle of the Boyne.' And another says
+of James: 'They liked him well before he ran; they didn't like him after
+that.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And when I looked through the lately gathered bundle of songs again, and
+through some old collections of Jacobite songs in Irish, I found they
+almost all belonged to Munster. And if they are still sung there, it is
+not, I think, for the sake of the kings, but for the sake of the poets
+who made them&mdash;Red-haired Owen O'Sullivan, potato-digger, harvestman,
+hedge-schoolmaster, whose poems are still the joy of the Munster people;
+O'Rahilly, more learned, and as boundlessly redundant; O'Donnell, whose
+heart was set on translating Homer into Irish; O'Heffernan, the blind
+wanderer; and many others. For the Munstermen have always been more
+'prone to versify' than their leaner neighbours on the bogs and stones
+of Connaught.</p>
+
+<p>There is a common formula for most of these songs or 'Visions,'
+<i>Aislinghe</i>, as they are called. Just as artists of to-day find no
+monotony in drawing Ireland over and over again with her harp, her
+wolf-dog, and her round tower, so the Munster poets found no monotony in
+representing her as a beautiful woman, white-skinned, with curling hair,
+with cheeks in which 'the lily and the rose were fighting for mastery.'
+The poet asks her if she is Venus, or Helen, or Deirdre, and describes
+her beauty in torrents of alliterative adjectives. Then she makes her
+complaint against England, or her lament for her own sorrows or for the
+loss of her Stuart lover, spoken of sometimes as 'the bricklayer,' or
+'the merchant's son.' The framework is artificial; but the laments are
+often very pathetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> the love of Ireland, and the hatred of England born
+of that love, finding expression in them.</p>
+
+<p>John O'Donnell sees her 'like a young queen that is going astray for the
+king being banished from her, that had a right to come and set her
+loose.' O'Rahilly, in one of his poems, shows the beautiful woman held
+to her Saxon lover by some strange enchantment:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I met brightness of brightness upon the path of loneliness;
+plaiting of plaiting in every lock of her yellow hair. News of news
+she gave me, and she as lonely as she was; news of the coming back
+of him that owns the tribute of the king.</p>
+
+<p>'Folly of follies I to go so near to her; slave I was made by a
+slave that put me in hard bonds. She made away from me then, and I
+following after her, till we came to a house of houses made by
+Druid enchantments.</p>
+
+<p>'They broke into mocking laughter, a troop of men of enchantments,
+and a troop of young girls with smooth-plaited hair. They put me up
+in chains; they made no delay about it; and my love holding to her
+breast an awkward ugly clown.</p>
+
+<p>'I told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not
+right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man
+that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots,
+waiting till she would come to him to be his beautiful bride.</p>
+
+<p>'At the sound of my words her pride set her crying; the tears were
+running down over the kindling of her cheeks. She sent a lad to
+bring me safe from the place I was in. She is the brightness of
+brightness I met in the path of loneliness.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Sometimes the Stuart is almost forgotten in the story of sorrows and the
+indictment of England. O'Heffernan complains in one of his songs that
+many of the heroes of Ireland have passed away, and their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> names have
+never been put in a song by the poets; 'and they even leave their verses
+without any account of Charles the wanderer, though I promise you they
+are not satisfied without giving some lines on Seaghan Buidhe' (one of
+the names for England). Yet he himself, when very downhearted, 'on the
+edge of the great wood under a harsh cloak of sorrow,' is cheered by the
+pleasant sound of a swarm of bees in search of their ruler; and with the
+pleasant thought that 'the harvest will be a bad one and with no joy in
+it to Seaghan. George will be sent back over the sea, and the tribe that
+was so high up will be left without gold or townlands; and I not pitying
+their sorrow.' And he winds up: 'In Shronehill, if I were stretched at
+rest under a hard flag, and to hear this story moving about so
+pleasantly, by force and strength of my shoulders I would throw the sod
+off me; and I coming back leaping to hear the news.'</p>
+
+<p>And another writer, Seaghan Clarach, looks forward to seeing 'timid
+George tame upon the road, without wine, without meat, without thread
+for his shoes.' And his last verse, his 'binding,' is, 'I beseech of
+God, I ask and I pray very hard, to cast out the gluttons that tormented
+the generous race of the Gael, from the island of the west, under hard
+bonds, and to banish the foreign devils from us.'</p>
+
+<p>For poets and people found it hard to forget Cromwell; and how 'the sons
+of the Gael are scorched, tormented, pitchforked, put under the yoke, by
+boors that are used to doing treachery.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the Stuarts come to mind, they are given fair words enough. 'The
+prince and heart-secret Charles that is sorrowful now and under
+weariness ... will be under esteem; and the Gael pleasant in the
+lime-white house.' ... 'It is friendly, fair bright, companionable,
+loving, brave, Charles will be, with sway, without a mist about him.'</p>
+
+<p>And in one of Red Owen's 'Visions' he is told not to forget James, who
+is 'persevering, well-tempered, affectionate, stout, sweet, kind,
+poetical.'</p>
+
+<p>Yet the Stuart seems to be always a faint and unreal image; a saint by
+whose name a heavy oath is sworn. There are no personal touches such as
+I find in a song taken down from some countryman, on Patrick Sarsfield,
+the brave, handsome fighter, the descendant of Conall Cearnach, the man
+who, after the Boyne, offered to 'change kings and fight the battle
+again.' This ballad seems to have more of Connaught simplicity than of
+Munster luxuriance in it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'O Patrick Sarsfield, health be to you, since you went to France
+and your camps were loosened; making your sighs along with the
+king, and you left poor Ireland and the Gael defeated&mdash;Och ochone!</p>
+
+<p>'O Patrick Sarsfield, it is a man with God you are; and blessed is
+the earth you ever walked on. The blessing of the bright sun and
+the moon upon you, since you took the day from the hands of King
+William&mdash;Och ochone!</p>
+
+<p>'O Patrick Sarsfield, the prayer of every person with you; my own
+prayer and the prayer of the Son of Mary with you, since you took
+the narrow ford going through Biorra, and since at Cuilenn O'Cuanac
+you won Limerick&mdash;Och ochone!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it
+again. It is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop
+thinned, not keeping with one another&mdash;Och ochone!</p>
+
+<p>'My five hundred healths to you, halls of Limerick, and to the
+beautiful troop was in our company; it is bonfires we used to have
+and playing cards, and the word of God was often with us&mdash;Och
+ochone!</p>
+
+<p>'There were many soldiers glad and happy that were going the way
+through seven weeks; but now they are stretched down in
+Aughrim&mdash;Och ochone!</p>
+
+<p>'They put the first breaking on us at the Bridge of the Boyne; the
+second breaking on the Bridge of Slaney; the third breaking in
+Aughrim of O'Kelly; and O sweet Ireland, my five hundred healths to
+you&mdash;Och ochone!</p>
+
+<p>'O'Kelly has manuring for his land, that is not sand or dung, but
+ready soldiers doing bravery with pikes, that were left in Aughrim
+stretched in ridges&mdash;Och ochone!</p>
+
+<p>'Who is that beyond on the hill, Beinn Edair? I a poor soldier with
+King James. I was last year in arms and in dress, but this year I
+am asking alms&mdash;Och ochone!'</p></div>
+
+<p>There are other symbolic songs besides the 'Visions.' Mangan's fine
+translation of Kathleen ni Houlihan is well known; and it is likely the
+king is calling to Ireland in '<i>Ceann dubh deelish</i>,' that is beautiful
+in all translations. This is <i>An Craoibhin's</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The women of the village are in madness and trouble,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pulling their hair and letting it go with the wind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They will not take a boy of the men of the country<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till they go into the rout with the boys of the king.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Black head, darling, darling, darling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Black head, darling, move over to me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Black head brighter than swan and than seagull,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It's a man without heart gives not love to thee.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>But most of the translations have been in the affected style of the
+early part of the last century twisting the sense to give what was
+thought to be a romantic turn. A verse of Seaghan Clarach's, for
+instance, the lament of a farmer 'who has been wrestling with the
+world': 'The two that belong to me are without shelter, and my yoke of
+cattle without grass, without growth; there is misery on my people and
+their elbows without sound clothes,' is turned into:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The loved ones my life would have nourished<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are foodless, and bare, and cold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My flocks by their fountain that flourished<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Decay on the mountain wold.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But there is one mistranslation for whose sake we must forgive many
+others, for it has given the sad refrain that has often been on Irish
+lips:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We're worsted in the game!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here are one or two of the many verses sung to the Little Black Rose by
+her lovers, poor or royal:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'There is love through and through me for you all the length of a
+year; sore love, vexing love, lasting love, love that left me
+without health, without a road, without running; and for ever,
+ever, without any sway at all over my Fair Black Rose.</p>
+
+<p>'I would travel through Munster with you, and the boundaries of the
+hills, if I thought I could find your secret, or a part of your
+love. O branch of the tree, it seems to me that you love me; that
+the flower of kind women is my Fair Black Rose.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'My heart leaps up with my bright Stuart!' James and Charles are, I
+think, the only English kings whose names, as it were by accident, have
+found their way into Irish song. And it is likely they are the last to
+find a place there, for the imagination of Ireland still tilts the beam
+to the national side; and the loyalty the poets of many hundred years
+have called for, is loyalty to Kathleen ni Houlihan. 'Have they not
+given her their wills, and their hearts, and their dreams? What have
+they left for any less noble Royalty?'</p>
+
+<p>1902.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>AN CRAOIBHIN'S</i> POEMS</h2>
+
+
+<p>'"I would much rather (and I take every occasion of making this protest)
+write, so to say, in a dead language and for a dead people, than write
+in those deaf and stammering (<i>sorde e mute</i>) tongues, French and
+English, notwithstanding they are the fashion with their rules and
+exercises." This is so with me. Alfieri wrote these words a hundred
+years ago, and they express what is in my own mind. I would like better
+to make even one good verse in the language in which I am now writing,
+than to make a whole book of verses in English. For if there should be
+any good found in my English verses, it would not go to the credit of my
+mother, Ireland, but of my stepmother, England.'</p>
+
+<p>I have translated this from Douglas Hyde's preface to his little book of
+poems, lately published in Dublin, <i>Ubhla de'n Craoibh</i>, "Apples from
+the Branch." <i>An Craoibhin Aoibhin</i>, "The delightful little branch," is
+the name by which he is called all over Irish-speaking Ireland; and a
+gold branch bearing golden apples is stamped on the cover of his book.
+The poems had already been published, one by one, in a weekly paper; and
+a friend of mine tells<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> me he has heard them sung and repeated by
+country people in many parts of Ireland&mdash;in Connemara, in Donegal, in
+Galway, in Kerry, in the Islands of Aran.</p>
+
+<p>Three or four of the thirty-three poems the book holds are, so to speak,
+official, written for the Gaelic League by its president; and these,
+like most official odes, are only for the moment. Some are ballads
+dealing with the old subjects of Irish ballads&mdash;emigration, exile,
+defeat, and death; for Douglas Hyde, as may be guessed from his preface,
+has, no less than his fellows&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Hidden in his heart the flame out of the eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Kathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But these national ballads, though very popular, are, I think, not so
+good as his more personal poems. I suppose no narrative of what others
+have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from 'that
+little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.' Even
+in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have
+as distinct a quality as that of Villon or of Heine:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There are three fine devils eating my heart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They left me, my grief! without a thing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sickness wrought, and Love wrought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poverty left me without a shirt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sickness left me with my head weak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my body miserable, an ugly thing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love left me like a coal upon the floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span><span class="i0">Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worse than any curse at all under the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worse than the great poverty<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the devil that is called "Love" by the people.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And if I were in my young youth again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The next, in the form of a little folk-song, expresses the thought of
+the idealist of all time, that makes him cry, as one of the oldest of
+the poets cried long ago, 'Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird;
+the birds round about are against her.' Yet, with its whimsical fancies
+and exaggerations, it could hardly have been written in any but Irish
+air.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It's my grief that I am not a little white duck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without high dances, without a big name, without music;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It's my grief that I am not an old crow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would sit for awhile up on the old branch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a grain of oats or a white potato.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It's my grief that I am not a red fox,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leaping strong and swift on the mountains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eating cocks and hens without pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taking ducks and geese as a conqueror.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It's my grief that I am not a fair salmon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Going through the strong full water,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Catching the mayflies by my craft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swimming at my choice, and swimming with the stream.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span><span class="i0">'It's my grief that I am of the race of the poets;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It would be better for me to be a high rock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or a stone or a tree or an herb or a flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or anything at all, but the thing that I am.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sympathy of the moods of nature with the moods of man is a
+traditional heritage that has come to us through the poets, from the old
+time when the three great waves of the sea answered to a cry of distress
+in Ireland, or when, as in Israel, the land mourned and the herbs of
+every field withered, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein. The
+sea, and the winds blowing from the sea, can never be very far from the
+dweller in Ireland; and they echo the loneliness of the lonely listener.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Cold, sharp lamentation<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the cold bitter winds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever blowing across the sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, there was loneliness with me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The loud sounding of the waves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beating against the shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their vast, rough, heavy outcry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, there was loneliness with me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The light sea-gulls in the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crying sharply through the harbours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cries and screams of the birds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With my own heart! Oh! that was loneliness.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The voice of the winds and the tide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the long battle of the mighty war;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sea, the earth, the skies, the blowing of the winds.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! there was loneliness in all of them together.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>Here is a verse from another poem of loneliness:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It is dark the night is; I do not see one star at all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it is dark and heavy my thoughts are that are scattered and straying.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no sound about but of the birds going over my head&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its whistle;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases my grief&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not one other cry but the cry and the call of the birds on the bog.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here is another, in which the storm outside and the storm within answer
+to one another:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The heavy clouds are threatening,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it's little but they'll take the roof off the house;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heavy thunder is answering<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To every flash of the yellow fire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, by myself, within in my room,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is narrow, small, warm, am sitting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I look at the surly skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I listen to the wind.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I was light, airy, lively,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the young morning of yesterday;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when the evening came,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was like a dead man!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have not one jot of hope<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But for a bed in the clay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death is the same as life to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From this out, from a word I heard yesterday.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>The next is very simple, and puts into more homely words the feeling of
+'lonesomeness' that is looked upon as almost the worst of evils by the
+Irish countryman, as we see by his proverb: 'It is better to be
+quarreling than to be lonesome.' 'I would be lonesome in it,' is often
+the reason given for a refusal to go from bog or mountain cabin to some
+crowded place 'where there is not heed for one or love.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Oh! if there were in this world<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Any nice little place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be my own, my own for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">My own only,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would have great joy&mdash;great ease&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Beyond what I have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without a place in the world where I can say:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">"This is my own."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It's a pity for a man to know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And it's a pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That there is no place in the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Where there is heed for him or love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That there is not in the world for him<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A heart or a hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To give help to him<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To the mering of the next world.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It is hard and it is bitter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And a sharp grief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is woe and it is pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To be by oneself.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is nothing the way you are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To anyone at all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is nothing the way you are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To yourself at last!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>I suppose the following may be called a political poem, from its elusive
+reference to Home Rule. I was not sure on the point myself; for I
+thought the wearer of the 'blue cloak and birds' feathers,' must be a
+fine lady, perhaps laying enchantment on the fields. But I heard some
+one ask the <i>Craoibhin</i> who he meant, and his answer was: 'I suppose I
+was thinking of an aide-de-camp':&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am looking at my cows walking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What are you that would put me out of my luck?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I will not always be turned backwards.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there is need to be humble to you, great is my grief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I cannot walk, if I cannot walk, if I cannot walk in my own fields.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It's little my respect, and it's little my desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For your blue cloak, and your birds' feathers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The day is coming as it's easy to see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When there shall not be among us the ugly like of you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And each one shall be walking, and each one shall be walking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherever shall be his will and his own desire.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are some love songs in the little volume. But their writer has
+had, in his beautiful translations of the 'Love Songs of Connacht,' to
+put such intensity of passion into English, that he must despair of
+putting any new wings to passion, or any new exaggeration into lovers'
+words. In one of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> Connacht songs, the lover says: 'Blacker is the
+sun when setting than your features, Mary!' And she answers back:
+'Neither star nor sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!'
+Another lover says of the woman he desires: 'I will write largely of
+her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost;
+and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks
+through love. And I myself am not free, but am a bondsman in bonds.' And
+another boasts of 'a love without littleness, without weakness; love
+from age till death, love from folly growing, love that shall send me
+close beneath the clay, love without a hope of the world, love without
+envy of fortune, love that left me outside in captivity, love of my
+heart beyond women.' Douglas Hyde's own love songs are quiet and staid
+in contrast to these; but nevertheless they have a sober charm. Here are
+the last verses of one of them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Will you be as hard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Colleen, as you are quiet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will you be without pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On me for ever?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Listen to me, Noireen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Listen, aroon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put healing on me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From your quiet mouth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am in the little road<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That is dark and narrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little road that has led<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thousands to sleep.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>In his preface to the 'Love Songs of Connacht' he says he finds in them
+'more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart,
+than of gaiety or hope'; and he writes: 'Not careless and light-hearted
+alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a
+melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything
+but sport and revelry, there is nothing in it but letting on.' There is
+grief and trouble, as I have shown, in many of his own songs, which the
+people have taken to their hearts so quickly; but there is also a touch
+of hope, of glad belief that, in spite of heavy days of change, all
+things are working for good at the last.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some verses from a poem called 'There is a Change coming':&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When that time comes it will come heavily;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He will grow fat that was lean;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He will grow lean that was fat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without shelter for the head, without mirth, without help.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The low will be raised up, says the poet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thing that was high will be thrown down again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world will be changed from end to end:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When that time comes it will come heavily.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If you yourself see this thing coming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the country without luck, without law, without authority,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept with the storm, without knowledge, without strength,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remember my words, and don't let your heart break.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'This life is like a tree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The top green, branches soft, the bark smooth and shining;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there is a little worm shut up in it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sucking at the sap all through the day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span><span class="i0">'But from this old, cold, withered tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A new plant will grow up;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old world will die without pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the young world will grow up on its grave.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here is a fine vision of a battle-field:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The time I think of the cause of Ireland<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart is torn within me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The time I think of the death of the people<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who protected Ireland bravely and faithfully.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'They are stretched on the side of the mountain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Very low, one with another.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Hidden under grass, or under tall herbs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far from friends or help or friendship.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Not a child or a wife near them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a priest to be found there or a friar;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But the mountain eagle and the white eagle<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moving overhead across the skies.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Without a defence against the sun in the daytime;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without a shelter against the skies at night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It's many a good soldier, joyful and pleasant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That has had his laughing mouth closed there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There is many a young breast with a hole through it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little black hole that is death to a man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There is many a brave man stripped there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His body naked, without vest or shirt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The young man that was proud and beautiful yesterday,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the woman he loved left a kiss on his mouth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span><span class="i0">'There is many a married woman, with the child at her breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without her comrade, without a father for her child to-night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There's many a castle without a lord, and many a lord without a house;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And little forsaken cabins with no one in them.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I saw a fox leaving its den<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Asking for a body to feed its hunger.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There's a fierce wolf at Carrig O'Neill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is blood on his tongue and blood on his mouth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I saw them, and I heard the cries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of kites and of black crows.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ochone! Is not the only Son of God angry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is
+about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the
+emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is
+not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only
+looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the
+people:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am lying in prison,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I am in bonds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-morrow I will be hanged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who am to-night so quiet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So quiet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who am to-night so quiet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span><span class="i0">'I am in prison,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My heart is cold and heavy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-morrow I will be hanged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there is no help for me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">My grief;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Och! there is no help for me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am in prison,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And I did no wrong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I only did the work<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was just, was right, was good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">I did,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, I did the thing was good.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It is with the people I was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It is not with the law I was;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they took me in my sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the side of Cnoc-na-Feigh;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-morrow they will hang me.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am weak in my body,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I am vexed in my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to-morrow I will be hanged;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lying beneath the clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">My sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lying beneath the clay.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'May God give pardon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To my vexed, sorrowful soul;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May God give mercy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me now and forever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Amen!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me now and forever.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But translation is poor work. Even if it gives a glimpse of the heart of
+a poem, too much is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> lost in losing the outward likeness. Here are the
+last lines of the lament of a felon's brother:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Now that you are stretched in the cold grave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May God set you free:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's vexed and sorry and pitiful are my thoughts;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It's sorrowful I am to-day!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I look at them and read them; and wonder why when I first read them,
+their sound had hung about me for days like a sobbing wind; but when I
+look at them in their own form, the sob is in them still:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nois ann san uai&#289; &#7711;uair &oacute; t&aacute; tu s&iacute;nte<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Go saorai&#289; Dia &#7787;u<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is buai&#7691;car&#7787;a, br&oacute;na&#267; bo&#267;t at&aacute; mo smaointe<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is brona&#267; m&eacute; an&#7691;i&uacute;.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+<h2>BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND</h2>
+
+
+<p>Yesterday I asked a woman on the Echtge hills, if any of her neighbours
+had gone to the war. She said: 'No; but I know a great many that went to
+America when the war began&mdash;even boys that had business to do at home;
+they were afraid of being brought away by the Press.' On another part of
+the Echtge hills, where a rumour had come that the police were to be
+sent to the war, an old woman said to a policeman I know: 'When you go
+out there, don't be killing the people of my religion.' He said: 'The
+Boers are not of your religion'; but she said: 'They are; I know they
+must be Catholics, or the English would not be against them.' Others on
+that wild range think that this is the beginning of the great war that
+will end in the final rout of the enemies of Ireland. Old prophecies say
+this war is to come at the meeting of these centuries; and there is an
+old Irish verse which seems to allude to this, and which has been thus
+translated:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When the Lion shall lose its strength,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the bracket Thistle begin to pine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Harp shall sound sweet, sweet, at length,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Between the eight and the nine.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>Lonely Echtge still keeps old prophecies and old songs and some of the
+old speech, and but few newspapers are seen there; but on the lowland,
+sympathy with the Boers, and prophecies of their victory, are put into
+the doggerel English verse that must be poor in form, because a ballad,
+more than another song, must have a long tradition of folk-thought and
+folk-expression behind it; and in Ireland this tradition does not belong
+to the English language. Even the beautiful air of 'The Wearing of the
+Green' cannot give poetic charm to such verses as these, which, like the
+others that follow, have been sung and sold by ballad-singers in
+market-towns and at fairs, and at country race-meetings, during the last
+year:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Oh! Paddy dear, and did ye hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The news that's going round?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No cheers for brave Paul Kruger<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Must be heard on Irish ground.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more the English tourist at<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Killarney will be seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless you join the pirate's cause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And chant "God save the Queen."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Or this other, sung during the siege of Ladysmith:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And I met with White the General,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And he's looking thin enough;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he says the boys in Ladysmith<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are running short of stuff.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faith, the dishes need no washing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now they're left so nice and clean;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! it's anything but pleasant<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To be starving for the Queen!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>The defender of Ladysmith is treated with greater courtesy than some
+other generals, for, in spite of sympathy with the besiegers, the singer
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But if he gave in to-morrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I would not think it right<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To throw the least disparagement<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On a man like General White.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is making a bold resistance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As great as could be made,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against their deadly Mauser rifles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their tremendous cannonade.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The 'Song of the Transvaal Irish Brigade' has more literary quality:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The Cross swings low; the morn is near&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now, comrades, fill up high;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cannon's voice will ring out clear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When morning lights the sky.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A toast we'll drink together, boys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere dawns the battle's grey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A toast to Ireland, dear old Ireland!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ireland far away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland far away! Ireland far away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Health to Ireland, strength to Ireland!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ireland, boys, hurrah!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Who told us that her cause was dead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who bade us bend the knee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The slaves! Again she lifts her head&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Again she dares be free!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gun in hand, we take our stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For Ireland in the fray:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We fight for Ireland, dear old Ireland!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ireland far away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland far away! Ireland far away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We fight for Ireland, die for Ireland&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ireland, boys, hurrah!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span><span class="i0">'Oh, mother of the wounded breast!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, mother of the tears!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sons you loved, and trusted best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have grasped their battle spears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Shannon, Lagan, Liffey, Lee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On Afric's soil to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We strike for Ireland, brave old Ireland!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ireland far away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland far away! Ireland far away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We smite for Ireland, brave old Ireland!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ireland, boys, hurrah!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'The Irish Boy,' which is sung to the air of 'The Minstrel Boy,' is also
+in honour of the Irish Brigade:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'While the Irish boy is on the shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He'll help to crush the stranger;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He'll sweep them hence for evermore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And free thy land from danger.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then he'll pray to God above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That his courage ne'er shall falter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To guard him to the land he loves&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To Ireland o'er the water.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mayo is the county to which John MacBride, the leader of the Irish
+Brigade, belongs; but I heard of a ballad-singer at Ballindereen, near
+my Galway home, the other day, whose refrain was:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And Erin watches from afar, with joy and hope and pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her sons who strike for liberty, led on by John MacBride!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At Galway Railway Station, whence the Connaught Rangers set out for the
+war, I have heard that wives, saying good-bye, begged their husbands
+'not to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> too hard on the Boers.' Anyhow, a 'Mother's lament for her
+son gone to the war,' that was sung at Galway Races the other day, shows
+more impartiality than most of the ballads:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When the battle rages fiercely, our boys are in the van;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How I do wish the blows they struck were for dear Ireland!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But duty calls, they must obey, and fight against the Boer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a cheerful Irish lad will fall to rise no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I wish my boy was home again! Oh! how I'd welcome him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sorrow I'm broken-hearted, my eyes are growing dim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The war is dark and cruel, but whoever wins the fight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pray to save my noble lad, and God defend the right!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it is the small farmers of Ireland who look with special sympathy on
+their fellows in the Transvaal. They give them a warning:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'England sends her grabbers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From far across the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To rob you of your friends and home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Likewise your liberty.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the Boers say in answer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When we came to this country,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Twas but a barren plain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the honest hand of labour<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was rewarded for its pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We found the precious metal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And of it we have great store;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Britain came to rob us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As she often done before.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As she thought to do before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As she thought to do before;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Britain comes to rob us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As she often done before.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>Another ballad explains:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Those Boers can't be blamed, as you might understand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are trying to free their own native land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where they toil night and day by the sweat of their brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the farmers in Ireland that follow the plough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Farewell to Old Ireland, we are now going away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fight the brave Boers in South Africa;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fight those poor farmers we are not inclined:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God be with you, Old Ireland, we are leaving behind.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Some verses&mdash;'The Boer's Prayer'&mdash;that I have not seen on a
+ballad-sheet, but in a weekly paper, give better expression to this
+feeling of farmer sympathy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My back is to the wall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lo! here I stand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Lord, whate'er befall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I love this land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'This land that I have tilled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This land is mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would, Lord, that Thou hadst willed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This heart were Thine!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'This land to us Thou gave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In days of old;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They seek to make a grave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or field of gold!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To us, O Lord, Thy hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Put forth to save!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give us, O Lord, this land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or give a grave!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>'A New Song for the Boers' says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Hark! to the curses ringing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From all smitten lands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sob and wail, they tell the tale<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of England's blood-red hands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And wheresoe'er her standard flings<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Forth its folds of shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A people's cries to heaven arise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For vengeance on her name!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But for passionate expression, one cannot, as I have already said, look
+to the comparatively new and artificial English ballad form; one must go
+to the Irish, with its long tradition. Here is a poem, 'The Curse of the
+Boers on England,' which I have translated literally from the Irish:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O God, we call to Thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This hour and this day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look down on this England<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That has come down in our midst.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O God, we call to Thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This day and this hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look down on England,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And her cold, cold heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It is she was a Queen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A Queen without sorrow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But we will take from her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Quietly, her Crown.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'That Queen that was beautiful<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Will be tormented and darkened,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For she will get her reward<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In that day, and her wage.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span><span class="i0">'Her wage for the blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She poured out on the streams;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blood of the white man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blood of the black man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Her wage for those hearts<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That she broke in the end;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearts of the white man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hearts of the black man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Her wage for the bones<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That are whitening to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bones of the white man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bones of the black man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Her wage for the hunger<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That she put on foot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her wage for the fever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That is an old tale with her.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Her wage for the white villages<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She has left without men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her wage for the brave men<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She has put to the sword.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Her wage for the orphans<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She has left under pain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her wage for the exiles<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She has spent with wandering.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'For the people of India<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Pitiful is their case);<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the people of Africa<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She has put to death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'For the people of Ireland,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nailed to the cross;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wage for each people<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her hand has destroyed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span><span class="i0">'Her wage for the thousands<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She deceived and she broke;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her wage for the thousands<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Finding death at this hour.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O Lord, let there fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Straight down on her head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The curse of the peoples<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That have fallen with us.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The curse of the mean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the curse of the small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The curse of the weak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the curse of the low.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The Lord does not listen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the curse of the strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But He will listen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To sighs and to tears.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He will always listen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the crying of the poor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the crying of thousands<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is abroad to-night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'That crying will rise up<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To God that is above;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is not long till every curse<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Comes to His ears.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The crying will be put away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tears will be put away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When they come to God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">These prayers to His kingdom.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He will make for England<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Strong chains, very heavy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He will pay her wages<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With strong, heavy chains.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>1901.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Irish poem I give this translation of was printed in the <i>Revue
+Celtique</i> some years ago, and lately in <i>An Fior Clairseach na
+h-Eireann</i>, where a note tells us it was taken from a manuscript in the
+Gottingen Library, and was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan,
+who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for
+its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish
+writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the
+horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which
+the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable
+than the people of a country that has kept its own settled rule.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My thoughts, alas! are without strength;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My spirit is journeying towards death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My eyes are as a frozen sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My tears my daily food;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is nothing in my life but only misery;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My poor heart is torn,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span><span class="i0">And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mourning the miserable state of Ireland,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without ease, without mirth for any person<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is born on the plains of Emer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here I give you the heavy story,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the tale of all the remnant of her deeds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">She lost her pomp and her strength together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When her strong men were banished across the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her churches are as holds of pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without altars, without Mass, without bowing of knees;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stables for horses&mdash;this story is pitiful&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or without a stone of their stones together.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Since the children of Israel were in Egypt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under bondage, and scarcity along with that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was never written in a book or never seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hardship like the hardships in Ireland.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They parted from us the shepherds of the flock<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is the flock that is astray and is wounded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Left to be torn by wild dogs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no healing for it from the hand of anyone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless God will look down on our distress<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland will indeed be lost for ever!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every old man, every strong man, every child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our young men and our well-dressed women,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keening, complaining, and reproaching;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Going under the power of the Gall or going across the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span><span class="i0">Our dear country without any ears of corn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without store, without cattle, but only the green grass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our fatherless children are wasted and weak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Famine and sickness travelling over Ireland,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every other scourge that was ever known,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rest of her pain has not yet been told.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Nevertheless, my sharp woe! I see with my eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the High King has a bow ready in His hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And His quiver is full of arrows with sharp points,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every arrow of them for our sore wounding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the sole of our feet to the top of our head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bruise our hearts and to tear our sinews;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no spot of our limbs but is scarred;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Misfortune has come upon us all together&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The poor and the rich, the weak and the strong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">I do not know of anything under the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is friendly or favourable to the Gael,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But only the sea that our need brings us to,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or the wind that blows to the harbour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ship that is bearing us away from Ireland;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there is reason that these are reconciled with us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we increase the sea with our tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wandering wind with our sighs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span><span class="i2">We do not see heaven look kindly upon us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We do not see our complaint being listened to;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even the earth refuses us shelter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wood that gives protection to the birds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every cliff, every cave, every mountain-top,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every hill, every lough, and every meadow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Our feasts are without any voice of priests,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And none at them but women lamenting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tearing their hair, with troubled minds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keening pitifully after the Fenians.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pipes of our organs are broken;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our harps have lost their strings that were tuned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That might have made the great lamentations of Ireland;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until the strong men come back across the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no help for us but bitter crying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Screams, and beating of hands, and calling out.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">It is not strength of hosts, not loss of food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not the horsemen of the Gall coming from Britain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor want of power, nor want of calling to war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That has put defeat upon the armies of Ireland,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And has filled the cities with a sad multitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! alas! but the greatness of our sins.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">See, we are now put in the crucible<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In which every worthless metal is tried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In which gold is cleansed from every tarnish;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Scripture is true in everything it says;<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span><span class="i0">It says we must suffer before we can be cured;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is through repentance we shall find forgiveness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the restoring of all that we have lost.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Let us put down the sum of our sins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oppression of the poor, thieving, robbery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great vows held in light esteem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Giving our soul to the man that is the worst;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The strength of our pride was greater than our life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The strength of our debts was more than we could pay.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">It was with treachery Ireland was lost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the ill-will of men one to another.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was no judge that would give a hearing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the oppressed people whose life was under hardship.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outcasts and widows crying aloud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without right judgment to be had or punishment.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">We were never agreed together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But as one ox bound and one free from the yoke;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No right humility to be found.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All trying for the headship of Ireland<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the time when her enemies were doing their work.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No settlement to be made of any quarrel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The share of the wheat-ear for the man that was strongest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is long that this has been the hurt of Ireland;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is thus that the battle ended with the Gael.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span><span class="i2">Let us turn now and change our manners,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us make repentance of our sins together&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is thus that the Israelites came out of Egypt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nineveh was given pardon for all its sins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And even Peter for denying Christ.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">O saints of Ireland, arise now together;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Patrick, who hast care of us, bless this flock;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We who are exiled, we who are forsaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This sod is gone out unless thou blow upon it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is thy sleep heavy or is thy hearing slow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thou dost not give an answer to us?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Awake quickly; let it not be as a tale with thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That there is no help for the fate of the Gael.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">This, Patrick, is my own quarrel with thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That every enemy of thy flock is saying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thy ears are not ears that listen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thou art not troubled by the sight of thy people,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That if they did trouble thee thou wouldst not deny them.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be with us nevertheless with thy strong power.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make our enemies to quit Ireland for ever.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>1900.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+<h2>MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mary Glyn lives under Slieve-nan-Or, the Golden Mountain, where the last
+battle will be fought in the last great war of the world; so that the
+sides of Gortaveha, a lesser mountain, will stream with blood. But she
+and her friends are not afraid of this; for an old weaver from the
+north, who knew all things, told them long ago that there is a place
+near Turloughmore where war will never come, because St. Columcill used
+to live there. So they will make use of this knowledge, and seek a
+refuge there, if, indeed, there is room enough for them all. There is a
+river by her house that marks the boundary between Galway and Clare; and
+there are stepping-stones in the river, so that she can cross from
+Connaught to Munster when she has a mind. But she cannot do her
+marketing when she has a mind; for the nearest town, Gort, is ten miles
+away. The roof of her little cabin is thatched with rushes, and a garden
+of weeds grows on it, and the rain comes through. But she is soon to
+have a new thatch; for she thinks she won't live long, and she wouldn't
+like the rain to be coming down on her when she is dead and laid out.
+There is heather in blow on the hills<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> about her home, and foxglove
+reddens the clay-banks, and loosetrife the marshy hollows; and
+rush-cotton waves its little white flags over the bogs. Mary Glyn's
+neighbours come to see her sometimes, when the sun is going down, and
+the hurry of the day is over. Old Mr. Saggarton is one of them; he had
+his learning from a hedge-schoolmaster in the old times; and he looks
+down on the narrow teaching of the National Schools; and he was once in
+jail for nine months, having been taken in the very act of making
+<i>poteen</i>. And Mrs. Casey comes and looks at the stepping-stones now and
+again, for she is a Clare woman; and though she has lived fifty years in
+Connaught, she is not yet quite reconciled to it, and would never have
+made it her home if she could have seen it before she came. And some who
+do not live among the bogs and the heather, but among the green pastures
+and the grey stones of Aidne, come to Slieve Echtge and learn unwritten
+truths from the lips of Mary and her friends.</p>
+
+<p>The duty of giving is taught as well as practised by these poor
+hill-people. 'For,' says Mary Glyn, 'the best road to heaven is to be
+charitable to the poor.' And old Mrs. Casey agrees, and says: 'There was
+a poor girl walking the road one night with no place to stop; and the
+Saviour met her on the road, and He said: "Go up to the house you see a
+light in; there's a woman dead there, and they'll let you in." So she
+went and she found the woman laid out, and the husband and other
+people;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> but she worked harder than they all, and she stopped in the
+house after; and after two quarters the man married her. And one day she
+was sitting outside the door, picking over a bag of wheat, and the
+Saviour came again, with the appearance of a poor man, and He asked her
+for a few grains of the wheat. And she said: "Wouldn't potatoes be good
+enough for you?" and she called to the girl within to bring out a few
+potatoes. But He took nine grains of the wheat in His hand and went
+away; and there wasn't a grain of wheat left in the bag, but all gone.
+So she ran after Him then to ask Him to forgive her; and she overtook
+Him on the road, and she asked forgiveness. And He said: "Don't you
+remember the time you had no house to go to, and I met you on the road,
+and sent you to a house where you'd live in plenty? and now you wouldn't
+give Me a few grains of wheat." And she said: "But why didn't You give
+me a heart that would like to divide it?" That is how she came round on
+Him. And He said: "From this out, whenever you have plenty in your
+hands, divide it freely for My sake."'</p>
+
+<p>And this is a marvel that might occur again at any time; for Mary Glyn
+says further:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'There was a woman I knew was very charitable to the poor; and she'd
+give them the full of her apron of bread, or of potatoes or anything she
+had. And she was only lately married; and one day, a poor woman came to
+the door with her children and she brought them to the fire, and warmed
+them, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> gave them a drink of milk; and she sent out to the barn for a
+bag of potatoes for them. And the husband came in, and he said: "Kitty,
+if you go on this way, you won't leave much for ourselves." And she
+said: "He that gave us what we have, can give more." And the next day
+when they went out to the barn, it was full of potatoes&mdash;more than were
+ever in it before. And when she was dying, and her children about her,
+the priest said to her: "Mrs. Gallagher, it's in heaven you'll be at 12
+o'clock to-morrow."'</p>
+
+<p>But when death comes, it is not enough to have been charitable; and it
+is not right to touch the body or lay it out for a couple of hours; for
+the soul should be given time to fight for itself, and to go up to
+judgment. And sometimes it is not willing to go; for Mrs. Casey says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The Saviour, one time, told St. Patrick to go and prepare a man that
+was going to die. And St. Patrick said: "I'd sooner not go; for I never
+yet saw the soul depart from the body." But then he went, and he
+prepared the man. And when he was lying there dead, he saw the soul go
+from the body; and three times it went to the door, and three times it
+came back and kissed the body. And St. Patrick asked the Saviour why it
+did that: and He said: "That soul was sorry to part from the body,
+because it had held it so clean and so honest."'</p>
+
+<p>When the hill-people talk of 'the time of the war,' it is the war that
+once took place in heaven that is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> understood. And when '<i>Those</i>' are
+spoken of, the fallen angels are understood, the cloud of witness, the
+whirling invisible host; and it is only to a stranger that an
+explanation need be given.</p>
+
+<p>'They were in heaven once,' Mary Glyn says 'and heaven is the first
+place there was war; and they were all to be done away with; and it was
+St. Peter asked the Saviour to help them, when he saw Him going to empty
+the heavens. So He turned His hand like this; and the earth and the sky
+and the sea were full of them, and they are in every place, and you know
+that better than I do, because you read books. Resting they do be in the
+daytime, and going about at night. And their music is the finest you
+ever heard, like all the fifers, and all the instruments, and all the
+tunes of the world. I heard it sometimes myself, and there is no music
+in the world like it; but not all can hear it. Round the hill it comes,
+and you going in at the door. And they are quiet neighbours if you treat
+them well. God bless them, and bring them all to heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>And then, having mentioned Monday (a spell against unseen listeners),
+and said, 'God bless the hearers, and the place it is told in'&mdash;and her
+niece, Mary Irwin, having said, 'God bless all we see, and those we
+don't see,' they tell&mdash;first one speaking and then the other&mdash;that: 'One
+night there were <i>banabhs</i> in the house; and there was a man coming to
+dig the potato-garden in the morning&mdash;and so late at night, Mary Glyn
+was making stirabout, and a cake to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> ready for the breakfast of the
+<i>banabhs</i> and the man; and Mary's brother Micky was asleep within on the
+bed. And there came the sound of the grandest music you ever heard from
+beyond the stream, and it stopped there. And Micky awoke in the bed, and
+was afraid, and said: "Shut up the door and quench the light," and so we
+did.' 'It's likely,' Mary says, 'they wanted to come into the house, and
+they wouldn't when they saw me up and the lights about.' But one time
+when there were potatoes in the loft, Mary and her brothers were pelted
+with the potatoes when they sat down to supper. And Mary Irwin got a
+blow on the side of the face, from one of them, one night in the bed.
+'And they have the hope of heaven, and God grant it to them.' 'And one
+day, there was a priest and his servant riding along the road, and there
+was a hurling of them going on in the field. And a man of them came out
+and stood in the road, and said to the priest: "Tell me this, for you
+know it, have we a chance of heaven?" "You have not," said the priest.
+("God forgive him," says Mary Irwin, "a priest to say that!") And the
+man that was of them said: "Put your fingers in your ears, till you have
+travelled two miles of the road; for when I go back and tell what you
+are after telling me to the rest, the crying and the bawling and the
+roaring will be so great that, if you hear it, you'll never hear a noise
+again in this world." So they put their fingers then in their ears; but
+after a while the servant said to the priest: "Let me take out my
+fingers now." And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> the priest said: "Do not." And then the servant said
+again: "I think I might take one finger out." And the priest said:
+"Since you are so persevering, you may take it out." So he did, and the
+noise of the crying and the roaring and the bawling was so great, that
+he never had the use of that ear again.'</p>
+
+<p>Old Mr. Saggarton confirms the story of the fall of the angels and their
+presence about us, but goes deeper into theology. 'The soul,' he says,
+'was the breath of God, breathed into Adam, and it is the possession of
+God ever since. And I could never have believed there was so much power
+in the shadow of a soul, till I saw <i>them</i> one night hurling. They tempt
+us sometimes in dreams&mdash;may God forgive me for saying He would allow
+power to any to tempt to evil. And they would destroy the world but for
+the hope they have of being saved. Every Monday morning they think the
+day of judgment may be coming, and that they will see heaven.</p>
+
+<p>'Half the world is with them. And when you see a blast of wind, and it
+comes sudden and carries the dust with it, you should say, "God bless
+them," and throw something after them. For how do you know but one of
+our own may be in it?</p>
+
+<p>'There never was a funeral they were not at, walking after the other
+people. And you can see them if you know the way&mdash;that is, to take a
+green rush and to twist it into a ring, and to look through it. But if
+you do, you'll never have a stim of sight in the eye again.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+<h2>HERB-HEALING</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>September 28th, 1899.</i></p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Honourable Lady Gregory</span>,</p>
+
+<p>'I, Bridget Ruane, wish to inform you that there is in the Oratory
+in London one of the Fathers, a Saint. I do not know his name; but
+there was a young woman of the name of Meara; she got two falls and
+could get no cure. She went to London and found this holy man; and
+he sent her back to Gort, here to me, and I cured her. If your
+honourable Ladyship could make him out, it would be a wonderful
+thing, and a great happiness to many a weary heart, and the great
+God would have it in store for you and your son. May you enjoy many
+happy days together is the prayer of your humble servant,</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Bridget Ruane.</span>'</p></div>
+
+<p>This letter was brought to me one morning; and I went down to see the
+writer, a respectable-looking old woman, dressed in the red petticoat
+and blue cloak of the country-people. She repeated what she had said in
+her note, and added: 'Now if you could find out the name of that Saint
+through the press, he'd tell me his remedies; and between us, all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+world would be cured. For I can't do all cures, though there are a great
+many I can do. I cured Michael Miscail when the doctor couldn't do it,
+and a woman in Gort that was paralyzed, and her two sons that were
+stretched. For I can bring back the dead with some of the herbs our Lord
+was brought back with, the <i>Garblus</i> and the <i>Slanlus</i>. But there are
+some things I can't do. I can't help anyone that has got a stroke from
+the Queen or the Fool of the Forth.</p>
+
+<p>'It was my brother got the knowledge of cures from a book that was
+thrown down before him on the road. What language was it written in?
+What language would it be but Irish? May be it was God gave it to him,
+and may be it was the <i>other people</i>. He was a fine strong man; and he
+weighed fifteen stone; and he went to England, and there he cured all
+the world, so that the doctors had no way of living. So one time he got
+in a ship to go to America; and the doctors had bad men engaged to
+shipwreck him out of the ship; he wasn't drowned, but he was broken to
+pieces on the rocks, and the book was lost along with him. But he taught
+me a good deal out of it. So I know all herbs, and I do a good many
+cures; and I have brought a good many children home to the world, and
+never lost one, or one of the women that bore them.'</p>
+
+<p>I asked her to teach me some of her fragments of Druids' wisdom, the
+healing power of herbs. So she came another day, and brought some herbs,
+and sorted them out on a table, and said: 'This is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> <i>Dwareen</i>
+(knapweed); and what you have to do with this, is to put it down with
+other herbs, and with a bit of threepenny sugar, and to boil it, and to
+drink it, for pains in the bones; and don't be afraid but it will cure
+you. Sure the Lord put it in the world for curing.</p>
+
+<p>'And this is <i>Corn-corn</i> [tansy]; it s very good for the heart&mdash;boiled
+like the others.</p>
+
+<p>'This is <i>Athair-talav</i>, the father of all herbs (wild camomile). This
+is very hard to pull; and when you go for it, you must have a
+black-handled knife. And whatever way the wind is when you begin to cut
+it, if it changes while you're cutting it, you'll lose your mind. And if
+you are paid for cutting it, you can do it when you like; but if not,
+<i>they</i> mightn't like it. I knew a woman was cutting at one time, and a
+voice, an enchanted voice, called out: "Don't cut that if you are not
+paid, or you'll be sorry." But if you put a bit of this with every other
+herb you drink, you'll live for ever. My grandmother used to put a bit
+with everything she took, and she lived to be over a hundred.</p>
+
+<p>'And this is <i>Camal buidhe</i> (loose-strife), that will keep all bad
+things away.</p>
+
+<p>'This is <i>Cuineal Muire</i> (mullein), the blessed candle of our Lady.</p>
+
+<p>'This is the <i>Fearaban</i> (water-buttercup); and it's good for every bone
+of your body.</p>
+
+<p>'This is <i>Dub-cosac</i> (trichomanes), that's good for the heart; very good
+for a sore heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Here are the <i>Slanlus</i> (plantain) and the <i>Garblus</i> (dandelion); and
+these would cure the wide world; and it was these brought our Lord from
+the Cross, after the ruffians that were with the Jews did all the harm
+to Him. And not one could be got to pierce His heart till a dark man
+came; and he said: "Give me the spear and I'll do it." And the blood
+that sprang out touched his eyes and they got their sight. And it was
+after that, His Mother and Mary and Joseph gathered these herbs and
+cured His wounds.</p>
+
+<p>'These are the best of the herbs; but they are all good, and there isn't
+one among them but would cure seven diseases. I'm all the days of my
+life gathering them, and I know them all; but it isn't easy to make them
+out. Sunday afternoon is the best time to get them, and I was never
+interfered with. Seven Hail Marys I say when I'm gathering them; and I
+pray to our Lord, and to St. Joseph and St. Colman. And there may be
+<i>some</i> watching me; but they never meddled with me at all.'</p>
+
+<p>A neighbour whom I asked about Bridget Ruane and her brother
+said:&mdash;'Some people call her "Biddy Early" (after a famous
+witch-doctor). She has done a good many cures. Her brother was <i>away</i>
+for a while, and it is from him she got her knowledge. I believe it's
+before sunrise she gathers the herbs; any way no one ever saw her
+gathering them. She has saved many a woman from being brought away when
+her child was born by whatever she does; and she told me herself that
+one night when she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> going to the lodge gate to attend the woman
+there, three magpies came before her and began roaring into her mouth to
+try and drive her back.</p>
+
+<p>Another neighbour, who has herself some reputation as an herb-doctor,
+says:&mdash;'Monday is a good day for pulling herbs, or Tuesday&mdash;not Sunday:
+a Sunday cure is no cure. The <i>Cosac</i> is good for the heart. There was
+Mahon in Gort&mdash;one time his heart was wore to a silk thread, and it
+cured him. And the <i>Slanugad</i> (ribgrass) is very good: it will take away
+lumps. You must go down where it is growing on the scraws, and pull it
+with three pulls; and mind would the wind change when you are pulling
+it, or your head will be gone. Warm it on the tongs when you bring it
+in, and put it on the lump. The <i>Lus-mor</i> is the only one that's good to
+bring back children that are "<i>away</i>."'</p>
+
+<p>Another authority says:&mdash;'Dandelion is good for the heart; and when
+Father Quinn was curate here, he had it rooted up in all the fields
+about to drink it; and see what a fine man he is. The wild parsnip
+(<i>Meacan-buidhe</i>) is good for the gravel; and for heart-beat there's
+nothing so good as dandelion. There was a woman I knew used to boil it
+down; and she'd throw out what was left on the grass. And there was a
+fleet of turkeys about the house, and they used to be picking it up. At
+Christmas they killed one of them; and when it was cut open, they found
+a new heart growing in it with the dint of the dandelion.'</p>
+
+<p>But an old man says there are no such healers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> now as there were in his
+youth:&mdash;'The best herb-doctor I ever knew was Connolly up at Kilbecanty.
+He knew every herb that grew in the earth. It is said he was away with
+the fairies one time; and when I saw him he had the two thumbs turned
+in; and it was said it was the sign they left on him. I had a lump on
+the thigh one time, and my father went to him, and he gave him an herb
+for it; but he told him not to come into the house by the door the wind
+would be blowing in at. They thought it was the evil I had&mdash;that is
+given by <i>them</i> by a touch; and that is why he said about the wind; for
+if it was the evil there would be a worm in it, and if it smelled the
+herb that was brought in at the door, it might change to another place.
+I don't know what the herb was; but I would have been dead if I had it
+on another hour&mdash;it burned so much&mdash;and I had to get the lump lanced
+after, for it wasn't the evil I had.</p>
+
+<p>'Connolly cured many a one; Jack Hall, that fell into a pot of water
+they were after boiling potatoes in, and had the skin scalded off him,
+and that Dr. Lynch could do nothing for, he cured. He boiled down herbs
+with a bit of lard, and after that was rubbed in three times, he was
+well.</p>
+
+<p>'And Cahill that was deaf, he cured with the <i>Riv mar seala</i>, that herb
+in the potatoes that milk comes out of.'</p>
+
+<p>Farrell says:&mdash;'The <i>Bainne bo blathan</i> (primrose) is good for the
+headache, if you put the leaves of it on your head. But as for the
+<i>Lus-mor</i>, it's best not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> to have anything to do with that.' For the
+<i>Lus-mor</i> is good to bring back children that are 'away,' and belongs to
+the class of herbs consecrated to the uses of magic, apart from any
+natural healing power. The Druids are said to have taken their knowledge
+of these properties from the magical teachers of the Chaldeans; but
+anyhow the belief in them lives on in Ireland and in other Celtic
+countries to this day.</p>
+
+<p>A man from East Galway says: 'To bring anyone back from being with the
+fairies, you should get the leaves of the <i>Lus-mor</i>, and give them to
+him to drink. And if he only got a little touch from them, and had some
+complaint in him at the same time, that makes him sick like, that will
+bring him back. But if he is altogether in the fairies, then it won't
+bring him back, for he'll know what it is, and he'll refuse to drink it.</p>
+
+<p>'There was a man I know, Andy Hegarty, had a little chap&mdash;a little
+<i>summach</i> of four years&mdash;and one day Andy was away to sell a pig in the
+market at Mount Bellew, and the mother was away some place with the
+dinner for the men in the field; and the little chap was in the house
+with the grandmother, and he sitting by the fire. And he said to the
+grandmother: "Put down a skillet of potatoes for me, and an egg." And
+she said: "I will not; for what do you want with them? you're just after
+eating." And he said: "Take care but I'll throw you over the roof of
+that house." And then he said: "Andy"&mdash;that was his father&mdash;"is after
+selling the pig to a jobber, and the jobber has given it back to him
+again; and he'll be at no loss by that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> for he'll get a half-a-crown
+more at the end." So when the grandmother heard that, she wouldn't stop
+in the house with him, but ran out&mdash;and he only four years old. When the
+mother came back, and was told about it, she went out and got some of
+the leaves of the <i>Lus-mor</i>, and she brought them in and put them on the
+child; and he went away, and their own child came back again. They
+didn't see him going, or the other coming; but they knew it by him.'</p>
+
+<p>And a Galway woman, who has been in England says: 'I was delicate one
+time myself, and I lost my walk; and one of the neighbours told my
+mother it wasn't myself that was there. But my mother said she'd soon
+find that out; for she'd tell me she was going to get a herb that would
+cure me; and if it was myself, I'd want it; but if it was another, I'd
+be against it. So she came in and said she to me: "I'm going to Dangan
+to look for the <i>Lus-mor</i>, that will soon cure you." And from that day I
+gave her no peace till she'd go to Dangan and get it; so she knew I was
+all right. She told me all this afterwards.'</p>
+
+<p>The man from East Galway says: 'The herbs they cure with, there's some
+that's natural, and you could pick them at all times of the day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sea-grass' is sometimes useful as a natural and sometimes as an occult
+cure. One who has tried it and other herbs, says: 'Indeed the porter did
+me good, and good that I'd hardly like to tell you, not to make a
+scandal. Did I drink too much of it? Not at all. But this long time I am
+feeling a worm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> in my side that is as big as an eel, and there's more of
+them in it than that. And I was told to put seagrass to it; and I put it
+to the side the other day; and whether it was that or the porter I don't
+know, but there's some of them gone out of it.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Garblus</i>&mdash;how did you hear of that? That is the herb for things that
+have to do with the fairies. And when you drink it for anything of that
+sort, if it doesn't cure you, it will kill you then and there. There was
+a fine young man I used to know, and he got his death on the head of a
+pig that came at himself and another man at the gate of Ramore, and that
+never left them, but was with them all the time, till they came to a
+stream of water. And when he got home, he took to his bed with a
+headache. And at last he was brought a drink of the <i>Garblus</i>, and no
+sooner did he drink it than he was dead. I remember him well.</p>
+
+<p>'There is something in flax, for no priest would anoint you without a
+bit of tow. And if a woman that was carrying was to put a basket of
+green flax on her back, the child would go from her; and if a mare that
+was in foal had a load of flax on her, the foal would go the same way.'</p>
+
+<p>And a neighbour of hers confirms this, and says: 'There's something in
+green flax, I know; for my mother often told me about one night she was
+spinning flax before she was married, and she was up late. And a man of
+the fairies came in&mdash;she had no right to be sitting up so late: they
+don't like that&mdash;and he told her it was time to go to bed; for he wanted
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> kill her, and he couldn't touch her while she was handling the flax.
+And every time he'd tell her to go to bed, she'd give him some answer,
+and she'd go on pulling a thread of the flax, or mending a broken one;
+for she was wise, and she knew that at the crowing of the cock he'd have
+to go. So at last the cock crowed, and she was safe, for the cock is
+blessed.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Old Bridget Ruane will not do any more cures by charms or by simples, or
+'bring children home to the world' any more. For she died last winter;
+and we may be sure that among the green herbs that cover her grave,
+there are some that are 'good for every bone in the body,' and that are
+'very good for a sore heart.'</p>
+
+<p>1900.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE WANDERING TRIBE</h2>
+
+
+<p>When poor Paul Ruttledge made his great effort to escape from the
+doorsteps of law and order&mdash;from the world, the flesh, and the
+newspaper&mdash;and fell among tinkers, I looked with more interest than
+before at the little camps that one sees every now and then by the
+roadside for a few days or weeks. And I wondered why our country
+people&mdash;who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that
+they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop:
+'Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ'&mdash;speak of a visit of the
+tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest. I asked why they
+were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange
+customs and of their unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>'They come mostly from the County Mayo,' I am told; 'and, indeed, they
+have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to
+marry a man and woman of them for nothing. But after he had them
+married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.</p>
+
+<p>'The people wouldn't like to let them into their house; for if you would
+let one man in, maybe twelve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> families would follow them and take
+possession of the whole place.</p>
+
+<p>'Some of them that do smiths' work are middling decent. They will sit
+there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that
+belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going
+to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of
+you with games. Indeed the most of them are no better than
+pickpockets&mdash;"newks" they are called. And they never go to Mass; and, as
+to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it's more
+likely they have no marriage at all.</p>
+
+<p>'They never go in lodgings; but they'll tilt up the cart, and put a bit
+of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it. Or if a man
+is alone, he'll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there.
+They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the
+hardiest people in the world.</p>
+
+<p>'And they make sport and fun sometimes. I used to see them dancing at
+Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among
+themselves they would have it. And they sing songs too&mdash;"The sweet boy
+of Milltown" I heard them singing.</p>
+
+<p>'There was a sweep in Gort joined them. Charlie his name was. He went
+into Greely's shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and
+bid him give him five pounds and he'd make his fortune. And he was
+afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was
+never seen there again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'He died after that in hospital. He slept out one night and the frost
+went through his body. There was another of them stole two of old Quin's
+geese at Ballylee one night, and sold them to him again next day. After
+he had them bought, Mrs. Quin came down and when she looked at them she
+knew them to be her own geese. "Give me back the money," she said. "I'd
+be a fool if I did," said he, and he went away.'</p>
+
+<p>Another neighbour says: 'They often made their camp in the boreen near
+my house; but one of them never came into the house, and I never saw one
+of them at Mass. One very hard morning I passed by them as I was
+bringing in pigs to the fair of Gort. There they were, sleeping under an
+ass-cart, quite happy and satisfied. They fight at night and make
+friends again in the daytime; and they sell their wives to one another;
+I've seen that myself.'</p>
+
+<p>And an old man says: 'I think the tinkers are not the same as the rest
+of us; I think they originated in themselves. They are very mirthful,
+and they have no control; but sometimes there will be a tyrant among
+them that is a good fighter, and they will obey him.</p>
+
+<p>'They have no religion; and it might be true they don't believe in the
+devil&mdash;but what of that? Aren't there many on your side and our own that
+think there is no resurrection, but that we go straight to heaven at the
+minute of death?</p>
+
+<p>'They never go into any house; and there's a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> many of them
+wouldn't go in a house if they were asked. My father went one time from
+Ballylee to Limerick; and there was a tinker at that time the Government
+wanted to get information from; something about Bonaparte it was. And
+they offered him a good lodging with a feather-bed in it to sleep on;
+and he said if he slept one night on a feather-bed, he'd never be any
+good after; that it was more wholesome to sleep outside on a bed of
+rushes. They didn't get any information out of him after; though they
+offered him good reward, he wouldn't give it to them.</p>
+
+<p>'They have no marriage at all; but their women might be ten times better
+than the rural women for all that, and true to their men. The women are
+very smart at cooking. You'll see them make a fire by the roadside with
+a bundle of straw and a bit of wood, and they'll put the pot down. What
+goes into the pot? Well, how would I know? but the men are very handy,
+and when they put their hand in the pot, believe me it doesn't go in
+empty.</p>
+
+<p>'They used to be prone to coining at one time; but the law of
+transportation stopped that. And there's few of the police would like to
+grabble with them. I saw four of the police trying to take one the other
+day, and he bet them all; and it was a countryman got a hold of him in
+the end.'</p>
+
+<p>And a woman whose house they have often made their camp near, says:
+'They are bad, and we don't like them to be coming near us. There was a
+little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> lad of them came running to the door one night, and he called to
+us to come; for there was a man killing his mother. But we drove him
+away and didn't go; for we knew her to be a bad woman.' And another
+woman says: 'If they have a religion, it's a wandering one; wandering
+like themselves.'</p>
+
+<p>And a farmer living by the roadside says: 'A bad class they are, indeed,
+sleeping out under a little bit of cloth, and hardy for all that. Wild
+beasts they are, stealing turf from the banks.'</p>
+
+<p>But an old man from Slieve Echtge takes a more kindly view of them.
+'There are very nice men among them,' he says; 'and they are as hardy as
+goats or as Connemara sheep. They go about to fairs and deal in asses
+and in horses, and sometimes they are rich. There was one I knew, a
+sieve-maker&mdash;they are of the same class&mdash;and that married a tinker's
+daughter; they were in here two or three times. I told him I wondered
+they wouldn't settle down in one place; for if I knew the way to make
+money, I said, I'd make plenty&mdash;for they are said to coin money. But he
+said it made no difference if they had money; they couldn't stop in one
+place; they must be walking always and going through the whole country.'</p>
+
+<p>And then we got to the reason of their wandering.</p>
+
+<p>'It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time. For he was a slave in
+Ireland after he was brought out of France, and it would take a hundred
+pounds to buy his freedom. And he found a lump of gold or of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> silver in
+a field one day, where he was minding sheep; and he brought it to a
+tinker and asked the value of it. "It's nothing at all but a bit of
+solder," says the tinker. "Give it here to me." But St. Patrick brought
+it to a smith then, and he told him the value of it. And then St.
+Patrick put a curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with
+every man's face against them, and their face against every man; and
+that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.</p>
+
+<p>'And there are some say that when our Lord was on the cross there could
+be no tradesman found to drive the nails in His hands and His feet till
+a tinker was brought, and he did it; and that is why they have to walk
+the world; and I never met anyone that had seen a tinker's funeral.</p>
+
+<p>'But they may believe some things. For there was a woman of them told me
+one time they were camping near the railway bridge that in the
+night-time she saw the whole wall beside her falling down and shattered;
+but in the morning it was standing as it did before. "And we'll get out
+of this place as fast as we can," she said.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are a class of themselves,' says another man, 'and they have been
+there ever since the world began. I often heard it said that our Lord
+asked a tinker one time to make Him some vessel He wanted, and he
+refused Him. He went then to a smith, and he did what was wanted. And
+from that time the tinkers have been wandering on the roads; but they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+wouldn't have refused Him if they had known He was God. I never saw them
+at Mass; but I am sure they believe in God. It was here in Ireland they
+refused our Lord, the time He walked the whole world after the
+Crucifixion.'</p>
+
+<p>'To be sure they are under a curse,' said another, 'like the Jews, to be
+wandering always; and they have some religion of their own, but it's a
+bad one. It's likely St. Patrick put the curse on them; for a fleet of
+children of tinkers went after him one time, mocking at him, and he
+turned one of them into a pillar of stone.'</p>
+
+<p>And that is their story as I have heard it so far.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+<h2>WORKHOUSE DREAMS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Last June I had a few free days, and I chose to spend them among the
+imaginative class, the holders of the traditions of Ireland, country
+people in thatched houses, workers in fields and bogs.</p>
+
+<p>I was looking for legends of those shadow-heroes, Finn and his men, to
+help me in writing their story; and I heard many tales and long poems
+about fair-haired Finn, who 'had all the wisdom of a little child'; and
+Conan of the sharp tongue, who was 'some way cross in himself,' and who
+had a briar on his shield; and their adventures beyond sea, and their
+hunting after deer that were 'as joyful as the leaves of a tree in
+summer time.' But some of the people repeated verses by Raftery and
+Callinan and Sweeny, and some told stories of the kingdom of the Sidhe.</p>
+
+<p>I spent three happy afternoons in a workhouse in my own county, but not
+in my own parish; and after we had spoken of the Fianna for a while, the
+old men began to tell me these long, rambling stories I am about to
+repeat.</p>
+
+<p>We sat in a gravelled yard, where only the leaves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> of a few young
+sycamores told that spring had come. Some of the old men sat on a bench
+against the whitewashed wall of a shed, in their rough frieze clothes
+and round grey caps, and others stood round, pressing closer and closer
+as their interest in the story grew.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the stories were new to me; some I had heard in other versions;
+but all&mdash;even those like the 'Taming of the Shrew,' which have, one must
+believe, been brought in from other countries&mdash;have taken an Irish
+colouring. I began to listen, half interested and half impatient; for I
+had never cared much for this particular kind of tale.</p>
+
+<p>But as I listened, I was moved by the strange contrast between the
+poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tales. These men who
+had failed in life, and were old and withered, or sickly, or crippled,
+had not laid up dreams of good houses and fields and sheep and cattle;
+for they had never possessed enough to think of the possession of more
+as a possibility. It seemed as if their lives had been so poor and rigid
+in circumstance that they did not fix their minds, as more prosperous
+people might do, on thoughts of customary pleasure. The stories that
+they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings'
+daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and lovers'
+flights on the backs of eagles, and music-loving water-witches, and
+journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for seven hundred
+years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I think it has always been to such poor people, with little of wealth or
+comfort to keep their thoughts bound to the things about them, that
+dreams and visions have been given. It is from a deep narrow well the
+stars can be seen at noonday; it was one left on a bare rocky island who
+saw the pearl gates and the golden streets that lead to the Tree of
+Life.</p>
+
+<p>One of the old men told me a story in Irish&mdash;another translating it as
+he went on; for my ear was not practised enough to follow it
+well:&mdash;'There was a farmer one time had one son only, and the son died,
+and the father wouldn't go to the funeral, where he had had some dispute
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>'And, after a while, a neighbour died, and he went to his funeral. And a
+while after that he was in the churchyard looking at the grave. And he
+took up a skull that was lying there&mdash;one of four&mdash;and he said: "It's a
+handsome man you may have been when you were young; and I'd like to know
+something about you," he said. And the skull spoke, and it is what it
+said: "I'll go spend to-morrow night with you, if you'll come and spend
+another night with me." "I will do that," said the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>'And on the way home he met with the priest, and he told him what had
+happened. "I would never believe that a skull spoke," said the priest.
+"Come to my house to-morrow night, and you'll hear him speak," said the
+farmer.</p>
+
+<p>'So the next night they were sitting together in the house, and they had
+dinner set out on the table.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> And after a while they heard something
+come to the door; and the skull came in, and it got up on the table, and
+it ate all the dinner that was there; and after that it went out again.
+"Why didn't you speak to it?" said the farmer to the priest. "Why didn't
+you speak to it yourself?" said the priest. "What will it do to me at
+all when I go to see it to-morrow night?" said the farmer; "but I must
+hold to my promise when it came here first."</p>
+
+<p>'So the next evening he set out for the churchyard, and he could see
+nothing at all in it. And then he went down three steps that were beside
+the church; and presently he was in a field, and it full of men fighting
+one against the other with spades and reaping-hooks. "Is it looking for
+a head you are?" they said; "it's gone into that field beyond."</p>
+
+<p>'So he went on into the other field; and it was full of men and women,
+all of them fighting one against the other. "Are you looking for a
+head?" they said; "it's after going into that field beyond."</p>
+
+<p>'So he went into the third field; and there he saw a big house, and he
+went into it. And he saw a fire on the hearth, and a lady in the room,
+and a serving-girl. And the lady was walking up and down the room; and
+whenever she would go near to the fire to warm herself, the serving-girl
+would put her away from it.</p>
+
+<p>'Then they said: "If it's for a head you're looking, it's within in the
+room."</p>
+
+<p>'So he went into the room; and the head was there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> before him, and it
+asked him would he have some dinner; and he said he would, and it
+brought him into a kitchen; and there were three women in it, and the
+head bade one of them to give the man his dinner; and what she put
+before him was a bit of brown bread and a jug of water, and he did not
+think it worth his while to eat that; and then the head bade the second
+woman to give him his dinner, and she gave him a worse dinner again; and
+then the third woman was told to give it to him, and she spread a nice
+table, and put the best of everything on it, and he ate and drank; and
+then he asked the head what was the meaning of all he saw.</p>
+
+<p>'And the head said: "The men you saw in the first field used to be
+fighting when they were in life, because they had land near to one
+another, and they used to be for moving the merings, and now they have
+to be fighting with one another for ever and always. And the men and the
+women you saw, they were married people that used to be fighting with
+one another, and they must go on fighting for ever now. And the lady you
+saw in the house, when she was in life, she usedn't to let the
+serving-girl near to the fire when she would come in wet and cold, and
+would want to warm herself; and now the serving-girl is doing the same
+to her, and that will go on to the Day of Judgment.</p>
+
+<p>'"And as to the three women in the kitchen," he said, "those were my own
+three wives. And when I asked the first wife for my dinner, she gave me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+nothing but brown bread and a jug of water. And when I asked the second
+wife for my dinner, she gave me a worse dinner again. But the third wife
+when I asked her, set out a grand table, and a white cloth on it, and
+gave me the best of food and drink.</p>
+
+<p>'"And as for yourself," he said, "the reason you were brought here is,
+that you wouldn't go to your son's funeral, because you had a falling
+out one day when you were ploughing the field together, but you went to
+a stranger's funeral. And go back now," he said, "to where your son was
+buried, and make your repentance there, and maybe you'll get forgiveness
+at the last. And how long is it since you left your home?" he said. "I
+left it on the afternoon of yesterday," said the farmer. "It is seven
+hundred years you are here," said the head. Isn't that a long time he
+was in it, and he thinking it was only a few hours?</p>
+
+<p>'So he went back to where his own son was buried; and he knelt down
+there, and made his repentance, and asked forgiveness and his son's
+forgiveness. And at last a hand came up out of the grave and took his
+hand; and then he and the son went up to heaven together.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another old man says: 'There was a Protestant and a Catholic one time;
+and the Protestant said if the Catholic would come to his church one
+Sunday, he'd go to his the next.</p>
+
+<p>'So the Catholic went first to the Protestant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> church for one day, and
+it seemed to him as if it was a week he was in it.</p>
+
+<p>'And the next Sunday the Protestant went into the Catholic church; and
+there he stopped for a year and a day, and he thought it was only a few
+hours he was in it.</p>
+
+<p>'And at the end of that time he died, and he went up before our Lord.
+And he had done some things that were not good in his life, and our Lord
+said: "I will give you as many years of heaven as there are penfuls of
+water in the sea, and hell at the end of that." "That is not enough of
+heaven," said the man. Then our Lord said: "I will give you as many
+years of heaven as there are grains in the sand, and hell after that."
+"That is not enough of heaven," said the man. Then our Lord said: "I
+will give you as many years of heaven as there are blades of grass on
+the earth, and hell after that." "That is not enough of heaven," said
+the man. "And I will ask you for this," he said; "give me a year of hell
+for all these things you have spoken of: the drops in the sea, and the
+blades of grass, and the grains of the sand, and give me heaven in the
+end."</p>
+
+<p>'And when the Lord heard that, He said, "I will give you heaven first
+and last."</p>
+
+<p>'That is how the Catholic had him saved.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another old man says: 'There was a king one time that had a daughter;
+and she went out one day in the garden, and there she saw a bird&mdash;a
+jackdaw it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>&mdash;and she thought it very nice, and she followed it on.
+And at last it spoke to her, and it said: "Will you give me your promise
+to marry me at the end of a year and a day?" "I will not," she said; and
+she went into the house again.</p>
+
+<p>'After that the king's younger daughter went out, and she saw the bird
+and followed it, and it asked her the same thing. And she gave her
+promise to marry it at the end of a year and a day.</p>
+
+<p>'And at the end of that time a great coach and horses came up to the
+door of the king's house; and the jackdaw came in, and he took the edge
+of the young girl's dress in his beak to draw her out of the house. And
+she went away in the carriage with him, and they came to a sort of a
+castle, and went into it. And there was no one in it; but no sooner did
+they come in, than there was a table set out before them, with every
+sort of food and drink, and beautiful gold cups and everything grand.
+And when they had eaten enough, the bird said, "Don't be frightened at
+anything you may see; and whatever happens, don't say one word; for if
+you do, you will lose me for ever."</p>
+
+<p>'And then some sort of people came in, and began hitting at the bird and
+attacking him, and he keeping out of their way. And at last they got to
+him, and began to knock feathers from him. And when the young girl saw
+that, she cried out, "Oh, they are destroying you, my poor jackdaw!"
+"Oh!" he said, "why did you say that? If you had not spoken," he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> said:
+"I would be all right; but now I must leave you for ever. And here is a
+ring I will leave with you," he said: "and whatever desire you have, you
+will get it when you rub the ring."</p>
+
+<p>'He went away then, and there was no one left in the house but the young
+girl; and all was darkness around her. And she went up the stairs; and
+at last she saw a little sign of light through a hole in the roof; and
+she rubbed the ring, and she said: "I wish that hole to be made bigger."
+And so it was on the moment, and more light came in.</p>
+
+<p>'And then she wished she could be up on the roof, and so she was. And
+from the roof she could see the sea, and there was a ship on it in the
+distance; and she said: "I wish I could be on the deck of that vessel."
+And there she was on the deck, and the sailors not knowing where did she
+come from. And she said to the captain: "Can you give me something to
+eat?" And he said: "That is what I cannot do, for the harness casks are
+empty, we are so long at sea; and we have not as much meat in them as
+would go on the point of a knife." So she rubbed the ring then; and
+there was a table before them, set out with every sort of food and
+drink, and they all had enough.</p>
+
+<p>'And then they came to a strange country; and she said to the captain to
+leave her on land. And she went up to a big house, where some great man
+lived, and she asked for employment as a sewing-maid. And they said:
+"You may sew one of those dresses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> that is for the master's daughter
+that is going to be married to-morrow. And mind you do it well," they
+said.</p>
+
+<p>'So she brought away the dress to her room, and she wished it to be the
+best dress, and the best-sewed, that would be seen on the morrow. And
+when the morrow came, so it was.</p>
+
+<p>'Then she went out into the garden, where there were beautiful flowers
+and trees; and she fastened a thread of silk from one tree to another,
+to make a swing-swong, and she began swinging on it. And the young lady
+that was going to be married, came down the steps into the garden, and
+she wanted to go on the swing-swong. And the other said she had best not
+go on it where she was not used to it, and she might get a fall. But she
+said she would; and the other warned her secondly not to go on it. But
+up she got, and the thread broke, and she fell and was killed on the
+spot.</p>
+
+<p>'Then all the people came out; and when they saw her dead, they had a
+court-martial on the strange girl, and they were going to put her to
+death; but she told them how it all happened. And when the jury heard
+it, they said there was no blame on her, where she had given two
+warnings.</p>
+
+<p>'That's a closure now.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what happened her after that?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what happened her; they let her off that time anyhow.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what became of the bird?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'How would I know? Didn't I say that's the closure?'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then a young man said: 'I'll tell you a folk-tale:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'It was in the good old time when Ireland was paved with penny loaves
+and the houses thatched with pancakes; and there was a king had a son,
+and the mother died, and he married another wife; and she had three
+daughters, and their names were Catherine Snowflake, and Broad Bridget,
+and Mary Anne Bold-eyes, that had two eyes in the front of her head, and
+another eye in the back of her poll.</p>
+
+<p>'And the stepmother got to be very wicked to the son then; and she used
+to be giving everything to the daughters; but he had nothing but
+hardship, and all they would give him to eat was stirabout.</p>
+
+<p>'He was out on the fields one day with the cattle, and there was a
+little Black Bull there, and it said to him: "I know the way you are
+treated," it said, "and the sort of food they are giving you. And
+unscrew now my left horn," he said, "and take what you will find out of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>'So the young man unscrewed the left horn; and the first thing he took
+out was a napkin, and he spread it out on the grass; and then he took
+out cups and plates, and every sort of food, and he sat down and ate and
+drank his fill. And then he put back the napkin and all into the horn
+again, and screwed it on.</p>
+
+<p>'That was going on every day, and he used to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> throwing his stirabout
+away into the ash-bin; and the servants found it, and they told the
+queen that he was throwing away what they gave him, and getting fat all
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>'The queen noticed then that he used to be going every day into the
+field with the cattle; and she bade her daughter, Catherine Snowflake,
+to go and to watch him there to see what would he be doing.</p>
+
+<p>'But that day when he went up to the little Black Bull, it said: "Your
+step-sister will be coming to-day to watch you," he said: "and unscrew
+now my right horn, and take out a pin of slumber you will find under it,
+and when you see her coming, go and play with her for a bit, and then
+put the pin of slumber to her ear, and she will fall asleep." So he did
+as the Bull told him; and when he put the pin of slumber to Catherine
+Snowflake's ear, she fell into a deep sleep in the grass, and never woke
+till evening.</p>
+
+<p>'The next day the queen sent Broad Bridget, that was a great big woman,
+to watch the step-brother; but the Bull warned him as before; and he put
+the pin of slumber to her ear, and she fell into a deep sleep, and saw
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>'The third day Mary Anne Bold-eyes was sent out, and the brother put her
+to sleep the same as he did the others. But if the two front eyes were
+shut, the eye at the back of her poll was open; and she saw all that
+happened, and she went back that evening and told her mother the way her
+step-brother got all he would want out of the Bull's horn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'The queen sent out then and gathered all her fighting men together to
+kill the Bull. And they all surrounded the field where the Bull was; but
+there were two or three hundred more cattle in it; and the Bull was
+running here and there between them, the way they could not get near
+him. And at the end of the second day he made for a gap and broke
+through it, and came to where the queen was, and he took her on his
+horns and tossed her as high as her own castle. He called to Jack then;
+and Jack put a halter on him, and they rode away together where winds
+never blew and the cocks never crew, and the old boy himself never
+sounded his horn. And they overtook the wind that was before them, and
+the wind that was after them couldn't overtake them.</p>
+
+<p>'They came then to a great wood, and the Black Bull said to Jack: "Get
+up, now, into the highest tree you can find, and stop there through the
+day, for I have to fight with the Red Bull that is coming against me.
+And unscrew my right horn," he said; "and take out the little bottle
+that is in it, and keep it with you; and if I am well at the end of the
+day," he said, "it will be white as it is now."</p>
+
+<p>'The Red Bull came to meet him then, and his head was as big as
+another's body would be; and he and the little Black Bull went to fight
+together; and Jack stopped up in the tree.</p>
+
+<p>'And in the evening he looked at the little bottle; and what was in it
+was as white as before. So he came down, and he found the Black Bull,
+and got up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> on his back again; and they went off the same as before.</p>
+
+<p>'They came then to the wood where the White Bull was, and he came out to
+fight the Black; and all happened the same as the first day.</p>
+
+<p>'And Jack came down from his tree and got on his back again; and they
+went on to another wood. And the Green Bull came to meet him this time;
+and Jack went up in a tree. And at evening he looked at the little
+bottle, and it was red up to the cork.</p>
+
+<p>'He got down then, and went to look for the little Black Bull, and he
+found him lying on the ground at the point of death; and the Green Bull
+gave a great bellow, and made away and left him there.</p>
+
+<p>'And the Black Bull said: "I am going from you now, Jack; but I won't go
+without leaving you something," he said. "When I am dead, cut three
+strips of hide off me from the nape of the neck to the root of the tail,
+and put them about your body; and they'll give you the strength of six
+hundred men."'</p>
+
+<p>Jack had many adventures after this; he killed three giants, rescued a
+princess from a dragon, and married her. These were told with dramatic
+effect; and the other men, young and old, who had gathered round the
+teller, cried out at each new splendid adventure: 'Good boy, Peter;
+that's it; bring it out.' And the last words, telling how Jack and his
+Princess 'put on the kettle and made the tea,' were drowned in applause
+and laughter, and clapping of hands.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But I had already heard that part of the story, in almost the same
+words, in Gort Workhouse; and had given it to Mr. Yeats for his 'Celtic
+Twilight,' so I need not put it down here.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then an old man said: 'There was a young man one time was out hunting;
+and as he was going home, he heard the cry of a child beside a sand-pit.
+And he got off his horse to look what was it; and it was a young little
+child was there, a girl. And he took her up on the horse and wrapped her
+up, and brought her home to his mother. And they reared her up, and she
+grew to be a beautiful young girl; and the young man thought the world
+and all of her.</p>
+
+<p>'But he got some sickness and died. And the mother was fretting for him
+always; and she shut up his room and locked it, that no one could go in.
+And she did not like to be looking at the young girl, because of the son
+being so fond of her; and she looked for a way to get rid of her.</p>
+
+<p>'So she sent her out on a message into a wood that had wild beasts in
+it, and she thought they would make an end of her. And the girl went
+astray there, and lay down and slept for the night. And the beasts came
+and lay down beside her, and did her no harm at all. And there she was
+found in the morning, asleep among them.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the mother thought of another way to get rid of her; and she bade
+her to go to the son's grave and to spend the night there. So she went
+as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> was told; and she was crying on the grass. And then the young
+man came up out of it, and it is what he said: "My mother thought I
+would harm you if you came here, but I will not harm you; I will help
+you. And take these three gray hairs from my head," he said, "and bring
+them back with you. And for every one of them my mother will have to
+grant you a request. And it is what you will ask her, to open my room
+that she has locked up for a day and a night. And at the end of a year,
+you will ask the same thing of her, and again at the end of another
+year."</p>
+
+<p>'So the girl went back, and she asked to have the door opened, and she
+went in and stopped there for a day and a night. And at the end of the
+year she did the same, and again at the end of the third year.</p>
+
+<p>'And after a while the mother said one day: "I wonder what she wanted in
+that room, and what she was doing in it." And she opened the door, and
+there she saw a fire on the hearth, and the girl sitting one side of it,
+and a child in her lap, and the son sitting the other side, and two
+children in his lap. For she had brought him back from the grave.</p>
+
+<p>'And the son said: "What is wanting to me now is someone that will go
+and spend seven years in hell for my sake, to save my soul." "I will do
+that for you," said the mother. "It would be no use you going," he said.
+"I will do it," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>'So he said she might go; and he gave a spoon that would give her drink,
+and a ring that would give her food, so long as she would keep them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'So she went down to hell, and she stopped there seven years; and
+through all that time she got no rest, only on Sundays.</p>
+
+<p>'And at the end of the seven years, she was going out, and she heard a
+voice saying: "Will you stop another seven years to save your father's
+soul?" "I will do that," she said. "Do not," they said; "for your father
+gave you no care, and did nothing for you." "No matter," she said; "I
+will give another seven years to save his soul."</p>
+
+<p>'And at the end of the second seven years she was going out; and her
+mother, that had done nothing for her, asked her to stop another seven
+years for her soul; and she did that. And at the end of the twenty-one
+years, they gave her the three souls in a napkin, and she went out.</p>
+
+<p>'And as she was going home, she met with an old man, and he said: "Give
+me what you have there." "Who are you?" "I am Almighty God," he said. "I
+will not give them to you," said the girl. And after a little time she
+met with another old man, and he said: "Give me what you have there."
+"Who are you?" she said. "I am Jesus Christ." "I will not give them to
+you;" and she went on. Then the third time she met with an old man, and
+he asked for what she had in the napkin. "Who are you?" she asked. "I am
+the King of Sunday." "Then I will give them to you," she said; "for in
+all the twenty-one years I went through, I got no rest at all but on the
+Sunday."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'She went home then; and at first they didn't know her, where she was so
+long away; and when the children came down to see her in the kitchen,
+they didn't know her.</p>
+
+<p>'But when the man of the house knew she was in it, he went down and gave
+her a great welcome back to himself and the children again.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then another old man said: 'There was a king that used to make rules and
+to break rules, and that was very cunning; and he wanted to get a good
+wife for his son. So he sent him out one day to look for a girl that he
+would fancy, and he brought one in. And the old king showed her a whole
+lot of gold and of treasures; and he said: "What would you do if all
+this was yours?" "I would sit down and do nothing else but enjoy it,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>'So the king said to his son that she wouldn't suit, and that he should
+go look for another girl, rich or poor. So he brought in a poor girl;
+and the king showed her the treasure, and he said: "What would you do if
+all this belonged to you?" And she said: "Whenever I would take a
+sovereign out of it, I would try to put back two."</p>
+
+<p>'So he said she would do, and that the son might marry her. But the girl
+said: "I will be well treated while you are in it; but some day you
+might be gone, and my husband mightn't treat me so well. And make him
+give me his promise now," she said, "that if ever he turns me out of the
+house, I may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> bring three ass-loads of whatever I myself will choose
+along with me." So he gave her his promise she might do that.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the old king died; and the young one was, like himself, a
+law-maker and a law-breaker. And he thought a great deal of his own
+wisdom, and of the judgments he would give.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, at that time there was a man had a mare that had a foal in a
+field; and in the field next it there was an old <i>garran</i>; and there was
+a little stream that made the mering between the two fields. And the
+foal took a habit of crossing over the stream to the other field where
+the <i>garran</i> was; and it got to be so friendly with him, and so fond of
+him, that at last it was hardly it would come back at all. And the man
+the other field belonged to laid a claim to it, where it was always in
+his ground.</p>
+
+<p>'So the case was brought before the king; and he thought a long time,
+and at last he said to put the foal in a house that had two doors, one
+on each side, and to put the <i>garran</i> outside one door and the mare
+outside the other, and to see which would the foal follow. And they did
+that, and the foal followed the <i>garran</i>, and it was given to the owner.</p>
+
+<p>'And the man it was taken from was vexed; and he went to the queen, and
+he told the injustice that was done to him. And she bade him to get a
+fishing-rod, and to go fishing in the river; and when the king would go
+by, to turn and to be fishing on the dry land.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'So he did that; and when the king was coming by, he turned and began
+fishing on the dry land. And the king stopped and asked why was he doing
+that. And the answer he gave was: "I think it no more foolish to be
+fishing on dry land than to believe that a foal would belong to a
+<i>garran</i>."</p>
+
+<p>'When the king heard that, he guessed it was his own wife had given the
+answer to the man; and he went back and asked was it true she had put
+the man up to do what he had done. "It is true," she said. "Then you may
+clear out of this," he said, "and go back to your own place; for I won't
+keep a wife in the house that will be upsetting my judgments." "I must
+go if you bid me to," she said; "but do you remember your promise to me,
+to bring away three ass-loads with me of whatever I would choose?" "You
+may do that," he said. So she got the three asses, and on the first she
+put her clothes and some money. And on the second she put her two
+children. And then she came back to her husband and stooped down before
+him. "Get up on my back," she said, "till I put you on the ass, for it
+is yourself I choose to bring along with me for my third load. So long
+as I have you and the children with me, what do I care where I go?" "If
+that is so," said the king, "you may as well bring in your things again
+and stop with me. And I will never drive you away again," he said.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another man said: 'There was a man in Ballinasloe Asylum that was not
+very mad&mdash;just a little mad&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> he used to be raking about the gate.
+And there was a clock over the gate; and one day the doctor was going
+out, and he took his watch out and looked up, and he said to himself,
+"That clock is not right." "If it was right, it wouldn't be in here,"
+said the man that was raking.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>'I have a sorrowful story,' says another man. 'I am blind, and I hurt my
+hip. And I have a brother fighting for the Queen and for the King, and a
+son fighting against the Boers, and neither of them ever sent me
+anything.' (But this was received without much sympathy, and with what I
+imagine to represent derisive cheers.)</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A very wild-looking man told 'on behalf of a poor man inside'&mdash;to get
+him a bit of tobacco&mdash;a long story about a farmer who worked hard
+himself, to give his sons time for schooling.</p>
+
+<p>'One of them made money in the West Indies by teaching, and he came
+back; and his mother was in the house, and she didn't know him; and he
+asked might he stop the night. "Indeed, I can't give you leave to do
+that," she said; "for a travelling man stopped for a night not long ago;
+and when he went away in the morning, he brought with him the flannel
+bawneen and the pants of the man of the house, that were hanging on the
+hedge to dry. But stop here for a while," she said, "and rest yourself."</p>
+
+<p>'Presently the father came in, and didn't know him; and when he heard
+what the wife had said, he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> vexed, and said: "A thousand men might
+come the road, and not one of them do what that travelling man did. And
+I am sorry, sir," he said, "that my wife gave you such a reason."</p>
+
+<p>'Then the potatoes were ready, and they were put on a skip for the
+dinner; and they asked the gentleman to help himself; and they gave him
+a knife but it had but half a blade; and they said they were sorry to
+have no better a one to give him. But he peeled his potatoes with that.</p>
+
+<p>'And then some one came in and asked would the young people come in and
+join a dance, for there was a piper in the next house. And the stranger
+asked to go with them. But at every dance-house there is a blackguard,
+and there was one there; and he began to mock at the strange gentleman.
+And one of his brothers that didn't know he was his brother, said to the
+blackguard: "It's a very mean thing of you to mock at a stranger." But
+he went on doing it.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the stranger got up and went over to where his sister was, and
+slipped a letter into her apron that told who he was. And then he
+quenched the dip-candle over her, that was lighting the house, and he
+made for the man that mocked him, and gave him a blow that sent him into
+the hearth, and then he made away.</p>
+
+<p>'And it was a long time before they could find the candle; and when it
+was lighted, the man was found dead on the hearth. And the sister read
+the letter;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> but she did not tell it was her own brother had come home.</p>
+
+<p>'But after that he got a good place in the West Indies, and sent for
+them all there.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then an old man said: 'I was minding a man in the hospital one time, and
+he was lying quiet in the bed; and the priest came in to see him, Father
+Kearns. And all of a sudden he made one leap, and was out of the bed,
+and bade the priest to be off out of that. And the priest made for the
+door; and I stood in the way of the man till he got out; and then I got
+out myself, and shut the door. He was brought away to Ballinasloe Asylum
+after. But if it wasn't for me, Father Kearns wouldn't have got safe
+out.</p>
+
+<p>'That's my story.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The first old man said: 'There was a man one time went to the market to
+sell a cow; and he sold her, and he took a drop of drink after; and
+instead of going home, he went into a sort of a barn where there was
+straw stored, and he fell asleep there.</p>
+
+<p>'And in the night some men came in, and he heard them talking. And they
+had a lot of silver plate with them, they were after stealing from some
+house in the town, and they were hiding it in the straw till they would
+come and bring it away again.</p>
+
+<p>'And he said nothing, and kept quiet till morning; and then he went out;
+and the people in the town were talking of nothing else but the great
+robbery of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> silver plate in the night. And no one knew who had done it;
+and the man came forward, and told them where the silver plate was, and
+who the men were that stole it; and the things were found, and the men
+convicted. But he did not let on how he had come to know it, or that he
+had slept in the barn.</p>
+
+<p>'So he got a great name; and when he went home, his landlord heard of
+it; and he sent for him, and he said: "I am missing things this good
+while, and the last thing I lost was a diamond ring. Tell me who was it
+stole that," he said. "I can't tell you," said the man. "Well," said the
+landlord, "I will lock you up in a room for three days; and if you can't
+tell me by the end of that time who stole the ring, I'll put you to
+death."</p>
+
+<p>'So he was locked up; and in the evening the butler brought him in his
+supper. And when he saw evening was come, he said: "There's one of
+them," meaning there was one of the three days gone.</p>
+
+<p>'But the butler went down stairs in a great fright; for he was one of
+the servants that had stolen the ring, and he said to the others: "He
+knew me, and he said, 'There's one of them.' And I won't go near him
+again," he said; "but let one of you go."</p>
+
+<p>'So the next evening the cook went up with the supper, and when she came
+in, he said the same way as before: "There's two of them," meaning there
+was another day gone. And the cook went down like the butler had gone,
+making sure he knew that she had a share in the robbery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'The next day the third of the servants&mdash;that was the housemaid&mdash;brought
+him his supper; and he gave a great sigh, and said: "There's the third
+of them." So she went down and told the others; and they agreed it was
+best to make a confession to him; and they went and told him of their
+robberies; and they brought him the diamond ring; and they asked him to
+try and screen them some way; so he said he would do his best for them,
+and he said: "I see a big turkey-gobbler out in the yard; and what you
+had best do is to open his mouth," he said, "and to force the ring down
+it."</p>
+
+<p>'So they did that. And then the landlord came up and asked could he tell
+him where the thief was to be found. "Kill that turkey-gobbler in the
+yard," he said, "and see what can you find in him." So they killed the
+turkey-gobbler, and cut him open, and there they found the diamond ring.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the landlord gave him great rewards, and everyone in the country
+heard of him.</p>
+
+<p>'And a neighbouring gentleman that heard of him said to the landlord:
+"I'll make a bet with you that if you bring him to dinner at my house,
+he won't be able to tell what is under a cover on the table." So the
+landlord brought him; and when he was brought in, they asked him what
+was in the dish with the cover; and he thought he was done for, and he
+said: "The fox is caught at last." And what was under the cover but a
+fox! So whatever name he had before, he got a three times greater name
+now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'But another gentleman made the same bet with the landlord; and when
+they came into the dinner, there was a dish with a cover, and the man
+had no notion what was under it; and he said: "Robin's done this
+time"&mdash;his own name being Robin. And what was there under the cover but
+a robin! So he got great rewards after that, and he settled down and
+lived happy ever after.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then a red-faced young man said: 'There was a young man one time, and
+his name was Stepney St. George, and his people said it was time for him
+to get married; and they brought twelve young ladies to stop in the
+house, the way he would make a choice among them. And he used to be
+talking with them and walking in the garden; and there was one of them
+he got to like better than the rest, and the others got jealous of her,
+and used to be picking at her. And when Stepney saw that, he brought her
+out one day into a field where there was a bull, and he covered with
+rings and bells of gold, and a golden door in his side. And he opened
+the door and bade her to go in there, where she would be safe from the
+other eleven women.</p>
+
+<p>'So she went in and he shut the door; and the others did not know where
+was she gone, and they were looking for her in every place. And they
+came to where the bull was; and they began looking at him and touching
+him, and just by chance one of them touched a bell, and the door opened,
+and there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> the young lady inside. And they took her out, and brought
+her into the house; and she was sitting on the window-seat looking out
+at the river. And they pushed her over, and she fell into the water and
+was swept away.</p>
+
+<p>'As to Stepney St. George, he was looking for her everywhere, but he
+could not find her. And one day he saw a poor travelling woman trying to
+cross the river, and she fell into it. And he thought it might be that
+way his own young lady was lost.</p>
+
+<p>'And that put it in his mind to build a bridge across the river, and he
+got all the men that could be got, and they set to work. And they had a
+good bit of it made before night. But in the night all they had made of
+it was swept away. And the next day they were building again, and they
+sat up to watch it that night. But all the same it was all gone before
+morning, and they did not see anyone near it.</p>
+
+<p>'The third night, Stepney St. George himself sat up to watch. And at
+last he saw a great black eagle, and it came flying towards the bridge;
+and, when it saw him, it called out: "What are you doing building this
+bridge to be in my way? I swept it away the last two nights, and I'll
+sweep it away again now." "If you do, I'll get satisfaction from you,"
+said Stepney. "You will have to find me for that," she said. "And my
+name is Mother Longfield, and my house is at the other end of the
+world." And with that she went away; and Stepney followed everywhere
+looking for her; and at last he came to a house, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> an old witch came
+out, and she told him her name was Mother Longfield. "And I've got you
+here now in my power," she said, "and you will have to do all the work I
+will give you to do."</p>
+
+<p>'So she brought him out then to a stable; and she gave him a fork, and
+bade him clear out all the dung and litter that was in it. So he began
+the work; but for every forkful he would throw out, two would come in
+its place, so that at last there was no room for him in the stable, and
+he had to go outside.</p>
+
+<p>'A young girl came up to him then, and she asked what was the matter.
+And he told her all that had happened; and she said, "I will help you."
+So she took out a little fork, and she went into the stable; and it
+wasn't long before she had it sweet and clean, that you could eat your
+dinner off the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'He went back then to the house, and the witch was at the door, and she
+asked how did he get on. "Very well," he said. "I have the whole stable
+cleaned out, sweet and clean." She looked very sharp at him then; and
+she said: "Take care did Lanka Pera help you?" But he let on not to hear
+her, and made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>'The next day she gave him a hatchet that was as blunt as a blunt knife;
+and she told him there was a forest he should cut down before night, or
+she would make an end of him. So he went to the forest and began to cut;
+but as he cut, it grew thicker and thicker, and the trees that were
+saplings in the morning were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> large trees before afternoon. So when he
+saw there was no use going on, he stopped. And then he saw the young
+girl again, and she said: "I am come to help you." And she took out a
+small hatchet, and began to cut, and before long the whole forest was
+levelled down.</p>
+
+<p>'He went back to the house whistling and singing; and he told the witch
+he had cut down the forest, and she asked did Lanka Pera help him. But
+he said she did not&mdash;for she had told him not to let on he had seen her
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>'The third day the witch showed him a hill a good way off, and a wild
+horse on it; and she said what he had to do was to catch the horse, and
+if he did not do that, it was his last day to live.</p>
+
+<p>'So he began hunting the horse, and trying to catch it; but he could
+never get near it at all. Then the girl came to him, and she said: "You
+will never be able to catch it without my help. And I will turn myself
+into a mare," she said; "and you can get on my back. But remember," she
+said, "not to put the spurs into me whatever may happen." She turned
+herself into a mare then, and he got on her back. And the old witch came
+out then and she called to Stepney: "Don't spare the spurs."</p>
+
+<p>'They galloped off then after the wild horse, but they never could come
+up with it. And at last, in the heat of the race, Stepney forgot what
+the girl had said, and he pressed the spurs into the side of the mare
+till the blood came down.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>('Oh murder!' and a groan of pity from all the old men.)</p>
+
+<p>'Then the mare fell, and the mare was gone; and it was the girl he saw
+before him, and her sides bleeding. And it is then he knew she was the
+young girl had been stolen from him at his own place after he shutting
+her up in the bull.</p>
+
+<p>'She went then and called to the wild horse, and he came to her; and
+they both of them got up on him, and they went back to the witch's
+house. And when they got near it, the girl got up and turned herself
+into a mare again. And the witch came out to meet them, and she said: "I
+see you didn't spare the spur."</p>
+
+<p>'And the witch said Stepney might have the girl if he could choose her
+out of thirteen. And he did that. And the witch wanted to keep her from
+him yet, but he wouldn't give her up; and he brought her to a house that
+was close by; and they made a plan to escape in the night; and they made
+the two horses ready to bring them away. And the girl made two cakes;
+and she left them with some of the servants, and she said: "The witch
+will be coming in to watch us for the night, and she will ask for a
+story; and stick a knife into one of the cakes when she asks that," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>'So they made off then by the back door; and the witch came to watch the
+house; and she said to the maid: "Tell me a story now while I'm
+waiting." So she stuck a knife in one of the cakes, and it began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> to
+tell a story; and the witch sat there listening to it.</p>
+
+<p>'And when it was done, she asked for another story; and the maid stuck a
+knife in another of the cakes, and it began to tell a story. And when
+that was done, the witch asked for another story, and the maid stuck a
+knife in the third cake, and it is what it said: "The two you think you
+are watching are off, and are on the way back to their own home."</p>
+
+<p>'When the witch heard that, she took the shape of an eagle on her; and
+she flew out after them, and she came in sight of them. And they looked
+back, and saw her coming like a big black cloud in the air; and the girl
+said to Stepney: "Take the bit of wood you'll find in the horse's ear,
+and throw it behind you." And he did that, and a great forest grew up
+behind them; and it is hardly the eagle could fly over it.</p>
+
+<p>'Then they saw her coming again; and the girl said: "Take the drop of
+water you will find in the horse's other ear, and throw it down behind
+you." And when he did that, there was a great sea behind them; and the
+eagle found it hard to pass it, but it did at last.</p>
+
+<p>'And when she was coming up with them again, the girl took a bit of
+stone was in her own horse's ear, and threw it behind them. And a great
+mountain rose up, that kept back the eagle for a time. And then she took
+a brass ball out of the other ear, and she gave it to Stepney; and bade
+him to throw it at a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> white mole that was on the eagle's breast. So he
+made a shot with it, and hit the eagle, and it fell dead there and then.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the girl said to Stepney: "There is no danger now between us and
+home. But have a care," she said, "when you get home not to let a dog
+touch your face in any way, or you will forget me and all that has
+happened."</p>
+
+<p>'So he said he would remember that. But when he got home and sat down in
+the house, his little lap-dog jumped up on him and licked his face. And
+on the moment he forgot all that had happened, and the girl he had
+brought home.</p>
+
+<p>'And after a while he was going to be married to another lady, and all
+was ready for the wedding; and a poor-looking girl came to the door. And
+the servants bade her to go away, for the grand people in the house
+would not want her. "I think I have something would amuse them," she
+said. "I have a cock and a hen that can talk the same as living people."</p>
+
+<p>'So when the company heard that, they sent for her; and she went up, and
+she put out the cock and the hen on the table, and she threw down a few
+grains of oats; and when the hen was going to pick at it, the cock drove
+her away. And the hen said then: "You should not do that, after the way
+I helped you, cleaning out the stable you were not able to clean by
+yourself." But Stepney took no notice of what she was saying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Then she threw a little more oats, and the cock was taking it all for
+himself. And the hen said again: "You should not do that, when you
+remember how I helped you to cut down the forest." But still Stepney
+took no notice of what was being said. Then she threw a little more
+oats, and the cock was shoving the hen away, and the hen said: "You
+would not have treated me this way the time I caught the horse for you,
+after you driving the spurs into my side."</p>
+
+<p>'And with that Stepney remembered all; and he jumped up, and drove all
+the others away, and took her for his wife, and they lived happy ever
+after.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another old man said: 'There was a mouse one time said to a robin, that
+they would lay up a store of provisions together against the winter. And
+he bade the robin to go up in the hedges and to be picking berries, and
+he would have the hole ready to put them in. And then he said: "Let you
+go to where they are threshing wheat; for if they saw me there, they
+would kill me; but if they see you, they'll be throwing grains to you."</p>
+
+<p>'So the robin went and brought back the grains; and when the hole was
+full, the mouse said: "I have enough for myself now, and go and look
+after your own house-keeping for the winter."</p>
+
+<p>'So the robin was vexed; and they agreed to go fight it out. And when
+the day came, all the animals came together, and all the birds of the
+air. And the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> place they fought was in a field before a big house. And
+they fought till all were dead but one eagle.</p>
+
+<p>'And the young man of the house came out and looked at the field; and he
+saw the eagle moving, and it said to him: "Go in now, and bring me out
+three sheaves of wheat." So he did that; and the eagle nicked the grain
+off two of the sheaves, and then he was strong. And he said: "I will
+bring you now on a voyage if you will come with me. But go in first to
+the house and bring me out a bit of yellow soap." So he got the bit of
+soap; and the eagle took him and the soap and the sheaf on its back, and
+flew away. And at last it began to get tired and to droop; and the place
+where it dropped was in the middle of the sea. And the young man said:
+"I don't like this, to be left down into the sea." Then the eagle bade
+him to throw away the bit of yellow soap, and where he threw it there
+came a green island. And they rested on it, and eat the grain from the
+sheaf they had with them.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the eagle took him up again; and when they came to land, it threw
+him down. And there was a house near, and a giant came out of it; and he
+brought him in, and said to his servant: "Give him barley bread to
+fatten him, and when he is fat enough, I will eat him."'</p>
+
+<p>(Then he was given tasks to do, and a girl came to help him, much as
+Lanka Pera helped Stepney St. George in the other story.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'And afterwards the girl said to him that they would make their escape;
+and they got into a boat; and what she brought with her was the three
+young pups of the dog that minded the giant's house.</p>
+
+<p>'And when they had gone a little way on the sea, the giant missed them;
+and he sent the dog after them to bring the girl back. But as soon as
+the dog came close to them, and opened its mouth to take hold of her,
+she put one of the pups into it, and it turned back to the shore again
+to bring the pup safe to land. And the giant was very angry when he saw
+it coming without the girl, and he sent it after them again. And the
+girl did the same thing as before, and put the second pup into its
+mouth, that it turned back again. And the giant sent it back the third
+time, and gave it great abuse for coming to shore without her. And the
+third time she dropped the pup into the water, for she was vexed, the
+dog to come so often. And the dog would not pick it up at first, for he
+was afraid to pick it up again after all the abuse he got from the
+giant. But when he saw it going to drown, he took it up and turned back,
+and they were free of him then.</p>
+
+<p>'And they came to land; and the young man left the girl down by a
+shoemaker's house while he went on to make all ready for her at his own
+house. But she bade him not to let a dog lick his face or touch it, or
+he would forget all about her. But when he went in, his dog jumped up
+and licked his face; and he forgot the girl or that he ever had seen
+her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'And as for her, she waited; and he did not come back, and she knew no
+one in the place; and she went up in a tree that was over the well in
+the shoemaker's garden to hide herself. And after a while the shoemaker
+sent out one of his daughters to the well to bring in water. And when
+she stooped down, she saw the shadow of the girl in the tree, and she
+thought it was herself, and she said: "My father should not be sending
+such a handsome girl as that to be bringing in water;" and she threw the
+tin can down against a wall and broke it, and went in.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the shoemaker sent out the second daughter for water; and she
+stooped down; and she thought it was her own face she saw; and she no
+better-looking than myself, and that's not saying much.' (Applause from
+all the old men.) 'So she wouldn't bring the water, but went in without
+it.</p>
+
+<p>'Then he sent his missus out, that was the ugliest you ever saw&mdash;old and
+withered. But that did not hinder her from thinking the shadow she saw
+was herself; and it is proud she was going into the house again.</p>
+
+<p>'So at last the shoemaker himself went out, and when he stooped and saw
+the shadow, he looked up in the tree, and he said: "Come down out of
+that, for you have given me trouble enough." So she came down, and told
+him her story; and he brought her to the young man's house.' (The cock
+and hen now come in as in Lanka Pera.) 'And they lived happily ever
+after.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another says: 'There was a young man killed a deer one time he was out
+hunting. And a lion and a hound and a hawk came by, and they asked a
+share of it. And he gave the flesh to the lion, and the bones to the
+dog, and the guts to the hawk. And they thanked him; and they said from
+that time he would have the strength of a lion, and the quickness of a
+hound, and the lightness of a hawk.</p>
+
+<p>'It was a good while after that he fell in love with a young girl; and
+her father said that before he could marry her he must go out and see
+who was it was stealing his cows; for there were some of them stolen
+every night.</p>
+
+<p>'So he watched, and he saw a witch coming and driving them away. And he
+attacked her, and fought with her, and beat her by his strength, and she
+made off. And he went to the place she had driven the cows, that was
+underground, and he found the cows belonging to the whole neighbourhood.
+And he drove them all out, and gave them to the owners.</p>
+
+<p>'And after a little time the father said to him, that there was a fox in
+the country, that no hound could catch, and that it was to be hunted
+again on the next day. So the young man went out, and when he saw the
+fox, he took the shape of a hound and followed it. And he was gaining on
+it, and it took to a lake, and he went in after it, and it turned to its
+own shape of a witch, and dragged him down.</p>
+
+<p>'The girl used to go and be looking at the lake every day, but she never
+got a sight of him. And at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> last, someone told her those water-witches
+were very fond of music, and to get a musical instrument. So she brought
+a musical instrument to the side of the lake, and she was playing it;
+and the witch put up her hand out of the water. "What will you take for
+that?" she said. "I will give it to you," the girl said, "if you will
+let me see my husband's head above the water." "I will do that much for
+you," said the witch.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the young man put up his head above the water, and she could see
+his face; but she could not touch him, and she went away.</p>
+
+<p>'The next day she came again with a musical instrument that was better
+again than the first, and she began to play it. The witch put up her
+hand, and asked what would she take for it. "Let me see my husband to
+his waist this time," she said. So the young man was let up out of the
+water as far as his waist, and then he disappeared again.</p>
+
+<p>'The next day she came again, and the musical instrument she brought
+with her was seven times better than the other two. "What will you take
+for that?" said the witch. "Let my husband stand up on your shoulders,
+clear and clean out of the water," she said. So the witch put him up on
+her shoulder; and when she did, he took the shape of a hawk on the
+moment, and away with him through the air, back to his own home again.</p>
+
+<p>'The witch followed him then; and when he was in a field, she came to
+fight him, and they fought the whole day, and they were both tired, and
+they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> stopped to rest. "Oh, if I had three drops of sea-water and a
+crumb of wheaten bread!" said the witch. "Oh, if I had three drops of
+fresh water and a crumb of barley bread!" said the young man.</p>
+
+<p>'And a fairy brought the witch the three drops of sea-water and the
+crumb of bread. And a little serving-girl from the farm brought the
+young man the three drops of fresh water and the crumb of bread. And
+then they fought together again; and he having the strength of a lion,
+he killed her in the end.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Another old man said: 'There was a young man looking for service one
+time; and a farmer said he would take him to mind his cattle. For a
+great many of his cattle had died with the herds he had, and he didn't
+know what the reason was.</p>
+
+<p>So the first morning the young man led them up as he was told, to the
+green grassy place on the top of Cruachmaa. And when he looked about him
+there, he noticed it to be very dirty and trampled by the cattle. So he
+brought them to graze in the fields at the side of the hill; and he came
+back, and cleared all the dirt from that field till it was green and
+smooth. And no more of the cattle died.</p>
+
+<p>'He was up in the field one day, and he saw a great hurling match going
+on; and one side had a young man at the head of it, and it was beating
+the other. So the next day he went to the wood, and he cut a hurl; and
+he was all that day and the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> shaping it; and his mother asked was
+he going to a match, and he said he was only amusing himself with it.</p>
+
+<p>'The next night he went up to the field to give a hand; and the king of
+the fairies came up to him, and asked would he join his side that was
+the weakest, and he said he would. And he drove the ball to the goal
+every time, and they gave the other side a great beating. And the king
+of the fairies thanked him, and said they had been able to do nothing
+till they had a living person along with them.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the king asked would he come along with him to bring away the King
+of Spain's daughter that he wanted for a wife. And the young man agreed
+to that. And the king raised them both into the air as if they were a
+wisp of straw; and they flew away on the air like two feathers.</p>
+
+<p>'When they came to the court of the King of Spain, there was a great
+ball going on; and they went in, but no one could see them. And the
+fairy king said to the young man that he would know which was the
+princess by hearing her sneeze. And presently the most beautiful young
+lady that was there gave a sneeze; and the young man said, "God bless
+her." "Don't say that again," said the fairy king, "or she'll be lost to
+us." So she sneezed twice after that, and he said nothing. And then the
+fairy king said: "Let you take hold of her now and bring her out, and I
+will make something in her own shape to put in her place, the way they
+won't miss her." So the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> young man took a hold of her and brought her
+outside; and then the fairy king came out, and they went away like
+feathers in the air.</p>
+
+<p>'And when they came to Irish land, the fairy king said: "Now you may
+give her to me." "Indeed I will not," said the young man, "after all the
+trouble I went through; but I will keep her for myself to be my own
+wife." "If you do," said the fairy king "you will have nothing better
+than a stone, for she will have no speech."</p>
+
+<p>'But the young man brought her to his own house; and his mother seeing
+her in her ball dress, thought it was one of the ladies from Castle
+Hacket come for a visit, and she was astonished when the son said she
+was to be his wife. But all the time she could not speak; and at last
+the young man went up to the field on the hill, and he brought a
+tar-barrel with him, and he gathered sticks and ferns, and put them all
+around, and began to set fire to them.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the fairy king came and asked what was he doing. "I am burning you
+out of the place," he said, "till you give back speech to my wife." So
+the king agreed to that, and they made friends again; and the young man
+went home, and found his wife speaking. And she wrote a letter then to
+her father and mother, the King and Queen of Spain; and they were very
+glad to hear that she was well, and they sent her money and clothes of
+all sorts.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the fairy king came and asked the young man to go with him to
+Germany to help him to bring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> back a wife for himself from the king's
+court there. So he agreed to go; and before he went, the wife said:
+"When you come back, you will bring a title for yourself and put an O to
+your name. And it is what you must do," she said, "when you are near the
+land, cut off your hand, and throw it on the shore, and bring it back to
+me after."</p>
+
+<p>'So they went to Germany, and brought away a wife for the fairy king.
+And when they were coming home and were near the strand, the young man
+cut off his hand, and threw it on the land.</p>
+
+<p>'And his wife put the hand on to him again after; and he was O'Connor
+from that time, that was the first of all; and the fairy king put an O
+to his name, and he was O'Neill, that was second.</p>
+
+<p>'But now at this time, there isn't a Tom, Dick, or John, but puts an O
+before his name.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>An old one-eyed man gave me a new version of Deirdre's story. He said:
+'The King of Ulster and his men were out hunting one time; and they met
+with the fairy king, Mannanan of the Hill. They sat down with him; and
+himself and the King of Ulster began to play cards together, and
+whichever of them won could put some command upon the other. It was
+Mannanan won; and what he put on the King of Ulster was to follow after
+him to whatever place he would go.</p>
+
+<p>'With that he changed into the shape of a hare, and away with him, and
+the hounds after him, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> the king and his men after them again; but
+they lost sight of him. But the hounds followed on till they came to a
+hill, and an old stump of a tree on top of it; and they began scratching
+at the stump where it was rotten. And when there was a hole scratched in
+it, the king looked down; and he saw steps; and he and his men went down
+the steps; and they passed through gardens and beside a pond with
+flowers about it; and then they came to a big house, and in it an old
+man sitting on a chair reading a book; and they knew him to be Mannanan
+that they were looking for.</p>
+
+<p>'And he rose up and bade them welcome; and there was a feast spread out
+before them, with every sort of food and drink. And while they were at
+the feast they heard something like the cry of a child from an inner
+room. And the King of Ulster rose up, and he said: "I will go see what
+is in there; for that is the cry of a child."</p>
+
+<p>'So he went in; and he came back again, bringing a baby in his arms, the
+most beautiful that was ever seen, and her hair like gold. "I will bring
+away this child with me, and rear her up," he said. "Do not," said
+Mannanan; "for if you do, your country will be destroyed, and your
+throne will be lost through her, and there will be a great many killed
+for her sake."</p>
+
+<p>'But the king would not mind him; but he brought her away, and he had a
+house made for her, and she was reared up in it. And she grew to be a
+nice young girl, and there were women about her to care<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> her and to
+attend on her; but she never saw a man but the king himself, that used
+to come and see her every week. And he had great love for her; and he
+thought she loved him.'</p>
+
+<p>The account of Deirdre's meeting with Naoise, and their flight to
+Scotland, and the king's message bringing them back, was much the same
+as in some of the printed versions; but Mannanan's part at the end was
+new to me. The old man went on: 'When they came to Ulster, the king made
+an attack on them, to bring away Deirdre from them; but they killed all
+that came near them, and drove the whole army back.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the king went to Mannanan of the Hill, and he said: "Come and give
+me your help against these men, or they will kill the whole army of
+Ulster." And Mannanan said: "I will give you no help; for I told you all
+this would come on you if you brought the girl away the time she was a
+baby in this place." But the king pressed him, and said: "Put blindness
+on them, the way they will not be able to kill my people."</p>
+
+<p>'So Mannanan agreed to do that, and he put blindness on the three
+brothers. And when they went out next time to fight against the army,
+they could not see who was before them; and it was at each other they
+were striking; and at last all of them fell by each other's hand.</p>
+
+<p>'And when Deirdre saw they were dead, she took up a sword or a dagger
+that was lying on the ground,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> and she put it through her own body, and
+she fell dead along with them.</p>
+
+<p>'And she was buried on one side of a dry stone wall, and her husband on
+the other side. And a briar grew up on his grave, and a briar on hers;
+and they met over the wall, and joined with one another.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A young man, narrow-chested and consumptive-looking, but with fun in his
+eyes, said then: 'There were three Irishmen joined the English army, and
+they didn't like it. And they were brought to India; and when they were
+there, they agreed to make away. So they went into a forest, where they
+would not be found. And they made a little cabin for themselves there;
+and two of them used to go hunting every day, and the other would stop
+at home to make ready the dinner.</p>
+
+<p>'One day when the pot was on the fire, a little old man came into the
+house. "Bum-bum," he said; "give me something to eat out of the pot."</p>
+
+<p>'So the soldier gave him a rabbit out of the pot. "Give me another," he
+said then. "I will not," said the soldier; "for there would not be
+enough for my friends' dinner when they come home from hunting." With
+that the little man took hold of the pot, and threw the scalding broth
+over the soldier, and made off, leaving nothing in the pot after him.</p>
+
+<p>'And when the others came home, they found their comrade lying there on
+the ground, scalded, and he told them what had happened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'The next day the second of them said he would watch the pot. And all
+happened the same as the first day; and they found him scalded and the
+pot empty when they came back.</p>
+
+<p>'The third day the third of them said he would keep a watch, and that
+they might be sure they would get their dinner that evening.</p>
+
+<p>'He put down the pot, and he put the tongs to redden in the fire; and
+when the pot was boiling, the little man came in. "Bum-bum," he said;
+"give me a bit from the pot." So the soldier gave him a bit. "Give me
+more now," he said, when he had the rabbit eaten. "I will not; I will
+keep it for my comrades," said the soldier. With that the little man
+took a hold of the pot; but if he did, the soldier took up the tongs
+that he was after making red-hot in the fire; and the little man made
+off, and the pot in his arms, and the soldier after him with the tongs.
+Then the little man dropped the pot; but the soldier took no notice, but
+followed after him till he went down a hole into the ground. Then he
+took a sapling, and tied his handkerchief on it, and stuck it where the
+hole was, and went back again to the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>'When his comrades came back, he told them all that happened; and they
+all set out to where the hole was. And they looked down, and it was very
+deep; and they could see no end to it. So the third man said to the
+others: "One of you is a rope-maker, and the other is a cooper; and let
+you make a rope and a bucket now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'So they made the rope and the bucket, and fastened one to the other;
+and the first man was let down. But after he went a good way, the rope
+came to an end, and there was no sign of a bottom; and he called to them
+to pull him up again. It happened the same with the second man; and he
+was pulled up again. Then the third said he would go, and that if the
+rope would not reach to the bottom, he would take a leap the rest of the
+way.</p>
+
+<p>'So when the rope was all given out, he made a leap and came safe to the
+bottom. And it was in a hole he found himself; and he went through a
+great many rooms from that, till he came to where the little man was
+sitting by himself.</p>
+
+<p>'And he gave him a welcome, and said: "You had good courage to get here.
+And have you enough courage now," he said, "to go straight before you
+for three hundred miles, to set free the King of Spain's three daughters
+that are in the power of three giants?" "I will do that," said the
+soldier.</p>
+
+<p>'So the little man gave him directions what to do. "But when you are
+going to fight the giants," he said, "take no weapon but the little
+rusty sword you'll find at the back of their own door."</p>
+
+<p>'The soldier set out then; and after he had gone a hundred miles in a
+straight line, he came to the first castle, and there was a copper crown
+over it.' (At this, we all looked up at the whitewashed boards of the
+shed, as if we expected to see the copper crown.) 'And there was a young
+lady looking out of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> window, and she saw him coming. "You'd best not
+come here," she said: "or the giant that owns the castle will make an
+end of you." "It's to make an end of himself, I am come," says he, "and
+to set you free." "And do you think the like of you could stand against
+him?" says she; "it's what he's gone out for now," says she, "is for
+seven bullocks to make his dinner of." "I'm ready for him whenever he
+comes," says the soldier.</p>
+
+<p>'Presently the giant came back, bringing the seven bullocks on his back.
+"It is to fight me you are come," says he. "Wait till I have my dinner
+eat, and I'll make a quick end of you."</p>
+
+<p>'So he sat down and had his dinner off the seven bullocks, and then he
+got up to fight. "What weapons will you fight with?" he says, throwing
+down a brace of swords. "Is it one of these you will have?" "It is not,"
+said the soldier; "but the little rusty sword that is behind the door."</p>
+
+<p>'So he went in and got that; and the giant began to hit and to strike at
+him; and he began to tickle the giant's ankles and his calves. And at
+last the giant stooped down to scratch his ankle; and when he did, the
+soldier struck off his head.</p>
+
+<p>'He let the princess out then, and bade her to go where the little man
+was waiting at the bottom of the hole, till he would come to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'He went then to the second castle, that had a silver crown over the
+door; and then he went on to the third castle, that had a golden crown
+over the door;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> and the same thing happened as before, except that the
+second giant had fourteen bullocks and third giant twenty-one bullocks
+for his dinner.</p>
+
+<p>'Then he brought the third princess back to the house, at the bottom of
+the hole, where the little man was sitting. And the little man gave him
+a whistle, and he blew it; and his comrades came and called down the
+hole that they were at the top, and he bade them to let the bucket down.
+And when they did, he put the first of the three princesses in it. They
+drew her up then; and when they saw so nice a girl come up, they began
+to quarrel which of them would have her for his wife. "Oh, don't quarrel
+about me," says she; "for there is a girl much handsomer than myself
+below yet." So they let the bucket down again, and she made off.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the second princess came up in the bucket, and they began to
+quarrel for her, and she said: "You may let me go, for I am nothing at
+all beside the girl that is below in the hole yet."</p>
+
+<p>'So they let her go; and then the third princess that was the most
+beautiful came up, and they began to quarrel for her. "You need not be
+quarrelling for me," says she; "for it is your comrade that is at the
+bottom of the hole yet, I am going to marry."</p>
+
+<p>'So when they heard that, they let the bucket down again. But when the
+soldier below was going to get into it, the little man said: "Don't get
+in," he said; "but put stones in it; for your comrades will cut the rope
+when it is half way up."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'So he filled it with stones, and sure enough, when it was half way up,
+his comrades cut the rope, and the bucket fell to the bottom.'</p>
+
+<p>('Oh! oh! oh!' There were indignant murmurs among the old men at this.)</p>
+
+<p>'The soldier did not know then what way he would make his escape. But
+the little old man took his whistle, and blew on it; and presently a
+great big eagle came down the hole.</p>
+
+<p>'The little man bade the soldier get on its back till it would bring him
+across the world; and he put seven bullocks on its back along with him.</p>
+
+<p>'They set out then; and the soldier was cutting a bit off the bullocks
+and putting it into the eagle's beak whenever he would say "Quawk." But
+they were only a third of the way when all was gone, and they had to
+turn back again.</p>
+
+<p>'He took fourteen bullocks the next time, but they gave out. But the
+third time the little old man gave twenty-one bullocks.</p>
+
+<p>'So this time the eagle brought him to Spain, and left him down there.
+And at that time the King of Spain was making a great feast for the
+marriage of his eldest daughter that was the most beautiful. And when
+the soldier saw her, he knew she was the third of the princesses he had
+set free from the giant, and the other two were her two sisters.</p>
+
+<p>'It was given out then that the princess would not marry anyone but the
+man that would bring her a golden crown, the same as the one that was
+hung<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> over the castle where the giant had kept her. And all the
+goldsmiths were very busy, everyone employing them to make crowns. But
+they could not make the right one.</p>
+
+<p>'Now the little man had given the soldier a ring before they parted, and
+had bade him rub it if he would want anything from him. So he rubbed it
+and a genii appeared before him. "Master, master, best master, what is
+your will?" "Bring me the golden crown from the third castle where I
+killed the giant," says the soldier.</p>
+
+<p>'So the genii brought it; and Jack went to the king's court and put it
+down; and the princess said it was just the very same crown that was
+over the castle; and she knew it was the soldier had freed her, and she
+was willing to marry him.</p>
+
+<p>'But the king was not pleased to see such a poor-looking husband coming
+for his daughter; and he said he would give her to no one but a man that
+would bring a coach for her.</p>
+
+<p>'So the soldier went away, and he rubbed the ring, and the genii
+appeared; and it is what he bade him, to get him a coach that would be
+filled full up of mud. So the coach went up to the king's door, and the
+king himself came out to open it; and when he did, out came all the mud
+over him that he was near choked. And he filled it a second and a third
+time with pebbles and with stones, and the same thing happened.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the soldier bade the genii to bring him a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> fine empty coach, and
+he got into it. And when he was in it, it is what he wished, to have the
+princess sitting beside him.</p>
+
+<p>'And there she was on the minute, and they went away together. But the
+king gave his consent then, and a great deal of money and treasure.</p>
+
+<p>'And they put down the teapot, and if they didn't live happy'&mdash;the end
+was lost in applause.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And when the applause had died away, an old, bright-eyed wrinkled man,
+said: 'There was a King of Leinster one time, and there was a lake
+beside his house. And every now and again twelve swans used to come to
+the lake; and they had been coming there for seven generations.</p>
+
+<p>'And the king's son that was away came home. And one day he saw the
+swans coming to the lake; and he said: "I wonder I never heard any talk
+of these swans before, for they are the most beautiful I ever saw." And
+his people said: "They are coming here for seven generations, and no one
+ever took notice of them before."</p>
+
+<p>'The next morning early the king's son went down and hid himself in the
+flags and the rushes by the lake. And after he had watched for a while,
+he saw the swans come flying to the edge of the lake. And then they took
+off their flying habits, and went bathing in the water; and they were
+not swans but beautiful young women; and there was one among them that
+was the most beautiful of all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'After the king's son had watched for a while, he went to where they had
+left their flying habits; and he brought away the one that belonged to
+the most beautiful of the women. After a while they came to shore, and
+began to look for their flying habits, and when she could not find hers,
+she made great laments.</p>
+
+<p>'The king's son came out to her then; and he asked her would she stop
+with him and be his wife. "I cannot do that," she said; "but give me
+back my wings now, and if you will come to the shore at such a place
+to-morrow, I will bring a ship, and you can come away with me." So he
+gave her back her habit, and she took the form of a swan again and flew
+away.</p>
+
+<p>'The next day he was making ready for his journey before he would go to
+meet her; and the old woman that was in the house, and that was over
+eighty years old, came and asked could she go with him. So at last he
+gave her leave, and they went down to the shore to wait. And the nurse
+said: "Lie down now and put your head in my lap and rest awhile." So he
+laid his head in her lap; and when he did that, she took a sleeping-pin
+and put it in his ear, and he fell into a heavy sleep.</p>
+
+<p>'And when he was asleep, the ship came over the sea, with music and
+playing in it, and came near the land. And when there was no one to meet
+it there, it went away again.</p>
+
+<p>'The king's son awoke then, and the nurse said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> "It is making a fool of
+you she was, for we have waited here all the day, and there has no ship
+come."</p>
+
+<p>'So they went back home; but the next day he went down to the shore
+again, and the same thing happened. The young man lay down to rest, and
+the nurse put a sleeping-pin in his ear, and the ship came when he was
+asleep, and it went away again.</p>
+
+<p>'But this time the lady in the ship wrote a letter and left it on the
+strand; and when the king's son awoke, and that the nurse told him there
+had no ship come, he was distracted, and went wandering about on the
+strand, and there he found the letter; and it told him what to do, and
+the way the nurse had deceived him.</p>
+
+<p>'So the next day when he went to the shore and the nurse followed him,
+he brought her where there was a well, and put a stone about her neck
+and pushed her in, and she was seen no more.</p>
+
+<p>'Then he went down to the shore, and he met the lady; but she said: "I
+cannot bring you with me now, but I will leave the ship with you, and
+you must follow till you find me."</p>
+
+<p>'And he took the ship, and she gave him directions; and he went on till
+he came to a country a long way off, and a wood in it, and a house in
+the wood, and an old man sitting in it.</p>
+
+<p>'And he told the old man all that had happened, and how he was looking
+for the lady. And the old man gave him clothes to put on, and a place to
+wash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> himself, till he was as fresh and fair as before he set out.</p>
+
+<p>'And then he sent for a pony, and he said: "I will give you this pony
+that will bring you where she is; and when you get there, you must put
+the bridle on his neck, and put the saddle cross-ways, and turn his head
+back here again."</p>
+
+<p>'So then he got on the pony's back; and it flew away with him through
+the air, till at last it put him down on land, near a great castle. And
+he turned the saddle cross-ways, and put the bridle on the pony's neck,
+and turned its head, and it went back to where it came from.</p>
+
+<p>'Then he went on to the castle; and he went in and asked the Master to
+take him as a serving-man. And the Master said he would, and he said:
+"The work you have to do to-night is to attend to the horse that is in
+the stable, and that belongs to my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>'But before the young man did that, he went to look for the young lady,
+and he saw her looking out of a window; and he went up to her, and she
+knew him, and gave him a welcome. And she said: "The Master of the house
+knows well who you are, and that it is to bring me away you are come;
+and that is the reason he bade you go to clean and to attend to the
+horse in the stable; for it is wicked, and it would make an end of you.
+But," says she, "take these brushes and these shammys and bring them
+along with you into the stable, and the horse will be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> as quiet as a
+lamb; and in place of wanting to kill you, he will love you. And when
+night comes," says she, "he will come to us, and we will get on his
+back, and he will bring us away."</p>
+
+<p>'So all happened as she said, and the horse came at night, and they both
+of them got on his back; and away with him, and never stopped till he
+brought them back to Ireland, and to this country.</p>
+
+<p>'And it was in this country they settled down; and some of their
+descendants are living in it yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is their name?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I think they, are the Persses of Roxborough; or maybe they are
+the Gregorys of Coole.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A red-faced, farmer-like man says: 'There was a poor man one time&mdash;Jack
+Murphy his name was; and rent day came, and he hadn't enough to pay his
+rent. And he went to the landlord, and asked would he give him time. And
+the landlord asked when would he pay him; and he said he didn't know
+that. And the landlord said: "Well, if you can answer three questions
+I'll put to you, I'll let you off the rent altogether. But if you don't
+answer them, you will have to pay it at once, or to leave your farm. And
+the three questions are these:&mdash;How much does the moon weigh? How many
+stars are there in the sky? What is it I am thinking?" And he said he
+would give him till the next day to think of the answers.</p>
+
+<p>'And Jack was walking along, very downhearted;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> and he met with a friend
+of his, one Tim Daly; and he asked what was on him; and he told him how
+he must answer the landlord's three questions on to-morrow, or to lose
+his farm. "And I see no use in going to him to-morrow," says he; "for
+I'm sure I will not be able to answer his questions right." "Let me go
+in your place," says Tim Daly; "for the landlord will not know one of us
+from the other; and I'm a good hand at answering questions, and I'll
+engage I'll get you through."</p>
+
+<p>'So he agreed to that; and the next day Tim Daly went in to the
+landlord, and says he: "I'm come now to answer your three questions."</p>
+
+<p>'Well, the first question the landlord put was: "What does the moon
+weigh?" And Tim Daly says: "It weighs four quarters."</p>
+
+<p>'Then the landlord asked: "How many stars are in the sky?" "Nine
+thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine," says Tim. "How do you know
+that?" says the landlord. "Well," says Tim, "if you don't believe me, go
+out yourself to-night and count them."</p>
+
+<p>'Then the landlord asked him the third question: "What am I thinking
+now?" "You are thinking it's to Jack Murphy you're talking, and it is
+not, but to Tim Daly."</p>
+
+<p>'So the landlord gave in then; and Jack had the farm free from that
+out.'</p>
+
+<p>There was great laughter and applause at this story.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>Then someone told this version of the <i>Taming of the Shrew</i>. I heard it
+told in Irish afterwards by an Aran girl at the Galway Feis:</p>
+
+<p>'There was a farmer one time had three daughters; and two of them were
+very nice and civil, but the third had a very hot temper. And the two
+civil ones were married first; and then a gentleman came and asked for
+the third. So after the wedding they started for home; and the farmer
+said to his son-in-law: "God speed you&mdash;yourself and your Fireball."</p>
+
+<p>'Well, on the way home, a hare started up; and the gentleman had a white
+hound, and it followed the hare; and he called to it to leave following
+it, but it would not till it had it killed. And it came back then, and
+the gentleman took out his pistol and shot the hound dead. "I did that
+because it would not obey me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>'And after a little time they came to a stone wall that was very high;
+and he put the white horse he was riding at it, and the horse refused
+it, and he shot it dead. "I did that because he would not take the wall
+when I bade him," he said.</p>
+
+<p>'They came home then; and there was a good deal of feasting made, and of
+good treatment for all the servants in the house; but as to the wife she
+got hardly enough given her, and that of the worst. She was angry then;
+and she said to the husband: "Why am I badly treated this way, and your
+servants are well treated?" "I have a good reason for that," says he;
+"for my servants are working hard for me, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> doing all they can for
+me, and you are doing nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>'Well, whatever happened after that, all the daughters and the
+sons-in-law came back one time to the father's house to see him. And
+after the dinner, the daughters were playing cards together, and the
+sons-in-law were in another room with the father. And he asked the first
+of them how did he like his wife. "Very well," says he, "I have no fault
+to find with her, a very civil, obedient girl." The second son-in-law
+said the same; and then the father said to the man that married the
+hot-tempered one: "And what sort of an account have you to give of your
+missus?" "Very good," he said. "If her sisters are civil and obedient,
+she is three times more civil and obedient."</p>
+
+<p>'They were surprised to hear him say that; and they said they would put
+it to the proof. And the first husband went to the door and called to
+his wife, "Come here a minute." "I can't come," says she; "I'm dealing
+the cards." Then the second husband went and called to his wife that he
+wanted her. "I can't come," says she; "I'm playing the game." Then the
+third went and called to his wife; and she rose up and put down the
+cards, and came out to him on the moment. "What were you doing when I
+called you?" says he. "I was playing the game," says she.</p>
+
+<p>'They all wondered when they heard that, and they asked what made her,
+that was so hard to manage before, so quiet now.</p>
+
+<p>'"I will tell you that," she said. And she told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> them the whole story of
+the horse and the hound being shot, and the servants being treated
+better than herself.</p>
+
+<p>'And that's the end of my story.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then a young red-faced, one-eyed man was dragged forward, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>'There was a farmer one time had met with great misfortunes; and at last
+of all his stock he had nothing left but one cow. And when he saw his
+children starving with the hunger, he made up his mind to sell the cow,
+and he set out with her to the fair.</p>
+
+<p>'And on the road he met a man that asked would he sell the cow. "I will
+indeed; it's for that I'm going to the fair," says he. "Will you give
+her to me for this bottle?" says the man, holding out a bottle to him.
+"Do you know what my wife would do if I brought her home that bottle in
+place of the cow?" said the farmer. "I do not," said the man. "She'd
+break it on my head," said the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, the man pressed him for a while; and at last he said the fair
+might be a bad one, and maybe he might as well chance the bottle and go
+home. So he took the bottle and gave the cow in place of it, and went
+home.</p>
+
+<p>'When his wife knew what he had done, she went near losing her wits; and
+she called him all the names; and the children were crying with the
+hunger. And the poor man didn't know what to do; and he sat down, and he
+put the bottle on the table and opened it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'And as soon as he did that, two men came out of it, and they began to
+lay a cloth, and to set out every sort of food on it. And the man and
+his wife and the children sat down and eat their fill.</p>
+
+<p>'And everything the farmer would wish for after that, he had but to open
+the bottle and the two men would come out, and would bring him what he
+wanted. So he grew to be rich, and the neighbours heard how he came by
+his money. And his landlord got word of it, and he came and asked would
+he sell the bottle to him.</p>
+
+<p>'But he refused to part with it; but after a while the landlord got him
+to his own house, and gave him drink; and, not being in his clear
+senses, he consented to give up the bottle for four acres of good land.</p>
+
+<p>'But after a while he had all his riches spent, and someway nothing went
+well with him; and at last he found himself the same way he was before,
+with but one cow left of all his stock, and the children crying with
+hunger.</p>
+
+<p>'So he set off with the one cow; and he went to the same place he met
+with the man with the bottle before, and he was there before him. And he
+told him all that had happened, and the way it was with him now; and the
+man gave him another bottle, and brought away the cow.</p>
+
+<p>'So he hurried back home with the bottle, and set it on the table and
+drew the cork, and the children were waiting round the table for the
+good dinner they would have. But when the bottle was opened, two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> men
+came out with blackthorns in their hands, and they began to beat the
+farmer and his wife and all about them; and it was blows the poor
+children got in place of food.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, as soon as the men went into the bottle again, the farmer put in
+the cork, and he went away to the landlord's house. And there was a
+great ball going on there; and the farmer asked could he see the
+landlord.</p>
+
+<p>'So he came down to him, and the farmer said he had got a new bottle,
+and that maybe the ladies and gentlemen would like to see all it would
+do. So the landlord agreed, and brought him up to the ballroom, and he
+put down the bottle and opened the cork. And when it was open, the two
+men came out with their blackthorns, and they began to hit at the ladies
+and gentlemen near them, and to beat them, till they ran to hide in
+every corner. And the landlord called out for them to stop, but the
+farmer said they would not till he would get his own bottle again.</p>
+
+<p>'So they gave it to him then, and he went home bringing the two bottles
+with him. And he lived in plenty ever after till he died.</p>
+
+<p>'But someway at his wake, with all that was going on there, the two
+bottles got broken, or if they did not they were lost.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Then another said: 'There was a servant-girl left to mind her master's
+house one time. And she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> heard a noise below the window, and she opened
+it to look out. And she saw the hand of a man on the window ledge, that
+was climbing up to rob the house. And when he put his hand up, she took
+a little hatchet she had and cut his hand off.</p>
+
+<p>'The same thing happened with another man and another after him again,
+till she had killed six. But when she was striking at the seventh, he
+drew back, and all she cut off was his finger.</p>
+
+<p>'When the master came back, she got great praise and great reward, so
+that she had plenty of money. And one day a man came to ask her in
+marriage; and she did not know him to be the robber that escaped, and
+she married him.</p>
+
+<p>'But after a while he brought her out through the fields to where there
+was a little bridge over the river. And when they got to it, he told her
+he was the man she had cut the finger off, and that he had brought her
+there to kill her.</p>
+
+<p>'"Give me time to say my prayers first," she said. So he gave her time
+for that, and she knelt down; and presently she turned round and he was
+on the bridge beside her, and she gave him a push into the water. And
+that was the end of the seventh of the robbers.</p>
+
+<p>'And then she went home again. That's my story.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And then the old man, whose brother has fought for the king, and hasn't
+sent him anything, said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Peace is made. That's my story. Will you give me tobacco for that?'</p>
+
+<p>But this being the last day, they all had tobacco&mdash;story-tellers and
+all.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And here is the last story: 'There was a steward one time in the
+employment of a gentleman; and he was a good, honourable man. And he
+used to make the Sunday begin at twelve o'clock on Saturday; and to ring
+the bell then for the workmen to go home.</p>
+
+<p>'He got sick at last, and his death was drawing near; and he asked one
+request of his master, and that was, that after his death he would put
+his body on a car, but not direct it anywhere; but to let it go what way
+the horse would bring it.</p>
+
+<p>'So the master did that; and they put the body on a car, and the carman
+went along with it; but he did not direct the horse, but let it go what
+way it liked.</p>
+
+<p>'And it went on a long way; and then they came to a path that was all
+full of spearheads sticking up through the ground. But the horse went
+on; and wherever it went, the spearheads would sink away before it.</p>
+
+<p>'They came at last to a house, and the horse stopped at the door; and
+the people of the house came out and brought in the body; and the carman
+went along with it, and he lay down and slept awhile.</p>
+
+<p>'And when he rose up, he said he would go back to his friends. But the
+people of the house said: "You can go back if you like, but you will
+find none<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> of your friends before you; for your sleep has lasted for
+seven hundred years."</p>
+
+<p>'So he went back; and there was nothing but grass and bushes in the
+village he came from. And he knelt down and made his repentance; and he
+was let up to heaven for the sake of the steward that was so good, and
+that made the Sunday begin at noon on Saturday.'</p>
+
+<p>1902.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD</h2>
+
+
+<p>Just where the road that runs by the bay turns northward to run by the
+Atlantic, a few white houses on either side turn it for a moment into a
+street. The grey road was not all grey yesterday, in spite of stones,
+and sea, and clouds, and a mist that blotted out the hills; for July had
+edged it with yellow rag-weed, the horses of the Sidhe, and with purple
+heather; and besides the tireless turf-laden donkeys, there were men in
+white and women in crimson flannel going towards the village. One woman
+sitting in a donkey-cart was chanting a song in Irish about a voyage
+across the sea; and when someone asked her if she was to try for a prize
+at the <i>Feis</i>, the Irish festival going on in the village, she only
+answered that she was 'lonesome after the old times.'</p>
+
+<p>At the <i>Feis</i>, in the white schoolhouse, some boys and girls from
+schools and convents at the 'big town' many miles away were singing; and
+now and then a little bare-footed boy from close by would go up on the
+platform and sing the <i>Paistin Fionn</i>, or <i>Is truag gan Peata</i>. People
+from the scattered houses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> and villages about had gathered to listen;
+some had come in turf-boats from Aran, Irish-speakers, proud to show
+that the language that has been called dead has never died; and glad at
+the new life that is coming into it. Men in loose flannel-jackets sang
+old songs, many sad ones, but not all; for one that was addressed to a
+mother, who had broken off her daughter's marriage with the maker of the
+song, turned more to anger than to grief; and there was the love song,
+'Courteous Bridget,' made perhaps a hundred years ago, by wandering
+Raftery.</p>
+
+<p>A woman with madder-dyed petticoat sang the lament of an emigrant going
+across the great sea, telling how she got up at daybreak to look at the
+places she was going to leave, Ballinrobe and the rest; and how she
+envied the birds that were free of the air, and the beasts that were
+free of the mountain, and were not forced to go away. Another song that
+was sung was the Jacobite one, with the refrain that has been put into
+English&mdash;'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna, we're worsted in the game!'</p>
+
+<p>Some poems were repeated also: Raftery's 'Argument with whiskey,' in
+which he puts the joys and sorrows of its lovers only too impartially.
+Another 'Argument' was between two men, herds, I think; each counting up
+the virtues of his own province, Connaught or Munster. An old man gave a
+long poem, a recital of Bible history; but the judges rang their bell
+when he had got to the parable of the Prodigal Son, and was telling how
+'the poor foolish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> boy went away from his home and from his father to
+some far country'; and he left the platform saying indignantly: 'You
+might have left me time to bring him back again.' And there was a poem
+on 'The rising again of Ireland,' telling how, when she has risen,
+'ships will be coming to her from France and from Spain, and from all
+the countries; and there will be no rent on the land; and every poet
+will be given a fee of twenty-one pounds.'</p>
+
+<p>In the evening there were people waiting round the door to hear the
+songs and the pipes again. An old man among them was speaking with many
+gestures, his voice rising, and a crowd gathering about him. '<i>Tha se
+beo, tha se beo</i>'&mdash;'he is living, he is living,' I heard him say over
+and over again. I asked what he was saying, and was told: 'He says that
+Parnell is alive yet.' I was pushed away from him by the crowd to where
+a policeman was looking on. 'He says that Parnell is alive still,' I
+said. 'There are many say that,' he answered. 'And, after all, no one
+ever saw the body that was buried.'</p>
+
+<p>The rising again of Ireland, of her old speech, of her last leader,
+dreams all, as we are told. But here, on the edge of the world, dreams
+are real things, and every heart is watching for the opening of one or
+another grave.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>AN CRAOIBHIN'S</i> PLAYS</h2>
+
+
+<p>I hold that the beginning of modern Irish drama was in the winter of
+1898, at a school feast at Coole, when Douglas Hyde and Miss Norma
+Borthwick acted in Irish in a Punch and Judy show; and the delighted
+children went back to tell their parents what grand curses <i>An
+Craoibhin</i> had put on the baby and the policeman.</p>
+
+<p>A little time after that, when a play was wanted for our Literary
+Theatre, Dr. Hyde wrote, and then acted in, 'The Twisting of the Rope,'
+the first Irish play ever given in a Dublin theatre.</p>
+
+<p>It has been acted many times since then, in Dublin, in London, in
+Galway, in Galway Workhouse, in Cornamona, Ballaghaderreen, Ballymoe,
+and other places. It has always given great delight, and its success is
+very natural; for the Irish-speakers, who are its audience, have an
+inborn love of drama, as is shown by their handing down of such long
+dramatic dialogues as those between Oisin and St. Patrick, from century
+to century. At country gatherings, those old dialogues, and the newer
+ones between Death and Raftery, or between the farmers of two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+provinces, are followed with a patient joy; and the creation of acting
+plays is the natural outcome of this living tradition. And Douglas
+Hyde's dramas grow directly from the folk-memory. The tradition and the
+beautiful old air, and the song of 'The Twisting of the Rope,' are very
+well known:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What was the dead cat that put me in this place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the pretty young girls I left after me?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I came into the house where was the bright love of my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the old hag put me out by the Twisting of the Rope.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If you are mine, be mine by day and by night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you are mine, be mine before the world;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you are mine, be mine with every inch of your heart;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is my grief you are not with me as a wife this evening.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'It is down in Sligo I got knowledge of my love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is up in Galway I drank my fill with her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the strength of my hands, if they do not leave me as I am,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will do a trick will set these women walking.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Yeats made Red Hanrahan the hero of this song in a story in 'The
+Secret Rose'; and it is Hanrahan Douglas Hyde has kept in the play, with
+his passion, his exaggerations, his wheedling tongue, his roving heart,
+that all but coax the girl from her mother and her sweetheart; but that
+fail after all in their attack on the settled order of things, and leave
+their owner homeless and restless, and angry and chiding, like the
+stormy west wind outside the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'The Marriage' is founded on the story of Raftery at the poor wedding at
+Cappaghtagle. It was acted in Galway, at the <i>Feis</i>, last summer. There
+had been some delay or misunderstanding in the giving of parts; and on
+the morning of the <i>Feis</i>, it was announced that the play would not be
+given. But the disappointment was so great, that we all begged <i>An
+Craoibhin</i> to take the chief part himself, as he had done in 'The
+Twisting of the Rope'; and when his kindness made him agree to this, we
+went in search of the other players. They were all at work in shops or
+stores, one wheeling sacks on a barrow; and it was a busy market-day,
+and it was hard for them to get away for a rehearsal. But, for all that,
+the play was given in the evening; in the very town where some still
+remember Raftery, and where he and Death had their first talk together.</p>
+
+<p>It will be hard to forget the blind poet, as he was represented on the
+stage by the living poet, so full of kindly humour, of humorous malice,
+of dignity under his poor clothing, or the wistful, ghostly sigh with
+which he went out of the door at the end. 'Is fear mar&#7683; do
+&#7683;i ann]'&mdash;'It is a dead man was in it.'</p>
+
+<p>It has been acted in Dublin since then; and many places are asking for
+the loan of the one manuscript in which it exists; but I am glad
+Connacht had it first.</p>
+
+<p>'The Lost Saint' was written last summer. <i>An Craoibhin</i> was staying
+with us at Coole; and one morning I went for a long drive to the sea,
+leaving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> him with a bundle of blank paper before him. When I came back
+at evening, I was told that Dr. Hyde had finished his play, and was out
+shooting wild duck. The hymn, however, was not quite ready, and was put
+into rhyme next day, while he was again watching for wild duck beside
+Inchy marsh.</p>
+
+<p>When he read it to us in the evening, we were all left with a feeling as
+if some beautiful white blossom had suddenly fallen at our feet.</p>
+
+<p>It was acted the other day at Ballaghaderreen; and, at the end, a very
+little girl, who wanted to let the author know how much she had liked
+his play, put out her hand, and put a piece of toffee into his.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Nativity' did not appear in time for Christmas acting; but Ireland,
+which now and then finds herself possessed of some accidental freedom,
+has no censor; and a play so beautiful and reverent, and so much in the
+tradition of the people, is sure to be acted and received reverently.</p>
+
+<p><i>An Craoibhin</i> has written other plays besides these&mdash;a pastoral play
+which has been acted in Dublin and Belfast, a match-making comedy, a
+satire on Trinity College.</p>
+
+<p>Other Irish plays have been acted here and there through the country
+during the last year or two, some written by priests; the last I saw in
+manuscript was by a workhouse schoolmaster; and all have had their share
+of success. But it is to the poet-scholar who has become actor-dramatist
+that we must still, as Raftery would put it, 'give the branch.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> <i>A wandering poet.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus O'Heran.</span> <i>Engaged to</i> <span class="smcap">Oona</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> <i>The woman of the house.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> <i>A neighbour.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> <i>Maurya's daughter.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Neighbours and a piper who have come to Maurya's house for a dance</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Scene.</span> <i>A farmer's house in Munster a hundred years ago. Men
+and women moving about and standing round the walls as if they had just
+finished a dance.</i> <span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span>, <i>in the foreground, talking to</i>
+<span class="smcap">Oona</span>.</p>
+
+<p><i>The piper is beginning a preparatory drone for another dance, but</i>
+<span class="smcap">Sheamus</span> <i>brings him a drink and he stops. A man has come and
+holds out his hand to</i> <span class="smcap">Oona</span>, <i>as if to lead her out, but she
+pushes him away.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> Don't be bothering me now; don't you see I'm listening to
+what he is saying? (<i>To</i> <span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span>) Go on with what you were
+saying just now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> What did that fellow want of you?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> He wanted the next dance with me, but I wouldn't give it
+to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> And why would you give it to him? Do you think I'd
+let you dance with anyone but myself, and I here? I had no comfort or
+satisfaction this long time until I came here to-night, and till I saw
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> What comfort am I to you?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> When a stick is half burned in the fire, does it not
+get comfort when water is poured on it?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> But, sure, you are not half burned.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> I am; and three-quarters of my heart is burned, and
+scorched and consumed, struggling with the world, and the world
+struggling with me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> You don't look that bad.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> O, Oona ni Regaun, you have not knowledge of the life
+of a poor bard, without house or home or havings, but he going and ever
+going a drifting through the wide world, without a person with him but
+himself. There is not a morning in the week when I rise up that I do not
+say to myself that it would be better to be in the grave than to be
+wandering. There is nothing standing to me but the gift I got from God,
+my share of songs; when I begin upon them, my grief and my trouble go
+from me; I forget my persecution and my ill luck; and now since I saw
+you, Oona, I see there is something that is better even than the songs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> Poetry is a wonderful gift from God; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> as long as you
+have that, you are richer than the people of stock and store, the people
+of cows and cattle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> Ah, Oona, it is a great blessing, but it is a great
+curse as well for a man, he to be a poet. Look at me: have I a friend in
+this world? Is there a man alive that has a wish for me? is there the
+love of anyone at all on me? I am going like a poor lonely barnacle
+goose throughout the world; like Oisin after the Fenians; every person
+hates me: you do not hate me, Oona?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> Do not say a thing like that; it is impossible that
+anyone would hate you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> Come and we will sit in the corner of the room
+together; and I will tell you the little song I made for you; it is for
+you I made it. (<i>They go to a corner and sit down together.</i>
+<span class="smcap">Sheela</span> <i>comes in at the door.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> I came to you as quick as I could.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> And a hundred welcomes to you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> What have you going on now?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> Beginning we are; we had one jig, and now the piper is
+drinking a glass. They'll begin dancing again in a minute when the piper
+is ready.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> There are a good many people gathering in to you
+to-night. We will have a fine dance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> Maybe so, Sheela; but there's a man of them there, and
+I'd sooner him out than in.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> It's about the long red man you are talking, isn't
+it&mdash;the man that is in close talk with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> Oona in the corner? Where is he
+from, and who is he himself?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> That's the greatest vagabond ever came into Ireland;
+Tumaus Hanrahan they call him; but it's Hanrahan the rogue he ought to
+have been christened by right. Aurah, wasn't there the misfortune on me,
+him to come in to us at all to-night?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> What sort of a person is he? Isn't he a man that makes
+songs, out of Connacht? I heard talk of him before; and they say there
+is not another dancer in Ireland so good as him. I would like to see him
+dance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> Bad luck to the vagabond! It is well I know what sort
+he is; because there was a kind of friendship between himself and the
+first husband I had; and it is often I heard from poor Diarmuid&mdash;the
+Lord have mercy on him!&mdash;what sort of person he was. He was a
+schoolmaster down in Connacht; but he used to have every trick worse
+than another; ever making songs he used to be, and drinking whiskey and
+setting quarrels afoot among the neighbours with his share of talk. They
+say there isn't a woman in the five provinces that he wouldn't deceive.
+He is worse than Donal na Greina long ago. But the end of the story is
+that the priest routed him out of the parish altogether; he got another
+place then, and followed on at the same tricks until he was routed out
+again, and another again with it. Now he has neither place nor house nor
+anything, but he to be going the country, making songs and getting a
+night's lodging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> from the people; nobody will refuse him, because they
+are afraid of him. He's a great poet, and maybe he'd make a rann on you
+that would stick to you for ever, if you were to anger him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> God preserve us; but what brought him in to-night?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> He was travelling the country and he heard there was to
+be a dance here, and he came in because he knew us; he was rather great
+with my first husband. It is wonderful how he is making out his way of
+life at all, and he with nothing but his share of songs. They say there
+is no place that he'll go to, that the women don't love him, and that
+the men don't hate him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela</span> (<i>catching</i> <span class="smcap">Maurya</span> <i>by the shoulder</i>). Turn
+your head, Maurya; look at him now, himself and your daughter, and their
+heads together; he's whispering in her ear; he's after making a poem for
+her and he's whispering it in her ear. Oh, the villain, he'll be putting
+his spells on her now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> Ohone, go deo! isn't it a misfortune that he came? He's
+talking every moment with Oona since he came in three hours ago. I did
+my best to separate them from one another, but it failed me. Poor Oona
+is given up to every sort of old songs and old made-up stories; and she
+thinks it sweet to be listening to him. The marriage is settled between
+herself and Sheamus O'Herin there, a quarter from to-day. Look at poor
+Sheamus at the door, and he watching them. There is grief and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> hanging
+of the head on him; it's easy to see that he'd like to choke the
+vagabond this minute. I am greatly afraid that the head will be turned
+on Oona with his share of blathering. As sure as I am alive there will
+come evil out of this night.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> And couldn't you put him out?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> I could. There's no person here to help him unless
+there would be a woman or two; but he is a great poet, and he has a
+curse that would split the trees, and that would burst the stones. They
+say the seed will rot in the ground and the milk go from the cows when a
+poet like him makes a curse, if a person routed him out of the house;
+but if he was once out, I'll go bail I wouldn't let him in again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> If himself were to go out willingly, there would be no
+virtue in his curse then.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> There would not, but he will not go out willingly, and
+I cannot rout him out myself for fear of his curse.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> Look at poor Sheamus. He is going over to her.
+(<span class="smcap">Sheamus</span> <i>gets up and goes over to her.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Will you dance this reel with me, Oona, as soon as the
+piper is ready?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span> (<i>rising up</i>). I am Tumaus Hanrahan, and I am speaking
+now to Oona ni Regaun; and as she is willing to be talking to me, I will
+allow no living person to come between us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus</span> (<i>without heeding</i> <span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span>). Will you not
+dance with me, Oona?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span> (<i>savagely</i>). Didn't I tell you now that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> it was to me
+Oona ni Regaun was talking? Leave that on the spot, you clown, and do
+not raise a disturbance here.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Oona&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span> (<i>shouting</i>). Leave that! (<span class="smcap">Sheamus</span> <i>goes
+away, and comes over to the two old women.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Maurya Regaun, I am asking leave of you to throw that
+ill-mannerly, drunken vagabond out of the house. Myself and my two
+brothers will put him out if you will allow us; and when he's outside
+I'll settle with him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> Sheamus, do not; I am afraid of him. That man has a
+curse they say that would split the trees.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> I don't care if he had a curse that would overthrow
+the heavens; it is on me it will fall, and I defy him! If he were to
+kill me on the moment, I will not allow him to put his spells on Oona.
+Give me leave, Maurya.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> Do not, Sheamus. I have a better advice than that.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> What advice is that?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> I have a way in my head to put him out. If you follow
+my advice, he will go out himself as quiet as a lamb; and when you get
+him out, slap the door on him, and never let him in again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> Luck from God on you, Sheela, and tell us what's in
+your head.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> We will do it as nice and easy as you ever saw. We will
+put him to twist a hay-rope till he is outside, and then we will shut
+the door on him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> It's easy to say, but not easy to do. He will say to
+you, "Make a hay-rope yourself."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> We will say then that no one ever saw a hay-rope made,
+that there is no one at all in the house to make the beginning of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> But will <i>he</i> believe that we never saw a hay-rope?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> He believe it, is it? He'd believe anything; he'd
+believe that himself is king over Ireland when he has a glass taken, as
+he has now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> But what excuse can we make for saying we want a
+hay-rope?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> Can't you think of something yourself, Sheamus?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Sure, I can say the wind is rising, and I must bind
+the thatch, or it will be off the house.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> But he'll know the wind is not rising if he does but
+listen at the door. You must think of some other excuse, Sheamus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Wait, I have a good idea now; say there is a coach
+upset at the bottom of the hill, and that they are asking for a hay-rope
+to mend it with. He can't see as far as that from the door, and he won't
+know it's not true it is.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maurya.</span> That's the story, Sheela. Now, Sheamus, go among the
+people and tell them the secret. Tell them what they have to say, that
+no one at all in this country ever saw a hay-rope, and put a good skin
+on the lie yourself. (<span class="smcap">Sheamus</span> <i>goes from person to person
+whispering to them, and some of them begin laughing.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> <i>The piper has
+begun playing. Three or four couples rise up.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span> (<i>after looking at them for a couple of minutes</i>).
+Whisht! Let ye sit down! Do ye call that dragging, dancing? You are
+tramping the floor like so many cattle. You are as heavy as bullocks, as
+awkward as asses. May my throat be choked if I would not sooner be
+looking at as many lame ducks hopping on one leg through the house.
+Leave the floor to Oona ni Regaun and to me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">One of the men going to dance.</span> And for what would we leave the
+floor to you?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> The swan of the brink of the waves, the royal
+ph[oe]nix, the pearl of the white breast, the Venus amongst the women,
+Oona ni Regaun, is standing up with me, and any place she rises up, the
+sun and the moon bow to her, and so shall ye yet. She is too handsome,
+too sky-like for any other woman to be near her. But wait a while!
+Before I'll show you how the Connacht boy can dance, I will give you the
+poem I made on the star of the province of Munster, on Oona ni Regaun.
+Get up, O sun among women, and we will sing the song together, verse
+about, and then we'll show them what right dancing is! (<span class="smcap">Oona</span>
+<i>rises.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She is white Oona of the yellow hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Coolin that was destroying my heart inside me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is my secret love and my lasting affection;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I care not for ever for any woman but her.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O bard of the black eye, it is you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who have found victory in the world and fame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I call on yourself and I praise your mouth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have set my heart in my breast astray.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O fair Oona of the golden hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My desire, my affection, my love and my store,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Herself will go with her bard afar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She has hurt his heart in his breast greatly.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I would not think the night long nor the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Listening to your fine discourse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More melodious is your mouth than the singing of the birds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From my heart in my breast you have found love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I walked myself the entire world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">England, Ireland, France, and Spain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I never saw at home or afar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any girl under the sun like fair Oona.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have heard the melodious harp<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the streets of Cork playing to us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More melodious by far I thought your voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More melodious by far your mouth than that.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I was myself one time a poor barnacle goose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The night was not plain to me more than the day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I got sight of her; she is the love of my heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That banished from me my grief and my misery.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I was myself on the morning of yesterday<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Walking beside the wood at the break of day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was a bird there was singing sweetly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How I love love, and is it not beautiful?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(<i>A shout and a noise, and</i> <span class="smcap">Sheamus O'Heran</span> <i>rushes in.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Ububu! Ohone-y-o, go deo! The big coach is overthrown
+at the foot of the hill! The bag in which the letters of the country are
+is bursted; and there is neither tie, nor cord, nor rope, nor anything
+to bind it up. They are calling out now for a hay sugaun&mdash;whatever kind
+of thing that is; the letters and the coach will be lost for want of a
+hay sugaun to bind them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> Do not be bothering us; we have our poem done, and we
+are going to dance. The coach does not come this way at all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> The coach does come this way now; but sure you're a
+stranger, and you don't know. Doesn't the coach come over the hill now,
+neighbours?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All.</span> It does, it does, surely.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> I don't care whether it does come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> or whether it
+doesn't. I would sooner twenty coaches to be overthrown on the road than
+the pearl of the white breast to be stopped from dancing to us. Tell the
+coachman to twist a rope for himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Oh! murder! he can't. There's that much vigour, and
+fire, and activity, and courage in the horses, that my poor coachman
+must take them by the heads; it's on the pinch of his life he's able to
+control them; he's afraid of his soul they'll go from him of a rout.
+They are neighing like anything; you never saw the like of them for wild
+horses.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> Are there no other people in the coach that will make
+a rope, if the coachman has to be at the horses' heads? Leave that, and
+let us dance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> There are three others in it; but as to one of them,
+he is one-handed, and another man of them, he's shaking and trembling
+with the fright he got; it's not in him now to stand up on his two feet
+with the fear that's on him; and as for the third man, there isn't a
+person in this country would speak to him about a rope at all, for his
+own father was hanged with a rope last year for stealing sheep.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> Then let one of yourselves twist a rope so, and leave
+the floor to us. (<i>To</i> <span class="smcap">Oona.</span>) Now, O star of women, show me how
+Juno goes among the gods, or Helen for whom Troy was destroyed. By my
+word, since Deirdre died, for whom Naoise son of Usnech, was put to
+death, her heir is not in Ireland to-day but yourself. Let us begin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> Do not begin until we have a rope; we are not able to
+twist a rope; there's nobody here can twist a rope.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> There's nobody here is able to twist a rope?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All.</span> Nobody at all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheela.</span> And that's true; nobody in this place ever made a hay
+sugaun. I don't believe there's a person in this house who ever saw one
+itself but me. It's well I remember when I was a little girsha that I
+saw one of them on a goat that my grandfather brought with him out of
+Connacht. All the people used to be saying: "Aurah, what sort of a thing
+is that at all?" And he said that it was a sugaun that was in it; and
+that people used to make the like of that down in Connacht. He said that
+one man would go holding the hay, and another man twisting it. I'll hold
+the hay now; and you'll go twisting it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> I'll bring in a lock of hay. (<i>He goes out.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I will make a dispraising of the province of Munster<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They do not leave the floor to us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It isn't in them to twist even a sugaun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The province of Munster without nicety, without prosperity.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Disgust for ever on the province of Munster,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That they do not leave us the floor;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The province of Munster of the foul clumsy people.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They cannot even twist a sugaun!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span><span class="smcap">Sheamus</span> (<i>coming back</i>). Here's the hay now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span> Give it here to me; I'll show ye what the
+well-learned, hardy, honest, clever, sensible Connachtman will do, that
+has activity and full deftness in his hands, and sense in his head, and
+courage in his heart; but that the misfortune and the great trouble of
+the world directed him among the <i>lebidins</i> of the province of Munster,
+without honour, without nobility, without knowledge of the swan beyond
+the duck, or of the gold beyond the brass, or of the lily beyond the
+thistle, or of the star of young women, and the pearl of the white
+breast, beyond their own share of sluts and slatterns. Give me a
+kippeen. (<i>A man hands him a stick; he puts a wisp of hay round it, and
+begins twisting it; and</i> <span class="smcap">Sheela</span> <i>giving him out the hay.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is a pearl of a woman giving light to us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is my love; she is my desire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is fair Oona, the gentle queen-woman.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Munstermen do not understand half her courtesy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These Munstermen are blinded by God;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They do not recognise the swan beyond the grey duck;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she will come with me, my fine Helen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where her person and her beauty shall be praised for ever.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>Arrah, wisha, wisha, wisha! isn't this the fine village? isn't this the
+exceeding village? The village where there be that many rogues hanged
+that the people have no want of ropes with all the ropes that they steal
+from the hangman!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sensible Connachtman makes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A rope for himself;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the Munsterman steals it<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the hangman;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may see a fine rope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A rope of hemp yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A stretching on the throats<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of every person here!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On account of one woman only the Greeks departed, and they never
+stopped, and they never greatly stayed, till they destroyed Troy; and on
+account of one woman only this village shall be damned; <i>go deo, ma
+neoir</i>, and to the womb of judgment, by God of the graces, eternally and
+everlastingly, because they did not understand that Oona ni Regaun is
+the second Helen, who was born in their midst, and that she overcame in
+beauty Deirdre and Venus, and all that came before or that will come
+after her!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But she will come with me, my pearl of a woman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the province of Connacht of the fine people;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She will receive feasts, wine, and meat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High dances, sport, and music!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Oh, wisha, wisha! that the sun may never rise upon this village; and
+that the stars may never shine on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> it and that&mdash;&mdash;. (<i>He is by this time
+outside the door. All the men make a rush at the door and shut it.</i>
+<span class="smcap">Oona</span> <i>runs towards the door, but the women seize her.</i>
+<span class="smcap">Sheamus</span> <i>goes over to her.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oona.</span> Oh! oh! oh! do not put him out; let him back; that is
+Tumaus Hanrahan&mdash;he is a poet&mdash;he is a bard&mdash;he is a wonderful man. O,
+let him back; do not do that to him!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> O Oona <i>b&aacute;n, acushla d&iacute;lis</i>, let him be; he is gone
+now, and his share of spells with him! He will be gone out of your head
+to-morrow; and you will be gone out of his head. Don't you know that I
+like you better than a hundred thousand Deirdres, and that you are my
+one pearl of a woman in the world?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanrahan</span> (<i>outside, beating on the door</i>). Open, open, open;
+let me in! Oh, my seven hundred thousand curses on you&mdash;the curse of the
+weak and of the strong&mdash;the curse of the poets and of the bards upon
+you! The curse of the priests on you and the friars! The curse of the
+bishops upon you, and the Pope! The curse of the widows on you, and the
+children! Open! (<i>He beats on the door again and again.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheamus.</span> I am thankful to ye, neighbours; and Oona will be
+thankful to ye to-morrow. Beat away, you vagabond! Do your dancing out
+there with yourself now! Isn't it a fine thing for a man to be listening
+to the storm outside, and himself quiet and easy beside the fire? Beat
+away, beat away! Where's Connacht now?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE MARRIAGE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin</span>, <i>a young man.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> <i>His newly married wife.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Blind Fiddler.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Neighbours.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Scene.</span>&mdash;<i>A cottage kitchen. A table poorly set out, with two
+cups, a jug of milk, and a cake of bread.</i> <span class="smcap">Martin</span> <i>and</i>
+<span class="smcap">Mary</span> <i>sitting down to it.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> This is a poor wedding dinner I have for you, Mary; and
+a poor house I brought you to. I wish it was seven thousand times better
+for your sake.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Only we have to part again, there wouldn't be in the
+world a pair happier than myself and yourself; but where's the good of
+fretting when there's no help for it?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> If I had but a couple of pounds, I could buy a little
+ass and earn a share of money bringing turf to the big town; or I could
+job at the fairs. But, my grief, we haven't it, or ten shillings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> And if I could get but a few hens, and what would feed
+them, I could be selling the eggs or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> rearing chickens. But unless God
+would work a miracle for us, there's no chance of that itself. (<i>She
+wipes her eyes with her apron.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Don't be crying, Mary. You belong to me now; am I not
+rich so long as you belong to me? Whatever place I will go to I will
+know you are thinking of me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> That is a true word you say, Martin; I will never be poor
+so long as I know you to be thinking of me. No riches at all would be so
+good as that. There's a line my poor father used to be saying:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Cattle and gold, store and goods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They pass away like the high floods.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was Raftery, the blind man, said that. I never saw him; but my father
+used to be talking of him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> I don't care what he said. I wish we had goods and
+store. He said the exact contrary another time:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Brogues in the fashion, a good house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are better than the bare sky over us.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Poor Raftery! he'd give us all that if he had the chance.
+He was always a good friend to the poor. I heard them saying the other
+day he was lying in his sickness at some place near Killeenan, and near
+his death. The Lord have mercy on him!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> The Lord have mercy on him, indeed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> Come now, Mary,
+eat the first bit in your own house. I'll take the eggs off the fire.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>He gets up and goes to the fire. There is a knock at the half-door,
+and an old ragged, patched fiddler puts in his head.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fiddler.</span> God save all here!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary</span> (<i>standing up</i>). Aurah, the poor man, bring him in.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Let there be sense on you, Mary; we have not anything
+at all to give him. I will tell him the way to the Brennans' house:
+there will be plenty to find there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Indeed and surely I will not put him from this door. This
+is the first time I ever had a house of my own; and I will not send
+anyone at all from my own door this day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Do as you think well yourself. (<span class="smcap">Mary</span> <i>goes to
+the door and opens it.</i>) Come in, honest man, and sit down, and a
+hundred welcomes before you. (<i>The old man comes in, feeling about him
+as if blind.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> O Martin, he is blind. May God preserve him!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man.</span> That is so, acushla; I am in my blindness; and it is a
+tired, vexed, blind man I am. I am going and ever going since morning,
+and I never found a bit to eat since I rose.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> You did not find a bit to eat since morning! Are you
+starving?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man.</span> Oh, indeed, there was food to be got if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> I would take
+it; but the bit that does not come from a willing heart, there would be
+no taste on it; and that is what I did not get since morning; but people
+putting a potato or a bit of bread out of the door to me, as if I was a
+dog, with the hope I would not stop, but would go away.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Oh, sit down with us now, and eat with us. Bring him to
+the table, Martin. (<span class="smcap">Martin</span> <i>gives his hand to the old man, and
+gives him a chair, and puts him sitting at the table with themselves. He
+makes two halves of the cake, and gives a half to the blind man, and one
+of the eggs. The old man eats eagerly.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man.</span> I leave my seven hundred thousand blessings on the
+people of this house. The blessing of God and Mary on them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> That it may be well with you. O Martin, that is the first
+blessing I got in my own house. That blessing is better to me than gold.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man.</span> Aurah, is it not beautiful for people to have a house
+of their own, and to have eyes to look about with?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> May God preserve you, right man; it is likely it is a
+poor thing to be without sight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man.</span> You do not understand, nor any person that has his
+sight, what it is to be blind and dark the way I am. Not to have before
+you and behind you but the night. Oh, darkness, darkness! No shape or
+form in anything; not to see the bird you hear singing in the tree over
+your head; nor the flower you smell on the bush, or the child, and he
+laughing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> in his mother's breast. The morning and the evening the day
+and the night, only the same thing to you Oh, it is a poor thing to be
+blind! (<span class="smcap">Martin</span> <i>puts over the other half of the cake and the
+egg to</i> <span class="smcap">Mary</span>, <i>and makes a sign to her to eat. She makes a sign
+to him to take a share of them. The blind man stretches his hand over
+the table to try for a crumb of bread, for he has eaten his own share;
+and he gets hold of the other half cake and takes it.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Eat that, poor man, it is likely there is hunger on you.
+Here is another egg for you. (<i>She puts the other egg in his hand.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> The blessing of the Only Son and of the Holy Mother
+on the hand that gives it. (<span class="smcap">Martin</span> <i>puts up his two hands as if
+dissatisfied; and he is going to say something when</i> <span class="smcap">Mary</span>
+<i>takes the words from his mouth, laughing at his gloomy face.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> <i>Maisead</i>, my blessing on the mouth that laughter
+came from, and my blessing on the light heart that let it out of the
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> A light heart, is it! There is not a light heart with
+Mary to-night, my grief!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Mary is your wife?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> She is. I made her my wife three hours ago.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Three hours ago?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin</span> (<i>bitterly</i>).&mdash;That is so. We were married to-day; and
+it is at our wedding dinner you are sitting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Your wedding dinner! Do not be mocking me! There is
+no company here.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Oh, he is not mocking you; he would not do a thing like
+that. There is no company here; for we have nothing in the house to give
+them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> But you gave it to me! Is it the truth you are
+speaking? Am I the only person that was asked to your wedding?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> You are. But that is to the honour of God; and we would
+never have told you that, but Martin let slip the word from his mouth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Oh, and I eat your little feast on you, and without
+knowing it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> It is not without a welcome you eat it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> I am well pleased you came in; you were more in want of
+it than ourselves. If we have a bare house now, we might have a full
+house yet; and a good dinner on the table to share with those in need of
+it. I'd be better off now; but all the little money I had I laid it out
+on the house, and the little patch of land. I thought I was wise at the
+time; but now we have the house, and we haven't what will keep us alive
+in it. I have the potatoes set in the garden; but I haven't so much as a
+potato to eat. We are left bare, and I am guilty of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> If there is any fault, it is on me it is; coming maybe to
+be a drag on Martin, where I have no fortune at all. The little money I
+gained in service, I lost it all on my poor father, when he took sick.
+And I went back into service; and the mistress I had was a cross woman;
+and when Martin saw the way she was treating me, he wouldn't let me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+stop with her any more, but he made me his wife. And now I will have
+great courage, when I have to go out to service again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Will you have to be parted again?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> We will, indeed; I must go as a <i>spailpin fanac</i>, to
+reap and to dig the harvest in some other place. But Mary and myself
+have it settled we'll meet again at this house on a certain day, with
+the blessing of God. I'll have the key in my pocket; and we'll come in,
+with a better chance of stopping in it. You'll have your own cows yet,
+Mary; and your calves and your firkins of butter, with the help of God.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> I think I hear carts on the road. (<i>She gets up, and goes
+to the door.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> It's the people coming back from the fair. Shut the
+door, Mary; I wouldn't like them to see how bare the house is; and I'll
+put a smear of ashes on the window, the way they won't see we're here at
+all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man</span> (<i>raising his head suddenly</i>). Do not do that; but
+open the door wide, and let the blessing of God come in on you.
+(<span class="smcap">Mary</span> <i>opens the door again. He takes up his fiddle, and begins
+to play on it. A little boy puts in his head at the door; and then
+another head is seen, and another with that again.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Who is that at the door?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Little boys that came to listen to you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Come in, boys. (<i>Three or four come inside.</i>)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Boys, I am listening to the carts coming home from
+the fair. Let you go out, and stop the people; tell them they must come
+in: there is a wedding-dance here this evening.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Boy.</span> The people are going home. They wouldn't stop for us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Tell them to come in; and there will be as fine a
+dance as ever they saw. But they must all give a present to the man and
+woman that are newly married.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Another Boy.</span> Why would they come in? They can have a dance of
+their own at any time. There is a piper in the big town.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Say to them that <i>I myself</i> tell them to come in;
+and to bring every one a present to the newly-married woman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Boy.</span> And who are you yourself?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Tell them it is Raftery the poet is here, and that
+is calling to them.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>The boys run out, tumbling over one another.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Are you Raftery, the great poet I heard talk of since I
+was born! (<i>taking his hand</i>). Seven hundred thousand welcomes before
+you; and it is a great honour to us you to be here.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Raftery the poet! Now there is luck on us! The first man
+that brought us his blessing, and that eat food in my own house, he to
+be Raftery the poet! And I hearing the other day you were sick and near
+your death. And I see no sign of sickness on you now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> I am well, I am well now, the Lord be praised for
+it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> I heard talk of you as often as there are fingers on my
+hands, and toes on my feet. But indeed I never thought to have the luck
+of seeing you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> And it is you that made 'County Mayo,' and the
+'Repentance,' and 'The Weaver,' and the 'Shining Flower.' It is often I
+thought there should be no woman in the world so proud as Mary Hynes,
+with the way you praised her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> O my poor Mary Hynes, without luck! (<i>They hear the
+wheels of a cart outside the house, and an old farmer comes in, a frieze
+coat on him.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> God save you, Martin; and is this your wife? God be
+with you, woman of the house. And, O Raftery, seven hundred thousand
+welcomes before you to this country. I would sooner see you than King
+George. When they told me you were here, I said to myself I would not go
+past without seeing you, if I didn't get home till morning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> But didn't you get my message?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> What message is that?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Didn't they tell you to bring a present to the
+new-married woman and her husband. What have you got for them?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> Wait till I see; I have something in the cart. (<i>He
+goes out.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> O Raftery, you see now what a great name you have here.
+(<i>Old farmer comes in again</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> <i>with a bag of meal on his shoulders. He
+throws it on the floor.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> Four bags of meal I was bringing from the mill; and
+there is one of them for the woman of the house.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> A thousand thanks to God and you. (<span class="smcap">Martin</span>
+<i>carries the bag to other side of table.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Now don't forget the fiddler. (<i>He takes a plate and
+holds it out.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> I'll not break my word, Raftery, the first time you
+came to this country. There is two shillings for you in the plate. (<i>He
+throws the money into it.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is a man has love to God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Opening his hand to give out food;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better a small house filled with wheat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than a big house that's bare of meat.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> <i>Maisead</i>, long life to you, Raftery.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Are you there, boy?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Boy.</span> I am.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> I hear more wheels coming. Go out, and tell the
+people Raftery will let no person come in here without a present for the
+woman of the house.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Boy.</span> I am going. (<i>He goes out.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> They say there was not the like of you for a poet
+in Connacht these hundred years back.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>A middle-aged woman comes in, a pound of tea and a parcel of sugar in
+her hand.</i>)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Woman.</span> God save all here! I heard Raftery the poet was in it;
+and I brought this little present to the woman of the house. (<i>Puts them
+into</i> <span class="smcap">Mary's</span> <i>hands.</i>) I would sooner see Raftery than be out
+there in the cart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Don't forget the fiddler, O right woman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Woman.</span> And are you Raftery?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am Raftery the poet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Full of gentleness and love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With eyes without light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With quietness, without misery.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Woman.</span> Good the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quick, quick, quick, for no man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Need speak twice to a handy woman;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll praise you when I hear the clatter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of your shilling on my platter.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(<i>A young man comes in with a side of bacon in his arms, and stands
+waiting.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Woman.</span> Indeed, I would not begrudge it to you if it was a piece
+of gold I had (<i>puts shilling in plate</i>). The 'Repentance' you made is
+at the end of my fingers. Here's another customer for you now. (<i>The
+young man comes forward, and gives the bacon to</i> <span class="smcap">Martin</span>, <i>who
+puts it with the meal.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> I thank you kindly. Oh, it's like the miracle worked for
+Saint Colman, sending him his dinner in the bare hills!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">May that young man with yellow hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Find yellow money everywhere!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fair Young Man.</span> I heard the world and his wife were stopping at
+the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be
+behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (<i>puts money in the
+plate</i>). I would sooner see that fiddler than any other fiddler in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">May that young man with yellow hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Buy cheap, sell dear, in every fair.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fair Young Man</span> (<i>to</i> <span class="smcap">Martin</span>). How does he know I have
+yellow hair and he blind? How does he know that?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Hush, my head is going round with the wonder is on me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> No wonder at all in that. Maybe it is dreaming we all
+are.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>A grey-haired man and two girls come in.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Grey-Haired Man</span> (<i>laying down a sack</i>). The blessing of God
+here! I heard Raftery was here in the wedding-house, and that he would
+let no one in without a present. There was nothing in the cart with us
+but a sack of potatoes, and there it is for you, ma'am.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Oh, it's too good you all are to me. Whether it's asleep
+or awake I am, I thank you kindly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Don't forget the fiddler.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Grey-Haired Man.</span> Are you Raftery?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who will give Raftery a shilling?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here is his platter: who is willing?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who will give honour to the poet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here is his platter: show it, show it.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Grey-Haired Farmer.</span> You're welcome; you're welcome! That is
+Raftery, anyhow! (<i>Puts money in the plate.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come hither, girls, give what you can<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the poor old travelling man.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Grey-Haired Man.</span> Aurah Susan, aurah Oona, are you looking at
+who is before you, the greatest poet in Ireland? That is Raftery
+himself. It is often you heard talk of the girl that got a husband with
+the praises he gave her. If he gives you the same, maybe you'll get
+husbands with it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Girl.</span> I often heard talk of Raftery.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Other Girl.</span> There was always a great name on Raftery.
+(<i>They put some money in the plate shyly.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Before you go, give what you can<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this young girl and this young man.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Girl</span> (<i>to</i> <span class="smcap">Mary</span>). Here's a couple of dozen of
+eggs, and welcome.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Other Girl.</span> O woman of the house! I have nothing with me
+here; but I have a good clucking hen at home, and I'll bring her to you
+to-morrow; our house is close by.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> Indeed, that's good news to me; such nice neighbours to
+be at hand. (<i>Several men and women come into the house together, every
+one of them carrying something.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Several</span> (<i>together</i>). Welcome, Raftery!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If ye have hearts are worth a mouse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Welcome the bride into her house.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(<i>They laugh and greet</i> <span class="smcap">Mary</span>, <i>and put down gifts&mdash;a roll of
+butter, rolls of woollen thread, and many other things.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> Ha, ha! That's right. They are coming in now. Now,
+Raftery; isn't it generous and open-handed and liberal this country is?
+Isn't it better than the County Mayo?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I'd say all Galway was rich land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I'd your shillings in my hand.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(<i>Holds out his plate to them.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer</span> (<i>laughing</i>). Now, neighbours, down with it! My
+conscience! Raftery knows how to get hold of the money.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Man of Them.</span> <i>Maisead</i>, he doesn't own much riches; and there
+is pride on us all to see him in this country. (<i>Puts money in the
+plate, and all the others do the same. A lean old man comes in.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin</span> (<i>to</i> <span class="smcap">Mary</span>). That is John the Miser, or Seagan
+na Stucaire, as they call him. That is the man that is hardest in this
+country. He never gave a penny to any person since he was born.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> God save all here! Oh, is that Raftery? Ho, ho! God save
+you, Raftery, and a hundred thousand welcomes before you to this
+country. There is pride on us all to see you. There is gladness on the
+whole country, you to be here in our midst. If you will believe me,
+neighbours, I saw with my own eyes the bush Raftery put his curse on;
+and as sure as I'm living, it was withered away. There is nothing of it
+but a couple of old twigs now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I've heard a voice like his before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And liked some little voice the more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd sooner have, if I'd my choice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A big heart and a small voice.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> Ho! ho! Raftery, making poems as usual. Well, there is
+great joy on us, indeed, to see you in our midst.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> What is the present you have brought to the
+new-married woman?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> What is the present I brought? O <i>maisead</i>! the times
+are too bad on a poor man. I brought a few fleeces of wool I had to the
+market to-day, and I couldn't sell it; I had to bring it home again. And
+calves I had there, I couldn't get any buyer for at all. There is
+misfortune on these times.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Every person that came in brought his own present
+with him. There is the new-married woman, and let you put down a good
+present.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> O <i>maisead</i>, much good may it do her! (<i>He takes out of
+his pocket a small parcel of snuff; takes a</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> <i>piece of paper from the
+floor, and pours into it, slowly and carefully, a little of the snuff,
+and puts it on the table.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Look at the gifts of every kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were given with a willing mind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After all this, it's not enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the man of cows&mdash;a pinch of snuff!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> <i>Maisead</i>, long life to you, Raftery; that your
+tongue may never lose its edge. That is a man of cows certainly; I
+myself am a man of sheep.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> A bag of meal from the man of sheep.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fair Young Man.</span> And I am a man of pigs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> A side of meat from the man of pigs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Don't forget the woman of hens.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A pound of tea from the woman of hens.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After all this, it's not enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the man of cows&mdash;a pinch of snuff!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">After all this, it's not enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the man of cows&mdash;a pinch of snuff!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> The devil the like of such fun have we had this
+year!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> Oh, indeed, I was only keeping a little grain for
+myself; but it's likely they may want it all. (<i>He takes the paper out,
+and lays it on the table.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> A bag of meal from the man of sheep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">After all this, it's not enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the man of cows&mdash;a half-ounce of snuff!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(<i>One of the girls hands the snuff round; they laugh and sneeze, taking
+pinches of it.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> My soul to the devil, Seagan, do the thing
+decently. Give out one of those fleeces you have in the cart with you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> I never saw the like of you for fools since I was born.
+Is it mad you are?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All.</span> From the man of cows, a half-ounce of snuff!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> Oh, <i>maisead</i>, if there must be a present put down, take
+the fleece, and my share of misfortune on you! (<i>Three or four of the
+boys run out.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> Aurah, Seagan, what is your opinion of Raftery now?
+He has you destroyed worse than the bush! (<i>The boys come back, a fleece
+with them.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Boy.</span> Here is the fleece, and it's very heavy it is. (<i>They put
+it down, and there falls a little bag out of it that bursts and scatters
+the money here and there on the floor.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> Ub-ub-bu! That is my share of money scattered on me that
+I got for my calves. (<i>He stoops down to gather it together. All the
+people burst out laughing again.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> <i>Maisead</i>, Seagan, where did you get the money? You
+told us you didn't sell your share of calves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He that got good gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For calves he never sold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must put good money down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a laugh, without a frown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or I'll destroy that man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a bone-breaking rann.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll rhyme him by the book<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a blue-watery look.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> Oh, Raftery, don't do that. I tasted enough of your
+ranns just now, and I don't want another taste of them. There's
+threepence for you. (<i>He puts three pennies in the plate.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I'll put a new name upon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This strong farmer, of Thrippeny John.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He'll be called, without a doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thrippeny John from this time out.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put your sovereign on my plate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that and worse will be your fate.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Miser.</span> O, in the name of God, Raftery, stop your mouth and let
+me go! Here is the sovereign for you; and indeed it's not with my
+blessing I give it.</p>
+
+<p>(<span class="smcap">Blind Man</span> <i>plays on the fiddle. They all stand up and dance
+but</i> <span class="smcap">Seagan na Stuciare</span>, <i>who shakes his fist in</i> <span class="smcap">Blind
+Man's</span> <i>face, and goes out.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>When they have danced for a minute or two</i>, <span class="smcap">Blind Man</span> <i>stops
+fiddling and stands up.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> I was near forgetting: I am the only person here
+gave nothing to the woman of the house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> (<i>Hands the plate of money to</i>
+<span class="smcap">Mary.</span>) Take that and my seven hundred blessings along with it,
+and that you may be as well as I wish you to the end of life and time.
+Count the money now, and see what the neighbours did for you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> That is too much indeed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> You have too much done for us already.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Blind Man.</span> Count it, count it; while I go over and try can I
+hear what sort of blessings Seagan na Stucaire is leaving after him.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>Neighbours all crowd round counting the money.</i> <span class="smcap">Blind Man</span>
+<i>goes to the door, looks back with a sigh, and goes quietly out.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> Well, you have enough to set you up altogether,
+Martin. You'll be buying us all up within the next six months.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Indeed I don't think I'll be going digging potatoes for
+other men this year, but to be working for myself at home.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>The sound of horse's steps are heard. A young man comes into the
+house.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Young Man.</span> What is going on here at all? All the cars in the
+country gathered at the door, and Seagan na Stucaire going swearing down
+the road.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Farmer.</span> Oh, this is the great wedding was made by
+Raftery.&mdash;Where is Raftery? Where is he gone?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin</span> (<i>going to the door</i>). He's not here. I don't see him on
+the road. (<i>Turns to young farmer.</i>)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> Did you meet a blind fiddler going
+out the door&mdash;the poet Raftery?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Young Man.</span> The poet Raftery? I did not; but I stood by his
+grave at Killeenan three days ago.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary.</span> His grave? Oh, Martin, it was a dead man was in it!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Martin.</span> Whoever it was, it was a man sent by God was in it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE LOST SAINT</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">An Old Man.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Teacher.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall and other Children.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Scene.</span>&mdash;<i>A large room as it was in the old time. A long table
+in it. A troop of children, a share of them eating their dinner, another
+share of them sitting after eating. There is a teacher stooping over a
+book in the other part of the room.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Child</span> (<i>standing up</i>). Come out, Felim, till we see the new
+hound.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Another Child.</span> We can't. The master told us not to go out till
+we would learn this poem, the poem he was teaching us to-day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Another Child.</span> He won't let anyone at all go out till he can
+say it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Another Child.</span> <i>Maisead</i>, disgust for ever on the same old
+poem; but there is no fear for myself&mdash;I'll get out, never fear; I'll
+remember it well enough. But I don't think you will get out, Conall. Oh,
+there is the master ready to begin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher</span> (<i>lifting up his head</i>). Now, children, have you
+finished your dinner?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Children</span>. Not yet. (<i>A poor-looking, grey old man comes to the
+door.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Child</span>. Oh, that is old Cormacin that grinds the meal for us,
+and minds the oven.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man</span>. The blessing of God here! Master, will you give me
+leave to gather up the scraps, and to bring them out with me?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>. You may do that. (<i>To the children.</i>) Come here now,
+till I see if you have that poem right, and I will let you go out when
+you have it said.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fearall</span>. We are coming; but wait a minute till I ask old
+Cormacin what is he going to do with the leavings he has there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man</span>. I am gathering them to give to the birds, avourneen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher</span>. We will do it now; come over here. (<i>The children
+stand together in a row.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> Now I will tell you who made the poem you are going to
+say to me: There was a holy, saintly man in Ireland some years ago.
+Aongus Ceile D&eacute; was the name he had. There was no man in Ireland had
+greater humility than he. He did not like the people to be giving honour
+to him, or to be saying he was a great saint, or that he made fine
+poems. It was because of his humility he stole away one night, and put a
+disguise on himself; and he went like a poor man through the country,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+working for his own living without anyone knowing him. He is gone away
+out of knowledge now, without anyone at all knowing where he is. Maybe
+he is feeding pigs or grinding meal now like any other poor person.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Child.</span> Grinding meal like old Cormacin here.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> Exactly. But before he went away, it is many fine
+sweet poems he made in the praise of God and the angels; and it was one
+of those I was teaching you to-day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Child.</span> What is the name you said he had?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> Aongus Ceile D&eacute;, the servant of God. They gave him
+that name because he was so holy. Now, Felim, say the first two lines
+you; and Art will say the two next lines; and Aodh the two lines after
+that, and so on to the end.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Felim.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up in the kingdom of God, there are<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Archangels for every single day.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Art.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And it is they certainly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That steer the entire week.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aodh.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first day is holy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunday belongs to God.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fergus.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gabriel watches constantly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every week over Monday.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gabriel watches constantly&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> That's not it, Conall; Fergus said that.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall.</span> It is to God Sunday belongs&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> That's not it; that was said before. It is at Tuesday
+we are now. Who is it has Tuesday? (<i>The little boy does not answer.</i>)
+Who is it has Tuesday? Don't be a fool, now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall</span> (<i>putting the joint of his finger in his eye</i>). I don't
+know.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> Oh, my shame you are! Look now; go in the place
+Fearall is, and he will go in your place. Now, Fearall.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fearall.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is true that Tuesday is kept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Michael in his full strength.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> That's it. Now, Conall, say who has Monday.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall.</span> I can't.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> Say the two lines before that and I will be satisfied.
+Who has Monday?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall</span> (<i>crying</i>). I don't know.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> Oh, aren't you the little amadan! I will never put
+anything at all in your head. I will not let you go out till you know
+that poem. Now, boys, run out with you; and we will leave Conall Amadan
+here. (<i>The</i> <span class="smcap">Teacher</span> <i>and all the other scholars go out.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Old Man.</span> Don't be crying, avourneen; I will teach the poem
+to you; I know it myself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall.</span> Aurah, Cormacin, I cannot learn it. I am not clever or
+quick like the other boys. I can't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> put anything in my head (<i>bursts
+into crying again</i>). I have no memory for anything.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man</span> (<i>laying his hand on his head</i>). Take courage, astore.
+You will be a wise man yet, with the help of God. Come with me now, and
+help me to divide these scraps. (<i>The child gets up.</i>) That's it now;
+dry your eyes and don't be discouraged.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall</span> (<i>wiping his eyes</i>). What are you making three shares of
+the scraps for?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Old Man.</span> I am going to give the first share to the geese; I
+am putting all the cabbage on this dish for them; and when I go out, I
+will put a grain of meal on it, and it will feed them finely. I have
+scraps of meat here, and old broken bread, and I will give that to the
+hens; they will lay their eggs better when they will get food like that.
+These little crumbs are for the little birds that do be singing to me in
+the morning, and that awaken me with their share of music. I have oaten
+meal for them. (<i>Sweeps the floor, and gathers little crumbs of bread.</i>)
+I have a great wish for the little birds. (<i>The old man looks up; he
+sees the little boy lying on a cushion, and he asleep. He stands a
+little while looking at him. Tears gather in his eyes; then he goes down
+on his knees.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man.</span> O Lord, O God, take pity on this little soft child.
+Put wisdom in his head, cleanse his heart, scatter the mist from his
+mind, and let him learn his lesson like the other boys. O Lord, Thou
+wert Thyself young one time: take pity on youth. O Lord, Thou Thyself
+shed tears: dry the tears of this little lad.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> Listen, O Lord, to the
+prayer of Thy servant, and do not keep from him this little thing he is
+asking of Thee. O Lord, bitter are the tears of a child, sweeten them;
+deep are the thoughts of a child, quiet them; sharp is the grief of a
+child, take it from him; soft is the heart of a child, do not harden it.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>While the old man is praying, the</i> <span class="smcap">Teacher</span> <i>comes in. He
+makes a sign to the children outside; they come in and gather about him.
+The old man notices the children; he starts up, and shame burns on
+him.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> I heard your prayer, old man; but there is no good in
+it. I praise you greatly for it, but that child is half-witted. I prayed
+to God myself once or twice on his account, but there was no good in it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Old Man.</span> Perhaps God heard me. God is for the most part
+ready to hear. The time we ourselves are empty without anything, God
+listens to us; and He does not think on the thing we are without, but
+gives us our fill.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> It is the truth you are speaking; but there is no good
+in praying this time. This boy is very ignorant. (<i>He and the old man go
+over to the child, who is still asleep, and signs of tears on his
+cheeks.</i>) He must work hard, and very hard; and maybe with the dint of
+work, he will get a little learning some time. (<i>He puts his hand on the
+cheek of the little boy, and he starts up, and wonder on him when he
+sees them all about him.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Old Man.</span> Ask it to him now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> DO you remember the poem now, Conall?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up in the heaven of God, there are<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Archangels for every day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And it is they certainly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That steer the entire week.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first day is holy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunday belongs to God.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gabriel watches constantly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every week over Monday.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is true that Tuesday is kept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Michael in his full strength.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rafael, honest and kind and gentle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is to him Wednesday belongs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To Sachiel, that is without crookedness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thursday belongs every week.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Haniel, the Archangel of God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is he has Friday.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bright Cassiel, of the blue eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is he directs Saturday.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> That is a great wonder, not a word failed on him. But
+tell me, Conall astore, how did you learn that poem since?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall.</span> When I was sleeping, just now, there came an old man to
+me, and I thought there was every colour that is in the rainbow upon
+him. And he took hold of my shirt, and he tore it; and then he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> opened
+my breast, and he put the poem within in my heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Old Man.</span> It is God that sent that dream to you. I have no doubt
+you will not be hard to teach from this out.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conall.</span> And the man that came to me, I thought it was old
+Cormacin that was in it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fearall.</span> Maybe it was Aongus Ceile D&eacute; himself that was in it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aodh.</span> Maybe Cormacin is Aongus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher.</span> Are you Aongus Ceile D&eacute;? I desire you in the name of
+God to tell me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Old Man</span> (<i>bowing his head</i>). Oh, you have found it out now!
+Oh, I thought no one at all would ever know me. My grief that you have
+found me out!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Teacher</span> (<i>going on his knees</i>). O holy Aongus, forgive me; give
+me your blessing. O holy man, give your blessing to these children.
+(<i>The children fall on their knees round him.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Old Man</span> (<i>stretching out his hand</i>). The blessing of God on
+you. The blessing of Christ and His Holy Mother on you. My own blessing
+on you.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE NATIVITY</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Two Women.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherds.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Kings.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Child Angels.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Holy Family.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Scene.</span>&mdash;<i>A stable. The door shut on it. The dawn of day is
+rising, and the colours of morning coming. Two women come in&mdash;a woman of
+them from the east, and a woman from the west, and they tired from the
+journey. There is a branch of a cherry tree in the hand of one of them,
+and a flock of flax in the hand of the other of them.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The First Woman.</span> God be with you!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Second Woman.</span> God be with yourself!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> Where are you going?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> In search of a woman I am.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> And myself as well as you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> That is strange. What woman is that?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> A woman that is about to give birth to a child;
+and I think it would be well for her, another woman to be giving care to
+her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> That is the same woman I am in search of in the
+same way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> I did an unkindness to her, and grief and shame
+came on me after, and I thought to make up for it if I could.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> Oh, that is just the same thing I myself did.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> That is a wonder. I will tell you how it happened
+with me; and you will tell me your story after that.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> I will tell it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> That is good. I was one evening a while ago
+getting ready the supper for my husband and my children, when there came
+a man and a young woman to the door, and the woman riding an ass. They
+asked a night's lodging of me. They said it was up to Jerusalem they
+were going. But, my grief! the husband I have is a rough man, and there
+was fear on me to let them in; I was afraid he would do something to me,
+and I refused them. They said to me they were very tired; and they
+pressed so hard on me that I told them at last to go out and sleep in
+the barn, in the place the flax was, and my husband would not have
+knowledge of it. But about midnight my husband was struck with sickness,
+and a great pain came on him of a sudden, as if his death was near. When
+I thought him to be dying, I was in dread; and I ran out to the people I
+had put in the barn, asking help from them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> God help us!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> God help us, indeed! And when the woman that was
+lying on the stalks of flax heard my story, it is what she did: she took
+a flock of the husks of the flax that were on the floor, and said to me:
+'Lay that,' she said, 'on the place the pain is, and it will cure him.'
+Out with me as quick as I could, and the husks in my hand, the same as
+they are now. My husband was on the point of death at that time; but, as
+sure as I am alive, when I put the husks on him, the pain went away, and
+he was as well as ever he was.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> That is a great story!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> And when I ran out again to bring the woman in
+with me, she was gone; and I heard a voice, as I thought, saying these
+two lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A meek woman and a rough man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Son of God lying in husks.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> You heard that said?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> There was grief and shame on me then, letting her
+from me like that, without giving her thanks, or anything at all; and I
+followed her on the morrow, for I said to myself that she was blessed. I
+heard she was gone to Bethlehem; and I followed her to this stable; for
+I thought I could be helpful to her, and she in that state. They told me
+she was not in the inn; and that there was no place at all for her to
+get, till she came to this stable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> Is not that wonderful? You said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> the truth when
+you said it was a blessed woman that was in it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> How do you know that?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> Because she did a great marvel under my own eyes.
+My sorrow and my bitter grief! I did a thing seven times worse than what
+you did. It was fear before your husband was on you when you refused her
+the night's lodging; but the hardness and the misery in my own heart
+made me refuse her fruit she asked of me. She herself and the man that
+was with her were going by; and the day came close on her and hot, and
+there was a large tree of cherries in my garden. She looked up then, and
+she took a longing for them. 'O right woman!' she said; 'there is a
+desire come on me to have a few of your cherries; maybe you will give me
+a share of them.' 'I will not give them,' said I, 'to any stranger at
+all travelling the road like yourself.' 'Give them to me, if it is your
+will,' says she, quiet, and nice, and gentle, 'for I am not far from the
+birth of my child; and I have a great longing for them.'</p>
+
+<p>I don't know what was the bad thing was in my heart; but I refused her
+again. No sooner was the word out of my mouth than the big tree bent
+down of itself to her, and laid its twigs across the wall, and out on
+the road, till she could put out her hand and take her fill of the
+cherries.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> That was a great miracle, without doubt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> It was so; and grief came to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> after that for
+refusing her; for I knew by it that God had a hand in her. And I took
+this branch in my hand, and I followed her to the stable to ask pardon
+of her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> Is it not a wonder how we came here together on
+the same search?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> I think she will be wanting help, for they said to
+me in the inn she was not far from the birth of her child; and I made as
+good haste as I could. Maybe we are in time to give her help yet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> I will knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> Do so.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> Wait a while; there are strangers coming up this
+road from the west.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> That is so; and look on the other side: there are
+great people coming from the east. We must wait till they go past.
+(<i>They sit down on either side of the door. Kings, finely dressed, come
+in at the east side; and herds and shepherds on the west side.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A King</span> (<i>pointing upwards with his hand</i>). Kings and friends,
+it is not possible I am mistaken. Is not the wonderful star we followed
+as far as this standing now without stirring over this place?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Shepherd.</span> O friends, look up. There is not a bird in the sky
+that is not gathered above this house.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A King.</span> We are come from the east, from the rising of the sun,
+a long, long way off from this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> country, following the star that is
+standing still over us now. Where are you come from, shepherds?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Shepherd.</span> We are come from the west, from the setting of the
+sun, a long way off from this country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> And what is it brought you here? I dare say it is not
+without cause yourselves and ourselves are met at the door of this
+house.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd.</span> We were sitting one evening quiet and satisfied on a
+grassy hill watching our flocks; and we saw all of a sudden a thing that
+put wonder on us. The lambs that were sucking at the ewes left off
+sucking, and they looked up in the sky; and the kids that were drinking
+at the pool stopped drinking and looked up. It would put wonder on any
+person at all to see the little kids looking up as wise as ourselves. We
+looked up then, and we saw a beautiful bright angel over our heads; and
+fear came on us; but the angel spoke, and he said to us that some great
+joy was coming into the world, and he said: 'Set out now in search of
+it, and go to Bethlehem.' 'Where is that?' we asked. 'In a country that
+is called Judea,' said the angel, 'a long, long way from you to the
+east.' We made ourselves ready on the morrow; and there was every sort
+of bird that was in the sky going before us. Look at them all now, a
+share of them sitting on the roof of the house, and thousands of others
+above in a great cloud. We are all simple people, poor shepherds, it is
+not fitting for us to be coming here; but there was fear on us when we
+heard the angel speak.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> It is great powerful kings we are. We come from far off,
+from the rising of the sun. There is not a king or a prince in these
+parts is fit to be put beside the lowest steward we have. And we are
+wise. There is no knowledge or learning to be had under the sun that we
+have not got. But now we are brought by the guidance of that star to the
+Master and the Teacher that will teach us all the knowledge and wisdom
+of the whole world. It is in that hope we are come following this star.
+And now, shepherds, tell us what is it you want here.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd.</span> We cannot say rightly what we want here. But the
+angel told us there was some great joy coming into the world; and we
+followed the birds in search of that joy, and the birds came to this
+place.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> It is likely, since the star of knowledge led us, and the
+birds led you, to the one place, that there is some wonderful thing in
+it. O friends, whatever thing is in this closed stable, it is certain it
+will put great fear or great joy, or maybe great sorrow, on these
+shepherds and on ourselves.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd.</span> You who are noble and great, and rich and wise, and
+learned in all things, tell us what is in this stable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> It is true we are noble and honourable, and learned and
+powerful, and wise and prudent, but we cannot tell you that. We do not
+know ourselves what is the thing that is in it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd.</span> Tell us this much anyway, is it sorrow or joy, grief
+or gladness, courage or fear, it will put on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> us? Will you not tell us
+that before we knock at the closed door?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> It is certain there are no other persons in the world so
+learned as ourselves. We are astronomers to tell of the coming and going
+of the stars, and the ways of the heavens, and everything that is on the
+earth and in the clouds and under the earth. But for all that we cannot
+tell you this thing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd.</span> Who will knock at the door?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> It is my advice to you now: the king that is youngest of
+us, and the shepherd that is youngest of you, to go to the door and to
+knock together.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd.</span> Why do you say the youngest king and the youngest
+shepherd?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> Do you not know there is no person free from sin but only
+infants that have never found occasion of doing it? The man that is
+youngest of us, it is he found least occasion to do wrong; and he is the
+best fitted to knock at this door, whatever there may be inside it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd</span> (<i>leading out another shepherd</i>). This is the man that
+is youngest among us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King</span> (<i>leading out another king</i>). This is the youngest king in
+our company.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>The two go to the door together and knock at it. The door is opened by
+St. Joseph, and the manger is seen, and Mary Mother kneeling beside the
+manger on her two knees, her hands crossed on her breast, and she
+praying.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> We are come to this door to do honour to God, and to Him
+that God has sent. It is here all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> the people of the whole world will be
+taught, and will be put on the road that is best. Show Him to us; and we
+will proclaim Him to all the people of knowledge, and the learned people
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sheperd.</span> We are come in search of Him who is come to put joy in
+the world, and to put gladness in the hearts of the people. Show Him to
+us; and we will give news of Him to the herds and the shepherds, and the
+simple people of the whole world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">St. Joseph.</span> It is great my gladness is to see you here. A
+hundred welcomes before you, both gentle and simple. Come in, and I will
+show you Him you are in search of. Look at this baby in the manger. It
+is He is King of the World, and He will put all the countries of the
+world under His feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary Mother.</span> He is the Son of God.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>They all go on their knees.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> We have brought gifts and offerings with us. Let us show
+them to you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary Mother.</span> Walk softly and quietly, that you may not awake
+the Child.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A King.</span> I am the king is oldest in our company. I will walk
+softly, and I will not awake the Child.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Shepherd.</span> I am the man is oldest among us; let us give our
+poor gifts to you like the others. I will walk softly; I will not awake
+the little One.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">King.</span> We have brought from the rising of the sun, gold, and
+frankincense, and myrrh, and a share of every noble precious treasure
+there is in the world. It is not possible for the whole world to give a
+thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> we have not with us; and we have brought another thing the world
+has not to give, the knowledge and sense and wisdom of our own hearts.
+We have been gathering it through the years, from youth to old age; and
+we put it first of all these things. (<i>They lay gold and spices, and
+other treasures before the Child.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shepherd.</span> We have brought fleeces, and cheeses, and a little
+lamb with us as an offering. We have no other thing to give. We are old
+now, and we have got this wisdom from God, that there is nothing better
+worth giving than the things God has given to us. (<i>They put down their
+own offerings. The two women come round to the front.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The First Woman.</span> Oh, do you see that?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> King of the World, he said! Oh, are we not the
+unhappy sinners?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> My bitter grief for myself and yourself!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> I am lost for ever. There is no forgiveness for
+me to find for the thing I did!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> Nor for myself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> You were not so guilty as I was.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Woman.</span> Let us go; and let us hide ourselves under some
+scalp of a rock, in a hole in the earth, or in the middle of the woods!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Woman.</span> Let us then hasten that we may hide ourselves.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary Mother</span> (<i>rises up and stretches out her hands, beckoning
+to the women</i>). Come over here.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> Come to this cradle. The Son of God is
+in this cradle, and His cradle is nothing but a manger. But yet He is
+King of the World. There is a welcome before the whole world coming to
+this cradle; but it is those that are asking forgiveness will get the
+greatest welcome.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>The two women fall on their knees.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Child angels come and stand on the rising ground at each side of the
+stable, and shining clothes on them like the colours of the morning.
+They lift their trumpets and blow them softly.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mary Mother.</span> Listen to the angels, the angels of God!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">An Angel of them.</span> A hundred welcomes before the whole world to
+this cradle. We give out peace; we give out goodwill; we give out joy to
+the whole world! (<i>They take their share of trumpets up again, and blow
+them long and very sweetly.</i>)</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>THE END.</h4>
+
+
+<h5>Printed by <span class="smcap">Ponsonby &amp; Gibbs</span> at the University Press, Dublin</h5>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poets and Dreamers, by 
+Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
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+Project Gutenberg's Poets and Dreamers, by Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poets and Dreamers
+       Studies and translations from the Irish
+
+Author: Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
+
+Translator: Lady Augusta Gregory
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2006 [EBook #18070]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETS AND DREAMERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POETS AND DREAMERS:
+STUDIES & TRANSLATIONS FROM
+THE IRISH, BY LADY GREGORY.
+
+
+
+DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, & CO., LTD.
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+1903.
+
+
+
+
+TO SOME UNDERGRADUATES OF TRINITY COLLEGE
+
+
+    'Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,
+    In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best;
+    In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;
+    Happiness, knowledge not in another place, but this place--not for
+        another hour but this hour.'
+
+WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                  PAGE
+RAFTERY                              1
+
+WEST IRISH BALLADS                  47
+
+JACOBITE BALLADS                    66
+
+AN CRAOIBHIN'S POEMS                76
+
+BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND             89
+
+A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND      98
+
+MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY                  104
+
+HERB-HEALING                       111
+
+THE WANDERING TRIBE                121
+
+WORKHOUSE DREAMS                   128
+
+ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD           193
+
+AN CRAOIBHIN'S PLAYS:--            196
+
+    THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE       200
+
+    THE MARRIAGE                   216
+
+    THE LOST SAINT                 236
+
+    THE NATIVITY                   244
+
+
+
+
+POETS AND DREAMERS
+
+
+
+
+RAFTERY
+
+
+I.
+
+One winter afternoon as I sat by the fire in a ward of Gort Workhouse, I
+listened to two old women arguing about the merits of two rival poets
+they had seen and heard in their childhood.
+
+One old woman, who was from Kilchreest, said: 'Raftery hadn't a stim of
+sight; and he travelled the whole nation; and he was the best poet that
+ever was, and the best fiddler. It was always at my father's house,
+opposite the big tree, that he used to stop when he was in Kilchreest. I
+often saw him; but I didn't take much notice of him then, being a child;
+it was after that I used to hear so much about him. Though he was blind,
+he could serve himself with his knife and fork as well as any man with
+his sight. I remember the way he used to cut the meat--across, like
+this. Callinan was nothing to him.'
+
+The other old woman, who was from Craughwell, said: 'Callinan was a
+great deal better than him; and he could make songs in English as well
+as in Irish; Raftery would run from where Callinan was. And he was a
+nice respectable man, too, with cows and sheep, and a kind man. _He_
+would never put anything that wasn't nice into a poem, and _he_ would
+never run anyone down; but if you were the worst in the world, he'd make
+you the best in it; and when his wife lost her beetle, he made a song of
+fifteen verses about it.'
+
+'Well,' the Kilchreest old woman admitted, 'Raftery would run people
+down; he was someway bitter; and if he had anything against a person,
+he'd give him a great lacerating. But there were more for him than for
+Callinan; some used to say Callinan's songs were too long.'
+
+'I tell you,' said the other, 'Callinan was a nice man and a nice
+neighbour. Raftery wasn't fit to put beside him. Callinan was a man that
+would go out of his own back door, and make a poem about the four
+quarters of the earth. I tell you, you would stand in the snow to listen
+to Callinan!' But, just then, a bedridden old woman suddenly sat up and
+began to sing Raftery's 'Bridget Vesach' as long as her breath lasted;
+so the last word was for him after all.
+
+Raftery died over sixty years ago; but there are many old people still
+living, besides those two old women, who have seen him, and who keep his
+songs in their memory. What they tell of him shows how closely he was in
+the old tradition of the bards, the wandering poets of two thousand
+years or more. His satire, his praises, his competitions with other
+poets were the dread and the pride of many Galway and Mayo parishes. And
+now the songs that he never wrote down, being blind, are known, if not
+as our people say, 'all over the world,' at least in all places where
+Irish is spoken.
+
+Raftery's satires, as I have heard them repeated by the country people,
+do not seem, even in their rhymed original--he only composed in
+Irish--to have the 'sharp spur' of some of his predecessors, such as
+O'Higinn, whose tongue was cut out by men from Sligo, who had suffered
+from it, or O'Daly, who criticised the poverty of the Irish chiefs in
+the sixteenth century until the servant of one of them stuck a knife
+into his throat. Yet they were much dreaded. 'He was very sharp with
+anyone that didn't please him,' I have been told; 'and no one would like
+to be put in his songs.' And though it is said of his songs in praise of
+his friends that 'whoever he praised was well praised,' it was thought
+safer that one's own name should not appear in them. The man at whose
+house he died said to me: 'He used often to come and stop with us, but
+he never made a verse about us; my father wouldn't have liked that.
+Someway it doesn't bring luck.' And another man says: 'My father often
+told me about Raftery. He was someway gifted, and people were afraid of
+him. I was often told by men that gave him a lift in their car when they
+overtook him now and again, that if he asked their name, they wouldn't
+give it, for fear he might put it in a song.' And another man says:
+'There was a friend of my father's was driving his car on the road one
+day, and he saw Raftery, but he didn't let on to see him. But when he
+was passing, Raftery said: "There was never a soldier marching but would
+get his billet. But the rabbit has an enemy in the ferret;" so then the
+man said in a hurry, "Oh, Mr. Raftery, I never knew it was you: won't
+you get up and take a seat in the car?"' A girl in whose praise he had
+made a song, Mary Hynes, of Ballylee, died young, and had a troubled
+life; and one of her neighbours says of her: 'No one that has a song
+made about them will ever live long;' and another says: 'She got a great
+tossing up and down; and at last she died in the middle of a bog.' They
+tell, too, of a bush that he once took shelter under from the rain, and
+how he 'praised it first; and then when it let the rain down, he
+dispraised it, and it withered up, and never put out leaf or branch
+after.' I have seen his poem on the bush in a manuscript book, carefully
+written in the beautiful Irish character, and the great treasure of a
+stonecutter's cottage. This is the form of the curse: 'I pronounce
+ugliness upon you. That bloom or leaf may never grow on you, but the
+flame of the mountain fires and of bonfires be upon you. That you may
+get your punishment from Oscar's flail, to hack and to bruise you with
+the big sledge of a forge.'
+
+There are some other verses made by him that have been less legendary in
+their effect. The story is:--'It was Anthony Daly, a carpenter, was
+hanged at Seefin. It was the two Z's got him put away. He was brought
+before a judge in Galway, and accused of being a Captain of Whiteboys,
+and it was sworn against him that he fired at Mr. X. He was a one-eyed
+man; and he said: "If I did, though I have but one eye, I would have hit
+him"--for he was a very good shot; and he asked that some object should
+be put up, and he would show the judge that he would hit it, but he said
+nothing else. Some were afraid he'd give up the names of the other
+Whiteboys; but he did not. There was a gallows put up at Seefin; and he
+was brought there sitting on his coffin in a cart. There were people all
+the way along the road, and they were calling on him to break through
+the crowd, and they'd save him; and some of the soldiers were Irish, and
+they called back that if he did they'd only fire their guns in the air;
+but he made no attempt, but went to the gallows quiet enough. There was
+a man in Gort was telling me he saw it, planting potatoes he was at
+Seefin that day. It was in the year 1820; and Raftery was there at the
+hanging, and he made a song about it. The first verse of the song said:
+"Wasn't that the good tree, that wouldn't let any branch that was on it
+fall to the ground?" He meant by that that he didn't give up the names
+of the other Whiteboys. And at the end he called down judgment from God
+on the two Z's, and, if not on them, on their children. And they that
+had land and farms in all parts, lost it after; and all they had
+vanished; and the most of their children died--only two left, one a
+friar, and the other living in the town.' And quite lately I have been
+told by another neighbour, in corroboration, that a girl of the Z family
+married into a family near his home the other day, and was coldly
+received; and when my neighbour asked one of the family why this was, he
+was told that 'those of her people that went so high ought to have gone
+higher'--meaning that they themselves ought to have been on the gallows;
+and then he knew that Raftery's curse was still having its effect. And
+he had also heard that the grass had never grown again at Seefin.
+
+This is a part of the song:--
+
+     'The evening of Friday of the Crucifixion, the Gael was under the
+     mercy of the Gall. It was as heavy the same day as when the only
+     Son of Mary was on the tree. I have hope in the Son of God, my
+     grief! and it is of no use for me; and it was Conall and his wife
+     hung Daly, and may they be paid for it!
+
+     'But oh! young woman, while I live, I put death on the village
+     where you will be; plague and death on it; and may the flood rise
+     over it; that much is no sin at all, O bright God; and I pray with
+     longing it may fall on the man that hung Daly; that left his people
+     and his children crying.
+
+     'O stretch out your limbs! The air is murky overhead; there is
+     darkness on the sun, and the fish do not leap in the water; there
+     is no dew on the grass, and the birds do not sing sweetly. With
+     sorrow after you, Daly, till death, there never will be fruit on
+     the trees.
+
+     'And that is the true man, that didn't humble himself or lower
+     himself to the Gall; Anthony Daly, O Son of God! He was that with
+     us always, without a lie. But he died a good Irishman; and he never
+     bowed the head to any man; and it was with false swearing that
+     Daly was hung, and with the strength of the Gall.
+
+     'If I were a clerk--kind, light, cheerful with the pen--it is I
+     would write your ways in clear Irish on a flag above your head. A
+     thousand and eight hundred and sixteen, and four put to that, from
+     the coming of the Son of God, to the death of Daly at the Castle of
+     Seefin.'
+
+I have heard, and have also seen in manuscript, a terrible list of
+curses that he hurled at the head of another poet, Seaghan Burke. But
+these were, I think, looked on as a mere professional display, and do
+not seem to have any ill effect.
+
+Here are some of them:--
+
+     'That God may perish you on the mountain-side, without a priest,
+     bishop, or clerk. Seven years may you be senseless and without wit,
+     going from door to door as an unfortunate creature.
+
+     'May you have a mouth that will go back to your ear, and may your
+     lips be turned back like gums; that your legs may lose feeling from
+     the knee down, your eyes lose their sight, and your hands lose
+     their strength.
+
+     'Deformity and lameness and corruption upon you; flight and defeat
+     and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you
+     nine times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,'
+     it is explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death,
+     and it is the time He can best hear the curses of the poor').
+
+     'May a sore heart and cold flesh be upon you; may there be no
+     marrow or moisture in your bones. That clay may never be put over
+     your coffin-boards, but wind and a sharp blast on you from the
+     north.
+
+     'Baldness and nakedness come upon you, judgment from above, and the
+     curses of the crowd. May dragon's gall and poison mixed through it
+     be your best drink at the hour of death.'
+
+Sometimes he left a scathing verse on a place where he was not well
+treated, as: 'Oranmore without merriment. A little town in scarce
+fields--a broken little town, with its back to the water, and with women
+that have no understanding.'
+
+He did not spare persons any more than places, especially if they were
+well-to-do, for his gentleness was for the poor. An old woman who
+remembers him says: 'He didn't care much about big houses. Just if they
+were people he liked, and that he was friendly with them, he would be
+kind enough to go in and see them.' A Mr. Burke, who met him going from
+his house, asked how he had fared, and he said in a scornful verse:--
+
+    'Potatoes that were softer than the fog,
+    And with neither butter nor meat,
+    And milk that was sourer than apples in harvest--
+    That's what Raftery got from Burke of Kilfinn.'
+
+'And Mr. Burke begged him to rhyme no more, but to come back, and he
+would be well taken care of.' I am told of another house he abused and
+that is now deserted: 'Frenchforth of the soot, that was wedded to the
+smoke, that is all that remains of the property.... There were some of
+them on mules, and some of them unruly, and the biggest of them were
+smaller than asses, and the master cracking them with a stick;' 'but he
+went no further than that, because he remembered the good treatment used
+to be there in former times, and he wouldn't have said that much if it
+wasn't for the servants that vexed him.' A satire, that is remembered
+in Aran, was made with the better intention of helping a barefooted
+girl, who had been kept waiting a long time for a pair of shoes she had
+ordered. Raftery came, and sat down before the shoemaker's house, and
+began:--
+
+     'A young little girl without sense, the ground tearing her feet, is
+     not satisfied yet by the lying Peter Glynn. Peter Glynn, the liar,
+     in his little house by the side of the road, is without the
+     strength in his arms to slip together a pair of brogues.'
+
+'And, before he had finished the lines, Peter Glynn ran out and called
+to him to stop, and he set at work on the shoes then and there.' He even
+ventured to poke a little satire at a priest sometimes. 'He went into
+the chapel at Kilchreest one time, and there was some cabbage after
+being stolen from a garden, and the priest was speaking about it.
+Raftery was at the bottom of the chapel, and at last he called out in
+verse:--"What a lot of talk about cabbage! If there was meat with it, it
+would feed the whole parish!" The priest didn't mind, but afterwards he
+came down, and said: "Where is the cabbage man?" and asked him to make
+some more verses about it; but whether he did or not I don't know.' And
+another time, I am told: 'A priest wanted to teach him the rite of lay
+baptism; for there were scattered houses a priest might take a long time
+getting to, away from the roads, and certain persons were authorized to
+give the rite. So the priest put his hat in Raftery's hand, and told him
+the words to say; but it is what he said: "I baptize you without either
+foot or hand, without salt or tow, beer or drink. Your father was a ram
+and your mother was a sheep, and your like never came to be baptized
+before." He was put under a curse, too, one time by a priest, and he
+made a song about him; but he said he put his frock out of the bargain,
+and it was only the priest's own body he would speak about. And the
+priest let him alone after that.' And an old basket-maker, who had told
+me some of these things, said at the end: 'That is why the poets had to
+be banished before in the time of St. Columcill. Sure no one could stand
+the satire of them.'
+
+
+II.
+
+Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great
+extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was
+born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years. It is hard to say
+where history ends in them and religion and politics begin; for history,
+religion, and politics grow on one stem in Ireland, an eternal trefoil.
+'He was a great historian,' it is said; 'for every book he'd get hold
+of, he'd get it read out to him.' And a neighbour tells me: 'He used to
+stop with my uncle that was a hedge schoolmaster in those times in
+Ballylee, and that was very fond of drink; and when he was drunk, he'd
+take his clothes off, and run naked through the country. But at evening
+he'd open the school; and the neighbours that would be working all day
+would gather in to him, and he'd teach them through the night; and there
+Raftery would be in the middle of them.' His chief historical poem is
+the 'Talk with the Bush,' of over three hundred lines. Many of the
+people can repeat it, or a part of it, and some possess it in
+manuscript. The bush, a forerunner of the 'Talking Oak' or the 'Father
+of the Forest,' gives its recollections, which go back to the times of
+the Firbolgs, the Tuatha De Danaan, 'without heart, without humanity';
+the Sons of the Gael; the heroic Fianna, who 'would never put more than
+one man to fight against one'; Cuchulain 'of the Grey Sword, that broke
+every gap'; till at last it comes to 'O'Rourke's wife that brought a
+blow to Ireland': for it was on her account the English were first
+called in. Then come the crimes of the English, made redder by the crime
+of Martin Luther. Henry VIII 'turned his back on God and denied his
+first wife.' Elizabeth 'routed the bishops and the Irish Church. James
+and Charles laid sharp scourges on Ireland.... Then Cromwell and his
+hosts swept through Ireland, cutting before him all he could. He gave
+estates and lands to Cromwellians, and he put those that had a right to
+them on mountains.' Whenever he brings history into his poems, the same
+strings are touched. 'At the great judgment, Cromwell will be hiding,
+and O'Neill in the corner. And I think if William can manage it at all,
+he won't stand his ground against Sarsfield.' And a moral often comes at
+the end, such as: 'Don't be without courage, but join together; God is
+stronger than the Cromwellians, and the cards may turn yet.'
+
+For Raftery had lived through the '98 Rebellion, and the struggle for
+Catholic Emancipation; and he saw the Tithe War, and the Repeal
+movement; and it is natural that his poems, like those of the poets
+before him, should reflect the desire of his people for 'the mayntenance
+of their own lewde libertye,' that had troubled Spenser in his time.
+
+Here are some verses from his '_Cuis da ple_,' 'cause to plead,'
+composed at the time of the Tithe War:--
+
+     'The two provinces of Munster are afoot, and will not stop till
+     tithes are overthrown, and rents accordingly; and if help were
+     given them, and we to stand by Ireland, the English guard would be
+     feeble, and every gap made easy. The Gall (English) will be on
+     their back without ever returning again; and the Orangemen bruised
+     in the borders of every town, a judge and jury in the courthouse
+     for the Catholics, England dead, and the crown upon the Gael....
+
+     'There is many a fine man at this time sentenced, from Cork to
+     Ennis and the town of Roscrea, and fair-haired boys wandering and
+     departing from the streets of Kilkenny to Bantry Bay. But the cards
+     will turn, and we'll have a good hand: the trump shall stand on the
+     board we play at.... Let ye have courage. It is a fine story I
+     have. Ye shall gain the day in every quarter from the Sassanach.
+     Strike ye the board, and the cards will be coming to you. Drink out
+     of hand now a health to Raftery: it is he would put success for you
+     on the _Cuis da ple_.'
+
+This is part of another song:--
+
+     'I have a hope in Christ that a gap will be opened again for us....
+     The day is not far off, the Gall will be stretched without anyone
+     to cry after them; but with us there will be a bonfire lighted up
+     on high.... The music of the world entirely, and Orpheus playing
+     along with it. I'd sooner than all that, the Sassanach to be cut
+     down.'
+
+But with all this, he had plenty of common sense, and an old man at
+Ballylee tells me:--'One time there were a sort of
+nightwalkers--Moonlighters as we'd call them now, Ribbonmen they were
+then--making some plan against the Government; and they asked Raftery to
+come to their meeting. And he went; but what he said was this, in a
+verse, that they should look at the English Government, and think of all
+the soldiers it had, and all the police--no, there were no police in
+those days, but gaugers and such like--and they should think how full up
+England was of guns and arms, so that it could put down Buonaparty; and
+that it had conquered Spain, and took Gibraltar from it; and the same in
+America, fighting for twenty-one years. And he asked them what they had
+to fight with against all those guns and arms?--nothing but a stump of a
+stick that they might cut down below in the wood. So he bid them give up
+their nightwalking, and come out and agitate in the daylight.'
+
+I have been told--but I do not know if it is true--that he was once sent
+to Galway Gaol for three months for a song he made against the
+Protestant Church, 'saying it was like a wall slipping, where it wasn't
+built solid.'
+
+
+III.
+
+When at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the poets O'Lewy and
+O'Clery and their supporters held a 'Contention,' the results were
+written down in a volume containing 7,000 lines. I think the greater
+number of the 'Contentions' between Raftery and his fellow-poets were
+never written down; but the country people still discuss them with all
+the eagerness of partisans. On old man from Athenry says: 'Raftery
+travelled Ireland, challenging all the poets of that time. There were
+hundreds of country poets in those days, and a welcome for them all.
+Raftery had enough to do to beat them, but he was the best; his poetry
+was the gift of God, and his poems are sung as far away as Limerick and
+Dublin.' There is a story of his knocking at a door one night, when he
+was looking for the house of a poet he had heard of and wanted to
+challenge, and saying: 'I am a poet seeing shelter'; and a girl answered
+him from within with a verse, saying he must be a blind man to be out so
+late looking for shelter; and then he knew it was the house he was
+looking for. And it is said that the daughter of another poet was on his
+way to see in Clare, gave him such a sharp answer when he met her
+outside the house that he turned back and would not contend with her
+father at all. And he is said to have 'hunted another poet Daly--hunted
+him all through Ireland.' But these other poets do not seem to have left
+a great name. There was a Connemara poet, Sweeny, that was put under a
+curse by the priests 'because he used to make so much fun at the wakes';
+and in one of Raftery's poems he thanks Sweeny for having come to his
+help in some dispute; and there was 'one John Burke, who was a good
+poet, too; he and Raftery would meet at fairs and weddings, and be
+trying which would put down the other.' I am told of an 'attack' they
+made on each other one day on the fair green of Cappaghtagle. Burke
+said: 'After all your walk of land and callows, Burke is before you at
+the fair of Cappagh.' And Raftery said: 'You are not Burke but a breed
+of _scatties_, That's all over the country gathering _praties_; When I'm
+at the table filling glasses, You are in the corner with your feet in
+the ashes.' Then Burke said: 'Raftery a poet, and he with bracked
+(speckled) shins, And he playing music with catgut; Raftery the poet,
+and his back to the wall, And he playing music for empty pockets.
+There's no one cares for his music at all, but he does be always craving
+money.' For he was sometimes accused of love of money; 'he wouldn't play
+for empty pockets, and he'd make the plate rattle at the end of a
+dance.'
+
+But his most serious rival in his own part of the country was Callinan,
+the well-to-do farmer who lived near Craughwell, of whom the old women
+in the workhouse spoke. I have heard some of Callinan's poems and songs;
+but I do not find the imaginative power of Raftery in them. He seems, in
+distinction to him, to be the poet of the domestic affections, of the
+settled classes. His songs have melody and good sentiments; and they are
+often accompanied by a rhymed English version, made by his brother, a
+lesser poet. The favourite among them is a song on a wooden beetle, lost
+by his wife when washing clothes at the river. She is made to lament the
+loss of 'so good a servant' in a sort of allegory; and then its journey
+is traced from the river to the sea. An old man gives me a little memory
+of him: 'I saw Callinan one time when we went to dig potatoes for him at
+his own place, the other side of Craughwell. We went into the house for
+dinner; and we were in a hurry, and he was sitting by the hearth talking
+all the time; for he was a great talker, so that the veins of his neck
+swelled up. And he was telling us about the song he made about his own
+Missus when she was out washing by the river. He was up to eighty years
+at that time.' And there are accounts of the making of some of his songs
+that show his kindly disposition and amiability. 'One time there was a
+baby in the house, and there was a dance going on near, and Mrs.
+Callinan was a young woman; and she said she'd go for a bit to the
+dance-house; and she bid Callinan rock the cradle till she'd come back.
+But she never came back till morning, and there he was rocking the
+cradle still; and he had a song composed while she was away about the
+time of a man's life, and the hours of the day, and the seasons of the
+year; how when a man is young he is strong, and then he grows old and
+passes away, and goes to the feast of the Saviour; and about the day,
+how bright the morning is, and the birds singing; and a man goes out to
+work, and he comes in tired out, and sits by the fire to talk with his
+neighbour; and the night comes on, and he says his prayers, and thinks
+of the feast of the Saviour; and about the seasons, the spring so nice,
+and the summer for work; and autumn brings the harvest, and winter
+brings Christmas, the feast of the Saviour. In Irish and English he made
+that.' And this is another story: 'A carpenter made a plough for
+Callinan one time, and when it came, it was the worst ever made; and he
+said to his brother: "I'll make a song that will cut him down
+altogether." But his brother said: "Do not, for if you cut him down, it
+will take his means of living from him, but make a song in his praise."
+And he did so, for he wouldn't like to do him any harm.' I have asked if
+he made any love-songs, and was told of one he had made 'about a girl he
+met going to a bog. He praised herself first, and then he said he had
+information as well that she had fifty gold guineas saved up.'
+
+His having been well off seems to make his poetic merit the greater in
+the eyes of farmers; for one says: 'He was as good a poet, for he had a
+plough and horses and a good way of living, and never sang in any
+public-house; but Raftery had no way of living but to go round and to
+mark some house to go to, and then all the neighbours would gather in to
+hear him.' Another says: 'Raftery was the best poet, for he had nothing
+else to do, and laid his mind to it; but Callinan was a strong farmer,
+and had other things to think of;' and another says: 'Callinan was very
+apt: it was all Raftery could do to beat him;' and another sums up by
+saying: 'The both of them was great.' But a supporter of Raftery says:
+'He was the best; he put his words so strong and stiff, following one
+another.'
+
+I had been often told, by supporters of either side, that there was one
+contest between the two, at which Callinan 'made Raftery cry tears
+down;' and I wondered how it was that his wit had so far betrayed him.
+It has been explained to me lately. Raftery had made a long poem, 'The
+Hunt,' in which he puts 'a Writer' in the place of the fox, and calls on
+all the gentlemen of Galway and Mayo, and even on 'Sarsfield from
+Limerick,' to come and hunt him through their respective neighbourhoods
+with a pack of hounds. It contains many verses; and he seems to have
+improvised others in the different places where he sang it. In the
+written copy I have seen, Burke is the 'Writer' who is thus hunted. But
+he probably put in the name of any other rival from time to time. This
+is the story: 'He and the Callinans were sometimes vexed with one
+another, but they'd make friends after; but there was one day he was put
+down by them. There was a funeral going on at Killeenan, and Raftery was
+there; and he was asked into the corpse-house afterwards, and the people
+asked him for the song about Callinan, and he began hunting him all
+through the country, and the people were laughing and making him go on;
+but Callinan's brother had come in, and was listening to him, and
+Raftery didn't see him, being blind; and he brought him to Killeenan at
+last, and he said: "Where can the rogue go now, unless he'll swim the
+turlough?" And at that Callinan's brother stood up and said, "Who is it
+you are calling a rogue?" And Raftery tried to laugh it off, and he
+said, "You mustn't expect poetry and truth to go together." But Callinan
+said: "I'll give you poetry that's truth as well;" and he began to say
+off some verses his brother had made on Raftery; and Raftery was choked
+up that time, and hadn't a word.' This story is corroborated by an
+eye-witness who said to me: 'It was in this house he was on the night
+Callinan made him cry. My father was away at the time; if he had been
+there, he never would have let Callinan come into the house unknown to
+Raftery.' I have not heard all of Callinan's poem, but this is part of
+it:--
+
+     'He left the County Mayo; he was hunted up from the country of the
+     brothons' (thick bed-coverings, then made in Mayo) 'without any for
+     the night, nor any shift for bedding, but with an old yellow
+     blanket with a thousand patches; he had a black trouser down to the
+     ground with two hundred holes and forty pieces; he had long legs
+     like the shank of a pipe, and a long great coat, for it is many the
+     dab he put in his pocket. His coat was greasy, and it was no
+     wonder, and an old grey hat as grey as snuff as it was many the day
+     it was in the dunghill.'
+
+It is said that 'Raftery could have answered that song better, but he
+had no back here; and Callinan was well-to-do, and had so many of his
+family and so many friends.' But others say there were some allusions in
+it to the poverty of his home, that had become known through a servant
+girl from Raftery's birth-place. But I think even Callinan's friends are
+sorry now that Raftery was ever made to 'cry tears down.'
+
+
+IV.
+
+A man near Oranmore says: 'There used to be great talk of the Fianna;
+and everyone had the poems about them till Raftery came, and he put them
+out. For when the people got Raftery's songs in their heads, they could
+think of nothing else: his songs put out everything else. I remember
+when I was a boy of ten, I was so taken up with his rhymes and songs, I
+had them all off. And I heard he was coming one night to a stage he had
+below there where he used to come now and again. And I begged my father
+to bring me with him that night, and he did; but whatever happened,
+Raftery didn't come that time, and the next year he died.'
+
+But it is hard to judge of the quality of Raftery's poems. Some of them
+have probably been lost altogether. There are already different versions
+of those written out in manuscript books, and of these books many have
+disappeared or been destroyed, and some have been taken to America by
+emigrants. It is said that when he was on his deathbed, he was very
+sorry that his songs had not all been taken down; and that he dictated
+one he composed there to a young man who wrote it down in Irish, but
+could not read his own writing when he had done, and that vexed Raftery;
+and then a man came in, and he asked him to take down all his songs, and
+he could have them for himself; but he said, 'If I did, I'd always be
+called Raftery,' and he went out again.
+
+I hear the people say now and then: 'If he had had education, he would
+have been the greatest poet in the world.' I cannot but be sorry that
+his education went so far as it did, for 'he used to carry a book about
+with him--a Pantheon--about the heathen gods and goddesses; and whoever
+he'd get that was able to read, he'd get him to read it to him, and then
+he'd keep them in his mind, and use them as he wanted them.' If he had
+been born a few decades later, he would have been caught, like other
+poets of the time, in the formulas of English verse. As it was, both his
+love poems and his religious poems were caught in the formulas imported
+from Greece and from Rome; and any formula must make a veil between the
+prophet who has been on the mountain top, and the people who are waiting
+at its foot for his message. The dreams of beauty that formed themselves
+in the mind of the blind poet become flat and vapid when he embodies
+them in the well-worn names of Helen and Venus. The truths of God that
+he strove in his last years, as he says, 'to have written in the book of
+the people,' left those unkindled whose ears were already wearied with
+the well-known words 'the keys of Heaven,' 'penance, fasts, and alms,'
+to whom it was an old tale to hear of hell as a furnace, and the grave
+as a dish for worms. When he gets away from the formulas, he has often a
+fine line on death or on judgment; the cheeks of the dead are 'cold as
+the snow that is at the back of the sun;' the careless--those who 'go
+out looking at their sheep on Sunday instead of going to Mass'--are
+warned that 'on the side of the hill of the tears there will be Ochone!'
+
+His love songs are many; and they were not always thought to bring ill
+luck; for I am told of a girl 'that was not handsome at all, but ugly,
+that he made a song about her for civility; for she used to be in a
+house where he used to lodge, and the song got her a husband; and there
+is a son of hers living now down in Clare-Galway.' And an old woman
+tells me, with a sigh of regret for what might have been, that she saw
+Raftery one time at a dance, and he spoke to her and said: 'Well planed
+you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade.' 'And I said:
+"Better than you know yours;" for there were two or three of the strings
+of his fiddle broke. And then he said something about O'Meara, that
+lived near us; and my father got vexed at what he said, and would let
+him speak no more with me. And if it wasn't for him speaking about
+O'Meara, and my father getting vexed, he might have made words about me
+like he did for Mary Hynes and for Mary Brown.'
+
+'Bridget Vesach,' which I have heard in many cottages, as well as from
+the old woman in Gort Workhouse, begins: 'I would wed courteous Bridget
+without coat, shoe, or shirt. Treasure of my heart, if it were possible
+for me, I would fast for you nine meals, without food, without drink,
+without any share of anything, on an island of Lough Erne, with desire
+for you and me to be together till we should settle our case.... My
+heart started with trouble, and I was frightened nine times that morning
+that I heard you were not to be found.... I would sooner be stretched by
+you with nothing under us but heather and rushes, than be listening to
+the cuckoos that are stirring at the break of day.... I am in grief and
+in sorrow since you slipped from me across the mearings.'
+
+Another love poem, 'Mairin Stanton,' shows his habit of mixing
+comparisons drawn from the classics with those drawn from nature:--
+
+     'There's a bright flower by the side of the road, and she beats
+     Deirdre in the beauty of her voice; or I might say Helen, Queen of
+     the Greeks, she for whose sake hundreds died at Troy.
+
+     'There is light and brightness in her as in those others; her
+     little mouth is as sweet as the cuckoo on the branch. You would not
+     find a mind like hers in any woman since the pearl died that was in
+     Ballylee.
+
+     'To see under the sky a woman settled like her walking on the road
+     on a fine sunny day, the light flashing from the whiteness of her
+     breast would give sight to a man without eyes.
+
+     'There is the love of hundreds in her face, and there is the
+     promise of the evening star. If she had been living in the time of
+     the gods, it is not Venus that would have had the apple.
+
+     'Her hair falls down below her knees, waving and winding to the
+     mouth of her shoes; her locks spread out wide and pale like dew,
+     they leave a brightness on the road behind her.
+
+     'She is the girl that has been taught the nicest of all whose eyes
+     still open to the sun; and if the estate of Lord Lucan belonged to
+     me, on the strength of my cause this jewel would be mine.
+
+     'Her slender lime-white shape, her face like flowers, her neck, her
+     cheek, and her amber hair; Virgil, Cicero, and Homer could tell of
+     nothing like her; she is like the dew in the time of harvest.
+
+     'If you could see this plant moving or dancing, you could not but
+     love the flower of the branch. If I cannot get a hundred words with
+     Mairin Stanton, I do not think my life will last long.
+
+     'She said "Good morrow" early and pleasantly; she drank my health,
+     and gave me a stool, and it not in the corner. At the time that I
+     am ready to go on my way I will stay talking and talking with her.'
+
+The 'pearl that was at Ballylee' was poor Mary Hynes, of whom I have
+already spoken. His song on her is very popular; 'a great song, so that
+her name is sung through the three parishes.' She must have been
+beautiful, for many who knew her still speak of her beauty, of her long,
+shining hair, and the 'little blushes in her cheeks.' An old woman says:
+'I never can think of her but I'll get a trembling, she was so nice; and
+if she was to begin talking, she'd keep you laughing till daybreak.'
+But others say: 'It was the poet that made her so handsome'; or,
+'whatever she was, he made twice as much of it.' I give one or two
+verses of the song:--
+
+     'There was no part of Ireland I did not travel: from the rivers to
+     the tops of the mountains, to the edge of Lough Greine, whose mouth
+     is hidden; but I saw no beauty but was behind hers.
+
+     'Her hair was shining, and her brows were shining too; her face was
+     like herself, her mouth pleasant and sweet. She is the pride, and I
+     give her the branch. She is the shining flower of Ballylee.'
+
+Even many miles from Ballylee, if the _posin glegeal_--the 'shining
+flower'--is spoken of, it is always known that it is Mary Hynes who is
+meant.
+
+Raftery is said to have spent the last seven years of his life praying
+and making religious songs, because death had told him in a vision that
+he had only seven years to live. His own account of the vision was given
+me by the man at whose house he died. 'I heard him telling my father one
+time, that he was sick in Galway, and there was a mug beside the bed,
+and in the night he heard a noise, and he thought it was the cat was on
+the table, and that she'd upset the mug; and he put his hand out, and
+what he felt was the bones and the thinness of death. And his sight came
+to him, and he saw where his wrapper was hanging on the wall. And death
+said he had come to bring him away, or else one of the neighbours that
+lived in such a house. And after they had talked a while, he said he
+would give him a certain time before he'd come for him again, and he
+went away. And in the morning when his wife came in, he asked where did
+she hang his wrapper the night before, and she told him it was in such a
+place, and that was the very place he saw it, so he knew he had had his
+sight. And then he sent to the house that had been spoken of to know how
+was the man of it, and word came back that he was dead. I remember when
+he was dying, a friend of his, one Cooney, came in to see him, and said:
+"Well, Raftery, the time is not up yet that death gave you to live." And
+he said: "The Church and myself have it made out that it was not death
+that was there, but the devil that came to tempt me."
+
+His description of death in his poem on the 'Vision,' is vivid and
+unconventional:--
+
+     'I had a vision in my sleep last night, between sleeping and
+     waking, a figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad, and
+     sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the
+     tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a
+     riddle; his nose thin, that it would go through a cambric needle;
+     his shoulders hard and sharp, that they would cut tobacco; his head
+     dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can
+     liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering;
+     a withered rod in his hand, and he looking in my face. It is not
+     worth my while to be talking about him; I questioned him in the
+     name of God.'
+
+A long conversation follows; Raftery addresses him:--
+
+     'Whatever harbour you came from last night, move up to me and speak
+     if you can.' Death answers: "Put away Hebrew, Greek and Latin,
+     French, and the three sorts of English, and I will speak to you
+     sweetly in Irish, the language that you found your verses in. I am
+     death that has hidden hundreds: Hannibal, Pompey, Julius Caesar; I
+     was in the way with Queen Helen. I made Hector fall, that conquered
+     the Greeks, and Conchubar, that was king of Ireland; Cuchulain and
+     Goll, Oscar and Diarmuid, and Oisin, that lived after the Fenians;
+     and the children of Usnach that brought away Deirdre from
+     Conchubar; at a touch from me they all fell." But Raftery answers:
+     "O high Prince, without height, without followers, without
+     dwelling, without strength, without hands, without force, without
+     state: all in the world wouldn't make me believe it, that you'd be
+     able to put down the half of them."'
+
+But death speaks solemnly to him then, and warns him that:--
+
+     'Life is not a thing that you get a lease of; there will be stones
+     and a sod over you yet. Your ears that were so quick to hear
+     everything will be closed, deaf, without sound, without hearing;
+     your tongue that was so sweet to make verses will be without a word
+     in the same way.... Whatever store of money or wealth you have, and
+     the great coat up about your ears, death will snap you away from
+     the middle of it.'
+
+And the poem ends at last with the story of the Passion and a prayer for
+mercy.
+
+He was always ready to confess his sins with the passionate exaggeration
+of St. Paul or of Bunyan. In his 'Talk with the Bush,' when a flood is
+threatened, he says:--
+
+     'I was thinking, and no blame to me, that my lease of life wouldn't
+     be long, and that it was bad work my hands had left after them; to
+     be committing sins since I was a child, swearing big oaths and
+     blaspheming. I never think to go to Mass. Confession at Christmas I
+     wouldn't ask to go to. I would laugh at my neighbour's downfall,
+     and I'd make nothing of breaking the Ten Commandments. Gambling and
+     drinking and all sorts of pleasures that would come across me, I'd
+     have my hand in them.'
+
+The poem known as his 'Repentance' is in the same strain. It is said to
+have been composed 'one time he went to confession to Father Bartley
+Kilkelly, and he refused him absolution because he was too much after
+women and drink. And that night he made up his "Repentance"; and the
+next day he went again, and Father Pat Burke, the curate, was with
+Father Bartley, and he said: "Well, Raftery, what have you composed of
+late?" and he said: "This is what I composed," and he said the
+Repentance. And then Father Bartley said to the curate: "You may give
+him absolution, where he has his repentance made before the world."'
+
+It is one of the finest of his poems. It begins:--
+
+     'O King, who art in heaven, ... I scream to Thee again and again
+     aloud, For it is Thy grace I am hoping for.
+
+     'I am in age, and my shape is withered; many a day I have been
+     going astray.... When I was young, my deeds were evil; I delighted
+     greatly in quarrels and rows. I liked much better to be playing or
+     drinking on a Sunday morning than to be going to Mass.... I was
+     given to great oaths, and I did not let lust or drunkenness pass me
+     by.... The day has stolen away, and I have not raised the hedge
+     until the crop in which Thou didst take delight is destroyed.... I
+     am a worthless stake in a corner of a hedge, or I am like a boat
+     that has lost its rudder, that would he broken against a rock in
+     the sea, and that would be drowned in the cold waves.'
+
+But in spite of this self-denunciation, people who knew him say 'there
+was no harm in him'; though it it is added: 'but as to a drop of drink,
+he was fond of that to the end.' And in another mood, in his 'Argument
+with Whisky,' he claims, as an excuse for this weakness, the desire for
+companionship felt by a wanderer. 'And the world knows it's not for love
+of what I drink, but for love of the people that do be near me.' And he
+has always a confident belief in final absolution:--"I pray to you to
+hear me, O Son of God; as you created the moon, the sun, the stars, it
+is no task or trouble for you to ready me."
+
+There are some fine verses in a poem made at the time of an outbreak of
+cholera:--
+
+     'Look at him who was yesterday swift and strong, who would leap
+     stone wall, ditch and gap, who was in the evening walking the
+     street, and is going under the clay on the morrow.
+
+     'Death is quicker than the wave of drowning or than any horse,
+     however fast, on the racecourse. He would strike a goal against the
+     crowd; and no sooner is he there than he is on guard before us.
+
+     'He is changing, hindering, rushing, starting, unloosed; the day is
+     no better to him than the night; when a person thinks there is no
+     fear of him, there he is on the spot laid low with keening.
+
+     'Death is a robber who heaps together kings, high princes, and
+     country lords; he brings with him the great, the young, and the
+     wise, gripping them by the throat before all the people.
+
+     'It is a pity for him who is tempted with the temptations of the
+     world; and the store that will go with him is so weak, and his
+     lease of life no better if he were to live for a thousand years,
+     than just as if he had slipped over on a visit and back again.
+
+     'When you are going to lie down, don't be dumb. Bare your knee and
+     bruise the ground. Think of all the deeds that you put by you, and
+     that you are travelling towards the meadow of the dead.'
+
+Some of his poems of places, usually places in Mayo, the only ones he
+had ever looked on--for smallpox took his sight away in his
+childhood--have much charm. 'Cnocin Saibhir,' 'the Plentiful Little
+Hill,' must have sounded like a dream of Tir-nan-og to many a poor
+farmer in a sodden-thatched cottage:--
+
+     'After the Christmas, with the help of Christ, I will never stop if
+     I am alive; I will go to the sharp-edged little hill; for it is a
+     fine place, without fog falling; a blessed place that the sun
+     shines on, and the wind doesn't rise there or any thing of the
+     sort.
+
+     'And if you were a year there, you would get no rest, only sitting
+     up at night and eternally drinking.
+
+     'The lamb and the sheep are there; the cow and the calf are there;
+     fine lands are there without heath and without bog. Ploughing and
+     seed-sowing in the right month, and plough and harrow prepared and
+     ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to pay
+     it. There is oats and flax and large-eared barley.... There are
+     beautiful valleys with good growth in them, and hay. Rods grow
+     there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there, and respect
+     for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars
+     reading their book; spending and getting is there, and nothing
+     scarce.'
+
+In another song in the same manner on 'Cilleaden,' he says:--
+
+     'I leave it in my will that my heart rises as the wind rises, or as
+     the fog scatters, when I think upon Carra and the two towns below
+     it, on the two-mile bush, and on the plains of Mayo.... And if I
+     were standing in the middle of my people, age would go from me, and
+     I would be young again.'
+
+He writes of friends that he has made in Galway as well as in Mayo, a
+weaver, a carpenter, a priest at Kilcolgan who is 'the good Christian,
+the clean wheat of the Gael, the generous messenger, the standing tree
+of the clergy.' Some of his eulogies both on persons and places are
+somewhat spoiled by grotesque exaggeration. Even Cilleaden has not only
+all sorts of native fishes, 'as plenty as turf,' and all sorts of native
+trees, but is endowed with 'tortoises,' with 'logwood and mahogany.' His
+country weaver must not only have frieze and linen in his loom, but
+satin and cambric. A carpenter near Ardrahan, Seaghan Conroy, is praised
+with more simplicity for his 'quick, lucky work,' and for the pleasure
+he takes in it. 'I never met his master; the trade was in his nature';
+and he gives a long list of all the things he could make: doors and all
+that would be wanted for a big house'; mills and ploughs and
+spinning-wheels 'nicely finished with a clean chisel'; 'all sorts of
+things for the living, and a coffin for the dead. And with all this 'he
+cares little for money, but to spend, as he earns, decently. And if he
+was up for nine nights, you wouldn't see the sign of a drop on him.'
+
+Another of his more simple poems is what Spenser would call an 'elegie
+or friend's passion' on a player on fiddle or pipes, Thomas O'Daly, that
+gives him a touch of kinship with the poets who have mourned their
+Astrophel, their Lycidas, their Adonais, their Thyrsis. This is how I
+have been helped to put it into English by a young working farmer,
+sitting by a turf fire one evening, when his day in the fields was
+over:--
+
+     'It was Thomas O'Daly that roused up young people and scattered
+     them, and since death played on him, may God give him grace. The
+     country is all sorrowful, always talking, since their man of sport
+     died that would win the goal in all parts with his music.
+
+     'The swans on the water are nine times blacker than a blackberry
+     since the man died from us that had pleasantness on the top of his
+     fingers. His two grey eyes were like the dew of the morning that
+     lies on the grass. And since he was laid in the grave, the cold is
+     getting the upper hand.
+
+     'If you travel the five provinces, you would not find his equal for
+     countenance or behaviour, for his equal never walked on land or
+     grass. High King of Nature, you who have all powers in yourself, he
+     that wasn't narrow-hearted, give him shelter in heaven for it.
+
+     'He was the beautiful branch. In every quarter that he ever knew he
+     would scatter his fill and not gather. He would spend the estate of
+     the Dalys, their beer and their wine. And that he may be sitting in
+     the chair of grace, in the middle of Paradise.
+
+     'A sorrowful story on death, it 's he is the ugly chief that did
+     treachery, that didn't give him credit, O strong God, for a little
+     time.
+
+     'There are young women, and not without reason, sorry and
+     heart-broken and withered, since he was left at the church. Their
+     hair thrown down and hanging, turned grey on their head.
+
+     'No flower in any garden, and the leaves of the trees have leave to
+     cry, and they falling on the ground. There is no green flower on
+     the tops of the tufts, since there did a boarded coffin go on Daly.
+
+     'There is sorrow on the men of mirth, a clouding over the day, and
+     no trout swim in the river. Orpheus on the harp, he lifted up
+     everyone out of their habits; and he that stole what Argus was
+     watching the time he took away Io; Apollo, as we read, gave them
+     teaching, and Daly was better than all these musicians.
+
+     'A hundred wouldn't be able to put together his actions and his
+     deeds and his many good works. And Raftery says this much for Daly,
+     because he liked him.'
+
+Though his praises are usually all for the poor, for the people, he has
+left one beautiful lament for a landowner:--
+
+     'There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be
+     seen on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees
+     complaining of the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in
+     the sky, or no light in the stars coming down, with the stretching
+     of O'Kelly in the grave.
+
+     'My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring
+     grief or trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that
+     were down.
+
+     'No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no
+     children on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants
+     don't blossom as they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went
+     away; he that used to forgive us a great share of the rent.
+
+     'Since the children of Usnach and Deirdre went to the grave and
+     Cuchulain, who, as the stories tell us, would gain victory in every
+     step he would take; since he died, such a story never came of
+     sorrow or defeat; since the Gael were sold at Aughrim, and since
+     Owen Roe died, the Branch.'
+
+
+V.
+
+His life was always the wandering, homeless life of the old bards. After
+Cromwell's time, as the houses they went to grew poorer, they had added
+music to their verse-making; and Raftery's little fiddle helped to make
+him welcome in the Ireland which was, in spite of many sorrows, as merry
+and light-hearted up to the time of the great famine as England had been
+up to the time of the Puritans. 'He had no place of his own,' I am told,
+'but to be walking the country. He did well to die before the bad years
+came. He used to play at Kiltartan cross for the dancing of a Sunday
+evening. And when he'd come to any place, the people would gather and
+he'd give them a dance; for there was three times as many people in the
+world then as what there is now. The people would never have let him
+want; but as to money, what could he do with it, and he with no place of
+his own?' An old woman near Craughwell says: 'He used to come here
+often; it was like home to him. He wouldn't have a dance then; my father
+liked better to be sitting listening to his talk and his stories; only
+when we'd come in, he'd take the fiddle and say: "Now we must give the
+youngsters a tune."' And an old man, who is still lamenting the fall in
+prices after the Battle of Waterloo, remembers having seen him 'one time
+at a shebeen house that used to be down there in Clonerle. He was
+playing the fiddle, and there used to be two couples at a time dancing;
+and they would put two halfpence in the plate, and Raftery would rattle
+them and say: "It's good for the two sorts to be together," and there
+would be great laughing.' And it is also said 'there was a welcome
+before him in every house he'd come to; and wherever he went, they'd
+think the time too short he would be with them.' There is a story I
+often hear told about the marriage near Cappaghtagle of a poor servant
+boy and girl, 'that was only a marriage and not a wedding, till Raftery
+chanced to come in; and he made it one. There wasn't a bit but bread and
+herrings in the house; but he made a great song about the grand feast
+they had, and he put every sort of thing into the song--all the beef
+that was in Ireland; and went to the Claddagh, and didn't leave a fish
+in the sea. And there was no one at all at it; but he brought all the
+_bacach_ and poor men in Ireland, and gave them a pound each. He went to
+bed after, without them giving him a drop to drink; but he didn't mind
+that when they hadn't got it to give.'
+
+The wandering, unrestrained life was probably to his mind; and I do not
+think there is a word of discontent or complaint in any of his verses,
+though he was always poor, and must often have known hardship. In the
+'Talk with the Bush,' he describes in his whimsical, exaggerated way, a
+wetting, which must have been one of very many.
+
+     'It chanced that I was travelling and the rain was heavy; I stepped
+     aside, and not without reason, till I'd get a wall or a bush that
+     would shelter me.
+
+     'I didn't meet at the side of a gap only an old, withered,
+     miserable bush by the side of the wall, and it bent with the west
+     wind. I stepped under it, and it was a wet place; torrents of rain
+     coming down from all quarters, east and west and straight
+     downwards; its equal I couldn't see, unless it is seeds winnowed
+     through a riddle. It was sharp, angry, fierce, and stormy, like a
+     deer running and racing past me. The storm was drowning the
+     country, and my case was pitiful, and I suffering without cause.
+
+     'An hour and a quarter it was raining; there isn't a drop that fell
+     but would fill a quart and put a heap on it afterwards; there's not
+     a wheat or rape mill in the neighbourhood but it would set going in
+     the middle of a field.'
+
+At last relief comes:--
+
+     'It was shortly then the rain grew weak, the sun shone, and the
+     wind rose. I moved on, and I smothered and drowned in wet, till I
+     came to a little house, and there was a welcome before me. Many
+     quarts of water I squeezed from my skirt and my cape. I hung my hat
+     on a nail, and I lying in a sweet flowery bed. But I was up again
+     in a little while. We began sports and pleasures; and it was with
+     pride we spent the night.'
+
+But there is a verse in his 'Argument with Whisky' that seems to have a
+wistful thought in it, perhaps of the settled home of his rival,
+Callinan:--
+
+     'Cattle is a nice thing for a man to have, and his share of land to
+     reap wheat and barley. Money in the chest, and a fire in the
+     evening time; and to be able to give shelter to a man on his road;
+     a hat and shoes in the fashion--I think, indeed, that would be much
+     better than to be going from place to place drinking _uisge
+     beatha_.'
+
+And there is a little sadness in the verses he made in some house, when
+a stranger asked who he was:--
+
+     'I am Raftery the poet, full of hope and love; with eyes without
+     light, with gentleness without misery.
+
+     'Going west on my journey with the light of my heart; weak and
+     tired to the end of my road.
+
+     'I am now, and my back to a wall, playing music to empty pockets.'
+
+'He was a thin man,' I am told by one who knew him, 'not very tall, with
+a long frieze coat and corduroy trousers. He was very strong; and he
+told my father there was never any man he wrestled with but he could
+throw him, and that he could lie on his back and throw up a bag with
+four hundred of wheat in it, and take it up again. He couldn't see a
+stim; but he would walk all the roads, and give the right turn, without
+ever touching the wall. My father was wondering at him one time they
+were out together; and he said: "Wait till we come to the turn to
+Athenry, and don't tell me of it, and see if I don't make it out right."
+And sure enough, when they came to it, he gave the right turn, and just
+in the middle.' This is explained by what another man tells me:--'There
+was a blind piper with him one time in Gort, and they set out together
+to go to Ballylee, and it was late, and they couldn't find the stile
+that led down there, near Early's house. And they would have stopped
+there till somebody would come by, but Raftery said he'd go back to Gort
+and step it again; and so he did, turned back a mile to Gort, and
+started from there. He counted every step that he stepped out; and when
+he got to the stile, he stopped straight before it.' And I was told also
+there used to be a flagstone put beside the bog-holes to leap from, and
+Raftery would leap as well as any man. He would count his steps back
+from the flag, and take a run and alight on the other side.
+
+
+VI.
+
+His knowledge and his poetic gift are often supposed to have been given
+to him by the invisible powers, who grow visible to those who have lost
+their earthly sight. An old woman who had often danced to his music,
+said:--'When he went to his rest at night, it's then he'd make the songs
+in the turn of a hand, and you would wonder in the morning where he got
+them.' And a man who 'was too much taken up with sport and hurling when
+he was a boy to think much about him,' says: 'He got the gift. It's said
+he was asked which would he choose, music or the talk. If he chose
+music, he would have been the greatest musician in the world; but he
+chose the talk, and so he was a great poet. Where could he have found
+all the words he put in his songs if it wasn't for that?' An old woman,
+who is more orthodox, says:--'I often used to see him when I was a
+little child, in my father's house at Corker. He'd often come in there,
+and here to Coole House he used to come as well. He couldn't see a
+stim, and that is why he had such great knowledge. God gave it to him.
+And his songs have gone all through the world; and he had a voice that
+was like the wind.'
+
+Legends are already growing up about his death. It has been said that
+'he knew the very day his time would be up; and he went to Galway, and
+brought a plank to the house he was stopping at, and he put it in the
+loft; and he told the people of the house his time was come, and bid
+them make a coffin for him with the plank--and he was dead before
+morning.' And another story says he died alone in an empty house, and
+that flames were seen about the house all night; and 'the flames were
+the angels waking him.' But many told me he had died in the house of a
+man near Craughwell; and one autumn day I went there to look for it, and
+the first person I asked was able to tell me that the house where
+Raftery had died was the other side of Craughwell, a mile and a half
+away. It was a warm, hazy day; and as I walked along the flat, deserted
+road that Raftery had often walked, I could see few landmarks--only a
+few more grey rocks, or a few more stunted hazel bushes in one
+stone-walled field than in another. At last I came to a thatched
+cottage; and when I saw an old man sitting outside it, with hat and coat
+of the old fashion, I felt sure it was he who had been with Raftery at
+the last. He was ready to talk about him, and told me how he had come
+there to die. 'I was a young chap at that time. It must have been in
+the year 1835, for my father died in '36, and I think it was a year
+before him that Raftery died. What did he die of? Of weakness. He had
+been bet up in Galway with some fit of sickness he had; and then he came
+to gather a little money about the country, and when he got here he was
+bet up again. He wasn't an old man--only about seventy years. He was in
+the bed for about a fortnight. When he got bad, my father said it was
+best get a priest for him; but the parish priest was away. But we saw
+Father Nagle passing the road, and I went out and brought him in, and he
+gave him absolution, and anointed him. He had no pain; only his feet
+were cold, and the boys used to be warming a stone in the fire and
+putting it to them in the bed. My mother wanted to send to Galway, where
+his wife and his daughter and his son were stopping, so that they would
+come and care him; but he wouldn't have them. Someway he didn't think
+they treated him well.'
+
+I had been told that the priest had refused him absolution when he was
+dying, until he forgave some enemy; and that he had said afterwards, 'If
+I forgave him with my mouth, I didn't with my heart'; but this was not
+true. 'Father Nagle made no delay in anointing him; but there was a
+carpenter down the road there he said too much to, and annoyed him one
+time; and the carpenter had a touch of the poet too, and was a great
+singer, and he came out and beat him, and broke his fiddle; and I
+remember when he was dying, the priest bringing in the carpenter, and
+making them forgive one another, and shake hands; and the carpenter
+said: "If two brothers were to have a falling out, they'd forgive one
+another--and why wouldn't we?" He was buried in Killeenan; it wasn't a
+very big funeral, but all the people of the village came to it. He used
+often to come and stop with us.... It was of a Christmas Eve he died:
+and he had always said that, if God had a hand in it, it was of a
+Christmas Day he'd die.'
+
+I went to Killeenan to look for his grave. There is nothing to mark it;
+but two old men who had been at his funeral pointed it out to me. There
+is a ruined church in the graveyard, which is crowded; 'there are people
+killing one another now to get a place in it.' I was asked into a house
+close by; and its owner said with almost a touch of jealousy: 'I think
+it was coming in here Raftery was the time he died; but he got bet up,
+and turned in at the house below. It was of a Christmas Eve he died, and
+that shows he was blessed; there's a blessing on them that die at
+Christmas. It was at night he was buried, for Christmas Day no work
+could be done, but my father and a few others made a little gathering to
+pay for a coffin, and it was made by a man in the village on St.
+Stephen's Day; and then he was brought here, and the people from the
+villages followed him, for they all had a wish for Raftery. But night
+was coming on when they got here; and in digging the grave there was a
+big stone in it, and the boys thought they would put him in a barn and
+take the night out of him. But my mother--the Lord have mercy on
+her--had a great veneration for Raftery; and she sent out two mould
+candles lighted; for in those days the women used to have their own
+mould, and to make their own candles for Christmas. And we held the
+candles there where the grave is, near the gable end of the church; and
+my brother went down in the grave and got the stone out, and we buried
+him. And there was a sharp breeze blowing at the time, but it never
+quenched the candles or moved the flame of them, and that shows that the
+Lord had a hand in him.'
+
+He and all the neighbours were glad to hear that there is soon to be a
+stone over the grave. 'He is worthy of it; he is well worthy of it,'
+they kept saying. A man who was digging sand by the roadside, took me to
+his house, and his wife showed me a little book, in which the
+'Repentance' and other poems had been put down for her, in phonetic
+Irish, by a beggar who had once stayed in the house. 'Many who go to
+America hear Raftery's songs sung out there,' they told me with pride.
+
+As I went back along the silent road, there was suddenly a sound of
+horses and a rushing and waving about me, and I found myself in the
+midst of the County Galway Fox Hounds, coming back from cub-hunting. The
+English M.F.H. and his wife rode by; and I wondered if they had ever
+heard of the poet whose last road this had been. Most likely not; for it
+is only among the people that his name has been kept in remembrance.
+
+There is still a peasant poet here and there, making songs in the 'sweet
+Irish tongue,' in which death spoke to Raftery; and I think these will
+be held in greater honour as the time of awakening goes on. But the
+nineteenth century has been a time of swift change in many countries;
+and in looking back on that century in Ireland, there seem to have been
+two great landslips--the breaking of the continuity of the social life
+of the people by the famine, and the breaking of the continuity of their
+intellectual life by the shoving out of the language. It seems as if
+there were no place left now for the wandering versemaker, and that
+Raftery may have closed the long procession that had moved unbroken
+during so many centuries, on its journey to 'the meadow of the dead.'
+
+1900.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was after I had written this that I went to see Raftery's birthplace,
+Cilleaden, in the County Mayo.
+
+A cousin of his came to see me, and some other men, but none of them
+remembered him; but they were very proud of his song on Cilleaden, which
+'is all through the world.' An old woman told me she had heard it in a
+tramcar in America; and an old man said: 'I was coming back from England
+one time, and there were a lot of Irish-speaking boys from Galway on
+board. There was one of them sick all through the night, but he was well
+in the morning; and the others came round him and asked him for a song,
+and the song he gave was 'Cilleaden.'
+
+They did not seem to know many of his other songs, except the
+'Repentance,' which someone remembered having seen sold as a ballad,
+with the English on one side and the Irish on the other. And one man
+told me: 'The first song Raftery wrote was about a hat that was stole
+from a man that was working in that middle field beyond. When the man
+was digging, he used to put his hat on a stick in the field to frighten
+away the crows; and Raftery got someone to bring away the hat, to make
+fun of the man. And then he made a song, making out it was the fairies
+had taken it; and he made the man follow them to Cruachmaa, and from
+that to Roscommon, and tell all that happened him there.'
+
+And one of them told me: 'He was six years old when the smallpox took
+his sight from him; and he was marked very little by the pox, only three
+or four little marks--it seemed to settle in his eyes. His father was a
+cottier--there were many here in those times. His mother was a Brennan.
+There are cousins of his living yet; but in the schools they are
+Englished into Rochford.'
+
+A young man said he had been told Raftery was born in some place beyond,
+at the foot of the mountain, but the others were very indignant; one got
+very angry, and said: 'Don't I know where he was born, and my father was
+the one age with him, and they sisters' sons; and isn't Michael Conroy
+there below his cousin? and it's up in that field was the house he was
+born in, so don't be trying to bring him away to the mountain.'
+
+I went to see the birthplace, a very green field, with two thorn bushes
+growing close together by a stone. The field is called 'Sean
+Straid'--the old street--for a few cottages had stood there. A man who
+lives close by told me he had dug up a blackened stone just there, and a
+stone into which a bar had been let, to hang a pot on; and that may have
+been the very hearth where Raftery had sat as a child.
+
+I found one old man who remembered him. 'He used to come to my father's
+house often, mostly from Easter to Whitsuntide, when the cakes were
+made, and there would be music and dancing. He used to play the fiddle
+for Frank Taafe that lived here, when he would be going out riding, and
+the horse used to prance when he heard it. And he made verses against
+one Seaghan Bradach, that used to be paid thirteen pence for every head
+of cattle he found straying in the Jordan's fields, and used to drive
+them in himself. There was another poet called Devine that praised
+Seaghan Bradach; and a verse was made against him again by a woman-poet
+that lived here at the time.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a stone over Raftery's grave now; and the people about
+Killeenan gather there on a Sunday in August every year to do honour to
+his memory. This year they established a _Feis_; and there were prizes
+given for traditional singing, and for old poems repeated, and old
+stories told, all in the Irish tongue.
+
+And the _Craoibhin Aoibhin_ is printing week by week all of Raftery's
+poems that can be found, with translations, and we shall soon have them
+in a book.
+
+And he has written a little play, having Raftery for its subject; and at
+a Galway Feis this year he himself acted, and took the blind poet's
+part; and he will act it many times again, _le congnamh De_--with the
+help of God.
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+WEST IRISH BALLADS.
+
+
+It was only a few years ago, when Douglas Hyde published his literal
+translations of Connacht Love Songs, that I realized that, while I had
+thought poetry was all but dead in Ireland, the people about me had been
+keeping up the lyrical tradition that existed in Ireland before Chaucer
+lived. While I had been looking in the columns of Nationalist newspapers
+for some word of poetic promise, they had been singing songs of love and
+sorrow in the language that has been pushed nearer and nearer to the
+western seaboard--the edge of the world. 'Eyes have we, but we see not;
+ears have we, but we do not understand.' It does not comfort me to think
+how many besides myself, having spent a lifetime in Ireland, must make
+this confession.
+
+The ballads to be gathered now are a very few out of the great mass of
+traditional poetry that was swept away during the last century in the
+merciless sweeping away of the Irish tongue, and of all that was bound
+up with it, by England's will, by Ireland's need, by official pedantry.
+
+To give an idea of the ballads of to-day, I will not quote from the
+translations of Douglas Hyde or of Dr. Sigerson already published. I
+will rather give a few of the more homely ballads, sung and composed by
+the people, and, as far as I know, not hitherto translated.
+
+Those I have heard since I have begun to look for them in the cottages,
+are, for the most part, sad; but not long ago I heard a girl sing a
+merry one, in a mocking tone, about a boy on the mountain, who neglected
+the girls of his village to run after a strange girl from Galway; and
+the girls of the village were vexed, and they made a song about him; and
+he went to Galway after her, and there she laughed at him, and said he
+had never gone to school or to the priest, and she would have nothing to
+do with him. So then he went back to the village, and asked the smith's
+daughter to marry him; but she said she would not, and that he might go
+back to the strange girl from Galway. Another song I have heard was a
+lament over a boy and girl who had run away to America, and on the way
+the ship went down. And when they were going down, they began to be
+sorry they were not married; and to say that if the priest had been at
+home when they went away, they would have been married; but they hoped
+that when they were drowned, it would be the same with them as if they
+were married. And I heard another lament that had been made for three
+boys that had lately been drowned in Galway Bay. It is the mother who is
+making it; and she tells how she lost her husband, the father of her
+three boys. And then she married again, and they went to sea and were
+drowned; and she wouldn't mind about the others so much, but it is the
+eldest boy, Peter, she is grieving for. And I have heard one song that
+had a great many verses, and was about 'a poet that is dying, and he
+confessing his sins.'
+
+The first ballad I give deals with sorrow and defeat and death; for
+sorrow is never far from song in Ireland; and the names best praised and
+kept in memory are of those--
+
+    'Lonely antagonists of destiny
+    That went down scornful under many spears;
+    Who soon as we are born are straight our friends,
+    And live in simple music, country songs,
+    And mournful ballads by the winter fire.'
+
+In this simple lament, the type of a great many, only the first name of
+the young man it was made for is given: 'Fair-haired Donough.' It is
+likely the people of his own place know still to what family he
+belonged; but I have not heard it sung, and only know that he was 'some
+Connachtman that was hanged in Galway.' And it is clear it was for some
+political crime he was hanged, by the suggestion that if he had been
+tried nearer his own home, 'in the place he had a right to be,' the
+issue would have been different, and by the allusion to the Gall, the
+English:--
+
+    'It was bound fast here you saw him, and you wondered to see him,
+    Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned;
+    There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat,
+    And a hempen rope in the place of a neckcloth.
+
+    'I am after walking here all through the night,
+    Like a young lamb in a great flock of sheep;
+    My breast open, my hair loosened out,
+    And how did I find my brother but stretched before me!
+
+    'The first place I cried my fill was at the top of the lake;
+    The second place was at the foot of the gallows;
+    The third place was at the head of your dead body
+    Among the Gall, and my own head as if cut in two.
+
+    'If you were with me in the place you had a right to be,
+    Down in Sligo or down in Ballinrobe,
+    It is the gallows would be broken, it is the rope would be cut,
+    And fair-haired Donough going home by the path.
+
+    'O fair-haired Donough, it is not the gallows was fit for you;
+    But to be going to the barn, to be threshing out the straw;
+    To be turning the plough to the right hand and to the left,
+    To be putting the red side of the soil uppermost.
+
+    'O fair-haired Donough, O dear brother,
+    It is well I know who it was took you away from me;
+    Drinking from the cup, putting a light to the pipe,
+    And walking in the dew in the cover of the night.
+
+    'O Michael Malley, O scourge of misfortune!
+    My brother was no calf of a vagabond cow;
+    But a well-shaped boy on a height or a hillside,
+    To knock a low pleasant sound out of a hurling-stick.
+
+    'And fair-haired Donough, is not that the pity,
+    You that would carry well a spur or a boot;
+    I would put clothes in the fashion on you from cloth that would be
+        lasting;
+    I would send you out like a gentleman's son.
+
+    'O Michael Malley, may your sons never be in one another's company;
+    May your daughters never ask a marriage portion of you;
+    The two ends of the table are empty, the house is filled,
+    And fair-haired Donough, my brother, is stretched out.
+
+    'There is a marriage portion coming home for Donough,
+    But it is not cattle nor sheep nor horses;
+    But tobacco and pipes and white candles,
+    And it will not be begrudged to them that will use it.'
+
+A very pathetic touch is given by the idea of the 'marriage portion,'
+the provision for the wake, being brought home for the dead boy.
+
+But it is chiefly in Aran, and on the opposite Connemara coast, that
+Irish ballads are still being made as well as sung. The little rock
+islands of Aran are fit strongholds for the threatened language,
+breakwaters of Europe, taking as they do the first onset of the ocean
+'that hath no limits nearer than America.' The fisher-folk go out in
+their canvas curraghs to win a living from the Atlantic, or painfully
+carry loads of sand and seaweed to make the likeness of an earth-plot on
+the bare rock. The Irish coast seems far away; the setting sun very
+near. When a sea-fog blots out the mainland for a day, a feeling grows
+that the island may have slipped anchor, and have drifted into
+unfamiliar seas. The fisher-folk are not the only dwellers upon the
+islands; they are the home, the chosen resting-place, of 'the Others,'
+the Fairies, the Fallen Angels, the mighty Sidhe. From here they sweep
+across the sea, invisible or taking at pleasure the form of a cloud, of
+a full-rigged ship, of a company of policemen, of a flock of gulls.
+Sometimes they only play with mortals; sometimes they help them. But
+often, often, the fatal touch is given to the first-born child, or to
+the young man in his strength, or the girl in her beauty, or the young
+mother in her pride; and the call is heard to leave the familiar
+fireside life for the whirling, vain, unresting life of the irresistible
+host.
+
+It is, perhaps, because of the very mistiness and dreaminess of their
+surroundings, the almost unearthly silences, the fantasy of story and of
+legend that lie about them, that the people of Aran and the Galway coast
+almost shrink from idealism in their fireside songs, and choose rather
+to dwell upon the slight incidents of daily life. It is in the songs of
+the greener plains that the depths of passion and heights of idealism
+have been reached.
+
+It is at weddings that songs are most in use--even the saddest not being
+thought out of place; and at the evening gathering in one cottage or
+another, while the pipe, lighted at the turf-fire, is passed from hand
+to hand. Here is one that is a great favourite, though very simple, and
+somewhat rugged in metre; for it touches on the chief events of an
+islander's life--emigration, loss of life by sea, the land jealousy. It
+is called 'a sorrowful song that Bridget O'Malley made'; and she tells
+in it of her troubles at the Boston factory, of her lasting sorrow for
+her drowned brothers, and her as lasting anger against her sister's
+husband.
+
+     'Do you remember, neighbours, the day I left the white strand? I
+     did not find anyone to give me advice, or to tell me not to go. But
+     with the help of God, as I have my health, and the help of the King
+     of Grace, whichever State I will go to, I will never turn back
+     again.
+
+     'Do you remember, girls, that day long ago when I was sick and when
+     the priest said, and the doctor, that with care I would come
+     through? I got up after; I went to work at the factory, until
+     Sullivan wrote a letter that put me down a step.
+
+     'And Bab O'Donnell rose up and put a shawl about her. She went to
+     the office till she got work for me to do; there was never a woman
+     I was with that would not shake hands with me; now I am at work
+     again, and no thanks to Sullivan.
+
+     'It is a great shame to look down on Ireland, and I think myself it
+     is not right; for the potatoes are growing in the gardens there,
+     and the women milking the cows. That is not the way in Boston, but
+     you may earn it or leave it there; and if the man earns a dollar,
+     the woman will be out drinking it.
+
+     'My curse on the curraghs, and my blessings on the boats; my curse
+     on that hooker that did the treachery; for it was she snapped away
+     my four brothers from me; the best they were that ever could be
+     found. But what does Kelly care, so long as he himself is in their
+     place?
+
+     'My grief on you, my brothers, that did not come again to land; I
+     would have put a boarded coffin on you out of the hand of the
+     carpenter; the young women of the village would have keened you,
+     and your people and your friends; and is it not Bridget O'Malley
+     you left miserable in the world?
+
+     'It is very lonely after Pat and Tom I am, and in great trouble for
+     them, to say nothing of my fair-haired Martin that was drowned long
+     ago; I have no sister, and I have no other brother, no mother; my
+     father weak and bent down; and, O God, what wonder for him!
+
+     'My curse on my sister's husband; for it was he made the boat; my
+     own curse again on himself and on his tribe. He married my sister
+     on me, and he sent my brothers to death on me; and he came himself
+     into the farm that belonged to my father and my mother!
+
+A Connemara schoolmaster tells me: 'At Killery Bay one time, I went into
+a house where there was an old man that had just lost his son by
+drowning. And he was sitting over the fire with his head in his hands,
+making a lament. I remember one verse of it that said: "My curse on the
+man that made the boat, that he did not tell me there was death lurking
+in it." I asked afterwards what the meaning of that was, and they said
+there is a certain board in every boat that the maker gives three blows
+of his hammer on, after he is done making it. And he knows someway by
+the sound of the blows if anyone will lose his life in that boat.' It is
+likely Bridget O'Malley had this idea in her mind when she made her
+lament.
+
+Another little emigration song, very simple and charming, tells of the
+return of a brother from America. He finds his pretty brown sister, his
+'cailin deas donn,' gathering rushes in a field, but she does not know
+him; and after they have exchanged words of greeting, he asks where her
+brother is, and she says 'beyond the sea'; then he asks if she would
+know him again, and she says she she would surely; and he asks by what
+sign, and she tells of a mark on his white neck. When she finds it is
+her brother who is there and speaking to her, she cries out, 'Kill me on
+the moment,' meaning that she is ready to die with joy.
+
+This is the lament of a woman whose bridegroom was drowned as he was
+rowing the priest home, on the wedding day:--
+
+     'I am widow and maid, and I very young; did you hear my great
+     grief, that my treasure was drowned? If I had been in the boat
+     that day, and my hand on the rope, my word to you, O'Reilly, it is
+     I would have saved you sorrow.
+
+     'Do you remember the day the street was full of riders, and of
+     priests and brothers, and all talking of the wedding feast? The
+     fiddle was there in the middle, and the harp answering to it; and
+     twelve mannerly women to bring my love to his bed.
+
+     'But you were of those three that went across to Kilcomin, ferrying
+     Father Peter, who was three-and-eighty years old; if you came back
+     within a month itself, I would be well content; but is it not a
+     pity I to be lonely, and my first love in the waves?
+
+     'I would not begrudge you, O'Reilly, to be kinsman to a king; white
+     bright courts around you, and you lying at your ease; a quiet,
+     well-learned lady to be settling out your pillow; but it is a great
+     thing you to die from me when I had given you my love entirely.
+
+     'It is no wonder a broken heart to be with your father and your
+     mother; the white-breasted mother that crooned you, and you a baby;
+     your wedded wife, O thousand treasures, that never set out your
+     bed; and the day you went to Trabawn, how well it failed you to
+     come home.
+
+     'Your eyes are with the eels, and your lips with the crabs; and
+     your two white hands under the sharp rule of the salmon. Five
+     pounds I would give to him that would find my true love. Ohone! it
+     is you are a sharp grief to young Mary ni-Curtain!'
+
+Some men and women who were drowned in the river Corrib, on their way to
+a fair at Galway, in the year 1820, have still their names kept green in
+a ballad:--
+
+     'Mary Ruane, that you would stand in a fair to look at, the
+     best-dressed woman in the place; John Cosgrave, the best a woman
+     ever reared; your mother thought that if a hundred were drowned,
+     your swimming would take the sway; but the boat went down, and
+     when I got up early on Friday, I heard the keening and the clapping
+     of women's hands, with the women that were drowsy and tired after
+     the night there, without doing anything but laying out the dead.'
+
+There are laments for other things besides death. A man taken up 'not
+for sheep-stealing or any crime, but just for making a drop of
+_poteen_,' tells of his hardships in Galway gaol. A lover who has
+enlisted because he cannot get the girl he loves--'a pity I not to be
+going to Galway with my heart's love on my arm'--tells of his hardships
+in the army: 'The first day I enlisted I was well pleased and satisfied;
+the second day I was vexed and tormented; and the third day I would have
+given a pound if I had it to get my pardon.' And I have heard a song
+'made by a woman out of her wits, that lost her husband and married
+again, and her three sons enlisted,' who cannot forgive herself for
+having driven them from home. 'If it was in Ballinakill I had your
+bones, I would not be half so much tormented after you; but you to be
+standing in the army of the Gall, and getting nothing after it but the
+bit in your mouth.'
+
+Here is a song of daily life, in which a girl laments the wandering and
+covetous appetite of her cow:--
+
+     'It is following after the white cow I spent last night; and,
+     indeed, all I got by it was the bones of an old goose. Do you hear
+     me, Michael Taylor? Give word to your uncle John that, unless he
+     can lay his hand on her, Nancy will lose her wits.
+
+     'It's what she is wanting, is the three islands of Aran for
+     herself; Brisbeg, that is in Maimen, and the glens of Maam Cross;
+     all round about Oughterard, and the hills that are below it; John
+     Blake's farm where she often does be bellowing; and as far as
+     Ballinamuca, where the long grass is growing; and it's in the wood
+     of Barna she'd want to spend her life.
+
+     'And when I was sore with walking through the dark hours of the
+     night, it's the coastguard came crying after her, and he maybe with
+     a bit of her in his mouth.'
+
+The little sarcastic hit at the coastguard, who may himself have stolen
+the cow he joins in the search for, is characteristic of Aran humour.
+The comic song, as we know it, is unknown on the islands; the nearest to
+it I have heard there is about the awkward meeting of two suitors, a
+carpenter and a country lad, at their sweetheart's house, and of the
+clever management of her mother, who promised to give her to the one who
+sang the best song, and how the country lad won her.
+
+Douglas Hyde, who is almost a folk-poet, the people have taken so many
+of his songs to their heart, has caught this sarcastic touch in this
+'love' song:--
+
+     'O sweet queen, to whom I gave my love; O dear queen, the flower of
+     fine women; listen to my keening, and look on my case; as you are
+     the woman I desire, free me from death.
+
+     'He speaks so humbly, humble entirely. Without mercy or pity she
+     looks on him with contempt. She puts mispleading in her cold
+     answer; there is a drop of poison in every quiet word:--
+
+     '"O man, wanting sense, put from you your share of love; it is bold
+     you are entirely to say such a thing as that; you will not get hate
+     from me; you will not get love from me; you will not get anything
+     at all, good or bad, for ever."
+
+     'I was myself the same night at the house of drink; and I saw the
+     man, and he under the table. Laid down by the strength of wine, and
+     without a twist in him itself; it was she did that much with the
+     talk of her mouth.'
+
+There is another that I thought was meant to provoke laughter, the
+lament of a girl for her 'beautiful comb' that had been carried off by
+her lover, whom she had refused to marry, 'until we take a little more
+out of our youth,' and invites instead to 'come with me to Eochaill
+reaping the yellow harvest.' Then he steals the comb, and the mother
+gives her wise advice how to get it back:--
+
+     'He will go this road to-morrow, and let you welcome him; settle
+     down a wooden chair in the middle of the house; snatch the hat from
+     him, and do not give him any ease until you get back the beautiful
+     comb that was high on the back of your head.'
+
+But an Aran man has told me: 'No, this is a very serious song; it was
+meant to praise the girl, and to tell what a loss she had in the comb.'
+
+I am told that the song that makes most mirth in Aran is 'The
+Carrageen'; the day-dream of an old woman, too old to carry out her
+purpose, of all she will buy when she has gathered a harvest of the
+Carrageen moss, used by invalids:--
+
+     'If I had two oars and a little boat of my own, I would go pulling
+     the Carrageen; I would dry it up in the sun; I would bring a load
+     of it to Galway; it would go away in the train, to pay the rent to
+     Robinson, and what is over would be my own.
+
+     'It is long I am hearing talk of the Carrageen, and I never knew
+     what it was. If I spent the last spring-tide at it, and I to take
+     care of myself, I would buy a gown and a long cloak and a wide
+     little shawl; that, and a dress cap, with frills on every side like
+     feathers.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     '(This is what the Calleac said, that was over a hundred years
+     old:--)
+
+     '"I lost the last spring-tide with it, and I went into sharp
+     danger. I did not know what the Carrageen was, or anything at all
+     like it; but I will have tobacco from this out, if I lose the half
+     of my fingers!"'
+
+This is a little song addressed by a fisherman to his little boat, his
+curragh-cin:--
+
+     'There goes my curragh-cin, it is she will get the prize; she will
+     he to-night in America, and back again with the tide....
+
+     'I put pins of oak in her, and oars of red pine; and I made her
+     ready for sailing; for she is the six-oared curragh-cin that never
+     gave heed to the storm; and it is she will be coming to land, when
+     the sailing boats will be lost.
+
+     'There was a man came from England to buy my little boat from me;
+     he offered me twenty guineas for her; there were many looking on.
+     If he would offer me as much again, and a guinea over and above, he
+     would not get my curragh-cin till she goes out and kills the
+     shark.'
+
+For a shark will sometimes flounder into the fishing-nets and tear his
+way out; and even a whale is sometimes seen. I remember an Aran man
+beginning some story he was telling me with: 'I was going down that path
+one time, with the priest and a few others; for a whale had come
+ashore, and the jaw-bones of it were wanted, to make the piers of a
+gate.'
+
+As for the love-songs of our coast and island people, they seem to be
+for the most part a little artificial in method, a little strained in
+metaphor perhaps so giving rise to the Scotch Gaelic saying: 'as
+loveless as an Irishman.' Love of country, _tir-gradh_, is I think the
+real passion; and bound up with it are love of home, of family, love of
+God. Constancy and affection in marriage are the rule; yet marriage 'for
+love' is all but unknown; marriage is a matter of commonsense
+arrangement between the heads of families. As Mr. Yeats puts it, the
+countryman's 'dream has never been entangled by reality.' However this
+may be, my Aran friends tell me: 'The people do not care for love-songs;
+they would rather have any others.'
+
+Yet I have just seen some love-songs, taken down the other day by a
+Kinvara man from a Connemara man, that have some charming lines:--
+
+'Going over the hills after parting from the store of my heart, there is
+a mist on them and the darkness of night.'
+
+'It is my sharp grief, my thousand treasures, my road not to be to the
+door of your house; it is with you I wore out my shoes from the
+beginning of my youth until now.'
+
+'It is not sorry I would be if there was the length of a year in the
+day, and the leaves of the trees dropping honey; I myself on the side
+where the blossoms are falling, my love beside me, and a little green
+branch in her hand.'
+
+    'She goes by me like a little breeze of the wind.'
+
+And this line that in a country of separations is already, they tell me,
+'passing into a proverb':--
+
+     'It is far from one another our rising is every day.'
+
+But the tradition of classical allusions, brought in some centuries ago,
+joined to the exaggeration that has been the breath of Irish poets, from
+the time Naoise called Deirdre 'a woman brighter than the sun,' has
+brought monotony into most of the love-songs.
+
+The ideal country girl, with her dew-grey eye and long amber hair, is
+always likened to Venus, to Juno, to Deirdre. 'I think she is nine times
+nicer than Deirdre,' says Raftery, 'or I may say Helen, the affliction
+of the Greeks'; and he writes of another country girl, that she is
+'beyond Venus, in spite of all Homer wrote on her appearance, and
+Cassandra also, and Io that bewitched Mars; beyond Minerva, and Juno,
+the king's wife'; and he wishes 'they might be brought face to face with
+her, that they might be confused':--
+
+     'She comes to me like a star through the mist; her hair is golden
+     and goes down to her shoes; her breast is the colour of white
+     sugar, or like bleached bone on the card-table; her neck is whiter
+     than the froth of the flood, or the swan coming from swimming....
+     If France and Spain belonged to me, I'd give it up to be along with
+     you.'
+
+And he gives 'a thousand praises to God, that I didn't lose my wits on
+account of her.' Raftery puts distinction into each one of his songs;
+but when lesser poets, echoing the voices of so many generations, bring
+in the same goddesses, and the same exaggerations, and the same amber
+hair, monotony brings weariness at last.
+
+There is an Aran song, 'Brigid na Casad,' that has more originality than
+is usual:--
+
+     'Brigid's kiss was sweeter than the whole of the waters of Lough
+     Erne; or the first wheaten flour, worked with fresh honey into
+     dough; there are streams of bees' honey on every part of the
+     mountain, there is brown sugar thrown on all you take, Brigid, in
+     your hand.
+
+     'It is not more likely for water to change than for the mind of a
+     woman; and is it not a young man without courage will not run the
+     chance nine times? It's not nicer than you the swan is when he
+     comes to the shore swimming; it's not nicer than you the thrush is,
+     and he singing from tree to tree.'
+
+And here is another, homely in the extreme in the beginning, and
+suddenly rising to wild exaggeration:--
+
+     'Late on the evening of last Monday, and it raining, I chanced to
+     come into Seaghan's and I sat down. It is there I saw her near me
+     in the corner of the hearth; and her laugh was better to me than to
+     have her eyes down; her hair was shining like the wool of a sheep,
+     and brighter than the swan swimming. It is then I asked who owned
+     her, and it is with Frank Conneely she was.
+
+     'It is a good house belongs to Frank Conneely, the people say that
+     do be going to it; plenty of whiskey and punch going round, and
+     food without stint for a man to get; and it is what I think the
+     girl is learned, for she has knowledge of books and of the pen,
+     and a schoolmaster coming to teach her every day.
+
+     'The troop is on the sea, sailing eternally, and looking always on
+     my Nora Ban. Is it not a great sin, she to be on a bare mountain,
+     and not to be dressed in white silk, and the king of the French
+     coming to the island for her, from France or from Germany?
+
+     'Is it not nice the jewel looked at the races and at the church in
+     Barna? She took the sway there as far as the big town. Is she not
+     the nice flower with the white breast, the comeliness of a woman?
+     and the sun of summer pleased with her, shining on her at every
+     side, and hundreds of men in love with her.
+
+     'It is I would like to run through the hills with her, and to go
+     the roads with her; and it is I would put a cloak around my Nora
+     Ban.'
+
+The very _naivete_, the simplicity of these ballads, make one feel that
+the peasants who make and sing them may be trembling on the edge of a
+great discovery; and that some day--perhaps very soon--one born among
+them will put their half-articulate, eternal sorrows and laments and
+yearnings into words that will be their expression for ever, as was done
+for the Hebrew people when the sorrow of exile was put into the hundred
+and thirty-seventh Psalm, and the sorrow of death into the lament for
+Saul and Jonathan, and the yearning of love into what was once known as
+'the ballad of ballads,' the Song of Solomon.
+
+I have one ballad at least to give, that shows, even in my prose
+translation, how near that day may be, if the language that holds the
+soul of our West Irish people can be saved from the 'West Briton'
+destroyer. There are some verses in it that attain to the intensity of
+great poetry, though I think less by the creation of one than by the
+selection of many minds; the peasants who have sung or recited their
+songs from one generation to another, having instinctively sifted away
+by degrees what was trivial, and kept only what was real, for it is in
+this way the foundations of literature are laid. I first heard of this
+ballad from the South; but when I showed it to an Aran man, he said it
+was well known there, and that his mother had often sung it to him when
+he was a child. It is called 'The Grief of a Girl's Heart':--
+
+     'O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and
+     do not forget it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and
+     market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at
+     night.
+
+     'It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was
+     speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird
+     through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you
+     find me.
+
+     'You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be
+     before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three
+     hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating
+     lamb.
+
+     'You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold
+     under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and
+     a fine white court by the side of the sea.
+
+     'You promised me a thing that is not possible, that you would give
+     me gloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of
+     the skin of a bird; and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.
+
+     'O Donall og, it is I would be better to you than a high, proud,
+     spendthrift lady: I would milk the cow; I would bring help to you;
+     and if you were hard pressed, I would strike a blow for you.
+
+     'O, ochone, and it's not with hunger or with wanting food, or
+     drink, or sleep, that I am growing thin, and my life is shortened;
+     but it is the love of a young man has withered me away.
+
+     'It is early in the morning that I saw him coming, going along the
+     road on the back of a horse; he did not come to me; he made nothing
+     of me; and it is on my way home that I cried my fill.
+
+     'When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness, I sit down and I go
+     through my trouble; when I see the world and do not see my boy, he
+     that has an amber shade in his hair.
+
+     'It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you; the Sunday that is
+     last before Easter Sunday. And myself on my knees reading the
+     Passion; and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.
+
+     'O, aya! my mother, give myself to him; and give him all that you
+     have in the world; get out yourself to ask for alms, and do not
+     come back and forward looking for me.
+
+     'My mother said to me not to be talking with you to-day, or
+     to-morrow, or on the Sunday; it was a bad time she took for telling
+     me that; it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
+
+     'My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe, or as the black
+     coal that is on the smith's forge; or as the sole of a shoe left in
+     white halls; it was you put that darkness over my life.
+
+     'You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
+     you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have
+     taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me; and my fear is
+     great that you have taken God from me!
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+JACOBITE BALLADS.
+
+
+I was looking the other day through a collection of poems, lately taken
+down from Irish-speaking country people for the _Oireactas_, the great
+yearly meeting of the Gaelic League; and a line in one of them seemed
+strange to me: '_Prebaim mo chroidhe le mo Stuart glegeal_,' 'my heart
+leaps up with my bright Stuart'; for I did not know there was still a
+memory of James and Charles among the people. The refrain of the poem
+was: 'Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!' and these are some
+of its verses:--
+
+     'There are young girls through the whole country would sit
+     alongside of me through a half-hour, till we would be telling you
+     the story together of what it was put myself under trouble; I make
+     my complaints, wanting my comrade. Och, my grief, my friend stole
+     away from me!
+
+     'Where are my people that were wise and learned? Where is the troop
+     readying their spears, that they do not smooth out this knot for
+     me? Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!
+
+     'I was for a while airy and beautiful, and all my treasure with my
+     pleasant James.... On the top of all, my Stuart to leave me. Och,
+     my grief, my friend stole away from me!
+
+     'It is the truth I cannot sleep in the night, fretting for my
+     comrade; I to be lying down, and he weak under cold. My heart leaps
+     up with my bright Stuart. Och, my grief, my friend stole away from
+     me!
+
+     'It is hard for me to lie down after that; it is an empty thing to
+     be crying the loss of my comrade, and I lying down with the mean
+     people; it is my death the Stuart not to come at all. Och, my
+     grief, my friend stole away from me!'
+
+I had not heard any songs of this sort in Galway, and I remembered that
+our Connaught Raftery, whose poems are still teaching history, dealt
+very shortly with the Royal Stuarts. 'James,' he says, 'was the worst
+man for habits.... He laid chains on our bogs and mountains.... The
+father wasn't worse than the son Charles, that left sharp scourges on
+Ireland. When God and the people thought it time the story to be done,
+he lost his head.... The next James--sharp blame to him--gave his
+daughter to William as woman and wife; made the Irish English, and the
+English Irish, like wheat and oats in the month of harvest. And it was
+at Aughrim on a Monday many a son of Ireland found sorrow, without
+speaking of all that died.'
+
+So I went to ask some of the wise old neighbours, who sit in wide
+chimney-nooks by turf fires, and to whom I go to look for knowledge of
+many things, if they knew of any songs in praise of the Stuarts. But
+they were scornful. 'The Stuarts?' one said; 'no, indeed; they have no
+songs about them here in the West, whatever they may have in the South.
+Why would they, running away and leaving the country? And what good did
+they ever do it?' And another, who lives on the Clare border, said: 'I
+used to hear them singing "The White Cockade" through the country.
+"King James was beaten, and all his well-wishers; my grief, my boy that
+went with them!" But I don't think the people had ever much opinion of
+the Stuarts; but in those days they were all prone to versify. But the
+famine did away with all that.' And then he also was scornful, and said:
+'Sure King James ran all the way from the Boyne to Dublin, after the
+battle. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got
+there; and he told her the battle was lost; and she said: "Faith you
+made good haste; you made no delay on the road." So he said no more
+after that.'
+
+And then he told me of the Battle of Aughrim, that is still such a
+terrible memory; and how the 'Danes'--the De Danaan--the mysterious
+divine race that were conquered by the Gael, and who still hold an
+invisible kingdom--'were dancing in the raths around Aughrim the night
+after the battle. Their ancestors were driven out of Ireland before; and
+they were glad when they saw those that had put them out put out
+themselves, and every one of them skivered.'
+
+And another old man said: 'When I was a young chap knocking about in
+Connemara, I often heard songs about the Stuarts, and talk of them and
+of the blackbird coming over the water. But they found it hard to get
+over James making off after the Battle of the Boyne.' And another says
+of James: 'They liked him well before he ran; they didn't like him after
+that.'
+
+And when I looked through the lately gathered bundle of songs again, and
+through some old collections of Jacobite songs in Irish, I found they
+almost all belonged to Munster. And if they are still sung there, it is
+not, I think, for the sake of the kings, but for the sake of the poets
+who made them--Red-haired Owen O'Sullivan, potato-digger, harvestman,
+hedge-schoolmaster, whose poems are still the joy of the Munster people;
+O'Rahilly, more learned, and as boundlessly redundant; O'Donnell, whose
+heart was set on translating Homer into Irish; O'Heffernan, the blind
+wanderer; and many others. For the Munstermen have always been more
+'prone to versify' than their leaner neighbours on the bogs and stones
+of Connaught.
+
+There is a common formula for most of these songs or 'Visions,'
+_Aislinghe_, as they are called. Just as artists of to-day find no
+monotony in drawing Ireland over and over again with her harp, her
+wolf-dog, and her round tower, so the Munster poets found no monotony in
+representing her as a beautiful woman, white-skinned, with curling hair,
+with cheeks in which 'the lily and the rose were fighting for mastery.'
+The poet asks her if she is Venus, or Helen, or Deirdre, and describes
+her beauty in torrents of alliterative adjectives. Then she makes her
+complaint against England, or her lament for her own sorrows or for the
+loss of her Stuart lover, spoken of sometimes as 'the bricklayer,' or
+'the merchant's son.' The framework is artificial; but the laments are
+often very pathetic the love of Ireland, and the hatred of England born
+of that love, finding expression in them.
+
+John O'Donnell sees her 'like a young queen that is going astray for the
+king being banished from her, that had a right to come and set her
+loose.' O'Rahilly, in one of his poems, shows the beautiful woman held
+to her Saxon lover by some strange enchantment:--
+
+     'I met brightness of brightness upon the path of loneliness;
+     plaiting of plaiting in every lock of her yellow hair. News of news
+     she gave me, and she as lonely as she was; news of the coming back
+     of him that owns the tribute of the king.
+
+     'Folly of follies I to go so near to her; slave I was made by a
+     slave that put me in hard bonds. She made away from me then, and I
+     following after her, till we came to a house of houses made by
+     Druid enchantments.
+
+     'They broke into mocking laughter, a troop of men of enchantments,
+     and a troop of young girls with smooth-plaited hair. They put me up
+     in chains; they made no delay about it; and my love holding to her
+     breast an awkward ugly clown.
+
+     'I told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not
+     right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man
+     that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots,
+     waiting till she would come to him to be his beautiful bride.
+
+     'At the sound of my words her pride set her crying; the tears were
+     running down over the kindling of her cheeks. She sent a lad to
+     bring me safe from the place I was in. She is the brightness of
+     brightness I met in the path of loneliness.'
+
+Sometimes the Stuart is almost forgotten in the story of sorrows and the
+indictment of England. O'Heffernan complains in one of his songs that
+many of the heroes of Ireland have passed away, and their names have
+never been put in a song by the poets; 'and they even leave their verses
+without any account of Charles the wanderer, though I promise you they
+are not satisfied without giving some lines on Seaghan Buidhe' (one of
+the names for England). Yet he himself, when very downhearted, 'on the
+edge of the great wood under a harsh cloak of sorrow,' is cheered by the
+pleasant sound of a swarm of bees in search of their ruler; and with the
+pleasant thought that 'the harvest will be a bad one and with no joy in
+it to Seaghan. George will be sent back over the sea, and the tribe that
+was so high up will be left without gold or townlands; and I not pitying
+their sorrow.' And he winds up: 'In Shronehill, if I were stretched at
+rest under a hard flag, and to hear this story moving about so
+pleasantly, by force and strength of my shoulders I would throw the sod
+off me; and I coming back leaping to hear the news.'
+
+And another writer, Seaghan Clarach, looks forward to seeing 'timid
+George tame upon the road, without wine, without meat, without thread
+for his shoes.' And his last verse, his 'binding,' is, 'I beseech of
+God, I ask and I pray very hard, to cast out the gluttons that tormented
+the generous race of the Gael, from the island of the west, under hard
+bonds, and to banish the foreign devils from us.'
+
+For poets and people found it hard to forget Cromwell; and how 'the sons
+of the Gael are scorched, tormented, pitchforked, put under the yoke, by
+boors that are used to doing treachery.'
+
+When the Stuarts come to mind, they are given fair words enough. 'The
+prince and heart-secret Charles that is sorrowful now and under
+weariness ... will be under esteem; and the Gael pleasant in the
+lime-white house.' ... 'It is friendly, fair bright, companionable,
+loving, brave, Charles will be, with sway, without a mist about him.'
+
+And in one of Red Owen's 'Visions' he is told not to forget James, who
+is 'persevering, well-tempered, affectionate, stout, sweet, kind,
+poetical.'
+
+Yet the Stuart seems to be always a faint and unreal image; a saint by
+whose name a heavy oath is sworn. There are no personal touches such as
+I find in a song taken down from some countryman, on Patrick Sarsfield,
+the brave, handsome fighter, the descendant of Conall Cearnach, the man
+who, after the Boyne, offered to 'change kings and fight the battle
+again.' This ballad seems to have more of Connaught simplicity than of
+Munster luxuriance in it:--
+
+     'O Patrick Sarsfield, health be to you, since you went to France
+     and your camps were loosened; making your sighs along with the
+     king, and you left poor Ireland and the Gael defeated--Och ochone!
+
+     'O Patrick Sarsfield, it is a man with God you are; and blessed is
+     the earth you ever walked on. The blessing of the bright sun and
+     the moon upon you, since you took the day from the hands of King
+     William--Och ochone!
+
+     'O Patrick Sarsfield, the prayer of every person with you; my own
+     prayer and the prayer of the Son of Mary with you, since you took
+     the narrow ford going through Biorra, and since at Cuilenn O'Cuanac
+     you won Limerick--Och ochone!
+
+     'I will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it
+     again. It is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop
+     thinned, not keeping with one another--Och ochone!
+
+     'My five hundred healths to you, halls of Limerick, and to the
+     beautiful troop was in our company; it is bonfires we used to have
+     and playing cards, and the word of God was often with us--Och
+     ochone!
+
+     'There were many soldiers glad and happy that were going the way
+     through seven weeks; but now they are stretched down in
+     Aughrim--Och ochone!
+
+     'They put the first breaking on us at the Bridge of the Boyne; the
+     second breaking on the Bridge of Slaney; the third breaking in
+     Aughrim of O'Kelly; and O sweet Ireland, my five hundred healths to
+     you--Och ochone!
+
+     'O'Kelly has manuring for his land, that is not sand or dung, but
+     ready soldiers doing bravery with pikes, that were left in Aughrim
+     stretched in ridges--Och ochone!
+
+     'Who is that beyond on the hill, Beinn Edair? I a poor soldier with
+     King James. I was last year in arms and in dress, but this year I
+     am asking alms--Och ochone!'
+
+There are other symbolic songs besides the 'Visions.' Mangan's fine
+translation of Kathleen ni Houlihan is well known; and it is likely the
+king is calling to Ireland in '_Ceann dubh deelish_,' that is beautiful
+in all translations. This is _An Craoibhin's_:--
+
+    'The women of the village are in madness and trouble,
+      Pulling their hair and letting it go with the wind;
+    They will not take a boy of the men of the country
+      Till they go into the rout with the boys of the king.
+
+    'Black head, darling, darling, darling,
+      Black head, darling, move over to me;
+    Black head brighter than swan and than seagull,
+      It's a man without heart gives not love to thee.'
+
+But most of the translations have been in the affected style of the
+early part of the last century twisting the sense to give what was
+thought to be a romantic turn. A verse of Seaghan Clarach's, for
+instance, the lament of a farmer 'who has been wrestling with the
+world': 'The two that belong to me are without shelter, and my yoke of
+cattle without grass, without growth; there is misery on my people and
+their elbows without sound clothes,' is turned into:--
+
+    'The loved ones my life would have nourished
+      Are foodless, and bare, and cold.
+    My flocks by their fountain that flourished
+      Decay on the mountain wold.'
+
+But there is one mistranslation for whose sake we must forgive many
+others, for it has given the sad refrain that has often been on Irish
+lips:--
+
+    'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna,
+    We're worsted in the game!'
+
+Here are one or two of the many verses sung to the Little Black Rose by
+her lovers, poor or royal:--
+
+     'There is love through and through me for you all the length of a
+     year; sore love, vexing love, lasting love, love that left me
+     without health, without a road, without running; and for ever,
+     ever, without any sway at all over my Fair Black Rose.
+
+     'I would travel through Munster with you, and the boundaries of the
+     hills, if I thought I could find your secret, or a part of your
+     love. O branch of the tree, it seems to me that you love me; that
+     the flower of kind women is my Fair Black Rose.'
+
+'My heart leaps up with my bright Stuart!' James and Charles are, I
+think, the only English kings whose names, as it were by accident, have
+found their way into Irish song. And it is likely they are the last to
+find a place there, for the imagination of Ireland still tilts the beam
+to the national side; and the loyalty the poets of many hundred years
+have called for, is loyalty to Kathleen ni Houlihan. 'Have they not
+given her their wills, and their hearts, and their dreams? What have
+they left for any less noble Royalty?'
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+_AN CRAOIBHIN'S_ POEMS
+
+
+'"I would much rather (and I take every occasion of making this protest)
+write, so to say, in a dead language and for a dead people, than write
+in those deaf and stammering (_sorde e mute_) tongues, French and
+English, notwithstanding they are the fashion with their rules and
+exercises." This is so with me. Alfieri wrote these words a hundred
+years ago, and they express what is in my own mind. I would like better
+to make even one good verse in the language in which I am now writing,
+than to make a whole book of verses in English. For if there should be
+any good found in my English verses, it would not go to the credit of my
+mother, Ireland, but of my stepmother, England.'
+
+I have translated this from Douglas Hyde's preface to his little book of
+poems, lately published in Dublin, _Ubhla de'n Craoibh_, "Apples from
+the Branch." _An Craoibhin Aoibhin_, "The delightful little branch," is
+the name by which he is called all over Irish-speaking Ireland; and a
+gold branch bearing golden apples is stamped on the cover of his book.
+The poems had already been published, one by one, in a weekly paper; and
+a friend of mine tells me he has heard them sung and repeated by
+country people in many parts of Ireland--in Connemara, in Donegal, in
+Galway, in Kerry, in the Islands of Aran.
+
+Three or four of the thirty-three poems the book holds are, so to speak,
+official, written for the Gaelic League by its president; and these,
+like most official odes, are only for the moment. Some are ballads
+dealing with the old subjects of Irish ballads--emigration, exile,
+defeat, and death; for Douglas Hyde, as may be guessed from his preface,
+has, no less than his fellows--
+
+    'Hidden in his heart the flame out of the eyes
+    Of Kathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.'
+
+But these national ballads, though very popular, are, I think, not so
+good as his more personal poems. I suppose no narrative of what others
+have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from 'that
+little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.' Even
+in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have
+as distinct a quality as that of Villon or of Heine:--
+
+    'There are three fine devils eating my heart--
+    They left me, my grief! without a thing;
+    Sickness wrought, and Love wrought,
+    And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe.
+    Poverty left me without a shirt,
+    Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering;
+    Sickness left me with my head weak
+    And my body miserable, an ugly thing.
+    Love left me like a coal upon the floor,
+    Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out,
+    Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself,
+    Worse than any curse at all under the sun,
+    Worse than the great poverty
+    Is the devil that is called "Love" by the people.
+    And if I were in my young youth again,
+    I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!'
+
+The next, in the form of a little folk-song, expresses the thought of
+the idealist of all time, that makes him cry, as one of the oldest of
+the poets cried long ago, 'Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird;
+the birds round about are against her.' Yet, with its whimsical fancies
+and exaggerations, it could hardly have been written in any but Irish
+air.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not a little white duck,
+    And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain;
+    I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,
+    To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.
+
+    'Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking,
+    Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat,
+    Without high dances, without a big name, without music;
+    There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not an old crow;
+    I would sit for awhile up on the old branch,
+    I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am,
+    With a grain of oats or a white potato.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not a red fox,
+    Leaping strong and swift on the mountains,
+    Eating cocks and hens without pity,
+    Taking ducks and geese as a conqueror.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am not a fair salmon,
+    Going through the strong full water,
+    Catching the mayflies by my craft,
+    Swimming at my choice, and swimming with the stream.
+
+    'It's my grief that I am of the race of the poets;
+    It would be better for me to be a high rock,
+    Or a stone or a tree or an herb or a flower
+    Or anything at all, but the thing that I am.'
+
+The sympathy of the moods of nature with the moods of man is a
+traditional heritage that has come to us through the poets, from the old
+time when the three great waves of the sea answered to a cry of distress
+in Ireland, or when, as in Israel, the land mourned and the herbs of
+every field withered, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein. The
+sea, and the winds blowing from the sea, can never be very far from the
+dweller in Ireland; and they echo the loneliness of the lonely listener.
+
+    'Cold, sharp lamentation
+    In the cold bitter winds
+    Ever blowing across the sky;
+    Oh, there was loneliness with me!
+
+    'The loud sounding of the waves
+    Beating against the shore,
+    Their vast, rough, heavy outcry,
+    Oh, there was loneliness with me!
+
+    'The light sea-gulls in the air,
+    Crying sharply through the harbours,
+    The cries and screams of the birds
+    With my own heart! Oh! that was loneliness.
+
+    'The voice of the winds and the tide,
+    And the long battle of the mighty war;
+    The sea, the earth, the skies, the blowing of the winds.
+    Oh! there was loneliness in all of them together.'
+
+Here is a verse from another poem of loneliness:--
+
+    'It is dark the night is; I do not see one star at all;
+    And it is dark and heavy my thoughts are that are scattered and
+        straying.
+    There is no sound about but of the birds going over my head--
+    The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows
+    And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its
+        whistle;
+    And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech.
+    But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases my grief--
+    Not one other cry but the cry and the call of the birds on the bog.'
+
+Here is another, in which the storm outside and the storm within answer
+to one another:--
+
+    'The heavy clouds are threatening,
+    And it's little but they'll take the roof off the house;
+    The heavy thunder is answering
+    To every flash of the yellow fire.
+    I, by myself, within in my room,
+    That is narrow, small, warm, am sitting,
+    I look at the surly skies,
+    And I listen to the wind.
+
+    'I was light, airy, lively,
+    On the young morning of yesterday;
+    But when the evening came,
+    I was like a dead man!
+    I have not one jot of hope
+    But for a bed in the clay;
+    Death is the same as life to me
+    From this out, from a word I heard yesterday.'
+
+The next is very simple, and puts into more homely words the feeling of
+'lonesomeness' that is looked upon as almost the worst of evils by the
+Irish countryman, as we see by his proverb: 'It is better to be
+quarreling than to be lonesome.' 'I would be lonesome in it,' is often
+the reason given for a refusal to go from bog or mountain cabin to some
+crowded place 'where there is not heed for one or love.'
+
+    'Oh! if there were in this world
+          Any nice little place,
+    To be my own, my own for ever,
+          My own only,
+    I would have great joy--great ease--
+          Beyond what I have,
+    Without a place in the world where I can say:
+          "This is my own."
+
+    It's a pity for a man to know,
+          And it's a pain,
+    That there is no place in the world
+          Where there is heed for him or love;
+    That there is not in the world for him
+          A heart or a hand
+    To give help to him
+          To the mering of the next world.
+
+    'It is hard and it is bitter,
+          And a sharp grief,
+    It is woe and it is pity,
+          To be by oneself.
+    It is nothing the way you are,
+          To anyone at all.
+    It is nothing the way you are,
+          To yourself at last!'
+
+I suppose the following may be called a political poem, from its elusive
+reference to Home Rule. I was not sure on the point myself; for I
+thought the wearer of the 'blue cloak and birds' feathers,' must be a
+fine lady, perhaps laying enchantment on the fields. But I heard some
+one ask the _Craoibhin_ who he meant, and his answer was: 'I suppose I
+was thinking of an aide-de-camp':--
+
+    'I am looking at my cows walking,
+    What are you that would put me out of my luck?
+    Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?
+
+    'I will not always be turned backwards.
+    If there is need to be humble to you, great is my grief,
+    If I cannot walk, if I cannot walk, if I cannot walk in my own fields.
+
+    'It's little my respect, and it's little my desire,
+    For your blue cloak, and your birds' feathers.
+    Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?
+
+    'The day is coming as it's easy to see,
+    When there shall not be among us the ugly like of you.
+    And each one shall be walking, and each one shall be walking,
+    Wherever shall be his will and his own desire.'
+
+There are some love songs in the little volume. But their writer has
+had, in his beautiful translations of the 'Love Songs of Connacht,' to
+put such intensity of passion into English, that he must despair of
+putting any new wings to passion, or any new exaggeration into lovers'
+words. In one of these Connacht songs, the lover says: 'Blacker is the
+sun when setting than your features, Mary!' And she answers back:
+'Neither star nor sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!'
+Another lover says of the woman he desires: 'I will write largely of
+her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost;
+and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks
+through love. And I myself am not free, but am a bondsman in bonds.' And
+another boasts of 'a love without littleness, without weakness; love
+from age till death, love from folly growing, love that shall send me
+close beneath the clay, love without a hope of the world, love without
+envy of fortune, love that left me outside in captivity, love of my
+heart beyond women.' Douglas Hyde's own love songs are quiet and staid
+in contrast to these; but nevertheless they have a sober charm. Here are
+the last verses of one of them:--
+
+    'Will you be as hard,
+        Colleen, as you are quiet?
+    Will you be without pity
+        On me for ever?
+
+    'Listen to me, Noireen,
+        Listen, aroon;
+    Put healing on me
+        From your quiet mouth.
+
+    'I am in the little road
+        That is dark and narrow,
+    The little road that has led
+        Thousands to sleep.'
+
+In his preface to the 'Love Songs of Connacht' he says he finds in them
+'more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart,
+than of gaiety or hope'; and he writes: 'Not careless and light-hearted
+alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a
+melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything
+but sport and revelry, there is nothing in it but letting on.' There is
+grief and trouble, as I have shown, in many of his own songs, which the
+people have taken to their hearts so quickly; but there is also a touch
+of hope, of glad belief that, in spite of heavy days of change, all
+things are working for good at the last.
+
+Here are some verses from a poem called 'There is a Change coming':--
+
+    'When that time comes it will come heavily;
+    He will grow fat that was lean;
+    He will grow lean that was fat,
+    Without shelter for the head, without mirth, without help.
+
+    'The low will be raised up, says the poet;
+    The thing that was high will be thrown down again;
+    The world will be changed from end to end:
+    When that time comes it will come heavily.
+
+    'If you yourself see this thing coming,
+    And the country without luck, without law, without authority,
+    Swept with the storm, without knowledge, without strength,
+    Remember my words, and don't let your heart break.
+
+    'This life is like a tree;
+    The top green, branches soft, the bark smooth and shining;
+    But there is a little worm shut up in it
+    Sucking at the sap all through the day.
+
+    'But from this old, cold, withered tree,
+    A new plant will grow up;
+    The old world will die without pity,
+    But the young world will grow up on its grave.'
+
+Here is a fine vision of a battle-field:--
+
+    'The time I think of the cause of Ireland
+    My heart is torn within me.
+
+    'The time I think of the death of the people
+    Who protected Ireland bravely and faithfully.
+
+    'They are stretched on the side of the mountain
+    Very low, one with another.
+
+    'Hidden under grass, or under tall herbs,
+    Far from friends or help or friendship.
+
+    'Not a child or a wife near them;
+    Not a priest to be found there or a friar;
+
+    'But the mountain eagle and the white eagle
+    Moving overhead across the skies.
+
+    'Without a defence against the sun in the daytime;
+    Without a shelter against the skies at night.
+
+    'It's many a good soldier, joyful and pleasant,
+    That has had his laughing mouth closed there.
+
+    'There is many a young breast with a hole through it;
+    The little black hole that is death to a man.
+
+    'There is many a brave man stripped there,
+    His body naked, without vest or shirt.
+
+    'The young man that was proud and beautiful yesterday,
+    When the woman he loved left a kiss on his mouth.
+
+    'There is many a married woman, with the child at her breast,
+    Without her comrade, without a father for her child to-night.
+
+    'There's many a castle without a lord, and many a lord without a house;
+    And little forsaken cabins with no one in them.
+
+    'I saw a fox leaving its den
+    Asking for a body to feed its hunger.
+
+    'There's a fierce wolf at Carrig O'Neill;
+    There is blood on his tongue and blood on his mouth.
+
+    'I saw them, and I heard the cries
+    Of kites and of black crows.
+
+    'Ochone! Is not the only Son of God angry;
+    Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'
+
+I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is
+about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the
+emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is
+not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only
+looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the
+people:--
+
+    'I am lying in prison,
+        I am in bonds;
+    To-morrow I will be hanged,
+    Who am to-night so quiet,
+          So quiet;
+    Who am to-night so quiet.
+
+    'I am in prison,
+        My heart is cold and heavy;
+    To-morrow I will be hanged,
+    And there is no help for me,
+          My grief;
+    Och! there is no help for me.
+
+    'I am in prison,
+        And I did no wrong;
+    I only did the work
+    Was just, was right, was good,
+          I did,
+    Oh, I did the thing was good.
+
+    'It is with the people I was,
+        It is not with the law I was;
+    But they took me in my sleep,
+    On the side of Cnoc-na-Feigh;
+          And so
+    To-morrow they will hang me.'
+
+    'I am weak in my body,
+        I am vexed in my heart,
+    And to-morrow I will be hanged;
+    Lying beneath the clay,
+          My sorrow,
+    Lying beneath the clay.
+
+    'May God give pardon
+        To my vexed, sorrowful soul;
+    May God give mercy
+    To me now and forever,
+          Amen!
+    To me now and forever.'
+
+But translation is poor work. Even if it gives a glimpse of the heart of
+a poem, too much is lost in losing the outward likeness. Here are the
+last lines of the lament of a felon's brother:--
+
+    'Now that you are stretched in the cold grave
+        May God set you free:
+    It's vexed and sorry and pitiful are my thoughts;
+        It's sorrowful I am to-day!'
+
+I look at them and read them; and wonder why when I first read them,
+their sound had hung about me for days like a sobbing wind; but when I
+look at them in their own form, the sob is in them still:
+
+    Nois ann san uaigh fhuair o ta tu sinte
+        Go saoraigh Dia thu
+    Is buaidhcartha, bronach bocht ata mo smaointe
+        Is bronach me andhiu.
+
+
+
+
+BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND
+
+
+Yesterday I asked a woman on the Echtge hills, if any of her neighbours
+had gone to the war. She said: 'No; but I know a great many that went to
+America when the war began--even boys that had business to do at home;
+they were afraid of being brought away by the Press.' On another part of
+the Echtge hills, where a rumour had come that the police were to be
+sent to the war, an old woman said to a policeman I know: 'When you go
+out there, don't be killing the people of my religion.' He said: 'The
+Boers are not of your religion'; but she said: 'They are; I know they
+must be Catholics, or the English would not be against them.' Others on
+that wild range think that this is the beginning of the great war that
+will end in the final rout of the enemies of Ireland. Old prophecies say
+this war is to come at the meeting of these centuries; and there is an
+old Irish verse which seems to allude to this, and which has been thus
+translated:--
+
+    'When the Lion shall lose its strength,
+        And the bracket Thistle begin to pine,
+    The Harp shall sound sweet, sweet, at length,
+        Between the eight and the nine.'
+
+Lonely Echtge still keeps old prophecies and old songs and some of the
+old speech, and but few newspapers are seen there; but on the lowland,
+sympathy with the Boers, and prophecies of their victory, are put into
+the doggerel English verse that must be poor in form, because a ballad,
+more than another song, must have a long tradition of folk-thought and
+folk-expression behind it; and in Ireland this tradition does not belong
+to the English language. Even the beautiful air of 'The Wearing of the
+Green' cannot give poetic charm to such verses as these, which, like the
+others that follow, have been sung and sold by ballad-singers in
+market-towns and at fairs, and at country race-meetings, during the last
+year:--
+
+    'Oh! Paddy dear, and did ye hear
+      The news that's going round?
+    No cheers for brave Paul Kruger
+      Must be heard on Irish ground.
+    No more the English tourist at
+      Killarney will be seen,
+    Unless you join the pirate's cause,
+      And chant "God save the Queen."'
+
+Or this other, sung during the siege of Ladysmith:--
+
+    'And I met with White the General,
+      And he's looking thin enough;
+    And he says the boys in Ladysmith
+      Are running short of stuff.
+    Faith, the dishes need no washing,
+      Now they're left so nice and clean;
+    Oh! it's anything but pleasant
+      To be starving for the Queen!'
+
+The defender of Ladysmith is treated with greater courtesy than some
+other generals, for, in spite of sympathy with the besiegers, the singer
+says:--
+
+    'But if he gave in to-morrow,
+      I would not think it right
+    To throw the least disparagement
+      On a man like General White.
+    He is making a bold resistance,
+      As great as could be made,
+    Against their deadly Mauser rifles,
+      And their tremendous cannonade.'
+
+The 'Song of the Transvaal Irish Brigade' has more literary quality:--
+
+    'The Cross swings low; the morn is near--
+      Now, comrades, fill up high;
+    The cannon's voice will ring out clear
+      When morning lights the sky.
+    A toast we'll drink together, boys,
+      Ere dawns the battle's grey,
+    A toast to Ireland, dear old Ireland!
+          Ireland far away!
+    Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
+      Health to Ireland, strength to Ireland!
+          Ireland, boys, hurrah!
+
+    'Who told us that her cause was dead?
+      Who bade us bend the knee?
+    The slaves! Again she lifts her head--
+      Again she dares be free!
+    With gun in hand, we take our stand,
+      For Ireland in the fray:
+    We fight for Ireland, dear old Ireland!
+          Ireland far away!
+    Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
+      We fight for Ireland, die for Ireland--
+          Ireland, boys, hurrah!
+
+    'Oh, mother of the wounded breast!
+      Oh, mother of the tears!
+    The sons you loved, and trusted best,
+      Have grasped their battle spears.
+    From Shannon, Lagan, Liffey, Lee,
+      On Afric's soil to-day,
+    We strike for Ireland, brave old Ireland!
+          Ireland far away!
+    Ireland far away! Ireland far away!
+      We smite for Ireland, brave old Ireland!
+          Ireland, boys, hurrah!'
+
+'The Irish Boy,' which is sung to the air of 'The Minstrel Boy,' is also
+in honour of the Irish Brigade:--
+
+    'While the Irish boy is on the shore,
+      He'll help to crush the stranger;
+    He'll sweep them hence for evermore,
+      And free thy land from danger.
+    And then he'll pray to God above,
+      That his courage ne'er shall falter,
+    To guard him to the land he loves--
+      To Ireland o'er the water.'
+
+Mayo is the county to which John MacBride, the leader of the Irish
+Brigade, belongs; but I heard of a ballad-singer at Ballindereen, near
+my Galway home, the other day, whose refrain was:--
+
+    'And Erin watches from afar, with joy and hope and pride,
+    Her sons who strike for liberty, led on by John MacBride!'
+
+At Galway Railway Station, whence the Connaught Rangers set out for the
+war, I have heard that wives, saying good-bye, begged their husbands
+'not to be too hard on the Boers.' Anyhow, a 'Mother's lament for her
+son gone to the war,' that was sung at Galway Races the other day, shows
+more impartiality than most of the ballads:--
+
+    'When the battle rages fiercely, our boys are in the van;
+    How I do wish the blows they struck were for dear Ireland!
+    But duty calls, they must obey, and fight against the Boer,
+    And many a cheerful Irish lad will fall to rise no more.
+
+    'I wish my boy was home again! Oh! how I'd welcome him,
+    With sorrow I'm broken-hearted, my eyes are growing dim;
+    The war is dark and cruel, but whoever wins the fight,
+    I pray to save my noble lad, and God defend the right!'
+
+But it is the small farmers of Ireland who look with special sympathy on
+their fellows in the Transvaal. They give them a warning:--
+
+    'England sends her grabbers,
+      From far across the sea,
+    To rob you of your friends and home,
+      Likewise your liberty.'
+
+And the Boers say in answer:--
+
+    'When we came to this country,
+      'Twas but a barren plain;
+    But the honest hand of labour
+      Was rewarded for its pain.
+    We found the precious metal,
+      And of it we have great store;
+    But Britain came to rob us
+      As she often done before.
+        As she thought to do before,
+        As she thought to do before;
+    But Britain comes to rob us,
+      As she often done before.'
+
+Another ballad explains:--
+
+    'Those Boers can't be blamed, as you might understand;
+    They are trying to free their own native land,
+    Where they toil night and day by the sweat of their brow,
+    Like the farmers in Ireland that follow the plough.
+    Farewell to Old Ireland, we are now going away,
+    To fight the brave Boers in South Africa;
+    To fight those poor farmers we are not inclined:
+    God be with you, Old Ireland, we are leaving behind.'
+
+Some verses--'The Boer's Prayer'--that I have not seen on a
+ballad-sheet, but in a weekly paper, give better expression to this
+feeling of farmer sympathy:--
+
+    'My back is to the wall;
+      Lo! here I stand.
+    O Lord, whate'er befall,
+      I love this land!
+
+    'This land that I have tilled,
+      This land is mine;
+    Would, Lord, that Thou hadst willed,
+      This heart were Thine!
+
+    'This land to us Thou gave
+      In days of old;
+    They seek to make a grave
+      Or field of gold!
+
+    'To us, O Lord, Thy hand,
+      Put forth to save!
+    Give us, O Lord, this land
+      Or give a grave!'
+
+'A New Song for the Boers' says:--
+
+    'Hark! to the curses ringing
+      From all smitten lands;
+    In sob and wail, they tell the tale
+      Of England's blood-red hands.
+
+    'And wheresoe'er her standard flings
+      Forth its folds of shame,
+    A people's cries to heaven arise
+      For vengeance on her name!'
+
+But for passionate expression, one cannot, as I have already said, look
+to the comparatively new and artificial English ballad form; one must go
+to the Irish, with its long tradition. Here is a poem, 'The Curse of the
+Boers on England,' which I have translated literally from the Irish:--
+
+    'O God, we call to Thee,
+      This hour and this day,
+    Look down on this England
+      That has come down in our midst.
+
+    'O God, we call to Thee,
+      This day and this hour,
+    Look down on England,
+      And her cold, cold heart.
+
+    'It is she was a Queen,
+      A Queen without sorrow;
+    But we will take from her,
+      Quietly, her Crown.
+
+    'That Queen that was beautiful
+      Will be tormented and darkened,
+    For she will get her reward
+      In that day, and her wage.
+
+    'Her wage for the blood
+      She poured out on the streams;
+    Blood of the white man,
+      Blood of the black man.
+
+    'Her wage for those hearts
+      That she broke in the end;
+    Hearts of the white man,
+      Hearts of the black man.
+
+    'Her wage for the bones
+      That are whitening to-day;
+    Bones of the white man,
+      Bones of the black man.
+
+    'Her wage for the hunger
+      That she put on foot;
+    Her wage for the fever,
+      That is an old tale with her.
+
+    'Her wage for the white villages
+      She has left without men;
+    Her wage for the brave men
+      She has put to the sword.
+
+    'Her wage for the orphans
+      She has left under pain;
+    Her wage for the exiles
+      She has spent with wandering.
+
+    'For the people of India
+      (Pitiful is their case);
+    For the people of Africa
+      She has put to death.
+
+    'For the people of Ireland,
+      Nailed to the cross;
+    Wage for each people
+      Her hand has destroyed.
+
+    'Her wage for the thousands
+      She deceived and she broke;
+    Her wage for the thousands
+      Finding death at this hour.
+
+    'O Lord, let there fall
+      Straight down on her head
+    The curse of the peoples
+      That have fallen with us.
+
+    'The curse of the mean,
+      And the curse of the small,
+    The curse of the weak,
+      And the curse of the low.
+
+    'The Lord does not listen
+      To the curse of the strong,
+    But He will listen
+      To sighs and to tears.
+
+    'He will always listen
+      To the crying of the poor,
+    And the crying of thousands
+      Is abroad to-night.
+
+    'That crying will rise up
+      To God that is above;
+    It is not long till every curse
+      Comes to His ears.
+
+    'The crying will be put away;
+      Tears will be put away,
+    When they come to God,
+      These prayers to His kingdom.
+
+    'He will make for England
+      Strong chains, very heavy;
+    He will pay her wages
+      With strong, heavy chains.
+
+1901.
+
+
+
+
+A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND
+
+
+The Irish poem I give this translation of was printed in the _Revue
+Celtique_ some years ago, and lately in _An Fior Clairseach na
+h-Eireann_, where a note tells us it was taken from a manuscript in the
+Gottingen Library, and was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan,
+who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for
+its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish
+writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the
+horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which
+the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable
+than the people of a country that has kept its own settled rule.
+
+
+A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND.
+
+    My thoughts, alas! are without strength;
+    My spirit is journeying towards death;
+    My eyes are as a frozen sea;
+    My tears my daily food;
+    There is nothing in my life but only misery;
+    My poor heart is torn,
+    And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
+    Mourning the miserable state of Ireland,
+    Without ease, without mirth for any person
+    That is born on the plains of Emer.
+    And here I give you the heavy story,
+    And the tale of all the remnant of her deeds.
+
+      She lost her pomp and her strength together
+    When her strong men were banished across the sea;
+    Her churches are as holds of pain,
+    Without altars, without Mass, without bowing of knees;
+    Stables for horses--this story is pitiful--
+    Or without a stone of their stones together.
+
+      Since the children of Israel were in Egypt
+    Under bondage, and scarcity along with that,
+    There was never written in a book or never seen
+    Hardship like the hardships in Ireland.
+    They parted from us the shepherds of the flock
+    That is the flock that is astray and is wounded,
+    Left to be torn by wild dogs,
+    And no healing for it from the hand of anyone.
+    Unless God will look down on our distress
+    Ireland will indeed be lost for ever!
+    Every old man, every strong man, every child,
+    Our young men and our well-dressed women,
+    Keening, complaining, and reproaching;
+    Going under the power of the Gall or going across the sea.
+    Our dear country without any ears of corn,
+    Without store, without cattle, but only the green grass;
+    Our fatherless children are wasted and weak,
+    Famine and sickness travelling over Ireland,
+    And every other scourge that was ever known,
+    And the rest of her pain has not yet been told.
+
+      Nevertheless, my sharp woe! I see with my eyes
+    That the High King has a bow ready in His hand,
+    And His quiver is full of arrows with sharp points,
+    And every arrow of them for our sore wounding,
+    From the sole of our feet to the top of our head,
+    To bruise our hearts and to tear our sinews;
+    There is no spot of our limbs but is scarred;
+    Misfortune has come upon us all together--
+    The poor and the rich, the weak and the strong;
+    The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained;
+    The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;
+    And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.
+
+      I do not know of anything under the sky
+    That is friendly or favourable to the Gael,
+    But only the sea that our need brings us to,
+    Or the wind that blows to the harbour
+    The ship that is bearing us away from Ireland;
+    And there is reason that these are reconciled with us,
+    For we increase the sea with our tears,
+    And the wandering wind with our sighs.
+
+      We do not see heaven look kindly upon us;
+    We do not see our complaint being listened to;
+    Even the earth refuses us shelter
+    And the wood that gives protection to the birds;
+    Every cliff, every cave, every mountain-top,
+    Every hill, every lough, and every meadow.
+
+      Our feasts are without any voice of priests,
+    And none at them but women lamenting,
+    Tearing their hair, with troubled minds,
+    Keening pitifully after the Fenians.
+    The pipes of our organs are broken;
+    Our harps have lost their strings that were tuned
+    That might have made the great lamentations of Ireland;
+    Until the strong men come back across the sea,
+    There is no help for us but bitter crying,
+    Screams, and beating of hands, and calling out.
+
+      It is not strength of hosts, not loss of food,
+    Not the horsemen of the Gall coming from Britain,
+    Nor want of power, nor want of calling to war,
+    That has put defeat upon the armies of Ireland,
+    And has filled the cities with a sad multitude,
+    Alas! alas! but the greatness of our sins.
+
+      See, we are now put in the crucible
+    In which every worthless metal is tried,
+    In which gold is cleansed from every tarnish;
+    The Scripture is true in everything it says;
+    It says we must suffer before we can be cured;
+    It is through repentance we shall find forgiveness,
+    And the restoring of all that we have lost.
+
+      Let us put down the sum of our sins;
+    Oppression of the poor, thieving, robbery,
+    Great vows held in light esteem;
+    Giving our soul to the man that is the worst;
+    The strength of our pride was greater than our life,
+    The strength of our debts was more than we could pay.
+
+      It was with treachery Ireland was lost,
+    And the ill-will of men one to another.
+    There was no judge that would give a hearing
+    To the oppressed people whose life was under hardship.
+    Outcasts and widows crying aloud
+    Without right judgment to be had or punishment.
+
+      We were never agreed together,
+    But as one ox bound and one free from the yoke;
+    No right humility to be found.
+    All trying for the headship of Ireland
+    At the time when her enemies were doing their work.
+    No settlement to be made of any quarrel,
+    The share of the wheat-ear for the man that was strongest;
+    It is long that this has been the hurt of Ireland;
+    It is thus that the battle ended with the Gael.
+
+      Let us turn now and change our manners,
+    Let us make repentance of our sins together--
+    It is thus that the Israelites came out of Egypt;
+    Nineveh was given pardon for all its sins,
+    And even Peter for denying Christ.
+
+      O saints of Ireland, arise now together;
+    O Patrick, who hast care of us, bless this flock;
+    We who are exiled, we who are forsaken,
+    This sod is gone out unless thou blow upon it;
+    Is thy sleep heavy or is thy hearing slow
+    That thou dost not give an answer to us?
+    Awake quickly; let it not be as a tale with thee
+    That there is no help for the fate of the Gael.
+
+      This, Patrick, is my own quarrel with thee
+    That every enemy of thy flock is saying
+    That thy ears are not ears that listen,
+    That thou art not troubled by the sight of thy people,
+    That if they did trouble thee thou wouldst not deny them.
+    Be with us nevertheless with thy strong power.
+    Make our enemies to quit Ireland for ever.
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+
+MOUNTAIN THEOLOGY
+
+
+Mary Glyn lives under Slieve-nan-Or, the Golden Mountain, where the last
+battle will be fought in the last great war of the world; so that the
+sides of Gortaveha, a lesser mountain, will stream with blood. But she
+and her friends are not afraid of this; for an old weaver from the
+north, who knew all things, told them long ago that there is a place
+near Turloughmore where war will never come, because St. Columcill used
+to live there. So they will make use of this knowledge, and seek a
+refuge there, if, indeed, there is room enough for them all. There is a
+river by her house that marks the boundary between Galway and Clare; and
+there are stepping-stones in the river, so that she can cross from
+Connaught to Munster when she has a mind. But she cannot do her
+marketing when she has a mind; for the nearest town, Gort, is ten miles
+away. The roof of her little cabin is thatched with rushes, and a garden
+of weeds grows on it, and the rain comes through. But she is soon to
+have a new thatch; for she thinks she won't live long, and she wouldn't
+like the rain to be coming down on her when she is dead and laid out.
+There is heather in blow on the hills about her home, and foxglove
+reddens the clay-banks, and loosetrife the marshy hollows; and
+rush-cotton waves its little white flags over the bogs. Mary Glyn's
+neighbours come to see her sometimes, when the sun is going down, and
+the hurry of the day is over. Old Mr. Saggarton is one of them; he had
+his learning from a hedge-schoolmaster in the old times; and he looks
+down on the narrow teaching of the National Schools; and he was once in
+jail for nine months, having been taken in the very act of making
+_poteen_. And Mrs. Casey comes and looks at the stepping-stones now and
+again, for she is a Clare woman; and though she has lived fifty years in
+Connaught, she is not yet quite reconciled to it, and would never have
+made it her home if she could have seen it before she came. And some who
+do not live among the bogs and the heather, but among the green pastures
+and the grey stones of Aidne, come to Slieve Echtge and learn unwritten
+truths from the lips of Mary and her friends.
+
+The duty of giving is taught as well as practised by these poor
+hill-people. 'For,' says Mary Glyn, 'the best road to heaven is to be
+charitable to the poor.' And old Mrs. Casey agrees, and says: 'There was
+a poor girl walking the road one night with no place to stop; and the
+Saviour met her on the road, and He said: "Go up to the house you see a
+light in; there's a woman dead there, and they'll let you in." So she
+went and she found the woman laid out, and the husband and other
+people; but she worked harder than they all, and she stopped in the
+house after; and after two quarters the man married her. And one day she
+was sitting outside the door, picking over a bag of wheat, and the
+Saviour came again, with the appearance of a poor man, and He asked her
+for a few grains of the wheat. And she said: "Wouldn't potatoes be good
+enough for you?" and she called to the girl within to bring out a few
+potatoes. But He took nine grains of the wheat in His hand and went
+away; and there wasn't a grain of wheat left in the bag, but all gone.
+So she ran after Him then to ask Him to forgive her; and she overtook
+Him on the road, and she asked forgiveness. And He said: "Don't you
+remember the time you had no house to go to, and I met you on the road,
+and sent you to a house where you'd live in plenty? and now you wouldn't
+give Me a few grains of wheat." And she said: "But why didn't You give
+me a heart that would like to divide it?" That is how she came round on
+Him. And He said: "From this out, whenever you have plenty in your
+hands, divide it freely for My sake."'
+
+And this is a marvel that might occur again at any time; for Mary Glyn
+says further:--
+
+'There was a woman I knew was very charitable to the poor; and she'd
+give them the full of her apron of bread, or of potatoes or anything she
+had. And she was only lately married; and one day, a poor woman came to
+the door with her children and she brought them to the fire, and warmed
+them, and gave them a drink of milk; and she sent out to the barn for a
+bag of potatoes for them. And the husband came in, and he said: "Kitty,
+if you go on this way, you won't leave much for ourselves." And she
+said: "He that gave us what we have, can give more." And the next day
+when they went out to the barn, it was full of potatoes--more than were
+ever in it before. And when she was dying, and her children about her,
+the priest said to her: "Mrs. Gallagher, it's in heaven you'll be at 12
+o'clock to-morrow."'
+
+But when death comes, it is not enough to have been charitable; and it
+is not right to touch the body or lay it out for a couple of hours; for
+the soul should be given time to fight for itself, and to go up to
+judgment. And sometimes it is not willing to go; for Mrs. Casey says:--
+
+'The Saviour, one time, told St. Patrick to go and prepare a man that
+was going to die. And St. Patrick said: "I'd sooner not go; for I never
+yet saw the soul depart from the body." But then he went, and he
+prepared the man. And when he was lying there dead, he saw the soul go
+from the body; and three times it went to the door, and three times it
+came back and kissed the body. And St. Patrick asked the Saviour why it
+did that: and He said: "That soul was sorry to part from the body,
+because it had held it so clean and so honest."'
+
+When the hill-people talk of 'the time of the war,' it is the war that
+once took place in heaven that is understood. And when '_Those_' are
+spoken of, the fallen angels are understood, the cloud of witness, the
+whirling invisible host; and it is only to a stranger that an
+explanation need be given.
+
+'They were in heaven once,' Mary Glyn says 'and heaven is the first
+place there was war; and they were all to be done away with; and it was
+St. Peter asked the Saviour to help them, when he saw Him going to empty
+the heavens. So He turned His hand like this; and the earth and the sky
+and the sea were full of them, and they are in every place, and you know
+that better than I do, because you read books. Resting they do be in the
+daytime, and going about at night. And their music is the finest you
+ever heard, like all the fifers, and all the instruments, and all the
+tunes of the world. I heard it sometimes myself, and there is no music
+in the world like it; but not all can hear it. Round the hill it comes,
+and you going in at the door. And they are quiet neighbours if you treat
+them well. God bless them, and bring them all to heaven.'
+
+And then, having mentioned Monday (a spell against unseen listeners),
+and said, 'God bless the hearers, and the place it is told in'--and her
+niece, Mary Irwin, having said, 'God bless all we see, and those we
+don't see,' they tell--first one speaking and then the other--that: 'One
+night there were _banabhs_ in the house; and there was a man coming to
+dig the potato-garden in the morning--and so late at night, Mary Glyn
+was making stirabout, and a cake to have ready for the breakfast of the
+_banabhs_ and the man; and Mary's brother Micky was asleep within on the
+bed. And there came the sound of the grandest music you ever heard from
+beyond the stream, and it stopped there. And Micky awoke in the bed, and
+was afraid, and said: "Shut up the door and quench the light," and so we
+did.' 'It's likely,' Mary says, 'they wanted to come into the house, and
+they wouldn't when they saw me up and the lights about.' But one time
+when there were potatoes in the loft, Mary and her brothers were pelted
+with the potatoes when they sat down to supper. And Mary Irwin got a
+blow on the side of the face, from one of them, one night in the bed.
+'And they have the hope of heaven, and God grant it to them.' 'And one
+day, there was a priest and his servant riding along the road, and there
+was a hurling of them going on in the field. And a man of them came out
+and stood in the road, and said to the priest: "Tell me this, for you
+know it, have we a chance of heaven?" "You have not," said the priest.
+("God forgive him," says Mary Irwin, "a priest to say that!") And the
+man that was of them said: "Put your fingers in your ears, till you have
+travelled two miles of the road; for when I go back and tell what you
+are after telling me to the rest, the crying and the bawling and the
+roaring will be so great that, if you hear it, you'll never hear a noise
+again in this world." So they put their fingers then in their ears; but
+after a while the servant said to the priest: "Let me take out my
+fingers now." And the priest said: "Do not." And then the servant said
+again: "I think I might take one finger out." And the priest said:
+"Since you are so persevering, you may take it out." So he did, and the
+noise of the crying and the roaring and the bawling was so great, that
+he never had the use of that ear again.'
+
+Old Mr. Saggarton confirms the story of the fall of the angels and their
+presence about us, but goes deeper into theology. 'The soul,' he says,
+'was the breath of God, breathed into Adam, and it is the possession of
+God ever since. And I could never have believed there was so much power
+in the shadow of a soul, till I saw _them_ one night hurling. They tempt
+us sometimes in dreams--may God forgive me for saying He would allow
+power to any to tempt to evil. And they would destroy the world but for
+the hope they have of being saved. Every Monday morning they think the
+day of judgment may be coming, and that they will see heaven.
+
+'Half the world is with them. And when you see a blast of wind, and it
+comes sudden and carries the dust with it, you should say, "God bless
+them," and throw something after them. For how do you know but one of
+our own may be in it?
+
+'There never was a funeral they were not at, walking after the other
+people. And you can see them if you know the way--that is, to take a
+green rush and to twist it into a ring, and to look through it. But if
+you do, you'll never have a stim of sight in the eye again.'
+
+
+
+
+HERB-HEALING
+
+
+     _September 28th, 1899._
+
+     'HONOURABLE LADY GREGORY,
+
+     'I, Bridget Ruane, wish to inform you that there is in the Oratory
+     in London one of the Fathers, a Saint. I do not know his name; but
+     there was a young woman of the name of Meara; she got two falls and
+     could get no cure. She went to London and found this holy man; and
+     he sent her back to Gort, here to me, and I cured her. If your
+     honourable Ladyship could make him out, it would be a wonderful
+     thing, and a great happiness to many a weary heart, and the great
+     God would have it in store for you and your son. May you enjoy many
+     happy days together is the prayer of your humble servant,
+
+     'BRIDGET RUANE.'
+
+This letter was brought to me one morning; and I went down to see the
+writer, a respectable-looking old woman, dressed in the red petticoat
+and blue cloak of the country-people. She repeated what she had said in
+her note, and added: 'Now if you could find out the name of that Saint
+through the press, he'd tell me his remedies; and between us, all the
+world would be cured. For I can't do all cures, though there are a great
+many I can do. I cured Michael Miscail when the doctor couldn't do it,
+and a woman in Gort that was paralyzed, and her two sons that were
+stretched. For I can bring back the dead with some of the herbs our Lord
+was brought back with, the _Garblus_ and the _Slanlus_. But there are
+some things I can't do. I can't help anyone that has got a stroke from
+the Queen or the Fool of the Forth.
+
+'It was my brother got the knowledge of cures from a book that was
+thrown down before him on the road. What language was it written in?
+What language would it be but Irish? May be it was God gave it to him,
+and may be it was the _other people_. He was a fine strong man; and he
+weighed fifteen stone; and he went to England, and there he cured all
+the world, so that the doctors had no way of living. So one time he got
+in a ship to go to America; and the doctors had bad men engaged to
+shipwreck him out of the ship; he wasn't drowned, but he was broken to
+pieces on the rocks, and the book was lost along with him. But he taught
+me a good deal out of it. So I know all herbs, and I do a good many
+cures; and I have brought a good many children home to the world, and
+never lost one, or one of the women that bore them.'
+
+I asked her to teach me some of her fragments of Druids' wisdom, the
+healing power of herbs. So she came another day, and brought some herbs,
+and sorted them out on a table, and said: 'This is _Dwareen_
+(knapweed); and what you have to do with this, is to put it down with
+other herbs, and with a bit of threepenny sugar, and to boil it, and to
+drink it, for pains in the bones; and don't be afraid but it will cure
+you. Sure the Lord put it in the world for curing.
+
+'And this is _Corn-corn_ [tansy]; it s very good for the heart--boiled
+like the others.
+
+'This is _Athair-talav_, the father of all herbs (wild camomile). This
+is very hard to pull; and when you go for it, you must have a
+black-handled knife. And whatever way the wind is when you begin to cut
+it, if it changes while you're cutting it, you'll lose your mind. And if
+you are paid for cutting it, you can do it when you like; but if not,
+_they_ mightn't like it. I knew a woman was cutting at one time, and a
+voice, an enchanted voice, called out: "Don't cut that if you are not
+paid, or you'll be sorry." But if you put a bit of this with every other
+herb you drink, you'll live for ever. My grandmother used to put a bit
+with everything she took, and she lived to be over a hundred.
+
+'And this is _Camal buidhe_ (loose-strife), that will keep all bad
+things away.
+
+'This is _Cuineal Muire_ (mullein), the blessed candle of our Lady.
+
+'This is the _Fearaban_ (water-buttercup); and it's good for every bone
+of your body.
+
+'This is _Dub-cosac_ (trichomanes), that's good for the heart; very good
+for a sore heart.
+
+'Here are the _Slanlus_ (plantain) and the _Garblus_ (dandelion); and
+these would cure the wide world; and it was these brought our Lord from
+the Cross, after the ruffians that were with the Jews did all the harm
+to Him. And not one could be got to pierce His heart till a dark man
+came; and he said: "Give me the spear and I'll do it." And the blood
+that sprang out touched his eyes and they got their sight. And it was
+after that, His Mother and Mary and Joseph gathered these herbs and
+cured His wounds.
+
+'These are the best of the herbs; but they are all good, and there isn't
+one among them but would cure seven diseases. I'm all the days of my
+life gathering them, and I know them all; but it isn't easy to make them
+out. Sunday afternoon is the best time to get them, and I was never
+interfered with. Seven Hail Marys I say when I'm gathering them; and I
+pray to our Lord, and to St. Joseph and St. Colman. And there may be
+_some_ watching me; but they never meddled with me at all.'
+
+A neighbour whom I asked about Bridget Ruane and her brother
+said:--'Some people call her "Biddy Early" (after a famous
+witch-doctor). She has done a good many cures. Her brother was _away_
+for a while, and it is from him she got her knowledge. I believe it's
+before sunrise she gathers the herbs; any way no one ever saw her
+gathering them. She has saved many a woman from being brought away when
+her child was born by whatever she does; and she told me herself that
+one night when she was going to the lodge gate to attend the woman
+there, three magpies came before her and began roaring into her mouth to
+try and drive her back.
+
+Another neighbour, who has herself some reputation as an herb-doctor,
+says:--'Monday is a good day for pulling herbs, or Tuesday--not Sunday:
+a Sunday cure is no cure. The _Cosac_ is good for the heart. There was
+Mahon in Gort--one time his heart was wore to a silk thread, and it
+cured him. And the _Slanugad_ (ribgrass) is very good: it will take away
+lumps. You must go down where it is growing on the scraws, and pull it
+with three pulls; and mind would the wind change when you are pulling
+it, or your head will be gone. Warm it on the tongs when you bring it
+in, and put it on the lump. The _Lus-mor_ is the only one that's good to
+bring back children that are "_away_."'
+
+Another authority says:--'Dandelion is good for the heart; and when
+Father Quinn was curate here, he had it rooted up in all the fields
+about to drink it; and see what a fine man he is. The wild parsnip
+(_Meacan-buidhe_) is good for the gravel; and for heart-beat there's
+nothing so good as dandelion. There was a woman I knew used to boil it
+down; and she'd throw out what was left on the grass. And there was a
+fleet of turkeys about the house, and they used to be picking it up. At
+Christmas they killed one of them; and when it was cut open, they found
+a new heart growing in it with the dint of the dandelion.'
+
+But an old man says there are no such healers now as there were in his
+youth:--'The best herb-doctor I ever knew was Connolly up at Kilbecanty.
+He knew every herb that grew in the earth. It is said he was away with
+the fairies one time; and when I saw him he had the two thumbs turned
+in; and it was said it was the sign they left on him. I had a lump on
+the thigh one time, and my father went to him, and he gave him an herb
+for it; but he told him not to come into the house by the door the wind
+would be blowing in at. They thought it was the evil I had--that is
+given by _them_ by a touch; and that is why he said about the wind; for
+if it was the evil there would be a worm in it, and if it smelled the
+herb that was brought in at the door, it might change to another place.
+I don't know what the herb was; but I would have been dead if I had it
+on another hour--it burned so much--and I had to get the lump lanced
+after, for it wasn't the evil I had.
+
+'Connolly cured many a one; Jack Hall, that fell into a pot of water
+they were after boiling potatoes in, and had the skin scalded off him,
+and that Dr. Lynch could do nothing for, he cured. He boiled down herbs
+with a bit of lard, and after that was rubbed in three times, he was
+well.
+
+'And Cahill that was deaf, he cured with the _Riv mar seala_, that herb
+in the potatoes that milk comes out of.'
+
+Farrell says:--'The _Bainne bo blathan_ (primrose) is good for the
+headache, if you put the leaves of it on your head. But as for the
+_Lus-mor_, it's best not to have anything to do with that.' For the
+_Lus-mor_ is good to bring back children that are 'away,' and belongs to
+the class of herbs consecrated to the uses of magic, apart from any
+natural healing power. The Druids are said to have taken their knowledge
+of these properties from the magical teachers of the Chaldeans; but
+anyhow the belief in them lives on in Ireland and in other Celtic
+countries to this day.
+
+A man from East Galway says: 'To bring anyone back from being with the
+fairies, you should get the leaves of the _Lus-mor_, and give them to
+him to drink. And if he only got a little touch from them, and had some
+complaint in him at the same time, that makes him sick like, that will
+bring him back. But if he is altogether in the fairies, then it won't
+bring him back, for he'll know what it is, and he'll refuse to drink it.
+
+'There was a man I know, Andy Hegarty, had a little chap--a little
+_summach_ of four years--and one day Andy was away to sell a pig in the
+market at Mount Bellew, and the mother was away some place with the
+dinner for the men in the field; and the little chap was in the house
+with the grandmother, and he sitting by the fire. And he said to the
+grandmother: "Put down a skillet of potatoes for me, and an egg." And
+she said: "I will not; for what do you want with them? you're just after
+eating." And he said: "Take care but I'll throw you over the roof of
+that house." And then he said: "Andy"--that was his father--"is after
+selling the pig to a jobber, and the jobber has given it back to him
+again; and he'll be at no loss by that, for he'll get a half-a-crown
+more at the end." So when the grandmother heard that, she wouldn't stop
+in the house with him, but ran out--and he only four years old. When the
+mother came back, and was told about it, she went out and got some of
+the leaves of the _Lus-mor_, and she brought them in and put them on the
+child; and he went away, and their own child came back again. They
+didn't see him going, or the other coming; but they knew it by him.'
+
+And a Galway woman, who has been in England says: 'I was delicate one
+time myself, and I lost my walk; and one of the neighbours told my
+mother it wasn't myself that was there. But my mother said she'd soon
+find that out; for she'd tell me she was going to get a herb that would
+cure me; and if it was myself, I'd want it; but if it was another, I'd
+be against it. So she came in and said she to me: "I'm going to Dangan
+to look for the _Lus-mor_, that will soon cure you." And from that day I
+gave her no peace till she'd go to Dangan and get it; so she knew I was
+all right. She told me all this afterwards.'
+
+The man from East Galway says: 'The herbs they cure with, there's some
+that's natural, and you could pick them at all times of the day.'
+
+'Sea-grass' is sometimes useful as a natural and sometimes as an occult
+cure. One who has tried it and other herbs, says: 'Indeed the porter did
+me good, and good that I'd hardly like to tell you, not to make a
+scandal. Did I drink too much of it? Not at all. But this long time I am
+feeling a worm in my side that is as big as an eel, and there's more of
+them in it than that. And I was told to put seagrass to it; and I put it
+to the side the other day; and whether it was that or the porter I don't
+know, but there's some of them gone out of it.
+
+'_Garblus_--how did you hear of that? That is the herb for things that
+have to do with the fairies. And when you drink it for anything of that
+sort, if it doesn't cure you, it will kill you then and there. There was
+a fine young man I used to know, and he got his death on the head of a
+pig that came at himself and another man at the gate of Ramore, and that
+never left them, but was with them all the time, till they came to a
+stream of water. And when he got home, he took to his bed with a
+headache. And at last he was brought a drink of the _Garblus_, and no
+sooner did he drink it than he was dead. I remember him well.
+
+'There is something in flax, for no priest would anoint you without a
+bit of tow. And if a woman that was carrying was to put a basket of
+green flax on her back, the child would go from her; and if a mare that
+was in foal had a load of flax on her, the foal would go the same way.'
+
+And a neighbour of hers confirms this, and says: 'There's something in
+green flax, I know; for my mother often told me about one night she was
+spinning flax before she was married, and she was up late. And a man of
+the fairies came in--she had no right to be sitting up so late: they
+don't like that--and he told her it was time to go to bed; for he wanted
+to kill her, and he couldn't touch her while she was handling the flax.
+And every time he'd tell her to go to bed, she'd give him some answer,
+and she'd go on pulling a thread of the flax, or mending a broken one;
+for she was wise, and she knew that at the crowing of the cock he'd have
+to go. So at last the cock crowed, and she was safe, for the cock is
+blessed.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Old Bridget Ruane will not do any more cures by charms or by simples, or
+'bring children home to the world' any more. For she died last winter;
+and we may be sure that among the green herbs that cover her grave,
+there are some that are 'good for every bone in the body,' and that are
+'very good for a sore heart.'
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+
+THE WANDERING TRIBE
+
+
+When poor Paul Ruttledge made his great effort to escape from the
+doorsteps of law and order--from the world, the flesh, and the
+newspaper--and fell among tinkers, I looked with more interest than
+before at the little camps that one sees every now and then by the
+roadside for a few days or weeks. And I wondered why our country
+people--who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that
+they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop:
+'Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ'--speak of a visit of the
+tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest. I asked why they
+were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange
+customs and of their unbelief.
+
+'They come mostly from the County Mayo,' I am told; 'and, indeed, they
+have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to
+marry a man and woman of them for nothing. But after he had them
+married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.
+
+'The people wouldn't like to let them into their house; for if you would
+let one man in, maybe twelve families would follow them and take
+possession of the whole place.
+
+'Some of them that do smiths' work are middling decent. They will sit
+there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that
+belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going
+to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of
+you with games. Indeed the most of them are no better than
+pickpockets--"newks" they are called. And they never go to Mass; and, as
+to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it's more
+likely they have no marriage at all.
+
+'They never go in lodgings; but they'll tilt up the cart, and put a bit
+of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it. Or if a man
+is alone, he'll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there.
+They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the
+hardiest people in the world.
+
+'And they make sport and fun sometimes. I used to see them dancing at
+Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among
+themselves they would have it. And they sing songs too--"The sweet boy
+of Milltown" I heard them singing.
+
+'There was a sweep in Gort joined them. Charlie his name was. He went
+into Greely's shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and
+bid him give him five pounds and he'd make his fortune. And he was
+afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was
+never seen there again.
+
+'He died after that in hospital. He slept out one night and the frost
+went through his body. There was another of them stole two of old Quin's
+geese at Ballylee one night, and sold them to him again next day. After
+he had them bought, Mrs. Quin came down and when she looked at them she
+knew them to be her own geese. "Give me back the money," she said. "I'd
+be a fool if I did," said he, and he went away.'
+
+Another neighbour says: 'They often made their camp in the boreen near
+my house; but one of them never came into the house, and I never saw one
+of them at Mass. One very hard morning I passed by them as I was
+bringing in pigs to the fair of Gort. There they were, sleeping under an
+ass-cart, quite happy and satisfied. They fight at night and make
+friends again in the daytime; and they sell their wives to one another;
+I've seen that myself.'
+
+And an old man says: 'I think the tinkers are not the same as the rest
+of us; I think they originated in themselves. They are very mirthful,
+and they have no control; but sometimes there will be a tyrant among
+them that is a good fighter, and they will obey him.
+
+'They have no religion; and it might be true they don't believe in the
+devil--but what of that? Aren't there many on your side and our own that
+think there is no resurrection, but that we go straight to heaven at the
+minute of death?
+
+'They never go into any house; and there's a great many of them
+wouldn't go in a house if they were asked. My father went one time from
+Ballylee to Limerick; and there was a tinker at that time the Government
+wanted to get information from; something about Bonaparte it was. And
+they offered him a good lodging with a feather-bed in it to sleep on;
+and he said if he slept one night on a feather-bed, he'd never be any
+good after; that it was more wholesome to sleep outside on a bed of
+rushes. They didn't get any information out of him after; though they
+offered him good reward, he wouldn't give it to them.
+
+'They have no marriage at all; but their women might be ten times better
+than the rural women for all that, and true to their men. The women are
+very smart at cooking. You'll see them make a fire by the roadside with
+a bundle of straw and a bit of wood, and they'll put the pot down. What
+goes into the pot? Well, how would I know? but the men are very handy,
+and when they put their hand in the pot, believe me it doesn't go in
+empty.
+
+'They used to be prone to coining at one time; but the law of
+transportation stopped that. And there's few of the police would like to
+grabble with them. I saw four of the police trying to take one the other
+day, and he bet them all; and it was a countryman got a hold of him in
+the end.'
+
+And a woman whose house they have often made their camp near, says:
+'They are bad, and we don't like them to be coming near us. There was a
+little lad of them came running to the door one night, and he called to
+us to come; for there was a man killing his mother. But we drove him
+away and didn't go; for we knew her to be a bad woman.' And another
+woman says: 'If they have a religion, it's a wandering one; wandering
+like themselves.'
+
+And a farmer living by the roadside says: 'A bad class they are, indeed,
+sleeping out under a little bit of cloth, and hardy for all that. Wild
+beasts they are, stealing turf from the banks.'
+
+But an old man from Slieve Echtge takes a more kindly view of them.
+'There are very nice men among them,' he says; 'and they are as hardy as
+goats or as Connemara sheep. They go about to fairs and deal in asses
+and in horses, and sometimes they are rich. There was one I knew, a
+sieve-maker--they are of the same class--and that married a tinker's
+daughter; they were in here two or three times. I told him I wondered
+they wouldn't settle down in one place; for if I knew the way to make
+money, I said, I'd make plenty--for they are said to coin money. But he
+said it made no difference if they had money; they couldn't stop in one
+place; they must be walking always and going through the whole country.'
+
+And then we got to the reason of their wandering.
+
+'It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time. For he was a slave in
+Ireland after he was brought out of France, and it would take a hundred
+pounds to buy his freedom. And he found a lump of gold or of silver in
+a field one day, where he was minding sheep; and he brought it to a
+tinker and asked the value of it. "It's nothing at all but a bit of
+solder," says the tinker. "Give it here to me." But St. Patrick brought
+it to a smith then, and he told him the value of it. And then St.
+Patrick put a curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with
+every man's face against them, and their face against every man; and
+that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.
+
+'And there are some say that when our Lord was on the cross there could
+be no tradesman found to drive the nails in His hands and His feet till
+a tinker was brought, and he did it; and that is why they have to walk
+the world; and I never met anyone that had seen a tinker's funeral.
+
+'But they may believe some things. For there was a woman of them told me
+one time they were camping near the railway bridge that in the
+night-time she saw the whole wall beside her falling down and shattered;
+but in the morning it was standing as it did before. "And we'll get out
+of this place as fast as we can," she said.'
+
+'They are a class of themselves,' says another man, 'and they have been
+there ever since the world began. I often heard it said that our Lord
+asked a tinker one time to make Him some vessel He wanted, and he
+refused Him. He went then to a smith, and he did what was wanted. And
+from that time the tinkers have been wandering on the roads; but they
+wouldn't have refused Him if they had known He was God. I never saw them
+at Mass; but I am sure they believe in God. It was here in Ireland they
+refused our Lord, the time He walked the whole world after the
+Crucifixion.'
+
+'To be sure they are under a curse,' said another, 'like the Jews, to be
+wandering always; and they have some religion of their own, but it's a
+bad one. It's likely St. Patrick put the curse on them; for a fleet of
+children of tinkers went after him one time, mocking at him, and he
+turned one of them into a pillar of stone.'
+
+And that is their story as I have heard it so far.
+
+
+
+
+WORKHOUSE DREAMS
+
+
+Last June I had a few free days, and I chose to spend them among the
+imaginative class, the holders of the traditions of Ireland, country
+people in thatched houses, workers in fields and bogs.
+
+I was looking for legends of those shadow-heroes, Finn and his men, to
+help me in writing their story; and I heard many tales and long poems
+about fair-haired Finn, who 'had all the wisdom of a little child'; and
+Conan of the sharp tongue, who was 'some way cross in himself,' and who
+had a briar on his shield; and their adventures beyond sea, and their
+hunting after deer that were 'as joyful as the leaves of a tree in
+summer time.' But some of the people repeated verses by Raftery and
+Callinan and Sweeny, and some told stories of the kingdom of the Sidhe.
+
+I spent three happy afternoons in a workhouse in my own county, but not
+in my own parish; and after we had spoken of the Fianna for a while, the
+old men began to tell me these long, rambling stories I am about to
+repeat.
+
+We sat in a gravelled yard, where only the leaves of a few young
+sycamores told that spring had come. Some of the old men sat on a bench
+against the whitewashed wall of a shed, in their rough frieze clothes
+and round grey caps, and others stood round, pressing closer and closer
+as their interest in the story grew.
+
+Some of the stories were new to me; some I had heard in other versions;
+but all--even those like the 'Taming of the Shrew,' which have, one must
+believe, been brought in from other countries--have taken an Irish
+colouring. I began to listen, half interested and half impatient; for I
+had never cared much for this particular kind of tale.
+
+But as I listened, I was moved by the strange contrast between the
+poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tales. These men who
+had failed in life, and were old and withered, or sickly, or crippled,
+had not laid up dreams of good houses and fields and sheep and cattle;
+for they had never possessed enough to think of the possession of more
+as a possibility. It seemed as if their lives had been so poor and rigid
+in circumstance that they did not fix their minds, as more prosperous
+people might do, on thoughts of customary pleasure. The stories that
+they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings'
+daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and lovers'
+flights on the backs of eagles, and music-loving water-witches, and
+journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for seven hundred
+years.
+
+I think it has always been to such poor people, with little of wealth or
+comfort to keep their thoughts bound to the things about them, that
+dreams and visions have been given. It is from a deep narrow well the
+stars can be seen at noonday; it was one left on a bare rocky island who
+saw the pearl gates and the golden streets that lead to the Tree of
+Life.
+
+One of the old men told me a story in Irish--another translating it as
+he went on; for my ear was not practised enough to follow it
+well:--'There was a farmer one time had one son only, and the son died,
+and the father wouldn't go to the funeral, where he had had some dispute
+with him.
+
+'And, after a while, a neighbour died, and he went to his funeral. And a
+while after that he was in the churchyard looking at the grave. And he
+took up a skull that was lying there--one of four--and he said: "It's a
+handsome man you may have been when you were young; and I'd like to know
+something about you," he said. And the skull spoke, and it is what it
+said: "I'll go spend to-morrow night with you, if you'll come and spend
+another night with me." "I will do that," said the farmer.
+
+'And on the way home he met with the priest, and he told him what had
+happened. "I would never believe that a skull spoke," said the priest.
+"Come to my house to-morrow night, and you'll hear him speak," said the
+farmer.
+
+'So the next night they were sitting together in the house, and they had
+dinner set out on the table. And after a while they heard something
+come to the door; and the skull came in, and it got up on the table, and
+it ate all the dinner that was there; and after that it went out again.
+"Why didn't you speak to it?" said the farmer to the priest. "Why didn't
+you speak to it yourself?" said the priest. "What will it do to me at
+all when I go to see it to-morrow night?" said the farmer; "but I must
+hold to my promise when it came here first."
+
+'So the next evening he set out for the churchyard, and he could see
+nothing at all in it. And then he went down three steps that were beside
+the church; and presently he was in a field, and it full of men fighting
+one against the other with spades and reaping-hooks. "Is it looking for
+a head you are?" they said; "it's gone into that field beyond."
+
+'So he went on into the other field; and it was full of men and women,
+all of them fighting one against the other. "Are you looking for a
+head?" they said; "it's after going into that field beyond."
+
+'So he went into the third field; and there he saw a big house, and he
+went into it. And he saw a fire on the hearth, and a lady in the room,
+and a serving-girl. And the lady was walking up and down the room; and
+whenever she would go near to the fire to warm herself, the serving-girl
+would put her away from it.
+
+'Then they said: "If it's for a head you're looking, it's within in the
+room."
+
+'So he went into the room; and the head was there before him, and it
+asked him would he have some dinner; and he said he would, and it
+brought him into a kitchen; and there were three women in it, and the
+head bade one of them to give the man his dinner; and what she put
+before him was a bit of brown bread and a jug of water, and he did not
+think it worth his while to eat that; and then the head bade the second
+woman to give him his dinner, and she gave him a worse dinner again; and
+then the third woman was told to give it to him, and she spread a nice
+table, and put the best of everything on it, and he ate and drank; and
+then he asked the head what was the meaning of all he saw.
+
+'And the head said: "The men you saw in the first field used to be
+fighting when they were in life, because they had land near to one
+another, and they used to be for moving the merings, and now they have
+to be fighting with one another for ever and always. And the men and the
+women you saw, they were married people that used to be fighting with
+one another, and they must go on fighting for ever now. And the lady you
+saw in the house, when she was in life, she usedn't to let the
+serving-girl near to the fire when she would come in wet and cold, and
+would want to warm herself; and now the serving-girl is doing the same
+to her, and that will go on to the Day of Judgment.
+
+'"And as to the three women in the kitchen," he said, "those were my own
+three wives. And when I asked the first wife for my dinner, she gave me
+nothing but brown bread and a jug of water. And when I asked the second
+wife for my dinner, she gave me a worse dinner again. But the third wife
+when I asked her, set out a grand table, and a white cloth on it, and
+gave me the best of food and drink.
+
+'"And as for yourself," he said, "the reason you were brought here is,
+that you wouldn't go to your son's funeral, because you had a falling
+out one day when you were ploughing the field together, but you went to
+a stranger's funeral. And go back now," he said, "to where your son was
+buried, and make your repentance there, and maybe you'll get forgiveness
+at the last. And how long is it since you left your home?" he said. "I
+left it on the afternoon of yesterday," said the farmer. "It is seven
+hundred years you are here," said the head. Isn't that a long time he
+was in it, and he thinking it was only a few hours?
+
+'So he went back to where his own son was buried; and he knelt down
+there, and made his repentance, and asked forgiveness and his son's
+forgiveness. And at last a hand came up out of the grave and took his
+hand; and then he and the son went up to heaven together.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man says: 'There was a Protestant and a Catholic one time;
+and the Protestant said if the Catholic would come to his church one
+Sunday, he'd go to his the next.
+
+'So the Catholic went first to the Protestant church for one day, and
+it seemed to him as if it was a week he was in it.
+
+'And the next Sunday the Protestant went into the Catholic church; and
+there he stopped for a year and a day, and he thought it was only a few
+hours he was in it.
+
+'And at the end of that time he died, and he went up before our Lord.
+And he had done some things that were not good in his life, and our Lord
+said: "I will give you as many years of heaven as there are penfuls of
+water in the sea, and hell at the end of that." "That is not enough of
+heaven," said the man. Then our Lord said: "I will give you as many
+years of heaven as there are grains in the sand, and hell after that."
+"That is not enough of heaven," said the man. Then our Lord said: "I
+will give you as many years of heaven as there are blades of grass on
+the earth, and hell after that." "That is not enough of heaven," said
+the man. "And I will ask you for this," he said; "give me a year of hell
+for all these things you have spoken of: the drops in the sea, and the
+blades of grass, and the grains of the sand, and give me heaven in the
+end."
+
+'And when the Lord heard that, He said, "I will give you heaven first
+and last."
+
+'That is how the Catholic had him saved.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man says: 'There was a king one time that had a daughter;
+and she went out one day in the garden, and there she saw a bird--a
+jackdaw it was--and she thought it very nice, and she followed it on.
+And at last it spoke to her, and it said: "Will you give me your promise
+to marry me at the end of a year and a day?" "I will not," she said; and
+she went into the house again.
+
+'After that the king's younger daughter went out, and she saw the bird
+and followed it, and it asked her the same thing. And she gave her
+promise to marry it at the end of a year and a day.
+
+'And at the end of that time a great coach and horses came up to the
+door of the king's house; and the jackdaw came in, and he took the edge
+of the young girl's dress in his beak to draw her out of the house. And
+she went away in the carriage with him, and they came to a sort of a
+castle, and went into it. And there was no one in it; but no sooner did
+they come in, than there was a table set out before them, with every
+sort of food and drink, and beautiful gold cups and everything grand.
+And when they had eaten enough, the bird said, "Don't be frightened at
+anything you may see; and whatever happens, don't say one word; for if
+you do, you will lose me for ever."
+
+'And then some sort of people came in, and began hitting at the bird and
+attacking him, and he keeping out of their way. And at last they got to
+him, and began to knock feathers from him. And when the young girl saw
+that, she cried out, "Oh, they are destroying you, my poor jackdaw!"
+"Oh!" he said, "why did you say that? If you had not spoken," he said:
+"I would be all right; but now I must leave you for ever. And here is a
+ring I will leave with you," he said: "and whatever desire you have, you
+will get it when you rub the ring."
+
+'He went away then, and there was no one left in the house but the young
+girl; and all was darkness around her. And she went up the stairs; and
+at last she saw a little sign of light through a hole in the roof; and
+she rubbed the ring, and she said: "I wish that hole to be made bigger."
+And so it was on the moment, and more light came in.
+
+'And then she wished she could be up on the roof, and so she was. And
+from the roof she could see the sea, and there was a ship on it in the
+distance; and she said: "I wish I could be on the deck of that vessel."
+And there she was on the deck, and the sailors not knowing where did she
+come from. And she said to the captain: "Can you give me something to
+eat?" And he said: "That is what I cannot do, for the harness casks are
+empty, we are so long at sea; and we have not as much meat in them as
+would go on the point of a knife." So she rubbed the ring then; and
+there was a table before them, set out with every sort of food and
+drink, and they all had enough.
+
+'And then they came to a strange country; and she said to the captain to
+leave her on land. And she went up to a big house, where some great man
+lived, and she asked for employment as a sewing-maid. And they said:
+"You may sew one of those dresses that is for the master's daughter
+that is going to be married to-morrow. And mind you do it well," they
+said.
+
+'So she brought away the dress to her room, and she wished it to be the
+best dress, and the best-sewed, that would be seen on the morrow. And
+when the morrow came, so it was.
+
+'Then she went out into the garden, where there were beautiful flowers
+and trees; and she fastened a thread of silk from one tree to another,
+to make a swing-swong, and she began swinging on it. And the young lady
+that was going to be married, came down the steps into the garden, and
+she wanted to go on the swing-swong. And the other said she had best not
+go on it where she was not used to it, and she might get a fall. But she
+said she would; and the other warned her secondly not to go on it. But
+up she got, and the thread broke, and she fell and was killed on the
+spot.
+
+'Then all the people came out; and when they saw her dead, they had a
+court-martial on the strange girl, and they were going to put her to
+death; but she told them how it all happened. And when the jury heard
+it, they said there was no blame on her, where she had given two
+warnings.
+
+'That's a closure now.'
+
+'And what happened her after that?'
+
+'I don't know what happened her; they let her off that time anyhow.'
+
+'And what became of the bird?'
+
+'How would I know? Didn't I say that's the closure?'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then a young man said: 'I'll tell you a folk-tale:--
+
+'It was in the good old time when Ireland was paved with penny loaves
+and the houses thatched with pancakes; and there was a king had a son,
+and the mother died, and he married another wife; and she had three
+daughters, and their names were Catherine Snowflake, and Broad Bridget,
+and Mary Anne Bold-eyes, that had two eyes in the front of her head, and
+another eye in the back of her poll.
+
+'And the stepmother got to be very wicked to the son then; and she used
+to be giving everything to the daughters; but he had nothing but
+hardship, and all they would give him to eat was stirabout.
+
+'He was out on the fields one day with the cattle, and there was a
+little Black Bull there, and it said to him: "I know the way you are
+treated," it said, "and the sort of food they are giving you. And
+unscrew now my left horn," he said, "and take what you will find out of
+it."
+
+'So the young man unscrewed the left horn; and the first thing he took
+out was a napkin, and he spread it out on the grass; and then he took
+out cups and plates, and every sort of food, and he sat down and ate and
+drank his fill. And then he put back the napkin and all into the horn
+again, and screwed it on.
+
+'That was going on every day, and he used to be throwing his stirabout
+away into the ash-bin; and the servants found it, and they told the
+queen that he was throwing away what they gave him, and getting fat all
+the same.
+
+'The queen noticed then that he used to be going every day into the
+field with the cattle; and she bade her daughter, Catherine Snowflake,
+to go and to watch him there to see what would he be doing.
+
+'But that day when he went up to the little Black Bull, it said: "Your
+step-sister will be coming to-day to watch you," he said: "and unscrew
+now my right horn, and take out a pin of slumber you will find under it,
+and when you see her coming, go and play with her for a bit, and then
+put the pin of slumber to her ear, and she will fall asleep." So he did
+as the Bull told him; and when he put the pin of slumber to Catherine
+Snowflake's ear, she fell into a deep sleep in the grass, and never woke
+till evening.
+
+'The next day the queen sent Broad Bridget, that was a great big woman,
+to watch the step-brother; but the Bull warned him as before; and he put
+the pin of slumber to her ear, and she fell into a deep sleep, and saw
+nothing.
+
+'The third day Mary Anne Bold-eyes was sent out, and the brother put her
+to sleep the same as he did the others. But if the two front eyes were
+shut, the eye at the back of her poll was open; and she saw all that
+happened, and she went back that evening and told her mother the way her
+step-brother got all he would want out of the Bull's horn.
+
+'The queen sent out then and gathered all her fighting men together to
+kill the Bull. And they all surrounded the field where the Bull was; but
+there were two or three hundred more cattle in it; and the Bull was
+running here and there between them, the way they could not get near
+him. And at the end of the second day he made for a gap and broke
+through it, and came to where the queen was, and he took her on his
+horns and tossed her as high as her own castle. He called to Jack then;
+and Jack put a halter on him, and they rode away together where winds
+never blew and the cocks never crew, and the old boy himself never
+sounded his horn. And they overtook the wind that was before them, and
+the wind that was after them couldn't overtake them.
+
+'They came then to a great wood, and the Black Bull said to Jack: "Get
+up, now, into the highest tree you can find, and stop there through the
+day, for I have to fight with the Red Bull that is coming against me.
+And unscrew my right horn," he said; "and take out the little bottle
+that is in it, and keep it with you; and if I am well at the end of the
+day," he said, "it will be white as it is now."
+
+'The Red Bull came to meet him then, and his head was as big as
+another's body would be; and he and the little Black Bull went to fight
+together; and Jack stopped up in the tree.
+
+'And in the evening he looked at the little bottle; and what was in it
+was as white as before. So he came down, and he found the Black Bull,
+and got up on his back again; and they went off the same as before.
+
+'They came then to the wood where the White Bull was, and he came out to
+fight the Black; and all happened the same as the first day.
+
+'And Jack came down from his tree and got on his back again; and they
+went on to another wood. And the Green Bull came to meet him this time;
+and Jack went up in a tree. And at evening he looked at the little
+bottle, and it was red up to the cork.
+
+'He got down then, and went to look for the little Black Bull, and he
+found him lying on the ground at the point of death; and the Green Bull
+gave a great bellow, and made away and left him there.
+
+'And the Black Bull said: "I am going from you now, Jack; but I won't go
+without leaving you something," he said. "When I am dead, cut three
+strips of hide off me from the nape of the neck to the root of the tail,
+and put them about your body; and they'll give you the strength of six
+hundred men."'
+
+Jack had many adventures after this; he killed three giants, rescued a
+princess from a dragon, and married her. These were told with dramatic
+effect; and the other men, young and old, who had gathered round the
+teller, cried out at each new splendid adventure: 'Good boy, Peter;
+that's it; bring it out.' And the last words, telling how Jack and his
+Princess 'put on the kettle and made the tea,' were drowned in applause
+and laughter, and clapping of hands.
+
+But I had already heard that part of the story, in almost the same
+words, in Gort Workhouse; and had given it to Mr. Yeats for his 'Celtic
+Twilight,' so I need not put it down here.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then an old man said: 'There was a young man one time was out hunting;
+and as he was going home, he heard the cry of a child beside a sand-pit.
+And he got off his horse to look what was it; and it was a young little
+child was there, a girl. And he took her up on the horse and wrapped her
+up, and brought her home to his mother. And they reared her up, and she
+grew to be a beautiful young girl; and the young man thought the world
+and all of her.
+
+'But he got some sickness and died. And the mother was fretting for him
+always; and she shut up his room and locked it, that no one could go in.
+And she did not like to be looking at the young girl, because of the son
+being so fond of her; and she looked for a way to get rid of her.
+
+'So she sent her out on a message into a wood that had wild beasts in
+it, and she thought they would make an end of her. And the girl went
+astray there, and lay down and slept for the night. And the beasts came
+and lay down beside her, and did her no harm at all. And there she was
+found in the morning, asleep among them.
+
+'Then the mother thought of another way to get rid of her; and she bade
+her to go to the son's grave and to spend the night there. So she went
+as she was told; and she was crying on the grass. And then the young
+man came up out of it, and it is what he said: "My mother thought I
+would harm you if you came here, but I will not harm you; I will help
+you. And take these three gray hairs from my head," he said, "and bring
+them back with you. And for every one of them my mother will have to
+grant you a request. And it is what you will ask her, to open my room
+that she has locked up for a day and a night. And at the end of a year,
+you will ask the same thing of her, and again at the end of another
+year."
+
+'So the girl went back, and she asked to have the door opened, and she
+went in and stopped there for a day and a night. And at the end of the
+year she did the same, and again at the end of the third year.
+
+'And after a while the mother said one day: "I wonder what she wanted in
+that room, and what she was doing in it." And she opened the door, and
+there she saw a fire on the hearth, and the girl sitting one side of it,
+and a child in her lap, and the son sitting the other side, and two
+children in his lap. For she had brought him back from the grave.
+
+'And the son said: "What is wanting to me now is someone that will go
+and spend seven years in hell for my sake, to save my soul." "I will do
+that for you," said the mother. "It would be no use you going," he said.
+"I will do it," said the girl.
+
+'So he said she might go; and he gave a spoon that would give her drink,
+and a ring that would give her food, so long as she would keep them.
+
+'So she went down to hell, and she stopped there seven years; and
+through all that time she got no rest, only on Sundays.
+
+'And at the end of the seven years, she was going out, and she heard a
+voice saying: "Will you stop another seven years to save your father's
+soul?" "I will do that," she said. "Do not," they said; "for your father
+gave you no care, and did nothing for you." "No matter," she said; "I
+will give another seven years to save his soul."
+
+'And at the end of the second seven years she was going out; and her
+mother, that had done nothing for her, asked her to stop another seven
+years for her soul; and she did that. And at the end of the twenty-one
+years, they gave her the three souls in a napkin, and she went out.
+
+'And as she was going home, she met with an old man, and he said: "Give
+me what you have there." "Who are you?" "I am Almighty God," he said. "I
+will not give them to you," said the girl. And after a little time she
+met with another old man, and he said: "Give me what you have there."
+"Who are you?" she said. "I am Jesus Christ." "I will not give them to
+you;" and she went on. Then the third time she met with an old man, and
+he asked for what she had in the napkin. "Who are you?" she asked. "I am
+the King of Sunday." "Then I will give them to you," she said; "for in
+all the twenty-one years I went through, I got no rest at all but on the
+Sunday."
+
+'She went home then; and at first they didn't know her, where she was so
+long away; and when the children came down to see her in the kitchen,
+they didn't know her.
+
+'But when the man of the house knew she was in it, he went down and gave
+her a great welcome back to himself and the children again.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then another old man said: 'There was a king that used to make rules and
+to break rules, and that was very cunning; and he wanted to get a good
+wife for his son. So he sent him out one day to look for a girl that he
+would fancy, and he brought one in. And the old king showed her a whole
+lot of gold and of treasures; and he said: "What would you do if all
+this was yours?" "I would sit down and do nothing else but enjoy it,"
+she said.
+
+'So the king said to his son that she wouldn't suit, and that he should
+go look for another girl, rich or poor. So he brought in a poor girl;
+and the king showed her the treasure, and he said: "What would you do if
+all this belonged to you?" And she said: "Whenever I would take a
+sovereign out of it, I would try to put back two."
+
+'So he said she would do, and that the son might marry her. But the girl
+said: "I will be well treated while you are in it; but some day you
+might be gone, and my husband mightn't treat me so well. And make him
+give me his promise now," she said, "that if ever he turns me out of the
+house, I may bring three ass-loads of whatever I myself will choose
+along with me." So he gave her his promise she might do that.
+
+'Then the old king died; and the young one was, like himself, a
+law-maker and a law-breaker. And he thought a great deal of his own
+wisdom, and of the judgments he would give.
+
+'Now, at that time there was a man had a mare that had a foal in a
+field; and in the field next it there was an old _garran_; and there was
+a little stream that made the mering between the two fields. And the
+foal took a habit of crossing over the stream to the other field where
+the _garran_ was; and it got to be so friendly with him, and so fond of
+him, that at last it was hardly it would come back at all. And the man
+the other field belonged to laid a claim to it, where it was always in
+his ground.
+
+'So the case was brought before the king; and he thought a long time,
+and at last he said to put the foal in a house that had two doors, one
+on each side, and to put the _garran_ outside one door and the mare
+outside the other, and to see which would the foal follow. And they did
+that, and the foal followed the _garran_, and it was given to the owner.
+
+'And the man it was taken from was vexed; and he went to the queen, and
+he told the injustice that was done to him. And she bade him to get a
+fishing-rod, and to go fishing in the river; and when the king would go
+by, to turn and to be fishing on the dry land.
+
+'So he did that; and when the king was coming by, he turned and began
+fishing on the dry land. And the king stopped and asked why was he doing
+that. And the answer he gave was: "I think it no more foolish to be
+fishing on dry land than to believe that a foal would belong to a
+_garran_."
+
+'When the king heard that, he guessed it was his own wife had given the
+answer to the man; and he went back and asked was it true she had put
+the man up to do what he had done. "It is true," she said. "Then you may
+clear out of this," he said, "and go back to your own place; for I won't
+keep a wife in the house that will be upsetting my judgments." "I must
+go if you bid me to," she said; "but do you remember your promise to me,
+to bring away three ass-loads with me of whatever I would choose?" "You
+may do that," he said. So she got the three asses, and on the first she
+put her clothes and some money. And on the second she put her two
+children. And then she came back to her husband and stooped down before
+him. "Get up on my back," she said, "till I put you on the ass, for it
+is yourself I choose to bring along with me for my third load. So long
+as I have you and the children with me, what do I care where I go?" "If
+that is so," said the king, "you may as well bring in your things again
+and stop with me. And I will never drive you away again," he said.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another man said: 'There was a man in Ballinasloe Asylum that was not
+very mad--just a little mad--and he used to be raking about the gate.
+And there was a clock over the gate; and one day the doctor was going
+out, and he took his watch out and looked up, and he said to himself,
+"That clock is not right." "If it was right, it wouldn't be in here,"
+said the man that was raking.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'I have a sorrowful story,' says another man. 'I am blind, and I hurt my
+hip. And I have a brother fighting for the Queen and for the King, and a
+son fighting against the Boers, and neither of them ever sent me
+anything.' (But this was received without much sympathy, and with what I
+imagine to represent derisive cheers.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A very wild-looking man told 'on behalf of a poor man inside'--to get
+him a bit of tobacco--a long story about a farmer who worked hard
+himself, to give his sons time for schooling.
+
+'One of them made money in the West Indies by teaching, and he came
+back; and his mother was in the house, and she didn't know him; and he
+asked might he stop the night. "Indeed, I can't give you leave to do
+that," she said; "for a travelling man stopped for a night not long ago;
+and when he went away in the morning, he brought with him the flannel
+bawneen and the pants of the man of the house, that were hanging on the
+hedge to dry. But stop here for a while," she said, "and rest yourself."
+
+'Presently the father came in, and didn't know him; and when he heard
+what the wife had said, he was vexed, and said: "A thousand men might
+come the road, and not one of them do what that travelling man did. And
+I am sorry, sir," he said, "that my wife gave you such a reason."
+
+'Then the potatoes were ready, and they were put on a skip for the
+dinner; and they asked the gentleman to help himself; and they gave him
+a knife but it had but half a blade; and they said they were sorry to
+have no better a one to give him. But he peeled his potatoes with that.
+
+'And then some one came in and asked would the young people come in and
+join a dance, for there was a piper in the next house. And the stranger
+asked to go with them. But at every dance-house there is a blackguard,
+and there was one there; and he began to mock at the strange gentleman.
+And one of his brothers that didn't know he was his brother, said to the
+blackguard: "It's a very mean thing of you to mock at a stranger." But
+he went on doing it.
+
+'Then the stranger got up and went over to where his sister was, and
+slipped a letter into her apron that told who he was. And then he
+quenched the dip-candle over her, that was lighting the house, and he
+made for the man that mocked him, and gave him a blow that sent him into
+the hearth, and then he made away.
+
+'And it was a long time before they could find the candle; and when it
+was lighted, the man was found dead on the hearth. And the sister read
+the letter; but she did not tell it was her own brother had come home.
+
+'But after that he got a good place in the West Indies, and sent for
+them all there.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then an old man said: 'I was minding a man in the hospital one time, and
+he was lying quiet in the bed; and the priest came in to see him, Father
+Kearns. And all of a sudden he made one leap, and was out of the bed,
+and bade the priest to be off out of that. And the priest made for the
+door; and I stood in the way of the man till he got out; and then I got
+out myself, and shut the door. He was brought away to Ballinasloe Asylum
+after. But if it wasn't for me, Father Kearns wouldn't have got safe
+out.
+
+'That's my story.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first old man said: 'There was a man one time went to the market to
+sell a cow; and he sold her, and he took a drop of drink after; and
+instead of going home, he went into a sort of a barn where there was
+straw stored, and he fell asleep there.
+
+'And in the night some men came in, and he heard them talking. And they
+had a lot of silver plate with them, they were after stealing from some
+house in the town, and they were hiding it in the straw till they would
+come and bring it away again.
+
+'And he said nothing, and kept quiet till morning; and then he went out;
+and the people in the town were talking of nothing else but the great
+robbery of silver plate in the night. And no one knew who had done it;
+and the man came forward, and told them where the silver plate was, and
+who the men were that stole it; and the things were found, and the men
+convicted. But he did not let on how he had come to know it, or that he
+had slept in the barn.
+
+'So he got a great name; and when he went home, his landlord heard of
+it; and he sent for him, and he said: "I am missing things this good
+while, and the last thing I lost was a diamond ring. Tell me who was it
+stole that," he said. "I can't tell you," said the man. "Well," said the
+landlord, "I will lock you up in a room for three days; and if you can't
+tell me by the end of that time who stole the ring, I'll put you to
+death."
+
+'So he was locked up; and in the evening the butler brought him in his
+supper. And when he saw evening was come, he said: "There's one of
+them," meaning there was one of the three days gone.
+
+'But the butler went down stairs in a great fright; for he was one of
+the servants that had stolen the ring, and he said to the others: "He
+knew me, and he said, 'There's one of them.' And I won't go near him
+again," he said; "but let one of you go."
+
+'So the next evening the cook went up with the supper, and when she came
+in, he said the same way as before: "There's two of them," meaning there
+was another day gone. And the cook went down like the butler had gone,
+making sure he knew that she had a share in the robbery.
+
+'The next day the third of the servants--that was the housemaid--brought
+him his supper; and he gave a great sigh, and said: "There's the third
+of them." So she went down and told the others; and they agreed it was
+best to make a confession to him; and they went and told him of their
+robberies; and they brought him the diamond ring; and they asked him to
+try and screen them some way; so he said he would do his best for them,
+and he said: "I see a big turkey-gobbler out in the yard; and what you
+had best do is to open his mouth," he said, "and to force the ring down
+it."
+
+'So they did that. And then the landlord came up and asked could he tell
+him where the thief was to be found. "Kill that turkey-gobbler in the
+yard," he said, "and see what can you find in him." So they killed the
+turkey-gobbler, and cut him open, and there they found the diamond ring.
+
+'Then the landlord gave him great rewards, and everyone in the country
+heard of him.
+
+'And a neighbouring gentleman that heard of him said to the landlord:
+"I'll make a bet with you that if you bring him to dinner at my house,
+he won't be able to tell what is under a cover on the table." So the
+landlord brought him; and when he was brought in, they asked him what
+was in the dish with the cover; and he thought he was done for, and he
+said: "The fox is caught at last." And what was under the cover but a
+fox! So whatever name he had before, he got a three times greater name
+now.
+
+'But another gentleman made the same bet with the landlord; and when
+they came into the dinner, there was a dish with a cover, and the man
+had no notion what was under it; and he said: "Robin's done this
+time"--his own name being Robin. And what was there under the cover but
+a robin! So he got great rewards after that, and he settled down and
+lived happy ever after.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then a red-faced young man said: 'There was a young man one time, and
+his name was Stepney St. George, and his people said it was time for him
+to get married; and they brought twelve young ladies to stop in the
+house, the way he would make a choice among them. And he used to be
+talking with them and walking in the garden; and there was one of them
+he got to like better than the rest, and the others got jealous of her,
+and used to be picking at her. And when Stepney saw that, he brought her
+out one day into a field where there was a bull, and he covered with
+rings and bells of gold, and a golden door in his side. And he opened
+the door and bade her to go in there, where she would be safe from the
+other eleven women.
+
+'So she went in and he shut the door; and the others did not know where
+was she gone, and they were looking for her in every place. And they
+came to where the bull was; and they began looking at him and touching
+him, and just by chance one of them touched a bell, and the door opened,
+and there was the young lady inside. And they took her out, and brought
+her into the house; and she was sitting on the window-seat looking out
+at the river. And they pushed her over, and she fell into the water and
+was swept away.
+
+'As to Stepney St. George, he was looking for her everywhere, but he
+could not find her. And one day he saw a poor travelling woman trying to
+cross the river, and she fell into it. And he thought it might be that
+way his own young lady was lost.
+
+'And that put it in his mind to build a bridge across the river, and he
+got all the men that could be got, and they set to work. And they had a
+good bit of it made before night. But in the night all they had made of
+it was swept away. And the next day they were building again, and they
+sat up to watch it that night. But all the same it was all gone before
+morning, and they did not see anyone near it.
+
+'The third night, Stepney St. George himself sat up to watch. And at
+last he saw a great black eagle, and it came flying towards the bridge;
+and, when it saw him, it called out: "What are you doing building this
+bridge to be in my way? I swept it away the last two nights, and I'll
+sweep it away again now." "If you do, I'll get satisfaction from you,"
+said Stepney. "You will have to find me for that," she said. "And my
+name is Mother Longfield, and my house is at the other end of the
+world." And with that she went away; and Stepney followed everywhere
+looking for her; and at last he came to a house, and an old witch came
+out, and she told him her name was Mother Longfield. "And I've got you
+here now in my power," she said, "and you will have to do all the work I
+will give you to do."
+
+'So she brought him out then to a stable; and she gave him a fork, and
+bade him clear out all the dung and litter that was in it. So he began
+the work; but for every forkful he would throw out, two would come in
+its place, so that at last there was no room for him in the stable, and
+he had to go outside.
+
+'A young girl came up to him then, and she asked what was the matter.
+And he told her all that had happened; and she said, "I will help you."
+So she took out a little fork, and she went into the stable; and it
+wasn't long before she had it sweet and clean, that you could eat your
+dinner off the floor.
+
+'He went back then to the house, and the witch was at the door, and she
+asked how did he get on. "Very well," he said. "I have the whole stable
+cleaned out, sweet and clean." She looked very sharp at him then; and
+she said: "Take care did Lanka Pera help you?" But he let on not to hear
+her, and made no answer.
+
+'The next day she gave him a hatchet that was as blunt as a blunt knife;
+and she told him there was a forest he should cut down before night, or
+she would make an end of him. So he went to the forest and began to cut;
+but as he cut, it grew thicker and thicker, and the trees that were
+saplings in the morning were large trees before afternoon. So when he
+saw there was no use going on, he stopped. And then he saw the young
+girl again, and she said: "I am come to help you." And she took out a
+small hatchet, and began to cut, and before long the whole forest was
+levelled down.
+
+'He went back to the house whistling and singing; and he told the witch
+he had cut down the forest, and she asked did Lanka Pera help him. But
+he said she did not--for she had told him not to let on he had seen her
+at all.
+
+'The third day the witch showed him a hill a good way off, and a wild
+horse on it; and she said what he had to do was to catch the horse, and
+if he did not do that, it was his last day to live.
+
+'So he began hunting the horse, and trying to catch it; but he could
+never get near it at all. Then the girl came to him, and she said: "You
+will never be able to catch it without my help. And I will turn myself
+into a mare," she said; "and you can get on my back. But remember," she
+said, "not to put the spurs into me whatever may happen." She turned
+herself into a mare then, and he got on her back. And the old witch came
+out then and she called to Stepney: "Don't spare the spurs."
+
+'They galloped off then after the wild horse, but they never could come
+up with it. And at last, in the heat of the race, Stepney forgot what
+the girl had said, and he pressed the spurs into the side of the mare
+till the blood came down.'
+
+('Oh murder!' and a groan of pity from all the old men.)
+
+'Then the mare fell, and the mare was gone; and it was the girl he saw
+before him, and her sides bleeding. And it is then he knew she was the
+young girl had been stolen from him at his own place after he shutting
+her up in the bull.
+
+'She went then and called to the wild horse, and he came to her; and
+they both of them got up on him, and they went back to the witch's
+house. And when they got near it, the girl got up and turned herself
+into a mare again. And the witch came out to meet them, and she said: "I
+see you didn't spare the spur."
+
+'And the witch said Stepney might have the girl if he could choose her
+out of thirteen. And he did that. And the witch wanted to keep her from
+him yet, but he wouldn't give her up; and he brought her to a house that
+was close by; and they made a plan to escape in the night; and they made
+the two horses ready to bring them away. And the girl made two cakes;
+and she left them with some of the servants, and she said: "The witch
+will be coming in to watch us for the night, and she will ask for a
+story; and stick a knife into one of the cakes when she asks that," she
+said.
+
+'So they made off then by the back door; and the witch came to watch the
+house; and she said to the maid: "Tell me a story now while I'm
+waiting." So she stuck a knife in one of the cakes, and it began to
+tell a story; and the witch sat there listening to it.
+
+'And when it was done, she asked for another story; and the maid stuck a
+knife in another of the cakes, and it began to tell a story. And when
+that was done, the witch asked for another story, and the maid stuck a
+knife in the third cake, and it is what it said: "The two you think you
+are watching are off, and are on the way back to their own home."
+
+'When the witch heard that, she took the shape of an eagle on her; and
+she flew out after them, and she came in sight of them. And they looked
+back, and saw her coming like a big black cloud in the air; and the girl
+said to Stepney: "Take the bit of wood you'll find in the horse's ear,
+and throw it behind you." And he did that, and a great forest grew up
+behind them; and it is hardly the eagle could fly over it.
+
+'Then they saw her coming again; and the girl said: "Take the drop of
+water you will find in the horse's other ear, and throw it down behind
+you." And when he did that, there was a great sea behind them; and the
+eagle found it hard to pass it, but it did at last.
+
+'And when she was coming up with them again, the girl took a bit of
+stone was in her own horse's ear, and threw it behind them. And a great
+mountain rose up, that kept back the eagle for a time. And then she took
+a brass ball out of the other ear, and she gave it to Stepney; and bade
+him to throw it at a white mole that was on the eagle's breast. So he
+made a shot with it, and hit the eagle, and it fell dead there and then.
+
+'Then the girl said to Stepney: "There is no danger now between us and
+home. But have a care," she said, "when you get home not to let a dog
+touch your face in any way, or you will forget me and all that has
+happened."
+
+'So he said he would remember that. But when he got home and sat down in
+the house, his little lap-dog jumped up on him and licked his face. And
+on the moment he forgot all that had happened, and the girl he had
+brought home.
+
+'And after a while he was going to be married to another lady, and all
+was ready for the wedding; and a poor-looking girl came to the door. And
+the servants bade her to go away, for the grand people in the house
+would not want her. "I think I have something would amuse them," she
+said. "I have a cock and a hen that can talk the same as living people."
+
+'So when the company heard that, they sent for her; and she went up, and
+she put out the cock and the hen on the table, and she threw down a few
+grains of oats; and when the hen was going to pick at it, the cock drove
+her away. And the hen said then: "You should not do that, after the way
+I helped you, cleaning out the stable you were not able to clean by
+yourself." But Stepney took no notice of what she was saying.
+
+'Then she threw a little more oats, and the cock was taking it all for
+himself. And the hen said again: "You should not do that, when you
+remember how I helped you to cut down the forest." But still Stepney
+took no notice of what was being said. Then she threw a little more
+oats, and the cock was shoving the hen away, and the hen said: "You
+would not have treated me this way the time I caught the horse for you,
+after you driving the spurs into my side."
+
+'And with that Stepney remembered all; and he jumped up, and drove all
+the others away, and took her for his wife, and they lived happy ever
+after.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man said: 'There was a mouse one time said to a robin, that
+they would lay up a store of provisions together against the winter. And
+he bade the robin to go up in the hedges and to be picking berries, and
+he would have the hole ready to put them in. And then he said: "Let you
+go to where they are threshing wheat; for if they saw me there, they
+would kill me; but if they see you, they'll be throwing grains to you."
+
+'So the robin went and brought back the grains; and when the hole was
+full, the mouse said: "I have enough for myself now, and go and look
+after your own house-keeping for the winter."
+
+'So the robin was vexed; and they agreed to go fight it out. And when
+the day came, all the animals came together, and all the birds of the
+air. And the place they fought was in a field before a big house. And
+they fought till all were dead but one eagle.
+
+'And the young man of the house came out and looked at the field; and he
+saw the eagle moving, and it said to him: "Go in now, and bring me out
+three sheaves of wheat." So he did that; and the eagle nicked the grain
+off two of the sheaves, and then he was strong. And he said: "I will
+bring you now on a voyage if you will come with me. But go in first to
+the house and bring me out a bit of yellow soap." So he got the bit of
+soap; and the eagle took him and the soap and the sheaf on its back, and
+flew away. And at last it began to get tired and to droop; and the place
+where it dropped was in the middle of the sea. And the young man said:
+"I don't like this, to be left down into the sea." Then the eagle bade
+him to throw away the bit of yellow soap, and where he threw it there
+came a green island. And they rested on it, and eat the grain from the
+sheaf they had with them.
+
+'Then the eagle took him up again; and when they came to land, it threw
+him down. And there was a house near, and a giant came out of it; and he
+brought him in, and said to his servant: "Give him barley bread to
+fatten him, and when he is fat enough, I will eat him."'
+
+(Then he was given tasks to do, and a girl came to help him, much as
+Lanka Pera helped Stepney St. George in the other story.)
+
+'And afterwards the girl said to him that they would make their escape;
+and they got into a boat; and what she brought with her was the three
+young pups of the dog that minded the giant's house.
+
+'And when they had gone a little way on the sea, the giant missed them;
+and he sent the dog after them to bring the girl back. But as soon as
+the dog came close to them, and opened its mouth to take hold of her,
+she put one of the pups into it, and it turned back to the shore again
+to bring the pup safe to land. And the giant was very angry when he saw
+it coming without the girl, and he sent it after them again. And the
+girl did the same thing as before, and put the second pup into its
+mouth, that it turned back again. And the giant sent it back the third
+time, and gave it great abuse for coming to shore without her. And the
+third time she dropped the pup into the water, for she was vexed, the
+dog to come so often. And the dog would not pick it up at first, for he
+was afraid to pick it up again after all the abuse he got from the
+giant. But when he saw it going to drown, he took it up and turned back,
+and they were free of him then.
+
+'And they came to land; and the young man left the girl down by a
+shoemaker's house while he went on to make all ready for her at his own
+house. But she bade him not to let a dog lick his face or touch it, or
+he would forget all about her. But when he went in, his dog jumped up
+and licked his face; and he forgot the girl or that he ever had seen
+her.
+
+'And as for her, she waited; and he did not come back, and she knew no
+one in the place; and she went up in a tree that was over the well in
+the shoemaker's garden to hide herself. And after a while the shoemaker
+sent out one of his daughters to the well to bring in water. And when
+she stooped down, she saw the shadow of the girl in the tree, and she
+thought it was herself, and she said: "My father should not be sending
+such a handsome girl as that to be bringing in water;" and she threw the
+tin can down against a wall and broke it, and went in.
+
+'Then the shoemaker sent out the second daughter for water; and she
+stooped down; and she thought it was her own face she saw; and she no
+better-looking than myself, and that's not saying much.' (Applause from
+all the old men.) 'So she wouldn't bring the water, but went in without
+it.
+
+'Then he sent his missus out, that was the ugliest you ever saw--old and
+withered. But that did not hinder her from thinking the shadow she saw
+was herself; and it is proud she was going into the house again.
+
+'So at last the shoemaker himself went out, and when he stooped and saw
+the shadow, he looked up in the tree, and he said: "Come down out of
+that, for you have given me trouble enough." So she came down, and told
+him her story; and he brought her to the young man's house.' (The cock
+and hen now come in as in Lanka Pera.) 'And they lived happily ever
+after.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another says: 'There was a young man killed a deer one time he was out
+hunting. And a lion and a hound and a hawk came by, and they asked a
+share of it. And he gave the flesh to the lion, and the bones to the
+dog, and the guts to the hawk. And they thanked him; and they said from
+that time he would have the strength of a lion, and the quickness of a
+hound, and the lightness of a hawk.
+
+'It was a good while after that he fell in love with a young girl; and
+her father said that before he could marry her he must go out and see
+who was it was stealing his cows; for there were some of them stolen
+every night.
+
+'So he watched, and he saw a witch coming and driving them away. And he
+attacked her, and fought with her, and beat her by his strength, and she
+made off. And he went to the place she had driven the cows, that was
+underground, and he found the cows belonging to the whole neighbourhood.
+And he drove them all out, and gave them to the owners.
+
+'And after a little time the father said to him, that there was a fox in
+the country, that no hound could catch, and that it was to be hunted
+again on the next day. So the young man went out, and when he saw the
+fox, he took the shape of a hound and followed it. And he was gaining on
+it, and it took to a lake, and he went in after it, and it turned to its
+own shape of a witch, and dragged him down.
+
+'The girl used to go and be looking at the lake every day, but she never
+got a sight of him. And at last, someone told her those water-witches
+were very fond of music, and to get a musical instrument. So she brought
+a musical instrument to the side of the lake, and she was playing it;
+and the witch put up her hand out of the water. "What will you take for
+that?" she said. "I will give it to you," the girl said, "if you will
+let me see my husband's head above the water." "I will do that much for
+you," said the witch.
+
+'Then the young man put up his head above the water, and she could see
+his face; but she could not touch him, and she went away.
+
+'The next day she came again with a musical instrument that was better
+again than the first, and she began to play it. The witch put up her
+hand, and asked what would she take for it. "Let me see my husband to
+his waist this time," she said. So the young man was let up out of the
+water as far as his waist, and then he disappeared again.
+
+'The next day she came again, and the musical instrument she brought
+with her was seven times better than the other two. "What will you take
+for that?" said the witch. "Let my husband stand up on your shoulders,
+clear and clean out of the water," she said. So the witch put him up on
+her shoulder; and when she did, he took the shape of a hawk on the
+moment, and away with him through the air, back to his own home again.
+
+'The witch followed him then; and when he was in a field, she came to
+fight him, and they fought the whole day, and they were both tired, and
+they stopped to rest. "Oh, if I had three drops of sea-water and a
+crumb of wheaten bread!" said the witch. "Oh, if I had three drops of
+fresh water and a crumb of barley bread!" said the young man.
+
+'And a fairy brought the witch the three drops of sea-water and the
+crumb of bread. And a little serving-girl from the farm brought the
+young man the three drops of fresh water and the crumb of bread. And
+then they fought together again; and he having the strength of a lion,
+he killed her in the end.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another old man said: 'There was a young man looking for service one
+time; and a farmer said he would take him to mind his cattle. For a
+great many of his cattle had died with the herds he had, and he didn't
+know what the reason was.
+
+So the first morning the young man led them up as he was told, to the
+green grassy place on the top of Cruachmaa. And when he looked about him
+there, he noticed it to be very dirty and trampled by the cattle. So he
+brought them to graze in the fields at the side of the hill; and he came
+back, and cleared all the dirt from that field till it was green and
+smooth. And no more of the cattle died.
+
+'He was up in the field one day, and he saw a great hurling match going
+on; and one side had a young man at the head of it, and it was beating
+the other. So the next day he went to the wood, and he cut a hurl; and
+he was all that day and the next shaping it; and his mother asked was
+he going to a match, and he said he was only amusing himself with it.
+
+'The next night he went up to the field to give a hand; and the king of
+the fairies came up to him, and asked would he join his side that was
+the weakest, and he said he would. And he drove the ball to the goal
+every time, and they gave the other side a great beating. And the king
+of the fairies thanked him, and said they had been able to do nothing
+till they had a living person along with them.
+
+'Then the king asked would he come along with him to bring away the King
+of Spain's daughter that he wanted for a wife. And the young man agreed
+to that. And the king raised them both into the air as if they were a
+wisp of straw; and they flew away on the air like two feathers.
+
+'When they came to the court of the King of Spain, there was a great
+ball going on; and they went in, but no one could see them. And the
+fairy king said to the young man that he would know which was the
+princess by hearing her sneeze. And presently the most beautiful young
+lady that was there gave a sneeze; and the young man said, "God bless
+her." "Don't say that again," said the fairy king, "or she'll be lost to
+us." So she sneezed twice after that, and he said nothing. And then the
+fairy king said: "Let you take hold of her now and bring her out, and I
+will make something in her own shape to put in her place, the way they
+won't miss her." So the young man took a hold of her and brought her
+outside; and then the fairy king came out, and they went away like
+feathers in the air.
+
+'And when they came to Irish land, the fairy king said: "Now you may
+give her to me." "Indeed I will not," said the young man, "after all the
+trouble I went through; but I will keep her for myself to be my own
+wife." "If you do," said the fairy king "you will have nothing better
+than a stone, for she will have no speech."
+
+'But the young man brought her to his own house; and his mother seeing
+her in her ball dress, thought it was one of the ladies from Castle
+Hacket come for a visit, and she was astonished when the son said she
+was to be his wife. But all the time she could not speak; and at last
+the young man went up to the field on the hill, and he brought a
+tar-barrel with him, and he gathered sticks and ferns, and put them all
+around, and began to set fire to them.
+
+'Then the fairy king came and asked what was he doing. "I am burning you
+out of the place," he said, "till you give back speech to my wife." So
+the king agreed to that, and they made friends again; and the young man
+went home, and found his wife speaking. And she wrote a letter then to
+her father and mother, the King and Queen of Spain; and they were very
+glad to hear that she was well, and they sent her money and clothes of
+all sorts.
+
+'Then the fairy king came and asked the young man to go with him to
+Germany to help him to bring back a wife for himself from the king's
+court there. So he agreed to go; and before he went, the wife said:
+"When you come back, you will bring a title for yourself and put an O to
+your name. And it is what you must do," she said, "when you are near the
+land, cut off your hand, and throw it on the shore, and bring it back to
+me after."
+
+'So they went to Germany, and brought away a wife for the fairy king.
+And when they were coming home and were near the strand, the young man
+cut off his hand, and threw it on the land.
+
+'And his wife put the hand on to him again after; and he was O'Connor
+from that time, that was the first of all; and the fairy king put an O
+to his name, and he was O'Neill, that was second.
+
+'But now at this time, there isn't a Tom, Dick, or John, but puts an O
+before his name.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An old one-eyed man gave me a new version of Deirdre's story. He said:
+'The King of Ulster and his men were out hunting one time; and they met
+with the fairy king, Mannanan of the Hill. They sat down with him; and
+himself and the King of Ulster began to play cards together, and
+whichever of them won could put some command upon the other. It was
+Mannanan won; and what he put on the King of Ulster was to follow after
+him to whatever place he would go.
+
+'With that he changed into the shape of a hare, and away with him, and
+the hounds after him, and the king and his men after them again; but
+they lost sight of him. But the hounds followed on till they came to a
+hill, and an old stump of a tree on top of it; and they began scratching
+at the stump where it was rotten. And when there was a hole scratched in
+it, the king looked down; and he saw steps; and he and his men went down
+the steps; and they passed through gardens and beside a pond with
+flowers about it; and then they came to a big house, and in it an old
+man sitting on a chair reading a book; and they knew him to be Mannanan
+that they were looking for.
+
+'And he rose up and bade them welcome; and there was a feast spread out
+before them, with every sort of food and drink. And while they were at
+the feast they heard something like the cry of a child from an inner
+room. And the King of Ulster rose up, and he said: "I will go see what
+is in there; for that is the cry of a child."
+
+'So he went in; and he came back again, bringing a baby in his arms, the
+most beautiful that was ever seen, and her hair like gold. "I will bring
+away this child with me, and rear her up," he said. "Do not," said
+Mannanan; "for if you do, your country will be destroyed, and your
+throne will be lost through her, and there will be a great many killed
+for her sake."
+
+'But the king would not mind him; but he brought her away, and he had a
+house made for her, and she was reared up in it. And she grew to be a
+nice young girl, and there were women about her to care her and to
+attend on her; but she never saw a man but the king himself, that used
+to come and see her every week. And he had great love for her; and he
+thought she loved him.'
+
+The account of Deirdre's meeting with Naoise, and their flight to
+Scotland, and the king's message bringing them back, was much the same
+as in some of the printed versions; but Mannanan's part at the end was
+new to me. The old man went on: 'When they came to Ulster, the king made
+an attack on them, to bring away Deirdre from them; but they killed all
+that came near them, and drove the whole army back.
+
+'Then the king went to Mannanan of the Hill, and he said: "Come and give
+me your help against these men, or they will kill the whole army of
+Ulster." And Mannanan said: "I will give you no help; for I told you all
+this would come on you if you brought the girl away the time she was a
+baby in this place." But the king pressed him, and said: "Put blindness
+on them, the way they will not be able to kill my people."
+
+'So Mannanan agreed to do that, and he put blindness on the three
+brothers. And when they went out next time to fight against the army,
+they could not see who was before them; and it was at each other they
+were striking; and at last all of them fell by each other's hand.
+
+'And when Deirdre saw they were dead, she took up a sword or a dagger
+that was lying on the ground, and she put it through her own body, and
+she fell dead along with them.
+
+'And she was buried on one side of a dry stone wall, and her husband on
+the other side. And a briar grew up on his grave, and a briar on hers;
+and they met over the wall, and joined with one another.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A young man, narrow-chested and consumptive-looking, but with fun in his
+eyes, said then: 'There were three Irishmen joined the English army, and
+they didn't like it. And they were brought to India; and when they were
+there, they agreed to make away. So they went into a forest, where they
+would not be found. And they made a little cabin for themselves there;
+and two of them used to go hunting every day, and the other would stop
+at home to make ready the dinner.
+
+'One day when the pot was on the fire, a little old man came into the
+house. "Bum-bum," he said; "give me something to eat out of the pot."
+
+'So the soldier gave him a rabbit out of the pot. "Give me another," he
+said then. "I will not," said the soldier; "for there would not be
+enough for my friends' dinner when they come home from hunting." With
+that the little man took hold of the pot, and threw the scalding broth
+over the soldier, and made off, leaving nothing in the pot after him.
+
+'And when the others came home, they found their comrade lying there on
+the ground, scalded, and he told them what had happened.
+
+'The next day the second of them said he would watch the pot. And all
+happened the same as the first day; and they found him scalded and the
+pot empty when they came back.
+
+'The third day the third of them said he would keep a watch, and that
+they might be sure they would get their dinner that evening.
+
+'He put down the pot, and he put the tongs to redden in the fire; and
+when the pot was boiling, the little man came in. "Bum-bum," he said;
+"give me a bit from the pot." So the soldier gave him a bit. "Give me
+more now," he said, when he had the rabbit eaten. "I will not; I will
+keep it for my comrades," said the soldier. With that the little man
+took a hold of the pot; but if he did, the soldier took up the tongs
+that he was after making red-hot in the fire; and the little man made
+off, and the pot in his arms, and the soldier after him with the tongs.
+Then the little man dropped the pot; but the soldier took no notice, but
+followed after him till he went down a hole into the ground. Then he
+took a sapling, and tied his handkerchief on it, and stuck it where the
+hole was, and went back again to the cabin.
+
+'When his comrades came back, he told them all that happened; and they
+all set out to where the hole was. And they looked down, and it was very
+deep; and they could see no end to it. So the third man said to the
+others: "One of you is a rope-maker, and the other is a cooper; and let
+you make a rope and a bucket now."
+
+'So they made the rope and the bucket, and fastened one to the other;
+and the first man was let down. But after he went a good way, the rope
+came to an end, and there was no sign of a bottom; and he called to them
+to pull him up again. It happened the same with the second man; and he
+was pulled up again. Then the third said he would go, and that if the
+rope would not reach to the bottom, he would take a leap the rest of the
+way.
+
+'So when the rope was all given out, he made a leap and came safe to the
+bottom. And it was in a hole he found himself; and he went through a
+great many rooms from that, till he came to where the little man was
+sitting by himself.
+
+'And he gave him a welcome, and said: "You had good courage to get here.
+And have you enough courage now," he said, "to go straight before you
+for three hundred miles, to set free the King of Spain's three daughters
+that are in the power of three giants?" "I will do that," said the
+soldier.
+
+'So the little man gave him directions what to do. "But when you are
+going to fight the giants," he said, "take no weapon but the little
+rusty sword you'll find at the back of their own door."
+
+'The soldier set out then; and after he had gone a hundred miles in a
+straight line, he came to the first castle, and there was a copper crown
+over it.' (At this, we all looked up at the whitewashed boards of the
+shed, as if we expected to see the copper crown.) 'And there was a young
+lady looking out of the window, and she saw him coming. "You'd best not
+come here," she said: "or the giant that owns the castle will make an
+end of you." "It's to make an end of himself, I am come," says he, "and
+to set you free." "And do you think the like of you could stand against
+him?" says she; "it's what he's gone out for now," says she, "is for
+seven bullocks to make his dinner of." "I'm ready for him whenever he
+comes," says the soldier.
+
+'Presently the giant came back, bringing the seven bullocks on his back.
+"It is to fight me you are come," says he. "Wait till I have my dinner
+eat, and I'll make a quick end of you."
+
+'So he sat down and had his dinner off the seven bullocks, and then he
+got up to fight. "What weapons will you fight with?" he says, throwing
+down a brace of swords. "Is it one of these you will have?" "It is not,"
+said the soldier; "but the little rusty sword that is behind the door."
+
+'So he went in and got that; and the giant began to hit and to strike at
+him; and he began to tickle the giant's ankles and his calves. And at
+last the giant stooped down to scratch his ankle; and when he did, the
+soldier struck off his head.
+
+'He let the princess out then, and bade her to go where the little man
+was waiting at the bottom of the hole, till he would come to her.'
+
+'He went then to the second castle, that had a silver crown over the
+door; and then he went on to the third castle, that had a golden crown
+over the door; and the same thing happened as before, except that the
+second giant had fourteen bullocks and third giant twenty-one bullocks
+for his dinner.
+
+'Then he brought the third princess back to the house, at the bottom of
+the hole, where the little man was sitting. And the little man gave him
+a whistle, and he blew it; and his comrades came and called down the
+hole that they were at the top, and he bade them to let the bucket down.
+And when they did, he put the first of the three princesses in it. They
+drew her up then; and when they saw so nice a girl come up, they began
+to quarrel which of them would have her for his wife. "Oh, don't quarrel
+about me," says she; "for there is a girl much handsomer than myself
+below yet." So they let the bucket down again, and she made off.
+
+'Then the second princess came up in the bucket, and they began to
+quarrel for her, and she said: "You may let me go, for I am nothing at
+all beside the girl that is below in the hole yet."
+
+'So they let her go; and then the third princess that was the most
+beautiful came up, and they began to quarrel for her. "You need not be
+quarrelling for me," says she; "for it is your comrade that is at the
+bottom of the hole yet, I am going to marry."
+
+'So when they heard that, they let the bucket down again. But when the
+soldier below was going to get into it, the little man said: "Don't get
+in," he said; "but put stones in it; for your comrades will cut the rope
+when it is half way up."
+
+'So he filled it with stones, and sure enough, when it was half way up,
+his comrades cut the rope, and the bucket fell to the bottom.'
+
+('Oh! oh! oh!' There were indignant murmurs among the old men at this.)
+
+'The soldier did not know then what way he would make his escape. But
+the little old man took his whistle, and blew on it; and presently a
+great big eagle came down the hole.
+
+'The little man bade the soldier get on its back till it would bring him
+across the world; and he put seven bullocks on its back along with him.
+
+'They set out then; and the soldier was cutting a bit off the bullocks
+and putting it into the eagle's beak whenever he would say "Quawk." But
+they were only a third of the way when all was gone, and they had to
+turn back again.
+
+'He took fourteen bullocks the next time, but they gave out. But the
+third time the little old man gave twenty-one bullocks.
+
+'So this time the eagle brought him to Spain, and left him down there.
+And at that time the King of Spain was making a great feast for the
+marriage of his eldest daughter that was the most beautiful. And when
+the soldier saw her, he knew she was the third of the princesses he had
+set free from the giant, and the other two were her two sisters.
+
+'It was given out then that the princess would not marry anyone but the
+man that would bring her a golden crown, the same as the one that was
+hung over the castle where the giant had kept her. And all the
+goldsmiths were very busy, everyone employing them to make crowns. But
+they could not make the right one.
+
+'Now the little man had given the soldier a ring before they parted, and
+had bade him rub it if he would want anything from him. So he rubbed it
+and a genii appeared before him. "Master, master, best master, what is
+your will?" "Bring me the golden crown from the third castle where I
+killed the giant," says the soldier.
+
+'So the genii brought it; and Jack went to the king's court and put it
+down; and the princess said it was just the very same crown that was
+over the castle; and she knew it was the soldier had freed her, and she
+was willing to marry him.
+
+'But the king was not pleased to see such a poor-looking husband coming
+for his daughter; and he said he would give her to no one but a man that
+would bring a coach for her.
+
+'So the soldier went away, and he rubbed the ring, and the genii
+appeared; and it is what he bade him, to get him a coach that would be
+filled full up of mud. So the coach went up to the king's door, and the
+king himself came out to open it; and when he did, out came all the mud
+over him that he was near choked. And he filled it a second and a third
+time with pebbles and with stones, and the same thing happened.
+
+'Then the soldier bade the genii to bring him a fine empty coach, and
+he got into it. And when he was in it, it is what he wished, to have the
+princess sitting beside him.
+
+'And there she was on the minute, and they went away together. But the
+king gave his consent then, and a great deal of money and treasure.
+
+'And they put down the teapot, and if they didn't live happy'--the end
+was lost in applause.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And when the applause had died away, an old, bright-eyed wrinkled man,
+said: 'There was a King of Leinster one time, and there was a lake
+beside his house. And every now and again twelve swans used to come to
+the lake; and they had been coming there for seven generations.
+
+'And the king's son that was away came home. And one day he saw the
+swans coming to the lake; and he said: "I wonder I never heard any talk
+of these swans before, for they are the most beautiful I ever saw." And
+his people said: "They are coming here for seven generations, and no one
+ever took notice of them before."
+
+'The next morning early the king's son went down and hid himself in the
+flags and the rushes by the lake. And after he had watched for a while,
+he saw the swans come flying to the edge of the lake. And then they took
+off their flying habits, and went bathing in the water; and they were
+not swans but beautiful young women; and there was one among them that
+was the most beautiful of all.
+
+'After the king's son had watched for a while, he went to where they had
+left their flying habits; and he brought away the one that belonged to
+the most beautiful of the women. After a while they came to shore, and
+began to look for their flying habits, and when she could not find hers,
+she made great laments.
+
+'The king's son came out to her then; and he asked her would she stop
+with him and be his wife. "I cannot do that," she said; "but give me
+back my wings now, and if you will come to the shore at such a place
+to-morrow, I will bring a ship, and you can come away with me." So he
+gave her back her habit, and she took the form of a swan again and flew
+away.
+
+'The next day he was making ready for his journey before he would go to
+meet her; and the old woman that was in the house, and that was over
+eighty years old, came and asked could she go with him. So at last he
+gave her leave, and they went down to the shore to wait. And the nurse
+said: "Lie down now and put your head in my lap and rest awhile." So he
+laid his head in her lap; and when he did that, she took a sleeping-pin
+and put it in his ear, and he fell into a heavy sleep.
+
+'And when he was asleep, the ship came over the sea, with music and
+playing in it, and came near the land. And when there was no one to meet
+it there, it went away again.
+
+'The king's son awoke then, and the nurse said: "It is making a fool of
+you she was, for we have waited here all the day, and there has no ship
+come."
+
+'So they went back home; but the next day he went down to the shore
+again, and the same thing happened. The young man lay down to rest, and
+the nurse put a sleeping-pin in his ear, and the ship came when he was
+asleep, and it went away again.
+
+'But this time the lady in the ship wrote a letter and left it on the
+strand; and when the king's son awoke, and that the nurse told him there
+had no ship come, he was distracted, and went wandering about on the
+strand, and there he found the letter; and it told him what to do, and
+the way the nurse had deceived him.
+
+'So the next day when he went to the shore and the nurse followed him,
+he brought her where there was a well, and put a stone about her neck
+and pushed her in, and she was seen no more.
+
+'Then he went down to the shore, and he met the lady; but she said: "I
+cannot bring you with me now, but I will leave the ship with you, and
+you must follow till you find me."
+
+'And he took the ship, and she gave him directions; and he went on till
+he came to a country a long way off, and a wood in it, and a house in
+the wood, and an old man sitting in it.
+
+'And he told the old man all that had happened, and how he was looking
+for the lady. And the old man gave him clothes to put on, and a place to
+wash himself, till he was as fresh and fair as before he set out.
+
+'And then he sent for a pony, and he said: "I will give you this pony
+that will bring you where she is; and when you get there, you must put
+the bridle on his neck, and put the saddle cross-ways, and turn his head
+back here again."
+
+'So then he got on the pony's back; and it flew away with him through
+the air, till at last it put him down on land, near a great castle. And
+he turned the saddle cross-ways, and put the bridle on the pony's neck,
+and turned its head, and it went back to where it came from.
+
+'Then he went on to the castle; and he went in and asked the Master to
+take him as a serving-man. And the Master said he would, and he said:
+"The work you have to do to-night is to attend to the horse that is in
+the stable, and that belongs to my daughter."
+
+'But before the young man did that, he went to look for the young lady,
+and he saw her looking out of a window; and he went up to her, and she
+knew him, and gave him a welcome. And she said: "The Master of the house
+knows well who you are, and that it is to bring me away you are come;
+and that is the reason he bade you go to clean and to attend to the
+horse in the stable; for it is wicked, and it would make an end of you.
+But," says she, "take these brushes and these shammys and bring them
+along with you into the stable, and the horse will be as quiet as a
+lamb; and in place of wanting to kill you, he will love you. And when
+night comes," says she, "he will come to us, and we will get on his
+back, and he will bring us away."
+
+'So all happened as she said, and the horse came at night, and they both
+of them got on his back; and away with him, and never stopped till he
+brought them back to Ireland, and to this country.
+
+'And it was in this country they settled down; and some of their
+descendants are living in it yet.'
+
+'What is their name?'
+
+'Well, I think they, are the Persses of Roxborough; or maybe they are
+the Gregorys of Coole.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A red-faced, farmer-like man says: 'There was a poor man one time--Jack
+Murphy his name was; and rent day came, and he hadn't enough to pay his
+rent. And he went to the landlord, and asked would he give him time. And
+the landlord asked when would he pay him; and he said he didn't know
+that. And the landlord said: "Well, if you can answer three questions
+I'll put to you, I'll let you off the rent altogether. But if you don't
+answer them, you will have to pay it at once, or to leave your farm. And
+the three questions are these:--How much does the moon weigh? How many
+stars are there in the sky? What is it I am thinking?" And he said he
+would give him till the next day to think of the answers.
+
+'And Jack was walking along, very downhearted; and he met with a friend
+of his, one Tim Daly; and he asked what was on him; and he told him how
+he must answer the landlord's three questions on to-morrow, or to lose
+his farm. "And I see no use in going to him to-morrow," says he; "for
+I'm sure I will not be able to answer his questions right." "Let me go
+in your place," says Tim Daly; "for the landlord will not know one of us
+from the other; and I'm a good hand at answering questions, and I'll
+engage I'll get you through."
+
+'So he agreed to that; and the next day Tim Daly went in to the
+landlord, and says he: "I'm come now to answer your three questions."
+
+'Well, the first question the landlord put was: "What does the moon
+weigh?" And Tim Daly says: "It weighs four quarters."
+
+'Then the landlord asked: "How many stars are in the sky?" "Nine
+thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine," says Tim. "How do you know
+that?" says the landlord. "Well," says Tim, "if you don't believe me, go
+out yourself to-night and count them."
+
+'Then the landlord asked him the third question: "What am I thinking
+now?" "You are thinking it's to Jack Murphy you're talking, and it is
+not, but to Tim Daly."
+
+'So the landlord gave in then; and Jack had the farm free from that
+out.'
+
+There was great laughter and applause at this story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then someone told this version of the _Taming of the Shrew_. I heard it
+told in Irish afterwards by an Aran girl at the Galway Feis:
+
+'There was a farmer one time had three daughters; and two of them were
+very nice and civil, but the third had a very hot temper. And the two
+civil ones were married first; and then a gentleman came and asked for
+the third. So after the wedding they started for home; and the farmer
+said to his son-in-law: "God speed you--yourself and your Fireball."
+
+'Well, on the way home, a hare started up; and the gentleman had a white
+hound, and it followed the hare; and he called to it to leave following
+it, but it would not till it had it killed. And it came back then, and
+the gentleman took out his pistol and shot the hound dead. "I did that
+because it would not obey me," he said.
+
+'And after a little time they came to a stone wall that was very high;
+and he put the white horse he was riding at it, and the horse refused
+it, and he shot it dead. "I did that because he would not take the wall
+when I bade him," he said.
+
+'They came home then; and there was a good deal of feasting made, and of
+good treatment for all the servants in the house; but as to the wife she
+got hardly enough given her, and that of the worst. She was angry then;
+and she said to the husband: "Why am I badly treated this way, and your
+servants are well treated?" "I have a good reason for that," says he;
+"for my servants are working hard for me, and doing all they can for
+me, and you are doing nothing at all."
+
+'Well, whatever happened after that, all the daughters and the
+sons-in-law came back one time to the father's house to see him. And
+after the dinner, the daughters were playing cards together, and the
+sons-in-law were in another room with the father. And he asked the first
+of them how did he like his wife. "Very well," says he, "I have no fault
+to find with her, a very civil, obedient girl." The second son-in-law
+said the same; and then the father said to the man that married the
+hot-tempered one: "And what sort of an account have you to give of your
+missus?" "Very good," he said. "If her sisters are civil and obedient,
+she is three times more civil and obedient."
+
+'They were surprised to hear him say that; and they said they would put
+it to the proof. And the first husband went to the door and called to
+his wife, "Come here a minute." "I can't come," says she; "I'm dealing
+the cards." Then the second husband went and called to his wife that he
+wanted her. "I can't come," says she; "I'm playing the game." Then the
+third went and called to his wife; and she rose up and put down the
+cards, and came out to him on the moment. "What were you doing when I
+called you?" says he. "I was playing the game," says she.
+
+'They all wondered when they heard that, and they asked what made her,
+that was so hard to manage before, so quiet now.
+
+'"I will tell you that," she said. And she told them the whole story of
+the horse and the hound being shot, and the servants being treated
+better than herself.
+
+'And that's the end of my story.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then a young red-faced, one-eyed man was dragged forward, and he said:
+
+'There was a farmer one time had met with great misfortunes; and at last
+of all his stock he had nothing left but one cow. And when he saw his
+children starving with the hunger, he made up his mind to sell the cow,
+and he set out with her to the fair.
+
+'And on the road he met a man that asked would he sell the cow. "I will
+indeed; it's for that I'm going to the fair," says he. "Will you give
+her to me for this bottle?" says the man, holding out a bottle to him.
+"Do you know what my wife would do if I brought her home that bottle in
+place of the cow?" said the farmer. "I do not," said the man. "She'd
+break it on my head," said the farmer.
+
+'Well, the man pressed him for a while; and at last he said the fair
+might be a bad one, and maybe he might as well chance the bottle and go
+home. So he took the bottle and gave the cow in place of it, and went
+home.
+
+'When his wife knew what he had done, she went near losing her wits; and
+she called him all the names; and the children were crying with the
+hunger. And the poor man didn't know what to do; and he sat down, and he
+put the bottle on the table and opened it.
+
+'And as soon as he did that, two men came out of it, and they began to
+lay a cloth, and to set out every sort of food on it. And the man and
+his wife and the children sat down and eat their fill.
+
+'And everything the farmer would wish for after that, he had but to open
+the bottle and the two men would come out, and would bring him what he
+wanted. So he grew to be rich, and the neighbours heard how he came by
+his money. And his landlord got word of it, and he came and asked would
+he sell the bottle to him.
+
+'But he refused to part with it; but after a while the landlord got him
+to his own house, and gave him drink; and, not being in his clear
+senses, he consented to give up the bottle for four acres of good land.
+
+'But after a while he had all his riches spent, and someway nothing went
+well with him; and at last he found himself the same way he was before,
+with but one cow left of all his stock, and the children crying with
+hunger.
+
+'So he set off with the one cow; and he went to the same place he met
+with the man with the bottle before, and he was there before him. And he
+told him all that had happened, and the way it was with him now; and the
+man gave him another bottle, and brought away the cow.
+
+'So he hurried back home with the bottle, and set it on the table and
+drew the cork, and the children were waiting round the table for the
+good dinner they would have. But when the bottle was opened, two men
+came out with blackthorns in their hands, and they began to beat the
+farmer and his wife and all about them; and it was blows the poor
+children got in place of food.
+
+'Well, as soon as the men went into the bottle again, the farmer put in
+the cork, and he went away to the landlord's house. And there was a
+great ball going on there; and the farmer asked could he see the
+landlord.
+
+'So he came down to him, and the farmer said he had got a new bottle,
+and that maybe the ladies and gentlemen would like to see all it would
+do. So the landlord agreed, and brought him up to the ballroom, and he
+put down the bottle and opened the cork. And when it was open, the two
+men came out with their blackthorns, and they began to hit at the ladies
+and gentlemen near them, and to beat them, till they ran to hide in
+every corner. And the landlord called out for them to stop, but the
+farmer said they would not till he would get his own bottle again.
+
+'So they gave it to him then, and he went home bringing the two bottles
+with him. And he lived in plenty ever after till he died.
+
+'But someway at his wake, with all that was going on there, the two
+bottles got broken, or if they did not they were lost.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then another said: 'There was a servant-girl left to mind her master's
+house one time. And she heard a noise below the window, and she opened
+it to look out. And she saw the hand of a man on the window ledge, that
+was climbing up to rob the house. And when he put his hand up, she took
+a little hatchet she had and cut his hand off.
+
+'The same thing happened with another man and another after him again,
+till she had killed six. But when she was striking at the seventh, he
+drew back, and all she cut off was his finger.
+
+'When the master came back, she got great praise and great reward, so
+that she had plenty of money. And one day a man came to ask her in
+marriage; and she did not know him to be the robber that escaped, and
+she married him.
+
+'But after a while he brought her out through the fields to where there
+was a little bridge over the river. And when they got to it, he told her
+he was the man she had cut the finger off, and that he had brought her
+there to kill her.
+
+'"Give me time to say my prayers first," she said. So he gave her time
+for that, and she knelt down; and presently she turned round and he was
+on the bridge beside her, and she gave him a push into the water. And
+that was the end of the seventh of the robbers.
+
+'And then she went home again. That's my story.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then the old man, whose brother has fought for the king, and hasn't
+sent him anything, said:
+
+'Peace is made. That's my story. Will you give me tobacco for that?'
+
+But this being the last day, they all had tobacco--story-tellers and
+all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here is the last story: 'There was a steward one time in the
+employment of a gentleman; and he was a good, honourable man. And he
+used to make the Sunday begin at twelve o'clock on Saturday; and to ring
+the bell then for the workmen to go home.
+
+'He got sick at last, and his death was drawing near; and he asked one
+request of his master, and that was, that after his death he would put
+his body on a car, but not direct it anywhere; but to let it go what way
+the horse would bring it.
+
+'So the master did that; and they put the body on a car, and the carman
+went along with it; but he did not direct the horse, but let it go what
+way it liked.
+
+'And it went on a long way; and then they came to a path that was all
+full of spearheads sticking up through the ground. But the horse went
+on; and wherever it went, the spearheads would sink away before it.
+
+'They came at last to a house, and the horse stopped at the door; and
+the people of the house came out and brought in the body; and the carman
+went along with it, and he lay down and slept awhile.
+
+'And when he rose up, he said he would go back to his friends. But the
+people of the house said: "You can go back if you like, but you will
+find none of your friends before you; for your sleep has lasted for
+seven hundred years."
+
+'So he went back; and there was nothing but grass and bushes in the
+village he came from. And he knelt down and made his repentance; and he
+was let up to heaven for the sake of the steward that was so good, and
+that made the Sunday begin at noon on Saturday.'
+
+1902.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
+
+
+Just where the road that runs by the bay turns northward to run by the
+Atlantic, a few white houses on either side turn it for a moment into a
+street. The grey road was not all grey yesterday, in spite of stones,
+and sea, and clouds, and a mist that blotted out the hills; for July had
+edged it with yellow rag-weed, the horses of the Sidhe, and with purple
+heather; and besides the tireless turf-laden donkeys, there were men in
+white and women in crimson flannel going towards the village. One woman
+sitting in a donkey-cart was chanting a song in Irish about a voyage
+across the sea; and when someone asked her if she was to try for a prize
+at the _Feis_, the Irish festival going on in the village, she only
+answered that she was 'lonesome after the old times.'
+
+At the _Feis_, in the white schoolhouse, some boys and girls from
+schools and convents at the 'big town' many miles away were singing; and
+now and then a little bare-footed boy from close by would go up on the
+platform and sing the _Paistin Fionn_, or _Is truag gan Peata_. People
+from the scattered houses and villages about had gathered to listen;
+some had come in turf-boats from Aran, Irish-speakers, proud to show
+that the language that has been called dead has never died; and glad at
+the new life that is coming into it. Men in loose flannel-jackets sang
+old songs, many sad ones, but not all; for one that was addressed to a
+mother, who had broken off her daughter's marriage with the maker of the
+song, turned more to anger than to grief; and there was the love song,
+'Courteous Bridget,' made perhaps a hundred years ago, by wandering
+Raftery.
+
+A woman with madder-dyed petticoat sang the lament of an emigrant going
+across the great sea, telling how she got up at daybreak to look at the
+places she was going to leave, Ballinrobe and the rest; and how she
+envied the birds that were free of the air, and the beasts that were
+free of the mountain, and were not forced to go away. Another song that
+was sung was the Jacobite one, with the refrain that has been put into
+English--'Seaghan O'Dwyer a Gleanna, we're worsted in the game!'
+
+Some poems were repeated also: Raftery's 'Argument with whiskey,' in
+which he puts the joys and sorrows of its lovers only too impartially.
+Another 'Argument' was between two men, herds, I think; each counting up
+the virtues of his own province, Connaught or Munster. An old man gave a
+long poem, a recital of Bible history; but the judges rang their bell
+when he had got to the parable of the Prodigal Son, and was telling how
+'the poor foolish boy went away from his home and from his father to
+some far country'; and he left the platform saying indignantly: 'You
+might have left me time to bring him back again.' And there was a poem
+on 'The rising again of Ireland,' telling how, when she has risen,
+'ships will be coming to her from France and from Spain, and from all
+the countries; and there will be no rent on the land; and every poet
+will be given a fee of twenty-one pounds.'
+
+In the evening there were people waiting round the door to hear the
+songs and the pipes again. An old man among them was speaking with many
+gestures, his voice rising, and a crowd gathering about him. '_Tha se
+beo, tha se beo_'--'he is living, he is living,' I heard him say over
+and over again. I asked what he was saying, and was told: 'He says that
+Parnell is alive yet.' I was pushed away from him by the crowd to where
+a policeman was looking on. 'He says that Parnell is alive still,' I
+said. 'There are many say that,' he answered. 'And, after all, no one
+ever saw the body that was buried.'
+
+The rising again of Ireland, of her old speech, of her last leader,
+dreams all, as we are told. But here, on the edge of the world, dreams
+are real things, and every heart is watching for the opening of one or
+another grave.
+
+
+
+
+_AN CRAOIBHIN'S_ PLAYS
+
+
+I hold that the beginning of modern Irish drama was in the winter of
+1898, at a school feast at Coole, when Douglas Hyde and Miss Norma
+Borthwick acted in Irish in a Punch and Judy show; and the delighted
+children went back to tell their parents what grand curses _An
+Craoibhin_ had put on the baby and the policeman.
+
+A little time after that, when a play was wanted for our Literary
+Theatre, Dr. Hyde wrote, and then acted in, 'The Twisting of the Rope,'
+the first Irish play ever given in a Dublin theatre.
+
+It has been acted many times since then, in Dublin, in London, in
+Galway, in Galway Workhouse, in Cornamona, Ballaghaderreen, Ballymoe,
+and other places. It has always given great delight, and its success is
+very natural; for the Irish-speakers, who are its audience, have an
+inborn love of drama, as is shown by their handing down of such long
+dramatic dialogues as those between Oisin and St. Patrick, from century
+to century. At country gatherings, those old dialogues, and the newer
+ones between Death and Raftery, or between the farmers of two
+provinces, are followed with a patient joy; and the creation of acting
+plays is the natural outcome of this living tradition. And Douglas
+Hyde's dramas grow directly from the folk-memory. The tradition and the
+beautiful old air, and the song of 'The Twisting of the Rope,' are very
+well known:--
+
+    'What was the dead cat that put me in this place,
+    And all the pretty young girls I left after me?
+    I came into the house where was the bright love of my heart,
+    And the old hag put me out by the Twisting of the Rope.
+
+    'If you are mine, be mine by day and by night;
+    If you are mine, be mine before the world;
+    If you are mine, be mine with every inch of your heart;
+    It is my grief you are not with me as a wife this evening.
+
+    'It is down in Sligo I got knowledge of my love;
+    It is up in Galway I drank my fill with her.
+    By the strength of my hands, if they do not leave me as I am,
+    I will do a trick will set these women walking.'
+
+Mr. Yeats made Red Hanrahan the hero of this song in a story in 'The
+Secret Rose'; and it is Hanrahan Douglas Hyde has kept in the play, with
+his passion, his exaggerations, his wheedling tongue, his roving heart,
+that all but coax the girl from her mother and her sweetheart; but that
+fail after all in their attack on the settled order of things, and leave
+their owner homeless and restless, and angry and chiding, like the
+stormy west wind outside the door.
+
+'The Marriage' is founded on the story of Raftery at the poor wedding at
+Cappaghtagle. It was acted in Galway, at the _Feis_, last summer. There
+had been some delay or misunderstanding in the giving of parts; and on
+the morning of the _Feis_, it was announced that the play would not be
+given. But the disappointment was so great, that we all begged _An
+Craoibhin_ to take the chief part himself, as he had done in 'The
+Twisting of the Rope'; and when his kindness made him agree to this, we
+went in search of the other players. They were all at work in shops or
+stores, one wheeling sacks on a barrow; and it was a busy market-day,
+and it was hard for them to get away for a rehearsal. But, for all that,
+the play was given in the evening; in the very town where some still
+remember Raftery, and where he and Death had their first talk together.
+
+It will be hard to forget the blind poet, as he was represented on the
+stage by the living poet, so full of kindly humour, of humorous malice,
+of dignity under his poor clothing, or the wistful, ghostly sigh with
+which he went out of the door at the end. 'Is fear marbh do bhi
+ann'--'It is a dead man was in it.'
+
+It has been acted in Dublin since then; and many places are asking for
+the loan of the one manuscript in which it exists; but I am glad
+Connacht had it first.
+
+'The Lost Saint' was written last summer. _An Craoibhin_ was staying
+with us at Coole; and one morning I went for a long drive to the sea,
+leaving him with a bundle of blank paper before him. When I came back
+at evening, I was told that Dr. Hyde had finished his play, and was out
+shooting wild duck. The hymn, however, was not quite ready, and was put
+into rhyme next day, while he was again watching for wild duck beside
+Inchy marsh.
+
+When he read it to us in the evening, we were all left with a feeling as
+if some beautiful white blossom had suddenly fallen at our feet.
+
+It was acted the other day at Ballaghaderreen; and, at the end, a very
+little girl, who wanted to let the author know how much she had liked
+his play, put out her hand, and put a piece of toffee into his.
+
+The 'Nativity' did not appear in time for Christmas acting; but Ireland,
+which now and then finds herself possessed of some accidental freedom,
+has no censor; and a play so beautiful and reverent, and so much in the
+tradition of the people, is sure to be acted and received reverently.
+
+_An Craoibhin_ has written other plays besides these--a pastoral play
+which has been acted in Dublin and Belfast, a match-making comedy, a
+satire on Trinity College.
+
+Other Irish plays have been acted here and there through the country
+during the last year or two, some written by priests; the last I saw in
+manuscript was by a workhouse schoolmaster; and all have had their share
+of success. But it is to the poet-scholar who has become actor-dramatist
+that we must still, as Raftery would put it, 'give the branch.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE
+
+
+HANRAHAN. _A wandering poet._
+
+SHEAMUS O'HERAN. _Engaged to_ OONA.
+
+MAURYA. _The woman of the house._
+
+SHEELA. _A neighbour._
+
+OONA. _Maurya's daughter._
+
+_Neighbours and a piper who have come to Maurya's house for a dance_.
+
+
+SCENE. _A farmer's house in Munster a hundred years ago. Men
+and women moving about and standing round the walls as if they had just
+finished a dance._ HANRAHAN, _in the foreground, talking to_
+OONA.
+
+_The piper is beginning a preparatory drone for another dance, but_
+SHEAMUS _brings him a drink and he stops. A man has come and
+holds out his hand to_ OONA, _as if to lead her out, but she
+pushes him away._
+
+
+OONA. Don't be bothering me now; don't you see I'm listening to
+what he is saying? (_To_ HANRAHAN) Go on with what you were
+saying just now.
+
+HANRAHAN. What did that fellow want of you?
+
+OONA. He wanted the next dance with me, but I wouldn't give it
+to him.
+
+HANRAHAN. And why would you give it to him? Do you think I'd
+let you dance with anyone but myself, and I here? I had no comfort or
+satisfaction this long time until I came here to-night, and till I saw
+yourself.
+
+OONA. What comfort am I to you?
+
+HANRAHAN. When a stick is half burned in the fire, does it not
+get comfort when water is poured on it?
+
+OONA. But, sure, you are not half burned.
+
+HANRAHAN. I am; and three-quarters of my heart is burned, and
+scorched and consumed, struggling with the world, and the world
+struggling with me.
+
+OONA. You don't look that bad.
+
+HANRAHAN. O, Oona ni Regaun, you have not knowledge of the life
+of a poor bard, without house or home or havings, but he going and ever
+going a drifting through the wide world, without a person with him but
+himself. There is not a morning in the week when I rise up that I do not
+say to myself that it would be better to be in the grave than to be
+wandering. There is nothing standing to me but the gift I got from God,
+my share of songs; when I begin upon them, my grief and my trouble go
+from me; I forget my persecution and my ill luck; and now since I saw
+you, Oona, I see there is something that is better even than the songs.
+
+OONA. Poetry is a wonderful gift from God; and as long as you
+have that, you are richer than the people of stock and store, the people
+of cows and cattle.
+
+HANRAHAN. Ah, Oona, it is a great blessing, but it is a great
+curse as well for a man, he to be a poet. Look at me: have I a friend in
+this world? Is there a man alive that has a wish for me? is there the
+love of anyone at all on me? I am going like a poor lonely barnacle
+goose throughout the world; like Oisin after the Fenians; every person
+hates me: you do not hate me, Oona?
+
+OONA. Do not say a thing like that; it is impossible that
+anyone would hate you.
+
+HANRAHAN. Come and we will sit in the corner of the room
+together; and I will tell you the little song I made for you; it is for
+you I made it. (_They go to a corner and sit down together._
+SHEELA _comes in at the door._)
+
+SHEELA. I came to you as quick as I could.
+
+MAURYA. And a hundred welcomes to you.
+
+SHEELA. What have you going on now?
+
+MAURYA. Beginning we are; we had one jig, and now the piper is
+drinking a glass. They'll begin dancing again in a minute when the piper
+is ready.
+
+SHEELA. There are a good many people gathering in to you
+to-night. We will have a fine dance.
+
+MAURYA. Maybe so, Sheela; but there's a man of them there, and
+I'd sooner him out than in.
+
+SHEELA. It's about the long red man you are talking, isn't
+it--the man that is in close talk with Oona in the corner? Where is he
+from, and who is he himself?
+
+MAURYA. That's the greatest vagabond ever came into Ireland;
+Tumaus Hanrahan they call him; but it's Hanrahan the rogue he ought to
+have been christened by right. Aurah, wasn't there the misfortune on me,
+him to come in to us at all to-night?
+
+SHEELA. What sort of a person is he? Isn't he a man that makes
+songs, out of Connacht? I heard talk of him before; and they say there
+is not another dancer in Ireland so good as him. I would like to see him
+dance.
+
+MAURYA. Bad luck to the vagabond! It is well I know what sort
+he is; because there was a kind of friendship between himself and the
+first husband I had; and it is often I heard from poor Diarmuid--the
+Lord have mercy on him!--what sort of person he was. He was a
+schoolmaster down in Connacht; but he used to have every trick worse
+than another; ever making songs he used to be, and drinking whiskey and
+setting quarrels afoot among the neighbours with his share of talk. They
+say there isn't a woman in the five provinces that he wouldn't deceive.
+He is worse than Donal na Greina long ago. But the end of the story is
+that the priest routed him out of the parish altogether; he got another
+place then, and followed on at the same tricks until he was routed out
+again, and another again with it. Now he has neither place nor house nor
+anything, but he to be going the country, making songs and getting a
+night's lodging from the people; nobody will refuse him, because they
+are afraid of him. He's a great poet, and maybe he'd make a rann on you
+that would stick to you for ever, if you were to anger him.
+
+SHEELA. God preserve us; but what brought him in to-night?
+
+MAURYA. He was travelling the country and he heard there was to
+be a dance here, and he came in because he knew us; he was rather great
+with my first husband. It is wonderful how he is making out his way of
+life at all, and he with nothing but his share of songs. They say there
+is no place that he'll go to, that the women don't love him, and that
+the men don't hate him.
+
+SHEELA (_catching_ MAURYA _by the shoulder_). Turn
+your head, Maurya; look at him now, himself and your daughter, and their
+heads together; he's whispering in her ear; he's after making a poem for
+her and he's whispering it in her ear. Oh, the villain, he'll be putting
+his spells on her now.
+
+MAURYA. Ohone, go deo! isn't it a misfortune that he came? He's
+talking every moment with Oona since he came in three hours ago. I did
+my best to separate them from one another, but it failed me. Poor Oona
+is given up to every sort of old songs and old made-up stories; and she
+thinks it sweet to be listening to him. The marriage is settled between
+herself and Sheamus O'Herin there, a quarter from to-day. Look at poor
+Sheamus at the door, and he watching them. There is grief and hanging
+of the head on him; it's easy to see that he'd like to choke the
+vagabond this minute. I am greatly afraid that the head will be turned
+on Oona with his share of blathering. As sure as I am alive there will
+come evil out of this night.
+
+SHEELA. And couldn't you put him out?
+
+MAURYA. I could. There's no person here to help him unless
+there would be a woman or two; but he is a great poet, and he has a
+curse that would split the trees, and that would burst the stones. They
+say the seed will rot in the ground and the milk go from the cows when a
+poet like him makes a curse, if a person routed him out of the house;
+but if he was once out, I'll go bail I wouldn't let him in again.
+
+SHEELA. If himself were to go out willingly, there would be no
+virtue in his curse then.
+
+MAURYA. There would not, but he will not go out willingly, and
+I cannot rout him out myself for fear of his curse.
+
+SHEELA. Look at poor Sheamus. He is going over to her.
+(SHEAMUS _gets up and goes over to her._)
+
+SHEAMUS. Will you dance this reel with me, Oona, as soon as the
+piper is ready?
+
+HANRAHAN (_rising up_). I am Tumaus Hanrahan, and I am speaking
+now to Oona ni Regaun; and as she is willing to be talking to me, I will
+allow no living person to come between us.
+
+SHEAMUS (_without heeding_ HANRAHAN). Will you not
+dance with me, Oona?
+
+HANRAHAN (_savagely_). Didn't I tell you now that it was to me
+Oona ni Regaun was talking? Leave that on the spot, you clown, and do
+not raise a disturbance here.
+
+SHEAMUS. Oona----
+
+HANRAHAN (_shouting_). Leave that! (SHEAMUS _goes
+away, and comes over to the two old women._)
+
+SHEAMUS. Maurya Regaun, I am asking leave of you to throw that
+ill-mannerly, drunken vagabond out of the house. Myself and my two
+brothers will put him out if you will allow us; and when he's outside
+I'll settle with him.
+
+MAURYA. Sheamus, do not; I am afraid of him. That man has a
+curse they say that would split the trees.
+
+SHEAMUS. I don't care if he had a curse that would overthrow
+the heavens; it is on me it will fall, and I defy him! If he were to
+kill me on the moment, I will not allow him to put his spells on Oona.
+Give me leave, Maurya.
+
+SHEELA. Do not, Sheamus. I have a better advice than that.
+
+SHEAMUS. What advice is that?
+
+SHEELA. I have a way in my head to put him out. If you follow
+my advice, he will go out himself as quiet as a lamb; and when you get
+him out, slap the door on him, and never let him in again.
+
+MAURYA. Luck from God on you, Sheela, and tell us what's in
+your head.
+
+SHEELA. We will do it as nice and easy as you ever saw. We will
+put him to twist a hay-rope till he is outside, and then we will shut
+the door on him.
+
+SHEAMUS. It's easy to say, but not easy to do. He will say to
+you, "Make a hay-rope yourself."
+
+SHEELA. We will say then that no one ever saw a hay-rope made,
+that there is no one at all in the house to make the beginning of it.
+
+SHEAMUS. But will _he_ believe that we never saw a hay-rope?
+
+SHEELA. He believe it, is it? He'd believe anything; he'd
+believe that himself is king over Ireland when he has a glass taken, as
+he has now.
+
+SHEAMUS. But what excuse can we make for saying we want a
+hay-rope?
+
+MAURYA. Can't you think of something yourself, Sheamus?
+
+SHEAMUS. Sure, I can say the wind is rising, and I must bind
+the thatch, or it will be off the house.
+
+SHEELA. But he'll know the wind is not rising if he does but
+listen at the door. You must think of some other excuse, Sheamus.
+
+SHEAMUS. Wait, I have a good idea now; say there is a coach
+upset at the bottom of the hill, and that they are asking for a hay-rope
+to mend it with. He can't see as far as that from the door, and he won't
+know it's not true it is.
+
+MAURYA. That's the story, Sheela. Now, Sheamus, go among the
+people and tell them the secret. Tell them what they have to say, that
+no one at all in this country ever saw a hay-rope, and put a good skin
+on the lie yourself. (SHEAMUS _goes from person to person
+whispering to them, and some of them begin laughing._ _The piper has
+begun playing. Three or four couples rise up._)
+
+HANRAHAN (_after looking at them for a couple of minutes_).
+Whisht! Let ye sit down! Do ye call that dragging, dancing? You are
+tramping the floor like so many cattle. You are as heavy as bullocks, as
+awkward as asses. May my throat be choked if I would not sooner be
+looking at as many lame ducks hopping on one leg through the house.
+Leave the floor to Oona ni Regaun and to me.
+
+ONE OF THE MEN GOING TO DANCE. And for what would we leave the
+floor to you?
+
+HANRAHAN. The swan of the brink of the waves, the royal
+phoenix, the pearl of the white breast, the Venus amongst the women,
+Oona ni Regaun, is standing up with me, and any place she rises up, the
+sun and the moon bow to her, and so shall ye yet. She is too handsome,
+too sky-like for any other woman to be near her. But wait a while!
+Before I'll show you how the Connacht boy can dance, I will give you the
+poem I made on the star of the province of Munster, on Oona ni Regaun.
+Get up, O sun among women, and we will sing the song together, verse
+about, and then we'll show them what right dancing is! (OONA
+_rises._)
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    She is white Oona of the yellow hair,
+    The Coolin that was destroying my heart inside me;
+    She is my secret love and my lasting affection;
+    I care not for ever for any woman but her.
+
+OONA.
+
+    O bard of the black eye, it is you
+    Who have found victory in the world and fame;
+    I call on yourself and I praise your mouth;
+    You have set my heart in my breast astray.
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    O fair Oona of the golden hair,
+    My desire, my affection, my love and my store,
+    Herself will go with her bard afar;
+    She has hurt his heart in his breast greatly.
+
+OONA.
+
+    I would not think the night long nor the day,
+    Listening to your fine discourse;
+    More melodious is your mouth than the singing of the birds;
+    From my heart in my breast you have found love.
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    I walked myself the entire world,
+    England, Ireland, France, and Spain;
+    I never saw at home or afar
+    Any girl under the sun like fair Oona.
+
+OONA.
+
+    I have heard the melodious harp
+    On the streets of Cork playing to us;
+    More melodious by far I thought your voice,
+    More melodious by far your mouth than that.
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    I was myself one time a poor barnacle goose;
+    The night was not plain to me more than the day
+    Till I got sight of her; she is the love of my heart
+    That banished from me my grief and my misery.
+
+OONA.
+
+    I was myself on the morning of yesterday
+    Walking beside the wood at the break of day;
+    There was a bird there was singing sweetly,
+    How I love love, and is it not beautiful?
+
+(_A shout and a noise, and_ SHEAMUS O'HERAN _rushes in._)
+
+SHEAMUS. Ububu! Ohone-y-o, go deo! The big coach is overthrown
+at the foot of the hill! The bag in which the letters of the country are
+is bursted; and there is neither tie, nor cord, nor rope, nor anything
+to bind it up. They are calling out now for a hay sugaun--whatever kind
+of thing that is; the letters and the coach will be lost for want of a
+hay sugaun to bind them.
+
+HANRAHAN. Do not be bothering us; we have our poem done, and we
+are going to dance. The coach does not come this way at all.
+
+SHEAMUS. The coach does come this way now; but sure you're a
+stranger, and you don't know. Doesn't the coach come over the hill now,
+neighbours?
+
+ALL. It does, it does, surely.
+
+HANRAHAN. I don't care whether it does come or whether it
+doesn't. I would sooner twenty coaches to be overthrown on the road than
+the pearl of the white breast to be stopped from dancing to us. Tell the
+coachman to twist a rope for himself.
+
+SHEAMUS. Oh! murder! he can't. There's that much vigour, and
+fire, and activity, and courage in the horses, that my poor coachman
+must take them by the heads; it's on the pinch of his life he's able to
+control them; he's afraid of his soul they'll go from him of a rout.
+They are neighing like anything; you never saw the like of them for wild
+horses.
+
+HANRAHAN. Are there no other people in the coach that will make
+a rope, if the coachman has to be at the horses' heads? Leave that, and
+let us dance.
+
+SHEAMUS. There are three others in it; but as to one of them,
+he is one-handed, and another man of them, he's shaking and trembling
+with the fright he got; it's not in him now to stand up on his two feet
+with the fear that's on him; and as for the third man, there isn't a
+person in this country would speak to him about a rope at all, for his
+own father was hanged with a rope last year for stealing sheep.
+
+HANRAHAN. Then let one of yourselves twist a rope so, and leave
+the floor to us. (_To_ OONA.) Now, O star of women, show me how
+Juno goes among the gods, or Helen for whom Troy was destroyed. By my
+word, since Deirdre died, for whom Naoise son of Usnech, was put to
+death, her heir is not in Ireland to-day but yourself. Let us begin.
+
+SHEAMUS. Do not begin until we have a rope; we are not able to
+twist a rope; there's nobody here can twist a rope.
+
+HANRAHAN. There's nobody here is able to twist a rope?
+
+ALL. Nobody at all.
+
+SHEELA. And that's true; nobody in this place ever made a hay
+sugaun. I don't believe there's a person in this house who ever saw one
+itself but me. It's well I remember when I was a little girsha that I
+saw one of them on a goat that my grandfather brought with him out of
+Connacht. All the people used to be saying: "Aurah, what sort of a thing
+is that at all?" And he said that it was a sugaun that was in it; and
+that people used to make the like of that down in Connacht. He said that
+one man would go holding the hay, and another man twisting it. I'll hold
+the hay now; and you'll go twisting it.
+
+SHEAMUS. I'll bring in a lock of hay. (_He goes out._)
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    I will make a dispraising of the province of Munster
+    They do not leave the floor to us;
+    It isn't in them to twist even a sugaun;
+    The province of Munster without nicety, without prosperity.
+
+    Disgust for ever on the province of Munster,
+    That they do not leave us the floor;
+    The province of Munster of the foul clumsy people.
+    They cannot even twist a sugaun!
+
+SHEAMUS (_coming back_). Here's the hay now.
+
+HANRAHAN. Give it here to me; I'll show ye what the
+well-learned, hardy, honest, clever, sensible Connachtman will do, that
+has activity and full deftness in his hands, and sense in his head, and
+courage in his heart; but that the misfortune and the great trouble of
+the world directed him among the _lebidins_ of the province of Munster,
+without honour, without nobility, without knowledge of the swan beyond
+the duck, or of the gold beyond the brass, or of the lily beyond the
+thistle, or of the star of young women, and the pearl of the white
+breast, beyond their own share of sluts and slatterns. Give me a
+kippeen. (_A man hands him a stick; he puts a wisp of hay round it, and
+begins twisting it; and_ SHEELA _giving him out the hay._)
+
+HANRAHAN.
+
+    There is a pearl of a woman giving light to us;
+    She is my love; she is my desire;
+    She is fair Oona, the gentle queen-woman.
+    And the Munstermen do not understand half her courtesy.
+
+    These Munstermen are blinded by God;
+    They do not recognise the swan beyond the grey duck;
+    But she will come with me, my fine Helen,
+    Where her person and her beauty shall be praised for ever.
+
+Arrah, wisha, wisha, wisha! isn't this the fine village? isn't this the
+exceeding village? The village where there be that many rogues hanged
+that the people have no want of ropes with all the ropes that they steal
+from the hangman!
+
+    The sensible Connachtman makes
+      A rope for himself;
+    But the Munsterman steals it
+      From the hangman;
+    That I may see a fine rope,
+      A rope of hemp yet,
+    A stretching on the throats
+      Of every person here!
+
+On account of one woman only the Greeks departed, and they never
+stopped, and they never greatly stayed, till they destroyed Troy; and on
+account of one woman only this village shall be damned; _go deo, ma
+neoir_, and to the womb of judgment, by God of the graces, eternally and
+everlastingly, because they did not understand that Oona ni Regaun is
+the second Helen, who was born in their midst, and that she overcame in
+beauty Deirdre and Venus, and all that came before or that will come
+after her!
+
+    But she will come with me, my pearl of a woman,
+    To the province of Connacht of the fine people;
+    She will receive feasts, wine, and meat,
+    High dances, sport, and music!
+
+Oh, wisha, wisha! that the sun may never rise upon this village; and
+that the stars may never shine on it and that----. (_He is by this time
+outside the door. All the men make a rush at the door and shut it._
+OONA _runs towards the door, but the women seize her._ SHEAMUS _goes
+over to her._)
+
+OONA. Oh! oh! oh! do not put him out; let him back; that is
+Tumaus Hanrahan--he is a poet--he is a bard--he is a wonderful man. O,
+let him back; do not do that to him!
+
+SHEAMUS. O Oona _ban, acushla dilis_, let him be; he is gone
+now, and his share of spells with him! He will be gone out of your head
+to-morrow; and you will be gone out of his head. Don't you know that I
+like you better than a hundred thousand Deirdres, and that you are my
+one pearl of a woman in the world?
+
+HANRAHAN (_outside, beating on the door_). Open, open, open;
+let me in! Oh, my seven hundred thousand curses on you--the curse of the
+weak and of the strong--the curse of the poets and of the bards upon
+you! The curse of the priests on you and the friars! The curse of the
+bishops upon you, and the Pope! The curse of the widows on you, and the
+children! Open! (_He beats on the door again and again._)
+
+SHEAMUS. I am thankful to ye, neighbours; and Oona will be
+thankful to ye to-morrow. Beat away, you vagabond! Do your dancing out
+there with yourself now! Isn't it a fine thing for a man to be listening
+to the storm outside, and himself quiet and easy beside the fire? Beat
+away, beat away! Where's Connacht now?
+
+
+
+
+THE MARRIAGE
+
+
+MARTIN, _a young man._
+
+MARY. _His newly married wife._
+
+A BLIND FIDDLER.
+
+NEIGHBOURS.
+
+
+SCENE.--_A cottage kitchen. A table poorly set out, with two
+cups, a jug of milk, and a cake of bread._ MARTIN _and_
+MARY _sitting down to it._
+
+
+MARTIN. This is a poor wedding dinner I have for you, Mary; and
+a poor house I brought you to. I wish it was seven thousand times better
+for your sake.
+
+MARY. Only we have to part again, there wouldn't be in the
+world a pair happier than myself and yourself; but where's the good of
+fretting when there's no help for it?
+
+MARTIN. If I had but a couple of pounds, I could buy a little
+ass and earn a share of money bringing turf to the big town; or I could
+job at the fairs. But, my grief, we haven't it, or ten shillings.
+
+MARY. And if I could get but a few hens, and what would feed
+them, I could be selling the eggs or rearing chickens. But unless God
+would work a miracle for us, there's no chance of that itself. (_She
+wipes her eyes with her apron._)
+
+MARTIN. Don't be crying, Mary. You belong to me now; am I not
+rich so long as you belong to me? Whatever place I will go to I will
+know you are thinking of me.
+
+MARY. That is a true word you say, Martin; I will never be poor
+so long as I know you to be thinking of me. No riches at all would be so
+good as that. There's a line my poor father used to be saying:--
+
+    'Cattle and gold, store and goods,
+    They pass away like the high floods.'
+
+It was Raftery, the blind man, said that. I never saw him; but my father
+used to be talking of him.
+
+MARTIN. I don't care what he said. I wish we had goods and
+store. He said the exact contrary another time:--
+
+    'Brogues in the fashion, a good house,
+    Are better than the bare sky over us.'
+
+MARY. Poor Raftery! he'd give us all that if he had the chance.
+He was always a good friend to the poor. I heard them saying the other
+day he was lying in his sickness at some place near Killeenan, and near
+his death. The Lord have mercy on him!
+
+MARTIN. The Lord have mercy on him, indeed. Come now, Mary,
+eat the first bit in your own house. I'll take the eggs off the fire.
+
+(_He gets up and goes to the fire. There is a knock at the half-door,
+and an old ragged, patched fiddler puts in his head._)
+
+FIDDLER. God save all here!
+
+MARY (_standing up_). Aurah, the poor man, bring him in.
+
+MARTIN. Let there be sense on you, Mary; we have not anything
+at all to give him. I will tell him the way to the Brennans' house:
+there will be plenty to find there.
+
+MARY. Indeed and surely I will not put him from this door. This
+is the first time I ever had a house of my own; and I will not send
+anyone at all from my own door this day.
+
+MARTIN. Do as you think well yourself. (MARY _goes to
+the door and opens it._) Come in, honest man, and sit down, and a
+hundred welcomes before you. (_The old man comes in, feeling about him
+as if blind._)
+
+MARY. O Martin, he is blind. May God preserve him!
+
+OLD MAN. That is so, acushla; I am in my blindness; and it is a
+tired, vexed, blind man I am. I am going and ever going since morning,
+and I never found a bit to eat since I rose.
+
+MARY. You did not find a bit to eat since morning! Are you
+starving?
+
+OLD MAN. Oh, indeed, there was food to be got if I would take
+it; but the bit that does not come from a willing heart, there would be
+no taste on it; and that is what I did not get since morning; but people
+putting a potato or a bit of bread out of the door to me, as if I was a
+dog, with the hope I would not stop, but would go away.
+
+MARY. Oh, sit down with us now, and eat with us. Bring him to
+the table, Martin. (MARTIN _gives his hand to the old man, and
+gives him a chair, and puts him sitting at the table with themselves. He
+makes two halves of the cake, and gives a half to the blind man, and one
+of the eggs. The old man eats eagerly._)
+
+OLD MAN. I leave my seven hundred thousand blessings on the
+people of this house. The blessing of God and Mary on them.
+
+MARY. That it may be well with you. O Martin, that is the first
+blessing I got in my own house. That blessing is better to me than gold.
+
+OLD MAN. Aurah, is it not beautiful for people to have a house
+of their own, and to have eyes to look about with?
+
+MARTIN. May God preserve you, right man; it is likely it is a
+poor thing to be without sight.
+
+OLD MAN. You do not understand, nor any person that has his
+sight, what it is to be blind and dark the way I am. Not to have before
+you and behind you but the night. Oh, darkness, darkness! No shape or
+form in anything; not to see the bird you hear singing in the tree over
+your head; nor the flower you smell on the bush, or the child, and he
+laughing in his mother's breast. The morning and the evening the day
+and the night, only the same thing to you Oh, it is a poor thing to be
+blind! (MARTIN _puts over the other half of the cake and the
+egg to_ MARY, _and makes a sign to her to eat. She makes a sign
+to him to take a share of them. The blind man stretches his hand over
+the table to try for a crumb of bread, for he has eaten his own share;
+and he gets hold of the other half cake and takes it._)
+
+MARY. Eat that, poor man, it is likely there is hunger on you.
+Here is another egg for you. (_She puts the other egg in his hand._)
+
+BLIND MAN. The blessing of the Only Son and of the Holy Mother
+on the hand that gives it. (MARTIN _puts up his two hands as if
+dissatisfied; and he is going to say something when_ MARY
+_takes the words from his mouth, laughing at his gloomy face._)
+
+BLIND MAN. _Maisead_, my blessing on the mouth that laughter
+came from, and my blessing on the light heart that let it out of the
+mouth.
+
+MARTIN. A light heart, is it! There is not a light heart with
+Mary to-night, my grief!
+
+BLIND MAN. Mary is your wife?
+
+MARTIN. She is. I made her my wife three hours ago.
+
+BLIND MAN. Three hours ago?
+
+MARTIN (_bitterly_).--That is so. We were married to-day; and
+it is at our wedding dinner you are sitting.
+
+BLIND MAN. Your wedding dinner! Do not be mocking me! There is
+no company here.
+
+MARY. Oh, he is not mocking you; he would not do a thing like
+that. There is no company here; for we have nothing in the house to give
+them.
+
+BLIND MAN. But you gave it to me! Is it the truth you are
+speaking? Am I the only person that was asked to your wedding?
+
+MARY. You are. But that is to the honour of God; and we would
+never have told you that, but Martin let slip the word from his mouth.
+
+BLIND MAN. Oh, and I eat your little feast on you, and without
+knowing it.
+
+MARY. It is not without a welcome you eat it.
+
+MARTIN. I am well pleased you came in; you were more in want of
+it than ourselves. If we have a bare house now, we might have a full
+house yet; and a good dinner on the table to share with those in need of
+it. I'd be better off now; but all the little money I had I laid it out
+on the house, and the little patch of land. I thought I was wise at the
+time; but now we have the house, and we haven't what will keep us alive
+in it. I have the potatoes set in the garden; but I haven't so much as a
+potato to eat. We are left bare, and I am guilty of it.
+
+MARY. If there is any fault, it is on me it is; coming maybe to
+be a drag on Martin, where I have no fortune at all. The little money I
+gained in service, I lost it all on my poor father, when he took sick.
+And I went back into service; and the mistress I had was a cross woman;
+and when Martin saw the way she was treating me, he wouldn't let me
+stop with her any more, but he made me his wife. And now I will have
+great courage, when I have to go out to service again.
+
+BLIND MAN. Will you have to be parted again?
+
+MARTIN. We will, indeed; I must go as a _spailpin fanac_, to
+reap and to dig the harvest in some other place. But Mary and myself
+have it settled we'll meet again at this house on a certain day, with
+the blessing of God. I'll have the key in my pocket; and we'll come in,
+with a better chance of stopping in it. You'll have your own cows yet,
+Mary; and your calves and your firkins of butter, with the help of God.
+
+MARY. I think I hear carts on the road. (_She gets up, and goes
+to the door._)
+
+MARTIN. It's the people coming back from the fair. Shut the
+door, Mary; I wouldn't like them to see how bare the house is; and I'll
+put a smear of ashes on the window, the way they won't see we're here at
+all.
+
+BLIND MAN (_raising his head suddenly_). Do not do that; but
+open the door wide, and let the blessing of God come in on you.
+(MARY _opens the door again. He takes up his fiddle, and begins
+to play on it. A little boy puts in his head at the door; and then
+another head is seen, and another with that again._)
+
+BLIND MAN. Who is that at the door?
+
+MARY. Little boys that came to listen to you.
+
+BLIND MAN. Come in, boys. (_Three or four come inside._)
+
+BLIND MAN. Boys, I am listening to the carts coming home from
+the fair. Let you go out, and stop the people; tell them they must come
+in: there is a wedding-dance here this evening.
+
+BOY. The people are going home. They wouldn't stop for us.
+
+BLIND MAN. Tell them to come in; and there will be as fine a
+dance as ever they saw. But they must all give a present to the man and
+woman that are newly married.
+
+ANOTHER BOY. Why would they come in? They can have a dance of
+their own at any time. There is a piper in the big town.
+
+BLIND MAN. Say to them that _I myself_ tell them to come in;
+and to bring every one a present to the newly-married woman.
+
+BOY. And who are you yourself?
+
+BLIND MAN. Tell them it is Raftery the poet is here, and that
+is calling to them.
+
+(_The boys run out, tumbling over one another._)
+
+MARTIN. Are you Raftery, the great poet I heard talk of since I
+was born! (_taking his hand_). Seven hundred thousand welcomes before
+you; and it is a great honour to us you to be here.
+
+MARY. Raftery the poet! Now there is luck on us! The first man
+that brought us his blessing, and that eat food in my own house, he to
+be Raftery the poet! And I hearing the other day you were sick and near
+your death. And I see no sign of sickness on you now.
+
+BLIND MAN. I am well, I am well now, the Lord be praised for
+it.
+
+MARTIN. I heard talk of you as often as there are fingers on my
+hands, and toes on my feet. But indeed I never thought to have the luck
+of seeing you.
+
+MARY. And it is you that made 'County Mayo,' and the
+'Repentance,' and 'The Weaver,' and the 'Shining Flower.' It is often I
+thought there should be no woman in the world so proud as Mary Hynes,
+with the way you praised her.
+
+BLIND MAN. O my poor Mary Hynes, without luck! (_They hear the
+wheels of a cart outside the house, and an old farmer comes in, a frieze
+coat on him._)
+
+OLD FARMER. God save you, Martin; and is this your wife? God be
+with you, woman of the house. And, O Raftery, seven hundred thousand
+welcomes before you to this country. I would sooner see you than King
+George. When they told me you were here, I said to myself I would not go
+past without seeing you, if I didn't get home till morning.
+
+BLIND MAN. But didn't you get my message?
+
+OLD FARMER. What message is that?
+
+BLIND MAN. Didn't they tell you to bring a present to the
+new-married woman and her husband. What have you got for them?
+
+OLD FARMER. Wait till I see; I have something in the cart. (_He
+goes out._)
+
+MARTIN. O Raftery, you see now what a great name you have here.
+(_Old farmer comes in again_ _with a bag of meal on his shoulders. He
+throws it on the floor._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Four bags of meal I was bringing from the mill; and
+there is one of them for the woman of the house.
+
+MARY. A thousand thanks to God and you. (MARTIN
+_carries the bag to other side of table._)
+
+BLIND MAN. Now don't forget the fiddler. (_He takes a plate and
+holds it out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. I'll not break my word, Raftery, the first time you
+came to this country. There is two shillings for you in the plate. (_He
+throws the money into it._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    This is a man has love to God,
+    Opening his hand to give out food;
+    Better a small house filled with wheat,
+    Than a big house that's bare of meat.
+
+OLD FARMER. _Maisead_, long life to you, Raftery.
+
+BLIND MAN. Are you there, boy?
+
+BOY. I am.
+
+BLIND MAN. I hear more wheels coming. Go out, and tell the
+people Raftery will let no person come in here without a present for the
+woman of the house.
+
+BOY. I am going. (_He goes out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. They say there was not the like of you for a poet
+in Connacht these hundred years back.
+
+(_A middle-aged woman comes in, a pound of tea and a parcel of sugar in
+her hand._)
+
+WOMAN. God save all here! I heard Raftery the poet was in it;
+and I brought this little present to the woman of the house. (_Puts them
+into_ MARY'S _hands._) I would sooner see Raftery than be out
+there in the cart.
+
+BLIND MAN. Don't forget the fiddler, O right woman.
+
+WOMAN. And are you Raftery?
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I am Raftery the poet,
+      Full of gentleness and love;
+    With eyes without light,
+      With quietness, without misery.
+
+WOMAN. Good the man.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Quick, quick, quick, for no man
+    Need speak twice to a handy woman;
+    I'll praise you when I hear the clatter
+    Of your shilling on my platter.
+
+(_A young man comes in with a side of bacon in his arms, and stands
+waiting._)
+
+WOMAN. Indeed, I would not begrudge it to you if it was a piece
+of gold I had (_puts shilling in plate_). The 'Repentance' you made is
+at the end of my fingers. Here's another customer for you now. (_The
+young man comes forward, and gives the bacon to_ MARTIN, _who
+puts it with the meal._)
+
+MARY. I thank you kindly. Oh, it's like the miracle worked for
+Saint Colman, sending him his dinner in the bare hills!
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    May that young man with yellow hair
+    Find yellow money everywhere!
+
+FAIR YOUNG MAN. I heard the world and his wife were stopping at
+the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be
+behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (_puts money in the
+plate_). I would sooner see that fiddler than any other fiddler in the
+world.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    May that young man with yellow hair
+    Buy cheap, sell dear, in every fair.
+
+FAIR YOUNG MAN (_to_ MARTIN). How does he know I have
+yellow hair and he blind? How does he know that?
+
+MARTIN. Hush, my head is going round with the wonder is on me.
+
+MARY. No wonder at all in that. Maybe it is dreaming we all
+are.
+
+(_A grey-haired man and two girls come in._)
+
+GREY-HAIRED MAN (_laying down a sack_). The blessing of God
+here! I heard Raftery was here in the wedding-house, and that he would
+let no one in without a present. There was nothing in the cart with us
+but a sack of potatoes, and there it is for you, ma'am.
+
+MARY. Oh, it's too good you all are to me. Whether it's asleep
+or awake I am, I thank you kindly.
+
+BLIND MAN. Don't forget the fiddler.
+
+GREY-HAIRED MAN. Are you Raftery?
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Who will give Raftery a shilling?
+    Here is his platter: who is willing?
+    Who will give honour to the poet?
+    Here is his platter: show it, show it.
+
+GREY-HAIRED FARMER. You're welcome; you're welcome! That is
+Raftery, anyhow! (_Puts money in the plate._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Come hither, girls, give what you can
+    To the poor old travelling man.
+
+GREY-HAIRED MAN. Aurah Susan, aurah Oona, are you looking at
+who is before you, the greatest poet in Ireland? That is Raftery
+himself. It is often you heard talk of the girl that got a husband with
+the praises he gave her. If he gives you the same, maybe you'll get
+husbands with it.
+
+FIRST GIRL. I often heard talk of Raftery.
+
+THE OTHER GIRL. There was always a great name on Raftery.
+(_They put some money in the plate shyly._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Before you go, give what you can
+    To this young girl and this young man.
+
+FIRST GIRL (_to_ MARY). Here's a couple of dozen of
+eggs, and welcome.
+
+THE OTHER GIRL. O woman of the house! I have nothing with me
+here; but I have a good clucking hen at home, and I'll bring her to you
+to-morrow; our house is close by.
+
+MARY. Indeed, that's good news to me; such nice neighbours to
+be at hand. (_Several men and women come into the house together, every
+one of them carrying something._)
+
+SEVERAL (_together_). Welcome, Raftery!
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    If ye have hearts are worth a mouse,
+    Welcome the bride into her house.
+
+(_They laugh and greet_ MARY, _and put down gifts--a roll of
+butter, rolls of woollen thread, and many other things._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Ha, ha! That's right. They are coming in now. Now,
+Raftery; isn't it generous and open-handed and liberal this country is?
+Isn't it better than the County Mayo?
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I'd say all Galway was rich land,
+    If I'd your shillings in my hand.
+
+(_Holds out his plate to them._)
+
+OLD FARMER (_laughing_). Now, neighbours, down with it! My
+conscience! Raftery knows how to get hold of the money.
+
+A MAN OF THEM. _Maisead_, he doesn't own much riches; and there
+is pride on us all to see him in this country. (_Puts money in the
+plate, and all the others do the same. A lean old man comes in._)
+
+MARTIN (_to_ MARY). That is John the Miser, or Seagan
+na Stucaire, as they call him. That is the man that is hardest in this
+country. He never gave a penny to any person since he was born.
+
+MISER. God save all here! Oh, is that Raftery? Ho, ho! God save
+you, Raftery, and a hundred thousand welcomes before you to this
+country. There is pride on us all to see you. There is gladness on the
+whole country, you to be here in our midst. If you will believe me,
+neighbours, I saw with my own eyes the bush Raftery put his curse on;
+and as sure as I'm living, it was withered away. There is nothing of it
+but a couple of old twigs now.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I've heard a voice like his before,
+    And liked some little voice the more;
+    I'd sooner have, if I'd my choice,
+    A big heart and a small voice.
+
+MISER. Ho! ho! Raftery, making poems as usual. Well, there is
+great joy on us, indeed, to see you in our midst.
+
+BLIND MAN. What is the present you have brought to the
+new-married woman?
+
+MISER. What is the present I brought? O _maisead_! the times
+are too bad on a poor man. I brought a few fleeces of wool I had to the
+market to-day, and I couldn't sell it; I had to bring it home again. And
+calves I had there, I couldn't get any buyer for at all. There is
+misfortune on these times.
+
+BLIND MAN. Every person that came in brought his own present
+with him. There is the new-married woman, and let you put down a good
+present.
+
+MISER. O _maisead_, much good may it do her! (_He takes out of
+his pocket a small parcel of snuff; takes a_ _piece of paper from the
+floor, and pours into it, slowly and carefully, a little of the snuff,
+and puts it on the table._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    Look at the gifts of every kind
+    Were given with a willing mind;
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a pinch of snuff!
+
+OLD FARMER. _Maisead_, long life to you, Raftery; that your
+tongue may never lose its edge. That is a man of cows certainly; I
+myself am a man of sheep.
+
+BLIND MAN. A bag of meal from the man of sheep.
+
+FAIR YOUNG MAN. And I am a man of pigs.
+
+BLIND MAN. A side of meat from the man of pigs.
+
+MARTIN. Don't forget the woman of hens.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    A pound of tea from the woman of hens.
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a pinch of snuff!
+
+ALL.
+
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a pinch of snuff!
+
+OLD FARMER. The devil the like of such fun have we had this
+year!
+
+MISER. Oh, indeed, I was only keeping a little grain for
+myself; but it's likely they may want it all. (_He takes the paper out,
+and lays it on the table._)
+
+BLIND MAN. A bag of meal from the man of sheep.
+
+ALL.
+
+    After all this, it's not enough
+    From the man of cows--a half-ounce of snuff!
+
+(_One of the girls hands the snuff round; they laugh and sneeze, taking
+pinches of it._)
+
+OLD FARMER. My soul to the devil, Seagan, do the thing
+decently. Give out one of those fleeces you have in the cart with you.
+
+MISER. I never saw the like of you for fools since I was born.
+Is it mad you are?
+
+ALL. From the man of cows, a half-ounce of snuff!
+
+MISER. Oh, _maisead_, if there must be a present put down, take
+the fleece, and my share of misfortune on you! (_Three or four of the
+boys run out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Aurah, Seagan, what is your opinion of Raftery now?
+He has you destroyed worse than the bush! (_The boys come back, a fleece
+with them._)
+
+BOY. Here is the fleece, and it's very heavy it is. (_They put
+it down, and there falls a little bag out of it that bursts and scatters
+the money here and there on the floor._)
+
+MISER. Ub-ub-bu! That is my share of money scattered on me that
+I got for my calves. (_He stoops down to gather it together. All the
+people burst out laughing again._)
+
+OLD FARMER. _Maisead_, Seagan, where did you get the money? You
+told us you didn't sell your share of calves.
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    He that got good gold
+    For calves he never sold
+    Must put good money down
+    With a laugh, without a frown;
+    Or I'll destroy that man
+    With a bone-breaking rann.
+    I'll rhyme him by the book
+    To a blue-watery look.
+
+MISER. Oh, Raftery, don't do that. I tasted enough of your
+ranns just now, and I don't want another taste of them. There's
+threepence for you. (_He puts three pennies in the plate._)
+
+BLIND MAN.
+
+    I'll put a new name upon
+    This strong farmer, of Thrippeny John.
+    He'll be called, without a doubt,
+    Thrippeny John from this time out.
+    Put your sovereign on my plate,
+    Or that and worse will be your fate.
+
+MISER. O, in the name of God, Raftery, stop your mouth and let
+me go! Here is the sovereign for you; and indeed it's not with my
+blessing I give it.
+
+(BLIND MAN _plays on the fiddle. They all stand up and dance
+but_ SEAGAN NA STUCIARE, _who shakes his fist in_ BLIND
+MAN'S _face, and goes out._
+
+_When they have danced for a minute or two_, BLIND MAN _stops
+fiddling and stands up._)
+
+BLIND MAN. I was near forgetting: I am the only person here
+gave nothing to the woman of the house. (_Hands the plate of money to_
+MARY.) Take that and my seven hundred blessings along with it,
+and that you may be as well as I wish you to the end of life and time.
+Count the money now, and see what the neighbours did for you.
+
+MARY. That is too much indeed.
+
+MARTIN. You have too much done for us already.
+
+BLIND MAN. Count it, count it; while I go over and try can I
+hear what sort of blessings Seagan na Stucaire is leaving after him.
+
+(_Neighbours all crowd round counting the money._ BLIND MAN
+_goes to the door, looks back with a sigh, and goes quietly out._)
+
+OLD FARMER. Well, you have enough to set you up altogether,
+Martin. You'll be buying us all up within the next six months.
+
+MARTIN. Indeed I don't think I'll be going digging potatoes for
+other men this year, but to be working for myself at home.
+
+(_The sound of horse's steps are heard. A young man comes into the
+house._)
+
+YOUNG MAN. What is going on here at all? All the cars in the
+country gathered at the door, and Seagan na Stucaire going swearing down
+the road.
+
+OLD FARMER. Oh, this is the great wedding was made by
+Raftery.--Where is Raftery? Where is he gone?
+
+MARTIN (_going to the door_). He's not here. I don't see him on
+the road. (_Turns to young farmer._) Did you meet a blind fiddler going
+out the door--the poet Raftery?
+
+YOUNG MAN. The poet Raftery? I did not; but I stood by his
+grave at Killeenan three days ago.
+
+MARY. His grave? Oh, Martin, it was a dead man was in it!
+
+MARTIN. Whoever it was, it was a man sent by God was in it.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST SAINT
+
+
+AN OLD MAN.
+
+A TEACHER.
+
+CONALL AND OTHER CHILDREN.
+
+
+SCENE.--_A large room as it was in the old time. A long table
+in it. A troop of children, a share of them eating their dinner, another
+share of them sitting after eating. There is a teacher stooping over a
+book in the other part of the room._
+
+
+A CHILD (_standing up_). Come out, Felim, till we see the new
+hound.
+
+ANOTHER CHILD. We can't. The master told us not to go out till
+we would learn this poem, the poem he was teaching us to-day.
+
+ANOTHER CHILD. He won't let anyone at all go out till he can
+say it.
+
+ANOTHER CHILD. _Maisead_, disgust for ever on the same old
+poem; but there is no fear for myself--I'll get out, never fear; I'll
+remember it well enough. But I don't think you will get out, Conall. Oh,
+there is the master ready to begin.
+
+TEACHER (_lifting up his head_). Now, children, have you
+finished your dinner?
+
+CHILDREN. Not yet. (_A poor-looking, grey old man comes to the
+door._)
+
+A CHILD. Oh, that is old Cormacin that grinds the meal for us,
+and minds the oven.
+
+OLD MAN. The blessing of God here! Master, will you give me
+leave to gather up the scraps, and to bring them out with me?
+
+MASTER. You may do that. (_To the children._) Come here now,
+till I see if you have that poem right, and I will let you go out when
+you have it said.
+
+FEARALL. We are coming; but wait a minute till I ask old
+Cormacin what is he going to do with the leavings he has there.
+
+OLD MAN. I am gathering them to give to the birds, avourneen.
+
+TEACHER. We will do it now; come over here. (_The children
+stand together in a row._)
+
+TEACHER. Now I will tell you who made the poem you are going to
+say to me: There was a holy, saintly man in Ireland some years ago.
+Aongus Ceile De was the name he had. There was no man in Ireland had
+greater humility than he. He did not like the people to be giving honour
+to him, or to be saying he was a great saint, or that he made fine
+poems. It was because of his humility he stole away one night, and put a
+disguise on himself; and he went like a poor man through the country,
+working for his own living without anyone knowing him. He is gone away
+out of knowledge now, without anyone at all knowing where he is. Maybe
+he is feeding pigs or grinding meal now like any other poor person.
+
+A CHILD. Grinding meal like old Cormacin here.
+
+TEACHER. Exactly. But before he went away, it is many fine
+sweet poems he made in the praise of God and the angels; and it was one
+of those I was teaching you to-day.
+
+A CHILD. What is the name you said he had?
+
+TEACHER. Aongus Ceile De, the servant of God. They gave him
+that name because he was so holy. Now, Felim, say the first two lines
+you; and Art will say the two next lines; and Aodh the two lines after
+that, and so on to the end.
+
+FELIM.
+
+    Up in the kingdom of God, there are
+    Archangels for every single day.
+
+ART.
+
+    And it is they certainly
+    That steer the entire week.
+
+AODH.
+
+    The first day is holy;
+    Sunday belongs to God.
+
+FERGUS.
+
+    Gabriel watches constantly
+    Every week over Monday.
+
+CONALL.
+
+    Gabriel watches constantly--
+
+TEACHER. That's not it, Conall; Fergus said that.
+
+CONALL. It is to God Sunday belongs----
+
+TEACHER. That's not it; that was said before. It is at Tuesday
+we are now. Who is it has Tuesday? (_The little boy does not answer._)
+Who is it has Tuesday? Don't be a fool, now.
+
+CONALL (_putting the joint of his finger in his eye_). I don't
+know.
+
+TEACHER. Oh, my shame you are! Look now; go in the place
+Fearall is, and he will go in your place. Now, Fearall.
+
+FEARALL.
+
+    It is true that Tuesday is kept
+    By Michael in his full strength.
+
+TEACHER. That's it. Now, Conall, say who has Monday.
+
+CONALL. I can't.
+
+TEACHER. Say the two lines before that and I will be satisfied.
+Who has Monday?
+
+CONALL (_crying_). I don't know.
+
+TEACHER. Oh, aren't you the little amadan! I will never put
+anything at all in your head. I will not let you go out till you know
+that poem. Now, boys, run out with you; and we will leave Conall Amadan
+here. (_The_ TEACHER _and all the other scholars go out._)
+
+THE OLD MAN. Don't be crying, avourneen; I will teach the poem
+to you; I know it myself.
+
+CONALL. Aurah, Cormacin, I cannot learn it. I am not clever or
+quick like the other boys. I can't put anything in my head (_bursts
+into crying again_). I have no memory for anything.
+
+OLD MAN (_laying his hand on his head_). Take courage, astore.
+You will be a wise man yet, with the help of God. Come with me now, and
+help me to divide these scraps. (_The child gets up._) That's it now;
+dry your eyes and don't be discouraged.
+
+CONALL (_wiping his eyes_). What are you making three shares of
+the scraps for?
+
+THE OLD MAN. I am going to give the first share to the geese; I
+am putting all the cabbage on this dish for them; and when I go out, I
+will put a grain of meal on it, and it will feed them finely. I have
+scraps of meat here, and old broken bread, and I will give that to the
+hens; they will lay their eggs better when they will get food like that.
+These little crumbs are for the little birds that do be singing to me in
+the morning, and that awaken me with their share of music. I have oaten
+meal for them. (_Sweeps the floor, and gathers little crumbs of bread._)
+I have a great wish for the little birds. (_The old man looks up; he
+sees the little boy lying on a cushion, and he asleep. He stands a
+little while looking at him. Tears gather in his eyes; then he goes down
+on his knees._)
+
+OLD MAN. O Lord, O God, take pity on this little soft child.
+Put wisdom in his head, cleanse his heart, scatter the mist from his
+mind, and let him learn his lesson like the other boys. O Lord, Thou
+wert Thyself young one time: take pity on youth. O Lord, Thou Thyself
+shed tears: dry the tears of this little lad. Listen, O Lord, to the
+prayer of Thy servant, and do not keep from him this little thing he is
+asking of Thee. O Lord, bitter are the tears of a child, sweeten them;
+deep are the thoughts of a child, quiet them; sharp is the grief of a
+child, take it from him; soft is the heart of a child, do not harden it.
+
+(_While the old man is praying, the_ TEACHER _comes in. He
+makes a sign to the children outside; they come in and gather about him.
+The old man notices the children; he starts up, and shame burns on
+him._)
+
+TEACHER. I heard your prayer, old man; but there is no good in
+it. I praise you greatly for it, but that child is half-witted. I prayed
+to God myself once or twice on his account, but there was no good in it.
+
+THE OLD MAN. Perhaps God heard me. God is for the most part
+ready to hear. The time we ourselves are empty without anything, God
+listens to us; and He does not think on the thing we are without, but
+gives us our fill.
+
+TEACHER. It is the truth you are speaking; but there is no good
+in praying this time. This boy is very ignorant. (_He and the old man go
+over to the child, who is still asleep, and signs of tears on his
+cheeks._) He must work hard, and very hard; and maybe with the dint of
+work, he will get a little learning some time. (_He puts his hand on the
+cheek of the little boy, and he starts up, and wonder on him when he
+sees them all about him._)
+
+THE OLD MAN. Ask it to him now.
+
+TEACHER. DO you remember the poem now, Conall?
+
+CONALL.
+
+    Up in the heaven of God, there are
+    Archangels for every day.
+
+    And it is they certainly
+    That steer the entire week.
+
+    The first day is holy;
+    Sunday belongs to God.
+
+    Gabriel watches constantly
+    Every week over Monday.
+
+    It is true that Tuesday is kept
+    By Michael in his full strength.
+
+    Rafael, honest and kind and gentle,
+    It is to him Wednesday belongs.
+
+    To Sachiel, that is without crookedness,
+    Thursday belongs every week.
+
+    Haniel, the Archangel of God,
+    It is he has Friday.
+
+    Bright Cassiel, of the blue eyes,
+    It is he directs Saturday.
+
+TEACHER. That is a great wonder, not a word failed on him. But
+tell me, Conall astore, how did you learn that poem since?
+
+CONALL. When I was sleeping, just now, there came an old man to
+me, and I thought there was every colour that is in the rainbow upon
+him. And he took hold of my shirt, and he tore it; and then he opened
+my breast, and he put the poem within in my heart.
+
+OLD MAN. It is God that sent that dream to you. I have no doubt
+you will not be hard to teach from this out.
+
+CONALL. And the man that came to me, I thought it was old
+Cormacin that was in it.
+
+FEARALL. Maybe it was Aongus Ceile De himself that was in it.
+
+AODH. Maybe Cormacin is Aongus.
+
+TEACHER. Are you Aongus Ceile De? I desire you in the name of
+God to tell me.
+
+THE OLD MAN (_bowing his head_). Oh, you have found it out now!
+Oh, I thought no one at all would ever know me. My grief that you have
+found me out!
+
+TEACHER (_going on his knees_). O holy Aongus, forgive me; give
+me your blessing. O holy man, give your blessing to these children.
+(_The children fall on their knees round him._)
+
+THE OLD MAN (_stretching out his hand_). The blessing of God on
+you. The blessing of Christ and His Holy Mother on you. My own blessing
+on you.
+
+
+
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+
+TWO WOMEN.
+
+SHEPHERDS.
+
+KINGS.
+
+CHILD ANGELS.
+
+THE HOLY FAMILY.
+
+
+SCENE.--_A stable. The door shut on it. The dawn of day is
+rising, and the colours of morning coming. Two women come in--a woman of
+them from the east, and a woman from the west, and they tired from the
+journey. There is a branch of a cherry tree in the hand of one of them,
+and a flock of flax in the hand of the other of them._
+
+
+THE FIRST WOMAN. God be with you!
+
+THE SECOND WOMAN. God be with yourself!
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Where are you going?
+
+SECOND WOMAN. In search of a woman I am.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. And myself as well as you.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is strange. What woman is that?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. A woman that is about to give birth to a child;
+and I think it would be well for her, another woman to be giving care to
+her.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is the same woman I am in search of in the
+same way.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. I did an unkindness to her, and grief and shame
+came on me after, and I thought to make up for it if I could.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Oh, that is just the same thing I myself did.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is a wonder. I will tell you how it happened
+with me; and you will tell me your story after that.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. I will tell it.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That is good. I was one evening a while ago
+getting ready the supper for my husband and my children, when there came
+a man and a young woman to the door, and the woman riding an ass. They
+asked a night's lodging of me. They said it was up to Jerusalem they
+were going. But, my grief! the husband I have is a rough man, and there
+was fear on me to let them in; I was afraid he would do something to me,
+and I refused them. They said to me they were very tired; and they
+pressed so hard on me that I told them at last to go out and sleep in
+the barn, in the place the flax was, and my husband would not have
+knowledge of it. But about midnight my husband was struck with sickness,
+and a great pain came on him of a sudden, as if his death was near. When
+I thought him to be dying, I was in dread; and I ran out to the people I
+had put in the barn, asking help from them.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. God help us!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. God help us, indeed! And when the woman that was
+lying on the stalks of flax heard my story, it is what she did: she took
+a flock of the husks of the flax that were on the floor, and said to me:
+'Lay that,' she said, 'on the place the pain is, and it will cure him.'
+Out with me as quick as I could, and the husks in my hand, the same as
+they are now. My husband was on the point of death at that time; but, as
+sure as I am alive, when I put the husks on him, the pain went away, and
+he was as well as ever he was.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. That is a great story!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. And when I ran out again to bring the woman in
+with me, she was gone; and I heard a voice, as I thought, saying these
+two lines:--
+
+    'A meek woman and a rough man;
+    The Son of God lying in husks.'
+
+FIRST WOMAN. You heard that said?
+
+SECOND WOMAN. There was grief and shame on me then, letting her
+from me like that, without giving her thanks, or anything at all; and I
+followed her on the morrow, for I said to myself that she was blessed. I
+heard she was gone to Bethlehem; and I followed her to this stable; for
+I thought I could be helpful to her, and she in that state. They told me
+she was not in the inn; and that there was no place at all for her to
+get, till she came to this stable.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Is not that wonderful? You said the truth when
+you said it was a blessed woman that was in it.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. How do you know that?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Because she did a great marvel under my own eyes.
+My sorrow and my bitter grief! I did a thing seven times worse than what
+you did. It was fear before your husband was on you when you refused her
+the night's lodging; but the hardness and the misery in my own heart
+made me refuse her fruit she asked of me. She herself and the man that
+was with her were going by; and the day came close on her and hot, and
+there was a large tree of cherries in my garden. She looked up then, and
+she took a longing for them. 'O right woman!' she said; 'there is a
+desire come on me to have a few of your cherries; maybe you will give me
+a share of them.' 'I will not give them,' said I, 'to any stranger at
+all travelling the road like yourself.' 'Give them to me, if it is your
+will,' says she, quiet, and nice, and gentle, 'for I am not far from the
+birth of my child; and I have a great longing for them.'
+
+I don't know what was the bad thing was in my heart; but I refused her
+again. No sooner was the word out of my mouth than the big tree bent
+down of itself to her, and laid its twigs across the wall, and out on
+the road, till she could put out her hand and take her fill of the
+cherries.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. That was a great miracle, without doubt.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. It was so; and grief came to me after that for
+refusing her; for I knew by it that God had a hand in her. And I took
+this branch in my hand, and I followed her to the stable to ask pardon
+of her.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. Is it not a wonder how we came here together on
+the same search?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. I think she will be wanting help, for they said to
+me in the inn she was not far from the birth of her child; and I made as
+good haste as I could. Maybe we are in time to give her help yet.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. I will knock at the door.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Do so.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. Wait a while; there are strangers coming up this
+road from the west.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. That is so; and look on the other side: there are
+great people coming from the east. We must wait till they go past.
+(_They sit down on either side of the door. Kings, finely dressed, come
+in at the east side; and herds and shepherds on the west side._)
+
+A KING (_pointing upwards with his hand_). Kings and friends,
+it is not possible I am mistaken. Is not the wonderful star we followed
+as far as this standing now without stirring over this place?
+
+A SHEPHERD. O friends, look up. There is not a bird in the sky
+that is not gathered above this house.
+
+A KING. We are come from the east, from the rising of the sun,
+a long, long way off from this country, following the star that is
+standing still over us now. Where are you come from, shepherds?
+
+A SHEPHERD. We are come from the west, from the setting of the
+sun, a long way off from this country.
+
+KING. And what is it brought you here? I dare say it is not
+without cause yourselves and ourselves are met at the door of this
+house.
+
+SHEPHERD. We were sitting one evening quiet and satisfied on a
+grassy hill watching our flocks; and we saw all of a sudden a thing that
+put wonder on us. The lambs that were sucking at the ewes left off
+sucking, and they looked up in the sky; and the kids that were drinking
+at the pool stopped drinking and looked up. It would put wonder on any
+person at all to see the little kids looking up as wise as ourselves. We
+looked up then, and we saw a beautiful bright angel over our heads; and
+fear came on us; but the angel spoke, and he said to us that some great
+joy was coming into the world, and he said: 'Set out now in search of
+it, and go to Bethlehem.' 'Where is that?' we asked. 'In a country that
+is called Judea,' said the angel, 'a long, long way from you to the
+east.' We made ourselves ready on the morrow; and there was every sort
+of bird that was in the sky going before us. Look at them all now, a
+share of them sitting on the roof of the house, and thousands of others
+above in a great cloud. We are all simple people, poor shepherds, it is
+not fitting for us to be coming here; but there was fear on us when we
+heard the angel speak.
+
+KING. It is great powerful kings we are. We come from far off,
+from the rising of the sun. There is not a king or a prince in these
+parts is fit to be put beside the lowest steward we have. And we are
+wise. There is no knowledge or learning to be had under the sun that we
+have not got. But now we are brought by the guidance of that star to the
+Master and the Teacher that will teach us all the knowledge and wisdom
+of the whole world. It is in that hope we are come following this star.
+And now, shepherds, tell us what is it you want here.
+
+SHEPHERD. We cannot say rightly what we want here. But the
+angel told us there was some great joy coming into the world; and we
+followed the birds in search of that joy, and the birds came to this
+place.
+
+KING. It is likely, since the star of knowledge led us, and the
+birds led you, to the one place, that there is some wonderful thing in
+it. O friends, whatever thing is in this closed stable, it is certain it
+will put great fear or great joy, or maybe great sorrow, on these
+shepherds and on ourselves.
+
+SHEPHERD. You who are noble and great, and rich and wise, and
+learned in all things, tell us what is in this stable.
+
+KING. It is true we are noble and honourable, and learned and
+powerful, and wise and prudent, but we cannot tell you that. We do not
+know ourselves what is the thing that is in it.
+
+SHEPHERD. Tell us this much anyway, is it sorrow or joy, grief
+or gladness, courage or fear, it will put on us? Will you not tell us
+that before we knock at the closed door?
+
+KING. It is certain there are no other persons in the world so
+learned as ourselves. We are astronomers to tell of the coming and going
+of the stars, and the ways of the heavens, and everything that is on the
+earth and in the clouds and under the earth. But for all that we cannot
+tell you this thing.
+
+SHEPHERD. Who will knock at the door?
+
+KING. It is my advice to you now: the king that is youngest of
+us, and the shepherd that is youngest of you, to go to the door and to
+knock together.
+
+SHEPHERD. Why do you say the youngest king and the youngest
+shepherd?
+
+KING. Do you not know there is no person free from sin but only
+infants that have never found occasion of doing it? The man that is
+youngest of us, it is he found least occasion to do wrong; and he is the
+best fitted to knock at this door, whatever there may be inside it.
+
+SHEPHERD (_leading out another shepherd_). This is the man that
+is youngest among us.
+
+KING (_leading out another king_). This is the youngest king in
+our company.
+
+(_The two go to the door together and knock at it. The door is opened by
+St. Joseph, and the manger is seen, and Mary Mother kneeling beside the
+manger on her two knees, her hands crossed on her breast, and she
+praying._)
+
+KING. We are come to this door to do honour to God, and to Him
+that God has sent. It is here all the people of the whole world will be
+taught, and will be put on the road that is best. Show Him to us; and we
+will proclaim Him to all the people of knowledge, and the learned people
+of the world.
+
+SHEPERD. We are come in search of Him who is come to put joy in
+the world, and to put gladness in the hearts of the people. Show Him to
+us; and we will give news of Him to the herds and the shepherds, and the
+simple people of the whole world.
+
+ST. JOSEPH. It is great my gladness is to see you here. A
+hundred welcomes before you, both gentle and simple. Come in, and I will
+show you Him you are in search of. Look at this baby in the manger. It
+is He is King of the World, and He will put all the countries of the
+world under His feet.
+
+MARY MOTHER. He is the Son of God.
+
+(_They all go on their knees._)
+
+KING. We have brought gifts and offerings with us. Let us show
+them to you.
+
+MARY MOTHER. Walk softly and quietly, that you may not awake
+the Child.
+
+A KING. I am the king is oldest in our company. I will walk
+softly, and I will not awake the Child.
+
+A SHEPHERD. I am the man is oldest among us; let us give our
+poor gifts to you like the others. I will walk softly; I will not awake
+the little One.
+
+KING. We have brought from the rising of the sun, gold, and
+frankincense, and myrrh, and a share of every noble precious treasure
+there is in the world. It is not possible for the whole world to give a
+thing we have not with us; and we have brought another thing the world
+has not to give, the knowledge and sense and wisdom of our own hearts.
+We have been gathering it through the years, from youth to old age; and
+we put it first of all these things. (_They lay gold and spices, and
+other treasures before the Child._)
+
+SHEPHERD. We have brought fleeces, and cheeses, and a little
+lamb with us as an offering. We have no other thing to give. We are old
+now, and we have got this wisdom from God, that there is nothing better
+worth giving than the things God has given to us. (_They put down their
+own offerings. The two women come round to the front._)
+
+THE FIRST WOMAN. Oh, do you see that?
+
+SECOND WOMAN. King of the World, he said! Oh, are we not the
+unhappy sinners?
+
+FIRST WOMAN. My bitter grief for myself and yourself!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. I am lost for ever. There is no forgiveness for
+me to find for the thing I did!
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Nor for myself.
+
+SECOND WOMAN. You were not so guilty as I was.
+
+FIRST WOMAN. Let us go; and let us hide ourselves under some
+scalp of a rock, in a hole in the earth, or in the middle of the woods!
+
+SECOND WOMAN. Let us then hasten that we may hide ourselves.
+
+MARY MOTHER (_rises up and stretches out her hands, beckoning
+to the women_). Come over here. Come to this cradle. The Son of God is
+in this cradle, and His cradle is nothing but a manger. But yet He is
+King of the World. There is a welcome before the whole world coming to
+this cradle; but it is those that are asking forgiveness will get the
+greatest welcome.
+
+(_The two women fall on their knees._
+
+_Child angels come and stand on the rising ground at each side of the
+stable, and shining clothes on them like the colours of the morning.
+They lift their trumpets and blow them softly._)
+
+MARY MOTHER. Listen to the angels, the angels of God!
+
+AN ANGEL OF THEM. A hundred welcomes before the whole world to
+this cradle. We give out peace; we give out goodwill; we give out joy to
+the whole world! (_They take their share of trumpets up again, and blow
+them long and very sweetly._)
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+Printed by PONSONBY & GIBBS at the University Press, Dublin
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poets and Dreamers, by
+Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
+
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