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diff --git a/41250-8.txt b/41250-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6390b06..0000000 --- a/41250-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2646 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mearing Stones, by Joseph Campbell - -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: Mearing Stones - Leaves from my Note-Book on Tramp in Donegal - -Author: Joseph Campbell - -Illustrator: Joseph Campbell - -Release Date: October 31, 2012 [EBook #41250] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEARING STONES *** - - - - -Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - [ Transcriber's Notes: - - Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully - as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. - Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They - are listed at the end of the text. - - Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. - ] - - - - -MEARING STONES - - - - -BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - - THE RUSHLIGHT. - THE GARDEN OF THE BEES. - THE GILLY OF CHRIST. - THE MOUNTAINY SINGER. - - - - -[Illustration: THE WALL OF SLIEVE LEAGUE.] - - - - - MEARING STONES - - Leaves from my Note-Book on Tramp - in Donegal, by JOSEPH CAMPBELL - (Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil), with Sixteen - Pencil Drawings by the Author. - - MAUNSEL & COMPANY, LTD., - 96 MIDDLE ABBEY ST., DUBLIN. - 1911. - - - Printed by Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - Page - - In the Mountains 1 - - The Wander-Lust 2 - - The Dark Woman 2 - - By Lochros Beag 3 - - Coaching by the Stars 3 - - A Rainbow 3 - - Change 4 - - Prophet's Food 4 - - The Transient 5 - - Women and Hares 5 - - The Smell of the Town 5 - - Glengesh 5 - - Clog-Seed 6 - - Herbs and Flowers 6 - - A Young Girl 7 - - The General Light and Dark 7 - - Soul and Body 8 - - A Man on Shelty-Back 9 - - The Fairies 9 - - Stranorlar Station 9 - - Stones 10 - - The Strand-Bird 10 - - Space 10 - - Rabbits and Cats 11 - - The Glas Gaibhlinn 11 - - A House in the Road's Mouth 11 - - The Quest 12 - - Muckish 12 - - The May-Fire 12 - - Bloody Foreland 13 - - Twilight and Silence 13 - - The Poor Herd 14 - - A Mountain Tramp 14 - - The Festival of Death 19 - - In Glen-Columcille 19 - - The Brink of Water 20 - - A Dark Morning 21 - - The Swallow-Mark 21 - - Women Beetling Clothes 21 - - The Sea 22 - - A Ballad-Singer 22 - - Sunlight 24 - - Turf-Cutting 24 - - His Old Mother 25 - - A Day of Wind and Light, Blown Rain 25 - - Lying and Walking 26 - - Glen-Columcille to Carrick 26 - - Ora et Labora 29 - - Two Things that won't go Grey 29 - - Rundal 29 - - Púca-Piles 30 - - The Rosses 30 - - A Country Funeral 30 - - Youth and Age 31 - - Summer Dusk 32 - - A Note 32 - - The Peasant in Literature 32 - - An Insleep 33 - - Water and Slán-Lus 33 - - By Lochros Mór 33 - - Rival Fiddlers 34 - - Nature 35 - - Sunday under Slieve League 35 - - The Night he was Born 36 - - The Lusmór 37 - - Derry People 37 - - A Clock 38 - - Carrick Glen 38 - - A Shuiler 39 - - Turkeys in the Trees 39 - - A Party of Tinkers 39 - - Teelin, Bunglass, and Slieve League 40 - - The Shooting Star 45 - - Sunday on the Road between Carrick and Glengesh 45 - - A Roany Bush 46 - - August Evening 46 - - Near Inver 47 - - All Subtle, Secret Things 47 - - A Madman 47 - - Laguna 48 - - Near Letterkenny 48 - - Shan Mac Ananty 48 - - A Poor Cabin 51 - - The Flax-Stone 51 - - After Sunset 52 - - The Darkness and the Tide 53 - - Errigal 54 - - The Sore Foot 54 - - Asherancally 54 - - Orange Gallases 55 - - The Human Voice 55 - - Loch Aluinn 56 - - The Open Road 56 - - - - -DRAWINGS - - - The Wall of Slieve League Frontispiece - - Clady River, near Gweedore Facing Page 2 - - Pass of Glengesh " 6 - - Lochros Beag " 8 - - Muckish, with a 'Cap' on " 12 - - On the Road to Doon Well " 16 - - Near Alton Loch " 20 - - A Street in Ardara " 22 - - Falling Water " 26 - - Bog and Sky " 30 - - Mountainy Folk " 34 - - A Wayfarer " 38 - - The Horn " 42 - - A Clachan of Houses " 48 - - A Gap between the Hills " 50 - - Loch Nacung--Moonrise " 54 - - - - -MEARING STONES - - - - -IN THE MOUNTAINS - - -"In the mountains," says Nietzsche, "the shortest way is from summit to -summit." That is the way I covered Donegal. Instead of descending into -the valleys (a tedious and destroying process at all times), I crossed, -like the king of the fairies, on a bridge of wonder: - - With a bridge of white mist - Columcille he crosses, - On his stately journeys - From Slieve League to Rosses. - -What seems in places in this book a fathomless _madhm_ is in reality -bridged over with wonder--dark to the senses here and there, I grant -you, but steady and treadable in proportion to the amount of vision -one brings to the passage of it. All, I know, will not follow me (the -fairies withhold knowledge from the many and bestow it on the few), -but if blame is to be given let the fairies get it, and not me. And -I may as well warn the reader here that it is unlucky to curse the -fairies. Rosses is but a storm's cry, and--the curse always comes home -to roost! - -With regard to the pictures illustrating the book, several people -who have seen them in the original have criticised their darkness, -as if they were all drawn "in twilight and eclipse." But the darkness -of Donegal was the first thing that struck me when I crossed the -frontier at Lifford, and the forty miles' journey through the hills -to Ardara bit the impression still more deeply into me. And if I were -asked now after a year's exile what I remember most vividly of the -county, I should say its gloom. I can see nothing now but a wilderness -of black hills, with black shadows chasing one another over them, -a gleam of water here and there, and just the tiniest little patch -of sunlight--extraordinarily brilliant by contrast with the general -darkness--on half a field, say, with its mearing-stones, to relieve the -sense of tragedy that one feels on looking at the landscape. - - - - -THE WANDER-LUST - - -Sea-ribbons have I cut, and gathered ling; talked with fairies; heard -Lia Fail moaning in the centre, and seen Tonn Tuaidh white in the -north; slept on hearth-flags odd times, and under bushes other times; -passed the mill with the scoop-wheels and the house with the golden -door; following the roads--the heart always hot in me, the lights on -the hills always beckoning me on! - - - - -THE DARK WOMAN - - -We were talking together the other morning--the publican and -myself--outside the inn door at Barra, when a dark woman passed. "God -look to that poor creature," says he; "she hasn't as much on her as -would stuff a crutch." "Stuff a what?" says I, for I didn't quite -understand him. "The bolster of a crutch," says he. "And she knows -nobody. Her eye-strings is broke." - -[Illustration: CLADY RIVER, NEAR GWEEDORE.] - - - - -BY LOCHROS BEAG - - -A waste of blown sand. The Atlantic breakers white upon its -extremest verge. A patch of sea-bog before, exhaling its own peculiar -fragrance--part fibre, part earth, part salt. Ricks of black turf -stacked over it here and there, ready to be creeled inland against -the winter firing. The dark green bulk of Slieve a-Tooey rising -like a wall behind, a wisp of cloud lying lightly upon its carn. The -village of Maghery, a mere clachan of unmortared stone and rain-beaten -straw, huddling at its foot. A shepherd's whistle, a cry in torrential -Gaelic, or the bleat of a sheep coming from it now and again, only to -accentuate the elemental quiet and wonder of the place. The defile of -Maum opening beyond, scarped and precipitous, barely wide enough to -hold the road and bog-stream that tumble through it to the sea. The -rainbow air of our western seaboard enfolding all, heavy with rain and -the fragrance of salt and peat fires. - - - - -COACHING BY THE STARS - - -Coaching by the stars, night-walking--all my best thoughts, I find, -come to me that way. Poetry, like devilry, loves darkness. - - - - -A RAINBOW - - -I was watching a rainbow this afternoon--a shimmering ring in the -sky between the fort at the mouth of the Owentocker river and Slieve -a-Tooey beyond. "That's a beautiful sight, now," said a beggar, -stopping on the road to have a word with me--the sort of person one -meets everywhere in Ireland, friendly, garrulous, inquisitive, very -proud of his knowledge of half-secret or hidden things, and anxious -at all times to air it before strangers. "We do have a power of them -this speckled weather." He looked into the sky with a queer look, then -started humming over the names of the colours to himself in Irish. "And -they say, sir, it's unlucky to pass through a rainbow. Did you ever -hear that?" - - - - -CHANGE - - -My heart goes out to the playing and singing folk, the folk who are -forever on the roads. Life is change; and to be seeing new wonders -every day--the thrown sea, the silver rush of the meadow, the lights -in distant towns--is to be living, and not merely existing. I pity the -man who is content to stay always in the place where his mother dropped -him; that is, unless his thoughts wander. For one might sit on a midden -and dream stars! - - - - -PROPHET'S FOOD - - -A man hailed me on the road, and we were talking. . . . "If -one had nothing but fraochans to eat and water to drink, sure one -would have to be satisfied. And remember," says he, "that a prophet -lived on as little." "Who was that?" says I. "John the Baptist," says -he. "You'll read that in the books." - - - - -THE TRANSIENT - - -Only the transient is beautiful, said Schiller; and Nature, in the -incessant play of her rising, vanishing forms, is not averse to -beauty. Beauty, said Turgenev, needs not to live for ever to be -eternal--one instant is enough for her. - - - - -WOMEN AND HARES - - -It's curious in Donegal sometimes, when going along the road, or -crossing a footpath through the fields, to see a shawled woman, a -perch or so off, dropping over the edge of a hill, and then when you -get up to the edge there is no sign of her at all. And, maybe, a pace -further on you will start a hare out of the hollow where you think the -woman should have been, and you begin to wonder is there any truth in -the story about women--that have to do with magic and charms and old -freets, and the like--changing into hares, after all! I have had many -experiences like that in my travels through the county, and in not a -few instances have I been puzzled how a figure--silhouetted sharply -against the skyline, and only a few yards off--could disappear so -quickly out of view. - - - - -THE SMELL OF THE TOWN - - -A woman said to me to-day: "You'll get the smell o' the town blowed off -you in the Donegal hills!" - - - - -GLENGESH - - -Darkness and austerity--those are the notes I carry away from this -wild glen. Its lines have something of the splendid bareness of early -architecture; its colour suggests time-stained walls, with quiet -aisles and mouldering altars where one might kneel and dream away an -existence. When you meet a stranger going the road that winds through -it, like a coil of incense suspended in mid-air, you expect him to look -at you out of eyes full of wonder, and to speak to you in half-chanted -and serious words, stopping not, turning neither to left nor to right, -but faring on, a symbol of pilgrimage: - - _Le solus a chroidhe,_ - _Fann agus tuirseach_ - _Go deireadh a shlighe._ - - - - -CLOG-SEED - - -"What are you sowing?" "Oh, clog-seed, clog-seed. The childer about -here is all running barefoot, and I thought I might help them against -the winter day!" - - - - -HERBS AND FLOWERS - - -_Lusmór_, _lus-na-méarachán_, _sian sléibhe_, foxglove, or -fairy-thimble--whatever you like best to call it--it, I think, is the -commonest herb of all. One sees it everywhere with its tall carmine -spray, growing on ditches in the sun, in dark, shady places by the side -of rivers, and under arches. Then the king-fern, the splendid _osmunda -regalis_; the delicate maidenhair and hart's-tongue, rooted in the -crannies of walls; bog-mint and bog-myrtle, deliciously fragrant after -rain, and the white tossing _ceanabhán_; brier-roses and woodbine; the -drooping convolvulus; blue-bough; Fairies' cabbage, or London Pride; -pignuts and anemones; amber water-lilies, curiously scented; orchises, -purple and white; wild daffodils and marigolds, gilding the wet meadows -between hills; crotal, a moss rather than a herb, but beautiful to -look at and most serviceable to the dyer; eyebright and purple mountain -saxifrage; crested ling; tufts of sea-holly, with their green, fleshy, -spiked leaves; and lake-sedge and sand-grass, blown through by soft -winds and murmurous with the hum of bees. Donegal, wild though it be in -other respects, is surely a paradise of herbs and flowers. - -[Illustration: PASS OF GLENGESH.] - - - - -A YOUNG GIRL - - -A young girl, in the purr and swell of youth. Her shawl is thrown -loosely back, showing a neck and breast beautifully modelled. She is -barefooted, and jumps from point to point on the wet road. At a stream -which crosses the road near the _gallán_ she lifts her dress to her -knees and leaps over. She does not see me where I am perched sunning -myself, so I can watch her to my heart's content. - - - - -THE GENERAL LIGHT AND DARK - - -"The words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark." One -feels the truth of this saying of Walt Whitman's in a place like the -Pass of Glengesh, or the White Strand outside Maghery. Chanting a -fragment of the "Leaves" one night in the Pass, when everything was -quiet and the smells were beginning to rise out of the wet meadows -below, I felt how supremely true it was, and how much it belonged to -the time and place--the darkness, the silence, the vibrant stars, the -earth smells, the bat that came out of the shadow of a fuchsia-bush and -fluttered across a white streak in the sky beyond. And I have tried -Wordsworth's sonnet beginning, "The world is too much with us," by a -criterion no less than that of the Atlantic itself, tumbling in foam -on the foreshore of Maghery when daylight was deepening into twilight, -and the moon was low over the hills, touching the rock-pools and the -sand-pools with flakes of carmine light. When I said the sonnet aloud -to myself it seemed to rise out of the landscape and to incorporate -itself with it again as my voice rose and fell in the wandering -cadences of the verse. Nature, after all, is the final touchstone -of art. Tried by it, the counterfeit fails and the unmixed gold is -justified. - - - - -SOUL AND BODY - - -"It's a strange world," said a tramp to me to-day. I agreed. "And would -you answer me this, gaffer?" said he. "Why is it when a man's soul is -in his body, and he lusty and well, you think nothing of kicking him -about as you would an old cast shoe? And the minute the soul goes, -and the body is stiffening in death, you draw back from him, hardly -daring to touch him for the dread that is on you. Would you answer -me that, gaffer?" I was silent. "It's a strange world, sure enough," -said the tramp. He rose from the gripe where he lay making rings in -the grass with his stick. "Good-day, gaffer," said he. "God speed your -journey." And he took the road, laughing. - -[Illustration: LOCHROS BEAG.] - - - - -A MAN ON SHELTY-BACK - - -A man on shelty-back. He has come in from the mountains to the cloth -fair at Ardara. He is about sixty-five, black on the turn, clean -shaven, but for side whiskers. He wears the soft wide-awake favoured by -the older generation of peasants, open shirt, and stock rolled several -times round his throat and knotted loosely in front. His legs dangle -down on either side of his mount, tied at the knees with sugans. His -brogues are brown with bog mud, very thick in the sole, and laced only -half-way up. He has a bundle of homespun stuff under his left arm. A -pipe is in his teeth, and as I approach he withdraws it to bid me the -time of day. "_Lá maith_," he says in a strong, hearty voice. I return -the greeting, and pass on. - - - - -THE FAIRIES - - -I was in a house one night late up in the Gap of Maum, a very -lonely place, yarning with two brothers--shepherds--who live there -by themselves. I had sat a long time over the _griosach_, and was -preparing to go, when the elder of them said to me: "Don't stir yet a -bit. Sit the fire out. A body's loath to leave such a purty wee fire to -the fairies." - - - - -STRANORLAR STATION - - -In a quiet corner, seated, I see a woman come in from the mountainy -country beyond Convoy. She is waiting for the up-train. She is -dark. Her hair and eyes are _very_ dark. Her lips are threads of -scarlet. Her skin is colourless, except for a slight tanning due -to exposure to sun and weather. She has a black shawl about her -shoulders, and a smaller one of lighter colour over her head. She -moves seldom. Her hands are folded on her knees. She looks into space -with an air of quiet ecstasy, like a Madonna in an old picture. Her -beauty is the beauty of one apart from the ruck and commonness of -things. . . . . She spits out now and again. I cannot help -watching her. - - - - -STONES - - -"Donegal is a terrible place for stones." "Heth, is it, sir--boulders -as big as a house. And skipping-stones? Man dear, I could give you a -field full, myself!" - - - - -THE STRAND-BIRD - - -I could sit for hours listening to the "bubbling" of the strand-bird; -but that's because I am melancholy. If I weren't melancholy I'd hardly -like it, I think. The tide's at ebb and the bollans and rock-pools -are full of water. Beyond is space--the yellow of the sand and the -grey of the sky--and the pipe-note "bubbling" between. A strange, -yearning sound, like nothing one hears in towns; bringing one into -touch with the Infinite, and deep with the melancholy that is Ireland's -. . . and mine. - - - - -SPACE - - -In towns the furthest we see is the other side of the street; but -here there is no limit to one's prospect--Perseus is as visible as -Boötes--and one's thought grows as space increases. - - - - -RABBITS AND CATS - - -Donegal is over-run with rabbits; and sometimes on your journeys -you will see a common house-cat--miles from anywhere--stalking them -up the side of a mountain, creeping stealthily through the heather -and pouncing on them with the savagery of a wild thing. The cats, -a stonebreaker told me, come from the neighbouring farm-houses and -cabins, "but they are devils for strolling," says he, and in addition -to what food they get from their owners "they prog a bit on their own!" - - - - -THE GLAS GAIBHLINN - - -"That's a very green field," I said to a man to-day, pointing to a -field, about two furrow-lengths away, on which the sun seemed to pour -all its light at once. "Is there water near it?" "There's a stream," -says he. "And the Glas Gaibhlinn sleeps there, anyway." "And what's -that?" "It's a magic cow the old people'll tell you of," says he, "that -could never be milked at one milking, or at seven milkings, for that," -says he. "Any field that's greener than another field, or any bit of -land that's richer than another bit, they say the Glas Gaibhlinn sleeps -in it," says he. "It's a freet, but it's true!" - - - - -A HOUSE IN THE ROAD'S MOUTH - - -A house in the road's mouth--it is no roundabout to visit, but a short -cut. Often I go up there of an evening, when my day's wandering is -done, to meet the people and to hear the old Fenian stories told--or, -maybe, a tune played on the fiddle, if Donal O'Gallagher, the dark -man from Falcarragh, should happen to be present. It is as good as -the sight of day to see the dancers, the boys and the girls out on -the floor, the old people looking on from the shadow of the walls, and -Donal himself, for all his blindness, shaking his head and beating time -with his foot, as proud as a quilt of nine hundred threads! - - - - -THE QUEST - - -Where am I going? Looking for the dew-snail? No, but going till I find -the verge of the sky. - - - - -MUCKISH - - -"When you see Muckish with a cap on," said a man to me one day, "you -may lay your hand on your heart and say: 'We'll have a wet spell before -long.'" This mountain, like Errigal, has a knack of drawing a hood of -grey vapour round its head when the rest of the landscape is perfectly -cloudless--like the peaks of the Kaatskills in _Rip Van Winkle_. - - - - -THE MAY-FIRE - - -The May-Fire is still kindled in some parts of Donegal. It is a -survival of a pagan rite of our forefathers. - -"And at it (the great national convention at Uisneach in Meath) -they were wont to make a sacrifice to the arch-god, whom they adored, -whose name was Bél. It was likewise their usage to light two fires to -Bél in every district in Ireland at this season, and to drive a pair -of each herd of cattle that the district contained between these two -fires, as a preservative, to guard them against all the diseases of -that year. It is from that fire thus made that the day on which the -noble feast of the apostles Peter and James is held has been called -Bealteine (in Scotch Beltane), _i.e._, Bél's fire." - -[Illustration: MUCKISH, WITH A 'CAP' ON.] - -The boys and girls of a whole countryside repair to these fires, -which are usually lit upon a high, commanding hill, and they spend -the night out telling stories, reciting poems, singing, and dancing to -the accompaniment of pipes and fiddles. The May-Fire is not quite so -generally observed as the John's-Fire, which is kindled on the night of -the 23rd of June, St. John's Eve. - - - - -BLOODY FORELAND - - -Bloody Foreland. An old woman comes out of the ditch to talk to -me. . . . "It's a wild place, sir, God help us! none wilder. And -myself, sir----sure I've nothing in the world but the bones of one -cow!" - - - - -TWILIGHT AND SILENCE - - -Some places in Donegal seem to me to brood under a perpetual twilight -and silence--Glen-Columcille, for instance, and the valley running into -it. And mixed up with the twilight and silence is a profound melancholy -that rises out of the landscape itself, or is read into it by the -greyness of one's own experience. Those dark hills with the rack over -them and the sun looking through on one little patch of tilled land, -and the stone mearings about it, figure forth the sorrow that is the -heritage of every Irishman; the darkness the sorrow, the sunshine -the hope, iridescent and beautiful, but a thing of moments only and -soon to fade away. I stand on the bridge here where the road forks, -Slieve League to the left of me, a dim lowering bulk, and the road to -Glen reaching away into the skyline beyond. The water of a hillstream -murmurs continually at my feet. A duck splashes, and flaps dripping -into the greyness overhead. Not a soul is in sight--only a blue -feather of turf-smoke here and there to show that human hearts _do_ -beat in this wilderness; that there are feet to follow the plough-tail -and hands to tend the hearth. The sense of wonder over-masters me--the -wonder that comes of silence and closeness to the elemental forces of -nature. Then the mood changes, and I feel rising up in me the sorrow -that is the dominating passion of my life. Do many people go mad -here? I have heard tell that they do, and no wonder, for one would -need to be a saint or a philosopher to resist the awful austerity of -the place. - - - - -THE POOR HERD - - -There is a poor herd at Maghery--a half-witted character--who lives -all his days in the open, with nothing between him and the sky. He -was herding his cows one evening in a quiet place by the caves when I -happened on him. "What time o' day is it?" says he. "Just gone four," -says I, looking at my watch. "What time is that?" says he, in a dull -sort of way. "Is it near dark?" - - - - -A MOUNTAIN TRAMP - - -Bearing south by the Owenwee river from Maghery, we strike up through -Maum gorge. Outside Maghery we come on two men--one of them a thin, -wizened old fellow with no teeth; the other a youngish man, very -raggedly dressed, with dark hair and features like an Italian. The old -man tells us in Irish (which we don't follow very clearly) to keep up -by the river-bed, and we can't possibly lose our direction. A quarter -of a mile further on we meet another man. He bids us the time of day -in passably good English. I answer in Irish, telling him that we are -on the road for Glen-Columcille, and asking him the easiest way over -the hills. He repeats what the old man told us, viz., to keep to the -river-bottom, and to cut up then by the fall at the head of Maum to -Laguna, a cluster of poor houses in the mountain under Crockuna. "When -you get there," he says, "you cannot lose your road." He comes a bit -of the way with us, and then we leave him at a point where the track -ends in the heather, and where a squad of navvies is engaged laying -down a foundation of brushwood and stones to carry it further into -the hills. It gives us a shock, in a way, to come on this squad of -wild-looking men in so lonely and desolate a place. - -We are now well into the gorge, and a wild place it is! Half-way up -we come on a house--if one could call it such--with a reek of blue -smoke threading out of a hole in the thatch. No other sign of life -is visible. The walls of the gorge close in darkly on every side -except the north. On that side is the sea, white on Maghery strand, -and stretching away, a dull copper-green colour, into the sailless -horizon beyond. Hearing the voices, a young man comes out from between -two boulders serving as a sort of gateway to the house. His face is -tanned with sun and exposure, and he is in his bare feet. We greet him -in Irish and he answers--a little surprised, no doubt, at hearing the -language from strangers. Then another man comes forward--a brother, -if his looks don't belie him. He is in his bare feet also, and hatless, -with a great glibbe of black hair falling over his eyes. "You have the -Irish?" he says. "It's newance to hear it from townsfolk." We talk for -a while, enquiring further as to our direction over the hill, and then -we push on. Near the head of the gorge we sit down to have a rest, -sitting on a rock over the stream, and bathing our hands and faces -in the brown, flooded water. All the rivers of Donegal are brownish -in colour, and the Owenwee (_recte Abhainnbhuidhe_, "yellow river") -is no exception. The water stains everything it touches, and I have no -doubt but that the dark colour of the people's skin is due, partly, -to their washing themselves in it. Coming through one's boots, even, -it will stain the soles of the feet. - -[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO DOON WELL.] - -We resume our journey, and after some rough and steep climbing reach -the plateau head. Loch Nalughraman, a deep pool of mountain water, lies -to the east of us, shimmering in the grey morning light. All around is -bogland, of a dull red colour, and soaking with rain. We make through -this, jumping from tuft to tuft, and from hummock to hummock, as best -we can, going over the shoe-mouth occasionally in slush. In an hour -or so we come on a bridle-path of white limestones, set on their flat -in the spongy turf. We follow this for a while, and in time reach the -poor village of Laguna. Entering into one of the houses I greet the -bean-a'-tighe in Irish. She rises quickly from her seat by the hearth -where she has been spinning--a crowd of very young children clinging to -her skirts. She is a dark woman, with mellow breasts, and fine eyes and -teeth. She is barefooted, as usual, and wears the coloured head-dress -of her kind, curtseying to me modestly as I approach. She answers me -in Irish--the only language she knows--and bids me come in. "_Beir -isteach_," she says. A young man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts -is weaving in the room beyond. (I recognised the heavy click-clack, -click-clack, click-clack of the loom as I entered.) Hearing my enquiry -he rises up from his seat, drops his setting-stick, and offers to guide -us as far as the southern edge of the hill. "You will see the Glen road -below you," he says, coming out in his bare feet into the open, and -speaking volubly, like one used to good speech. "Look at it beyond," he -says, "winding from the Carrick side. Keep south, and you will strike -it after two miles of a descent." The woman brings a bowl of goat's -milk to my sister. She drinks it readily, for she is thirsty after her -climb. Then, thanking the poor people for their hospitality, we say, -"_Slán agaibh_," and press forward on our journey to Glen-Columcille. - -We reach the high-road in about half-an-hour, near a school-house, -shining white in the sun, and busy with the hum of children singing -over their lessons. Things look more familiar now. We pass many houses, -with fleeces of dyed wool--green and blue and madder--drying on bushes -outside the doors, and men busy stacking turf and thatching. Here -and there on the road flocks of geese lie sunning themselves, -head-under-wing. As we draw near they get up and face us with -protruding necks, hissing viciously. Dogs bark at us occasionally, -but not often. (I had heard ill accounts of the Donegal dogs from -travellers, but on the whole, my experience of them has not been -quite so bad as I had been led to expect.) Slieve League rises on -our left, a dark, shadowy bulk of mountain, shutting off the view -to the south. All around is moorland, with a stream in spate foaming -through a depression in it, and little patches of tilled land here and -there, and the inevitable brown-thatched cabin and the peat-reek over -it. After some miles' travelling we come on a little folk-shop by the -road--a shop where one might buy anything from a clay-pipe or a lemon -to Napoleon's Book of Fate. The window looks tempting, so we go in. The -shopkeeper is a quiet-mannered little man, not very old, I would think, -but with greyish hair, and eyes that look as if they were bound round -with red tape--burnt out of his head with snuff and peat-smoke. We ask -him has he any buttermilk to sell. He hasn't any, unfortunately--he -is just run out of it--so we content ourselves with Derry biscuits, -made up in penny cartons, and half a dozen hen-eggs to suck on the -way. Some people may shiver at the idea of it, but raw eggs are as -sustaining a thing as one could take on a journey! We pay our score, -and get under way again. At a bridge where the road forks we sit down -and eat our simple repast. A bridge has always a peculiar fascination -for me--especially in an open country like this where one's horizon -is not limited by trees and hedges--and I could spend hours dawdling -over it, watching the play of sun and shadow on the water as it foams -away under the arches. Here there is a delightful sense of space and -quietness. The heather-ale is in our hearts, the water sings and the -wind blows, and one ceases to trouble about time and the multitude of -petty vexations that worry the townsman out of happiness. Did I say one -ceases to trouble about time? Even here it comes, starting one like -a guilty thing. We reach Meenacross Post-office at four-thirty, and -an hour later see the Atlantic tumbling through rain on the age-worn -strand of Glen-Columcille. - - - - -THE FESTIVAL OF DEATH - - -I met an old man on the road, and his face as yellow as dyer's -rocket. "Walk easy past that little house beyond," says he in -a whisper, turning round and pointing with his staff into the -valley. "There's a young girl in it, and she celebrating the festival -of death." - - - - -IN GLEN-COLUMCILLE - - -Through blown rain and darkness I see the Atlantic tumble in white, -ghost-like masses on the strand. Beevna is a shadow, the crosses -shadows. Only one friendly light burns in the valley. The patter of -rain and the dull boom of the surf ring ceaselessly in my ears. The -hills brood: my thoughts brood with them. I stare into the sunset--a -far-drawn, scarlet trail--with mute, wondering eyes. Remoteness -grips me, and is become a reality in this ultimate mearing of a grey, -ultimate land. - - - - -THE BRINK OF WATER - - -I have often heard it said that what passes for folk-lore is in reality -book-lore, or what began as book-lore got into the oral tradition -and handed down through the generations by word of mouth. A young -Ardara man, a poet and dreamer in his way, told me that poetry most -frequently came to him when he was near water; wandering, say, by the -edge of Lochros, or looking down from Bracky Bridge at the stream as -it forced its way through impeding boulders to the sea. I asked him -had he ever read "The Colloquy of the Two Sages(1)"? He said that -he had not. I told him that in that MS. occurred the passage: _ar bá -baile fallsigthe éicsi dogrés lasna filedu for brú uisci_, _i.e._, -"for the poets thought that the place where poetry was revealed always -was upon the brink of water." Nettled somewhat, he confessed that he -got the idea from his father, a _seanchaidhe_, since dead, who knew -something of Irish MSS., and who perhaps had read the "Colloquy," or -at all events, had heard of it. But apart from the fact of the thing -having been given him by his father, he felt that it was true in his -own experience--that poetry always came to him more readily when he was -near water. - - (1) Book of Leinster. - -[Illustration: NEAR ALTON LOCH.] - - - - -A DARK MORNING - - -A dark, wet morning, with the mist driving in swaths over the hills. I -met an old man on the road. "There's somebody a-hanging this morning," -says he. "It's fearful dark!" - - - - -THE SWALLOW-MARK - - -There is a lot of the wanderer in me, and no wonder, I suppose; -for I have the swallow-mark--a wise man once showed it to me on my -hand--and that means that I must always be going journeys, whether -in the flesh or in the spirit, or both. "The swallow-mark is on you," -says he. "You will go wandering with the airs of the world. You will -cheat the Adversary himself, even that he drops his corroding-drop on -you!" And as I am a wanderer, so the heart in me opens to its kind. I -love a brown face, a clear eye, and an honest walk more than anything; -if in a man, good; if in a woman, better. And why people look for the -cover of a roof, and the sun shining, I never can make out. Sunshine -and the open, the wind blowing, travelling betimes and resting betimes, -with my back to the field and my knees to the sky, a copy of Raftery -or Borrow in my pocket to dip into when the mood is on me--and I am -supremely happy! - - - - -WOMEN BEETLING CLOTHES - - -I see three women by a river: they are so close to me that I can hear -them talking and laughing. One of them is an oldish creature, the other -two are young and dark. They are on their knees on the bank, beetling -clothes. One of them gets up--a fine, white-skinned girl--and tucking -her petticoats about her thighs, goes into the stream and swishes the -clothes several times to and fro in the brown-clear water. Then she -throws them out to her companions on the bank, and the beetling process -is repeated--each garment being laid on a flat stone and pounded -vigorously until clean. The women do not see me (I am standing on a -bridge, with a rowan-bush partly between them and me), so I can watch -them to my heart's content. - - - - -THE SEA - - -The sea is one of those things you cannot argue with. You must accept -it on its own terms, or leave it alone. And I like a man to be that -way: calm at times, rough at times, kind at times, treacherous -at times, but at heart unchanging: _not to be argued with, but -accepted_. Is not the comparison apter than one thinks? Is not a man -and his passions as divine and turbulent as anything under the sun? - - - - -A BALLAD-SINGER - - -A ballad-singer has come into Ardara. It is late afternoon. He stands -in the middle of the Diamond--a sunburnt, dusty figure, a typical -Ishmael and stroller of the roads. The women have come to their doors -to hear him, and a benchful of police, for lack of something better -to do, are laughing at him from the barrack front. The ballad he is -singing is about Bonaparte and the Poor Old Woman. Then he changes his -tune to "The Spanish Lady"--a Dublin street-song: - - As I walked down thro' Dublin city - At the hour of twelve in the night, - Who should I spy but a Spanish lady, - Washing her feet by candlelight. - - First she washed them, and then she dried them - Over a fire of amber coal: - Never in all my life did I see - A maid so neat about the sole! - -[Illustration: A STREET IN ARDARA.] - -Finally he gives "I'm a Good Old Rebel," a ballad of the type that -became so popular in the Southern States of America after the Civil -war: - - I'm a good old rebel--that's what I am, - And for this fair land of freedom I don't care a damn; - I'm glad I fought agin it, I only wish we'd won, - And I don't want no one-horse pardon for anything I done. - - I followed old Marse Robert for four years nigh about, - Got wounded in three places and starved at Point Look-Out: - I cotched the rheumatism a-campin' in the snow, - But I killed a chance of Yankees, and I'd like to kill some moe. - - Two hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust, - We got two hundred thousand before they conquered us: - They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot-- - I wish it was two millions instead of what we got! - - And now the war is over and I can't fight them any more, - But I ain't a-goin' to love them--that's sartin shor'; - And I don't want no one-horse pardon for what I was and am, - And I won't be reconstructed, and I don't care a damn! - -He howls out the verses in disjointed, unmusical bursts. He acts with -head and arms, and at places where he is worked up to a particular -frenzy he takes a run and gives a buck-jump in the air, blissfully -unconscious, I suppose, that he is imitating the manner in which the -_ballistea_, or ancient dancing-songs, were sung by the Romans. At -the end of each verse he breaks into a curious chanted refrain like: -"Yum tilly-yum-yum-yum-yum-yum"--and then there are more sidlings and -buck-jumps. Some of the women throw him money, which he acknowledges -by lifting his hat grandiosely. Others of them pass remarks, quite the -reverse of complimentary, about his voice and ragged appearance. "Isn't -it terrible he is!" says one woman. "Look at him with the seat out -of his trousers, and he lepping like a good one. I could choke him, -I could!" Another woman comes out of a shop with a crying child in -her arms, and shouts at him: "Will you go away, then? You're wakening -the childer." "Well, ma'am," says he, stopping in the middle of a -verse, "you may thank the Lord for His mercy that you have childer to -waken!" The ducks quack, the dogs howl, the poor ballad-singer roars -louder than ever. I listen for a while, amused and interested. Then I -get tired of it, and pass on towards Bracky Bridge. - - - - -SUNLIGHT - - -Unless you have seen the sun you cannot know anything. Sunlight is -better than wisdom, and the red of the fairy-thimble more than painted -fans. - - - - -TURF-CUTTING - - -In the Lochros district, when the weather begins to take up, about the -middle of May, the farmers repair to the moss on the north side of the -Point, and start cutting the banks. The turf is then footed (sometimes -by girls) along the causeway ditches, and when properly seasoned--say -about the middle of July--is piled in stacks on high ground -convenient to the moss, and covered on top with a lot of old mouldering -"winter-stales," to keep the rain off it. "Winter-stales" are sods that -have been left over from the previous season's cutting--the wet setting -in and leaving the bog-roads in such a state that no slipe or wheeled -car could get into them. Of course, most of the carrying in Donegal is -done by creel or ass-cart; but in the Lochros district turf is scarce, -and the farmers on the Point are obliged to keep horses to draw the -turf in from the moss on the north side of the Owenea river, some miles -off, and over roads that are none too good for wheeled traffic. In -some cases I have noticed the "winter-stales" built up in little -beehive-shaped heaps on dry ground, to be carted or creeled away as -soon as the weather begins to mend. But it is only the more provident -farmers who do this. - - - - -HIS OLD MOTHER - - -"My old mother's ailing this twelvemonth back," said a man to me -to-day. "I'm afeard she'll go wi' the leaves." - - - - -A DAY OF WIND AND LIGHT, BLOWN RAIN - - -A day of wind and light, blown rain, with the sun shining through it in -spells. Aighe river below me, brown and clear, foaming through mossed -stones to the sea. Trout rising from it now and again to the gnats that -skim its surface. Glengesh mountain in the middle distance--a black, -splendid bulk--dropping to the Nick of the Bealach on the left. Meadows -in foreground bright with marigolds, with here and there by the -mearings tufts of king-fern, wild iris and fairy-thimble. - - - - -LYING AND WALKING - - -To lie on one's loin in the sun is all very well, but walking is -better. It is over the hill the wonders are. - -[Illustration: FALLING WATER.] - - - - -GLEN-COLUMCILLE TO CARRICK - - -Saturday. It is about half-past seven o'clock in the evening. The rain, -which kept at it pitilessly all the afternoon, has cleared off, and we -have left the little whitewashed inn at Glen-Columcille refreshed, and -in high fettle, for the further six miles that has to be done before -we reach Carrick, where we mean to spend the night. We had arrived at -Glen two hours before in a weary enough condition physically after -our tramp over the hills from Ardara, and we had almost resolved on -the advice of the hostess of the inn--a slow, deliberate, slatternly -sort of woman--to put up with her for the night; but it is wonderful -what a rest and a meal and, incidentally, a slatternly hostess does, -and so we finally decided to go on to Carrick. We follow the road up -by the telegraph posts, and after a stiffish climb of half a mile or -more, reach the plateau head. We are now about five hundred feet over -sea level. Turning round to have a last look at the place, we see -the chapel--a plain white cruciform building, with a queer detached -belfry--the little grey, straggling village street (some of the houses -with slate roofs, some with thatch), the crosses standing up like -gallan-stones on every side of it, the deep valley-bottom green as -an emerald, Ballard mountain silhouetted against the sunset, and the -vast Atlantic tumbling through mist on the yellow strand beyond. The -air smells deliciously of peat. In Donegal one notices the smell of -peat everywhere; in fact, if I were asked to give an impression of the -county in half a dozen words I should say: "Black hills, brown rivers, -and peat." The road is fairly level now, and we continue our course -in a south-easterly direction. A wild waste of moorland stretches on -every side of us, brightened here and there by little freshwater lakes, -out of which we see the trout jumping in hundreds--Loch Unshagh, -Loch Unna, Loch Divna, and another quite near the road, where we -got, at the expense of wet feet and knees, some lovely specimens -of the _lilium aureum_, or golden lily, which grows, I think, on -every little shallow and flat and bywater in South Donegal. After -an hour of pleasant walking the road begins to drop and the rain to -fall again. Slieve League is on our right, but we can only see the -lower slopes of it, for the cairn is completely covered with driving -mist. The wind has risen, and the rain beats coolingly on our cheeks, -and exasperatingly, at times, down our necks. We pass a shepherd on -the road making for Malin Mór, a shawled figure with a lantern, and -several groups of boys and asses with creels bringing turf into the -stackers; and farther on a side-car zig-zagging up hill on its way to -the Glen. There are two occupants, a priest--presumably the curate of -Glen parish going over for Sunday's Mass--and the driver. It is quite -dark now, and the rain increases in intensity. Tramping in a mountainy -country is a delightful sport--none better! But it is on such a night -and at the end of such a journey as this that one begins to see that -it has a bad as well as a good side to it. The rain is coming down -in sheets, our clothes are soaked through, the darkness is intense, -the roads are shockingly muddy, we are tired out walking, and still -we have another stiff mile to go before we see the friendly lights of -the inn at Carrick. Two of us--R. M. and myself--stop at a bridge -to have a look at the ordnance sheet which has stood us in such good -stead all through our journey. Torrential rain beating on a map--even a -"cloth-mounted, water-proofed" one like ours--doesn't improve it; but -we have qualms about our direction. We think we should have arrived at -Carrick ere this, and we just want to make sure that our direction is -right, and that we haven't taken a wrong turning in the darkness. After -some trouble we manage to get a match lighted. The first misfires on -the damp emery, the second blows out, the third is swallowed up in -rain pouring like a spout through the branches overhead, the fourth -. . . . "Carrick! Carrick! Carrick!" The frenzied cries of the -advance guard tell us that the town is in view. We put up our map -resignedly, shaking great blabs of water out of it, and push ahead. In -five minutes we have passed the chapel, with its square tower looming -up darkly in the fog, and in another two we are safe in the inn -parlour, enjoying a supper of hot coffee, muffins, and poached eggs. - - - - -ORA ET LABORA - - -Noon of a summer's day. I see a man in the fields--a wild, solitary -figure--the only living thing in sight for miles. He is thinning -turnips. Slowly a bell rings out from the chapel on the hill beyond. It -is the Angelus. The man stands up, takes off his hat and bows his -head in the ancient prayer of his faith. . . . The bell ceases -tolling, and he bends to labour again. - - - - -TWO THINGS THAT WON'T GO GREY - - -I met a woman up Glengesh going in the direction of the -danger-post. She seemed an old woman by her look, but she more -than beat me at the walking. When we got to the top of the hill I -complimented her on her powers. "'Deed," says she, with a deprecating -little laugh, "and I'm getting old now. I'm fair enough yet at the -walking, but I'm going grey--going fast. A year ago my hair was -as black as that stack there"--pointing to a turf-stack out in the -bog--"but now it's on the turn. And I tell you there's only two things -in the world that won't go grey some time--and that's salt and iron." - - - - -RUNDAL - - -I see a green island. It is hardly an island now, for the tide is -out, and one might walk across to it by the neck of yellow-grey sand -that connects it with the mainland. It is held in rundal by a score -of tenants living in the mountains in-by. Little patches of oats, -potatoes, turnips, and "cow's grass" diversify its otherwise barren -surface. There are no mearings, but each man's patch is marked by a -cairn of loose stones, thrown aside in the process of reclamation. The -stones, I see, are used also as seaweed beds. They are spitted in the -sand about, like a _cheval de frise_, and in the course of time the -seaweed carried in by successive tides gathers on them, and is used by -the tenants for manure. - - - - -PÚCA-PILES - - -"What are these?" I asked an old woman in the fields this morning, -pointing to a cluster of what we in the north-east corner call -paddock-stools, and sometimes fairy-stools. "Well," said she, "they're -not mushrooms, anyway. They're what you call Púca-piles. They say the -Púca lays them!" - - - - -THE ROSSES - - -Bog and sky: a boulder-strewn waste, with salt lochs and freshwater -lochs innumerable, and a trail running up to a huddle of white clouds. - -[Illustration: BOG AND SKY.] - - - - -A COUNTRY FUNERAL - - -Death, as they say, has taken somebody away under his oxter! I was -coming into Ardara this morning from the Lochros side, and as I came -up to the chapel on the hill I heard the bell tolling. That, I knew, -was for a burying: it was only about ten o'clock, and the Angelus does -not ring until midday. Farther on I met the funeral procession. It was -just coming out of the village. The coffin, a plain deal one covered -with rugs, was carried over the well of a side-car, and the relatives -and country people walked behind. The road was thick with them--old men -in their Sunday homespuns and wide-awakes, their brogues very dusty, -as if they had come a long way; younger men with bronzed faces, and -ash-plants in their hands; old women in the white frilled caps and -coloured shawls peculiar to western Ireland; young married women, girls -and children. Most of them walked, but several rode in ass-carts, and -three men, I noticed, were on horseback. The tramping of so many feet, -the rattle of the wheels and the talk made a great stir on the road, -and the movement and colour suggested anything but a funeral. Still -one could see that underneath all was a deep and beautiful feeling of -sorrow, so different to the black-coated, slow-footed, solemn-faced -thing of the towns. As the coffin approached I stood into the side -of the road, saluted, and turned back with it the _tri céimeanna na -trocaire_ (three steps of mercy) as far as the chapel yard. - - - - -YOUTH AND AGE - - -An old man came dawdling out of a gap by the road, and he stopped -to have a word with me. We were talking for some time when he said: -"You're a young man, by the looks of you?" I laughed and nodded. "Och," -says he, "but it's a poor thing to be old, and all your colt-tricks -over," says he, "and you with nothing to do but to be watching the -courses of the wind!" - - - - -SUMMER DUSK - - -Summer dusk. A fiddle is playing in a house by the sea. "Maggie -Pickens" is the tune. The fun and devilment of it sets my heart -dancing. Then the mood changes. It is "The Fanaid Grove" now, full of -melancholy and yearning, full of the spirit of the landscape--the soft -lapping tide, the dove-grey sands, the blue rhythmic line of hill and -sky beyond. The player repeats it. . . . I feel as if I could -listen to that tune forever. - - - - -A NOTE - - -Darkness, freshness, fragrance. Donegal fascinates one like a beautiful -girl. - - - - -THE PEASANT IN LITERATURE - - -It has been said before that there is "too much peasant" in -contemporary Irish literature, especially in the plays. The phenomenon -is easily explained. Ireland is an agricultural country, a country of -small farms, and therefore a nation of peasants; so that a literature -which pretends to reflect the life of Ireland must deal in the main -with peasants and the thoughts that peasants think. And peasants' -thoughts are not such dead and commonplace things that I, who have -learnt practically all I know from them, can afford to ignore them -now. The king himself is served by the field. Where there is contact -with the unseen in this book, with the mysteries which we feel rather -than understand, it is because of some strange thought dropped in -strange words from a peasant's mouth and caught by me here, as in a -snare of leaves, for everyone to ponder. Impressions, with something of -the roughness of peasant speech in them and something of the beauty, -phases of a moment breathless and fluttering, the mystery of the sea, -the thresh of rain, the sun on a bird's wing, a wayfarer passing--those -are the things I sought to capture in this book. - - - - -AN INSLEEP - - -We were talking together the other evening--an old woman and myself--on -a path which leads through the fields from Glengesh mountain to Ardara -wood. We had got as far as the stream which crosses the path near the -wood when she stopped suddenly. She looked west, and scratched her -eyebrow. "I've an insleep," says she. "I hadn't one this long time!" - - - - -WATER AND SLÁN-LUS - - -What is more beautiful than water falling, or a spray of _slán-lus_ -with its flowers? - - - - -BY LOCHROS MÓR - - -The heat increases. The osmunda droops on the wall. The tide is at full -ebb. A waste of sea-wrack and sand stretches out to Dawros, a day's -journey beyond. I see two figures, a boy and a girl, searching for -bait--the boy digging and the girl gathering into a creel. The deep, -purring note of a sandpiper comes to me over the bar. It is like the -sound that air makes bubbling through water. I listen to it in infinite -space and quietness. - - - - -RIVAL FIDDLERS - - -I was talking with a fiddler the other evening in a house where there -was a dance, up by Portnoo. I happened to mention the name of another -fiddler I had heard playing a night or two before in Ardara. "Him, -is it?" put in my friend. "Why, he's no fiddler at all. He's only an -old stroller. He doesn't know the differs between 'Kyrie Eleison' and -'The Devil's Dreams'!" He became very indignant. I interrupted once or -twice, trying to turn the conversation, but all to no purpose; he still -went on. Finally, to quiet him, I asked him could he play "The Sally -Gardens." He stopped to think for a while, fondling the strings of his -instrument lovingly with his rough hands; then he said that he didn't -know the tune by that name, but that if I'd lilt or whistle the first -few bars of it, it might come to him. I whistled them. "Oh," says he, -"that's 'The Maids of Mourne Shore.' That's the name we give it in -these parts." He played the tune for me quite beautifully. Then there -was a call from the man of the house for "The Fairy Reel," and the -dancers took the floor again. The fiddlers in Donegal are "all sorts," -as they say--farmers, blacksmiths, fisher boys, who play for the love -of the thing, and strollers (usually blind men) who wander about from -house to house and from fair to fair playing for money. When they are -playing I notice they catch the bow in a curious way with their thumbs -between the horsehair and the stick. At a dance it is no uncommon thing -to see a "bench" of seven or eight of them. They join in the applause -at the end of each item, rasping their bows together on the strings and -stamping vigorously with their feet. - -[Illustration: MOUNTAINY FOLK.] - - - - -NATURE - - -A poor woman praying by a cross; a mountain shadowed in still water; a -tern crying; the road ribboning away into the darkness that looks like -hills beyond. Can we live every day with these aspiring things, and not -love beauty? Can we look out on our broad view--as someone has said of -the friars of the monastery of San Pietro in Perugia--and not note the -play of sun and shadow? Nature is the "Time-vesture of God." If we but -touch it, we are made holier. - - - - -SUNDAY UNDER SLIEVE LEAGUE - - -It is Sunday. The dawn has broken clear after a night's rain. The -sunlight glitters in the soft morning air. The fragrance of -peat, marjoram, and wild-mint hangs like a benediction over the -countryside. A lark is singing; the swallows are out in hundreds. The -road turns and twists--past a cabin, over a bridge--between fringes -of wet grass. It dips suddenly, then rises sheer against a wisp -of cloud into the dark bulk of Slieve League behind. I see the -mountainy people wending in from all parts to Mass. I am standing -on high ground, and can see the hiving roads--the men with their -black coats and wide-awakes, and the women with their bright-coloured -kerchiefs and shawls. Some of them have trudged in for miles on bare -feet. They carry their brogues, neatly greased and cleaned, over their -shoulders. As they come near the chapel they stop by the roadside or -go into a field and put them on. The young girls--grey-eyed, limber -slips from the hills--are fixing themselves before they go in of the -chapel door. They stand in their ribboned heads and shawls pluming -themselves, and telling each other how they look. The boys are watching -them. I hear the fresh, nonchalant laugh and the kindly greeting in -Irish--"_Maidin bhreagh, a Phaid_," and the "_Goidé mar tá tú, -a Chait?_" The men--early-comers--sit in groups on the chapel wall, -discussing affairs--the weather, the crops, the new potato spray, -the prospects of a war with Germany, the marrying and the giving in -marriage, the letters from friends in America, the death and month's -mind of friends. The bell has ceased ringing. The men drop from their -perch on the wall, and the last of them has gone in. The road is quiet -again, and only the sonorous chant of the priest comes through the open -windows--"_Introibo ad altare Dei_," and the shriller response of the -clerk, "_Ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam_." - - - - -THE NIGHT HE WAS BORN - - -We were talking together, an old man and myself, on the hill between -Laguna and Glen. The conversation turned on ages--a favourite topic -with old men(2)--and on the degeneracy that one noticed all over -Ireland, especially among the young. "And what age would you take _me_ -for?" said he, throwing his staff from him and straightening himself -up. "Well, I'm a bad hand at guessing," said I, "but you're eighty if -you're a day." "I'm that," said he, "and more. And would you believe -it," said he, "the night I was born my mother was making a cake!" - - (2) He had the Old Age Pension. - - - - -THE LUSMÓR - - -The _lusmór_, or "great herb"--foxglove, - - That stars the green skirt of the meadow, - -is known to the peasantry by a variety of other names, as for example, -_sian sléibhe_, "sian of the hills" (it grows plentifully on the high, -rough places); _méarachán_, "fairy-thimble"; _rós gréine_, "little -rose of the sun"; and _lus na mban-sidhe_, "herb of the elf-women, or -witch-doctors," etc., etc. It is bell-shaped, and has a purplish-red -colour. As Dr. Joyce observes, it is a most potent herb, for it is a -great fairy plant; and those who seek the aid of the _Daoine Maithe_, -or Good People, in the cure of diseases or in incantations of any kind, -often make use of - - Drowsy store, - Gathered from the bright _lusmór_, - -to add to the power of their spells. It is a favourite flower in -Highland, otherwise Gaelic Scotland; and the clan Farquhar, "hither -Gaels," have assumed it for their badge. - - - - -DERRY PEOPLE - - -Donegal is what I call "county-proud." Speaking of Derry--the marching -county--an old woman said to me the other day: "Och, there's no -gentility about the Derry people. They go at a thing like a day's -work!" - - - - -A CLOCK - - -I was going along the road this evening when I came on a clock -(some would call it a black beetle), travelling in the direction of -Narin. The poor thing seemed to have its mind set on getting there -before dark--a matter of three miles, and half an hour to do it in! The -sense of tears in me was touched for the clock, and I stooped down -to watch it crawling laboriously along in the dust, over a very rough -road, tired and travel-stained, as if it had already come a long way; -climbing stones (miniature Errigals) twenty times as high as itself; -circumventing others, falling into ruts headlong, and rising again none -the worse for its awful experience; keeping on, on, on, "with a mind -fixed and a heart unconquered." I couldn't help laughing at first, -but after five minutes I felt a sort of strange kinship with the -clock--it was a wayfarer like myself, "a poor earth-born companion -and fellow-mortal"--and I stood watching it, hat in hand, until it -disappeared out of view. The last I saw of it was on the top of a stone -on rising ground, silhouetted against the sunset. Then it dropped over -. . . and I resumed my journey, thinking. - - - - -CARRICK GLEN - - -Here there is quiet; quiet to think, quiet to read, quiet to listen, -quiet to do nothing but lie still in the grass and vegetate. The water -falls (to me there is no music more beautiful); a wayfarer passes now -and again along the road on his way into Carrick; the sea-savour is -in my nostrils; the clouds sail northward, white and luminous, far up -in the sky; their shadows checker the hills. If the Blue Bird is to be -found this side of heaven, surely it must be here! - -[Illustration: A WAYFARER.] - - - - -A SHUILER - - -I was talking to a stonebreaker on the road between Carrick and Glen -when a shuiler passed, walking very fast. "A supple lad, that," says -the stonebreaker. "The top o' the road's no ditch-shough to him. Look -at him--he's lucky far down the hill already." He dropped his hammer, -and burst into a fit of laughing. "He's as many feet as a cat!" says -he. - - - - -TURKEYS IN THE TREES - - -One of the gruesomest sights I ever saw in my life--turkeys roosting -among the branches of the trees at a house above Lochros. You would -think they were birds with evil spirits in them, they kept so quiet in -the half-darkness, and looked so solemn. - - - - -A PARTY OF TINKERS - - -A party of tinkers on the high road--man, wife, children, ass and -cart. A poor, back-gone lot they are surely. The man trails behind -carrying one of the children in a bag over his back. The woman pushes -on in front, smiling broadly out of her fat, drunken face. "Oh, -God love ye for a gentleman," she whines in an up-country _barróg_ -which proclaims her a stranger to the place. "Give us the lucky hand, -gentleman, and may the Golden Doors never be shut against ye. Spare a -decent poor body a copper, and I'll say seven 'Hail Mary's' and seven -'Glory be to the Father's' for ye every night for a week. Give us the -lucky hand, gentleman." I throw her a penny, not so much out of charity -as to get rid of her, and the cavalcade moves on. Over the hill I hear -her voice raised in splendid imprecation on the husband. Such coloured -speech one only hears from peasants and strolling folk, who are in -touch with the elemental things--the wonders and beauties and cruelties -of life. - - - - -TEELIN, BUNGLASS, AND SLIEVE LEAGUE - - -It is a lovely summer's day, warm and fragrant and sunny. We have just -come from Mass at Carrick chapel, and are following the road that leads -south by the harbour up to Teelin village. Numbers of people are on -the road with us--mostly women and girls, for the men have remained -behind to smoke and to talk over the week's happenings in the different -ends of the parish. The groups go in ages--the old women with the old -women, the marriageable girls with the marriageable girls, the younger -girls with the girls of their own age. There is a crowd of little boys, -too--active as goats, dressed in corduroys or homespuns, and discussing -in Irish what they will do with themselves in the afternoon. Some -will go bathing in the harbour, others will go up to the warren by -Loch O'Mulligan to hunt rabbits, others will remain in the village -to watch the men and bigger boys play at skittles in a cleared space -by the high road. I pick up with a quiet-eyed lad--the makings of a -priest or a scholar, by his look--and in a short time I am friends with -the crowd. If one could see me behind I must look like the Pied Piper -of Hamelin, so many children have I following alongside me and at my -heels. They come to know by my talk that I am interested in Irish--an -enthusiast, in fact--and they all want to tell me at once about the -Feis at Teelin, and about the great prizes that were offered, and how -one out of their own school, a little fellow of eight years, won first -prize for the best telling of a wonder-tale in the vernacular. The -quiet-eyed lad asks me would I like to see Bunglass and the great view -to be had of Slieve League from the cliff-head. I tell him that I am -going there, and in an instant the crowd is running out in front of us, -shouting and throwing their caps in the air--delighted, I suppose, -at the prospect of a scramble for coppers on the grass when we get -to the end of our journey. For boys are boys the world over, let the -propagandists carp as they will! and when I was young myself I would -wrestle a ghost under a bed for a halfpenny--so my grandmother used to -tell me, and she was a very wise and observant woman. We have come to -Teelin village--a clean, whitewashed little place on a hill, built "all -to one side like Clogher"--and from there we strike up to the right by -a sort of rocky, grass-covered loaning which leads to the cliffs. We -pass numbers of houses on the way, each with a group of gaily-dressed -peasants sunning themselves at the door. The ascent is gradual at -first, but as we go on it gets steeper, and after a while's climbing -we begin to feel the sense of elevation and detachment. The air is -delightfully warm, and the fragrance of sea and bracken and ling is in -our hearts. In time we reach Carrigan Head, with its martello tower, -seven hundred feet odd over the Atlantic. Southwards the blue waters of -Donegal Bay spread themselves, with just the slightest ripple on their -surface, glinting in the warm sunlight. In the distance the heights of -Nephin Beag and Croagh Patrick in Mayo are faintly discernible, and -westwards the illimitable ocean stretches to the void. From Carrigan -Head we follow a rough mountain trail, and in a short time reach -Loch O'Mulligan, a lonely freshwater tarn, lying under the shadow of -Slieve League. Back of the loch a grassy hill rises. We climb this, -the younger boys leading about fifty yards in front, jumping along the -short grass and over the stones like goats. Arrived at a point called -in Irish _Amharc Mór_, or "Great View," a scene of extraordinary -beauty bursts on us. We are standing on Scregeighter, the highest of -the cliffs of Bunglass. A thousand and twenty-four feet below us, in a -sheer drop, the blue waters of Bunglass advance and recede--blue as a -sapphire, shading into emerald and white where they break on the spit -of grass-covered rock rising like a _sceilg-draoidheachta_, or "horn of -wizardy," out of the narrow bay. Right opposite us is Slieve League, -its carn a thousand feet higher than the point on which we stand. In -the precipitous rock-face, half-way up, is a scarped streak called -_Nead an Iolair_, or the Eagle's Nest. The colouring is wonderfully -rich and varied--black, grey, violet, brown, red, green--due, one -would think, to the complex stratification and to the stains oozing -from the soft ores, clays, and mosses impinging between the layers. We -step back from the cliff-edge, and sit down on a flat slab of stone, -the better to enjoy the view, and the boys spread themselves out in -various attitudes over the short grass before and behind us. They -are conversing among themselves in Irish, speaking very rapidly, and -with an intonation that is as un-English as it can possibly be. The -thickened l's and thrilled r's are especially noticeable. To hear these -children speak Irish the way they do makes one feel that the language -of Niall Naoi Giallach is not dead yet, and has, indeed, no signs of -dying. - -[Illustration: THE HORN.] - -One could spend a day in this place sunning oneself on the cliff-head, -or loafing about on the grass, enjoying the panorama of mountain and -sea and sky spread in such magnificence on all sides. But we have -promised to be back in Carrick for lunch, and already the best part -of the forenoon is gone. "_Cad a-chlog é anois?_" I ask one of the -boys. He looks into the sky, calculates for a while, and answers: "_Tá -sé suas le h-aon anois. Féach an ghrían_." (It is upwards of one -o'clock now. Look at the sun.) In a remote, open country like this the -children are wonderfully astute, and well up in the science of natural -things. Coming up the hill I had noticed a number of strange birds, and -when I asked the crowd the names of them in Irish they told me without -once having to stop to think. We are ready to go now, but before -setting out we decide on having a scramble. My friend, R. M., takes -a sixpence from his pocket, puts it edge down on the turf, and digs it -in with his heel, covering it up so that no sign of it is visible. He -then brings the boys back over the grass about a hundred yards, -handicapping them according to age and size. One boy, the youngest, has -boots on, and he is put in front. At a given signal--the dropping of -a handkerchief--the race is started, and in the winking of an eye the -crowd is mixed up on the grass, one boy's head here, another's heels -there, over the spot where the sixpence is hidden. Five minutes and -more does the scramble last, the boys pushing and shoving for all they -are worth, and screaming at the top of their voices. Then the lad who -reached the spot first crawls out from underneath the struggling mass, -puffing and blowing, his hair dishevelled, the coat off him, and the -sixpence in his hand! - -We have got back to Carrick, an hour late for lunch, and with the -appetites of giants. We met many people on the road as we returned, -all remarkably well-dressed--young men in the blue serge favoured by -sailors, and girls in white; a clerical student, home on holidays from -Maynooth, discussing the clauses of Mr. Birrell's latest Land Bill -with a group of elderly folk; big hulking fellows with bronzed faces, -in a uniform that I hadn't seen before, but which a local man told me -was that of the Congested Districts Board; and pinafored children. One -young man we noticed sitting on a rock over the water with his boots -off, washing his feet, and several boys sailing miniature boats made -out of the leaves of flaggers. - - - - -THE SHOOTING STAR - - -I was out the other evening on the shore to the northward of Lochros, -watching the men taking in the turf from the banks where it had been -footed and dried. The wind was quiet, and there was a great stir of -traffic on the road--men with creels, horses and carts, asses and -children driving them. An old woman (a respectable beggar by her look) -came by, and we started to talk. We were talking of various things--the -beauty of the evening, the plentifulness of the turf harvest, the -sorrows of the poor, and such like--when she stopped suddenly, and -looked up into the sky. She gripped my arm. "Look, look," she said, "a -shooting star!" She blessed herself. There was a trail of silver light -in the air--a luminous moment--then darkness. "That's a soul going up -out of purgatory," she said. - - - - -SUNDAY ON THE ROAD BETWEEN CARRICK AND GLENGESH - - -Sunday on the road between Carrick and Glengesh. It is drawing -near sunset. We pass a group of country boys playing skittles in -the middle of the road--quite a crowd of them, big, dark fellows, -of all ages between twenty and thirty-five. Some are lolling on the -ditch behind, and one has a flute. Farther on we come on a string -of boys and girls paired off in twos with their arms about each -other's waists, like a procession on Bride's Sunday. The front pair -are somewhat ill-matched. The man is old and awkward in his walk, -yet cavalierly withal; the girl is young and pretty, with a charming -white laundered dress and flowers in her hair. As our car passes they -wave their hands to us as a sign that they are enjoying the fun quite -as much as we are. We are rising gradually towards the Pass. Below us -the road ribbons away through miles of bog to Slieve League. There is -a delightful warmth and quietness in the air. The smoke of the cabin -chimneys, as far as one can see, rises up in straight grey lines, -"pillaring the skies of God." The whole landscape is suffused with -colour--browns and ambers and blues--melting into infinity. - - - - -A ROANY BUSH - - -"Do you see that bush over there?" said an old man to me one day on the -road near Leckconnell--a poor village half-way between Ardara and Gull -Island. "It's what they call a roany bush. Well, it's green now, but in -a month's time it'll be as red as a fox's diddy, and you wouldn't know -it for berries growing all over it." - - - - -AUGUST EVENING - - -August evening, moonrise. A drift of ponies on the road. I heard the -neighing of them half an hour ago as I came down the glen, and now I -can see them, a red, ragged cavalcade, and a cloud of dust about their -heels. There are some fourteen ponies in the drift, and three young -fellows with long whips are driving them. They give me the time of -day as I pass. One of them turns back and shouts after me: "Would you -happen to have a match on you, gaffer?" He is a stout-built lad, with -a red face, and a mat of black hair falling over his eyes. I feel in my -pocket for a box, and give him share of what I have. He thanks me, and -I pass on. The air is damp and fragrant, and wisps of fog lie along the -ditches and in the hollow places under the hills. The newly-risen moon -touches them with wonder and colour. - - - - -NEAR INVER - - -A yellow day in harvest. A young girl with a piece of drawn-thread work -in her lap, sunning herself in the under wisp of her father's thatch. I -come on her suddenly round a bend in the road. She is taken by surprise -(almost as completely as _I_ am) . . . draws her legs in, settles -her clothing, half smiles, then hangs her head, blushing with all the -_pudor_ of abashed femininity. I pass on. - - - - -ALL SUBTLE, SECRET THINGS - - -All subtle, secret things--the smell of bees, twilight on water, a -woman's presence, the humming of a lime-tree in full leaf, a bracken -stalk cut through to show the "eagle" in it--all speak to me as to an -intimate. I know and feel them all. - - - - -A MADMAN - - -I passed an old fellow to-day between Ardara and Narin, doubled up in -the ditch with his chin on his knees, and staring at me out of two red -eyes that burned in his head like candles. - -"Who's that old fellow?" I asked of a stonebreaker, a perch further -down the road. - -"Oh, never heed him," says he--"he's mad. This is the sixth. There's a -full moon the-night, and he ever goes off at the full o' the moon. Was -he coughing at you? God, you'd think he was giving his last 'keeks,' -to hear him sometimes!" - - - - -LAGUNA - - -Under Crockuna; a thousand feet up. Interminable red bog. A -cluster of hovels on the tableland; one set this way, another that, -huddling together for company sake, it seems, in this abomination of -desolation. A drift of young children play about on a green cleared -space between the holdings. (In Donegal one sees young children -everywhere.) They run off like wild-cats at our approach, screaming -loudly and chattering in Irish as they run. A rick of turf, thatched -with winter-stales; a goat tethered; a flock of geese; tufts of dyed -wool--red and green and indigo--spread on stones to dry; the clack of a -loom from the house nearest us; a dog working sheep beyond. - - - - -NEAR LETTERKENNY - - -A sheepdog with a flock of geese (a most unusual charge, I'm sure) -halted by a bridge on their way to market. The owner squats smoking -under the parapet--a darkavis'd man, with the slouch hat, slow eye, and -wide, mobile mouth of Donegal. I greet him, and pass on. - -[Illustration: A CLACHAN OF HOUSES.] - - - - -SHAN MAC ANANTY - - -Up Glengesh. The hills of the Pass close in darkly on either side of -me. The brown road rises between them in devious loops and twists to -the sky beyond. There is the smell of bog-myrtle and ling in the air, -and the sound of running water. The silence is awful. I am going along -quiet and easy-like, with hardly a thought in my head, when near a -sodded shelter, almost hidden from view in a cluster of fuchsia bushes, -I come on a little lad of about three years of age. He can't be older, -I fancy, he is so small. He runs out in front of me, scared somewhat at -my approach, as quaint a figure as ever I looked at. I shout at him and -he stops, pulling the hat which he wears--and it is big enough to be -his father's--over his face, and laughing shyly at me out of one corner -of it. His hands are wet, I notice, a blae-red colour, and sticking -with grass--as if he had been "feeling" for minnows in the stream which -runs alongside the road. He has a pair of homespun jumpers on, very -thick, and dyed a crude indigo colour, a shirt and vest, and his legs -are bare and wet up to the knees. I ask him in English "where he comes -from," "who is his father," "who is his mother," "where he lives?" He -doesn't answer, only pulls the hat deeper over his head, and laughs -into it. I put the question to him then in Irish. . . . . The -words were hardly out of my mouth when he gave a leap in the air. I -felt as if something had struck me in the face--something soft and -smothering, like a bag of feathers--and I was momentarily blinded. When -I looked again who should I see but Shan Mac Ananty, my _leaprachán_ -friend from Scrabo in Down, running out in front of me, in a whirl of -dust, it seemed--a white, blinding cloud--giving buck-jumps in the air, -and dancing and capering about in the most outlandish fashion possible. - -"So it's you, Shan?" I said, when I had recovered my breath. I wasn't a -bit afraid, only winded. - -"Ay," says he. "I didn't know you at first. The English is strange to -me." Then with a quaint grimace: "What are _you_ doing up here?" - -"And what are you doing up here yourself, Shan?" says I. "I thought -Scrabo was your playground." - -"You're right, son," says he. "The old fort _is_ my playground, but the -smoke--the smoke from the mill chimneys--chases me away at times, and -I come up here for an airing. And, anyway, you mustn't forget that I'm -king of the fairies of Leath-Chuinn," says he. - -"And so you are," says I. "I clean forgot that. And do you be in -Donegal often?" I asked. - -"Once in a spell," says he. "I travel the townlands in turn from -Uisneach to Malin," says he, "and it takes me a year and a day to do -the round. I saw you at Scrabo in June last," says he, "but you didn't -see me." - -"When was that, Shan?" says I, thinking. - -"On the night of the twenty-third," says he. "There wasn't a fire -lighting as far as I could see; and I could see from Divis to the Horns -of Boirche, and from that over to Vannin." - -[Illustration: A GAP BETWEEN THE HILLS.] - -A shadow darkened his queer little face. "Ah," says he, "they're -changed times. I was an old man when Setanta got his hero-name,(3) -and look at me now," says he, "clean past my time. No one knows me, -barring yourself there. No one can talk to me; and at Scrabo it's -worse than here. They're all planters there," says he, "all strange, -dour folk, long in the jaw and seldom-spoken, and with no heart in the -old customs. Never a John's-Fire lighted, never a dance danced, never a -blessing said, never a . . . ." - - (3) Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, a contemporary of Conchubhair - MacNeassa, who was--so tradition has it--born on the same night as - Christ. - -He stopped, and I turned to answer . . . . but Shan was -gone! Nothing in sight for miles--nothing living--only a magpie walking -the road, and a _toit_ of blue smoke from a cabin away down in the -glen. - - - - -A POOR CABIN - - -A poor cabin, built of loose whin rubble; no mortar or limewash; thatch -brown and rotting. Dung oozing out of door in pig-crew to north, and -lying in wet heaps about causey stones. A brier, heavy with June roses, -growing over south gable-end; rare pink bloom, filling the air with -fragrance. - - - - -THE FLAX-STONE - - -Outside nearly every house in Donegal--at least in the north-western -parts of it--is the _Cloch Lín_, or "Flax-Stone." This is a huge -wheel of granite, half a ton or more in weight, revolving on the end -of a wooden shaft which itself turns horizontally on an iron spike -secured firmly in the ground. The purpose it serves is to "break" -the flax after it has been retted and dried. On the long arm of the -shaft tackling is fixed for the horse supplying the motive power--much -in the same way as it is in a pug-mill or puddling machine used in -the old days by brick-makers. The flax is strewn in swaths under the -wheel, which passes over it repeatedly, disintegrating the fibre. The -scutch-mill, of course, is a more expeditious way of doing the work, -but Donegal folk are conservative and stick to the old method--which -must be as old, indeed, as the culture of flax itself is in the -country. - - - - -AFTER SUNSET - - -I was coming through Ardara wood the other evening just after -sunset. There was a delightful smell of wet larch and bracken in the -air. The road was dark--indeed, no more than a shadow in the darkness; -but a streak of silver light glimmered through from the west side -over the mountains and lay on the edge of the wood, and thousands -of stars trembled in the branches, touching them with strangeness -and beauty. As I approached the village I met an old woman--I knew -she was old by her voice--who said to me: "Isn't it a fine evening, -that?" "It is," said I. "And look," said she, "at all the stars hung -up in the trees!" Farther on I came on a number of women and girls, -all laughing and talking through other in the half-darkness. I was out -of the wood now and almost into the village, and there was light enough -to see that they were carrying water--some with one pail, others with -two--from the spring well I passed on my way up. This, I believe, is -a custom in Ardara.(4) The grown girls of the village go out every -evening after dark-fall, if the weather happens to be good. They meet -at the well, spend half an hour or so chatting and talking together, -and then saunter home again in groups through the darkness, carrying -their pails, just as I saw them on this particular evening. When I -got to the village the windows were nearly all lit up. The white and -white-grey houses looked strange and unearthly in the darkness. The -doors were open, and one could see a dark figure here and there out -taking the air. Over the roofs the stars shone and the constellations -swung in their courses--the Dog's Tail, the Dragon, the Plough, the -Rule, and the Tailor's Three Leaps; and although there was no moon one -could see the smoke from the chimneys wavering up into the sky in thin -green lines. The fragrance of peat hung heavily on the senses. There -wasn't a sound--only a confused murmur of voices, like the wind among -aspen-trees, and the faint singing of a fiddle from a house away at -the far end of the street. Even the dogs were quiet. I passed through -the Diamond, down the long main street next the shore, and like Red -Hanrahan of the stories, into "that Celtic twilight, in which heaven -and earth so mingle that each seems to have taken upon itself some -shadow of the other's beauty." - - (4) In fact, a "go of water" is a byword there--"Many a girl met - her man in a go of water!" - - - - -THE DARKNESS AND THE TIDE - - -"What time o' day is it?" My interrogator was an old man I met the -other evening in a loaney running down from the back of Lochros to -the sands of Lochros Beag Bay, near where the old fish-pass used to -be. I looked at my watch, and told him it was five-and-twenty past -seven. "Oh," said he, "is it so much as that? The darkness and the -tide'll soon be coming in, then." - - - - -ERRIGAL - - -The hill of Errigal climbs like a wave to the sky. A pennon of -white cloud tosses on its carn. Its sides are dark. They slope -precipitously. They are streaked and mottled here and there -with patches of loose stone, bleached to a soft violet colour -with rain. Not a leaf of grass, not a frond of fern roots on these -patches. They are altogether bare. Loch Nacung, a cold spread of water, -gleams at the bottom, white as a shield and green at the margin with -sedge. Dunlewy chapel, with its round tower--a black silhouette in the -'tweenlight--and the walls of the Poisoned Glen beyond. - - - - -THE SORE FOOT - - -"It's a provident thing," a tramp said to me the other day, "to lay -something by for the sore foot." - - - - -ASHERANCALLY - - -A roar, as of breaking seas. We are approaching the open Atlantic, -but though its salt is bitter on our lips, our view is obscured -by sand-dunes. Then, as we round a bend in the road, the Fall of -Asherancally breaks suddenly on us, tumbling through a gut in the -mountainside--almost on to the road it seems. We stand under it. We -watch the brown bulk of water dropping from the gut-head and dancing -in foam on the rocks a hundred feet below. The roar is deafening. One -might shout at the top of one's voice, and yet not be heard. The air is -iridescent with spindrift, which shines in the sun and sprays coolingly -on our cheeks. We lean on the bridge parapet, watching and listening. - -[Illustration: LOCH NACUNG--MOONRISE.] - - - - -ORANGE GALLASES - - -I came across an old man to-day out in Lochros--a shock-headed old -fellow in shirt and trousers, carrying water from a spring well near -the Cross, and a troop of dogs snapping at his heels. "You don't seem -to be popular with the dogs?" says I, laughing. "Oh, let them snap," -says he. "It's not me they're snapping at, but my orange gallases!" - - - - -THE HUMAN VOICE - - -The human voice--what a wonder and mystery it is! "All power," said -Whitman, "is folded in a great vocalism." I spoke to a man to-day -on the roadside, near Maghery. He was a poor, raggedy fellow, with a -gaunt, unshaven chin and wild eyes, and a couple of barefooted children -played about the mud at his feet. He answered me in a voice that -_thrilled_ me--deep, chestfull, resonant; a voice, that had he been -an educated man, might have won fame for him, as a politician, say, or -a preacher, or an actor. And voices like his are by no means uncommon -along the western seaboard of Ireland. Men address you on the road in -that frank, human, comrade-like way of Irishmen, out of deep lungs and -ringing larynxes that bring one back to the time when men were giants, -and physique was the rule rather than the exception. In such voices -one can imagine the Fenians to have talked one with the other, Fionn -calling to Sgeolan, and Oisin chanting the divine fragments of song he -dreamed in the intervals of war and venery. Will Ireland ever recapture -the heroic qualities--build personality, voice, gesture--or, as Whitman -puts it: "Litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes"--that were hers down -to a comparatively late period, and in places have not quite died out -even yet? I believe she will. - - - - -LOCH ALUINN - - -A grey loch, lashed into foam by wind from nor' westward, -lapping unquietly among reeds that fringe its margin. Boulders -everywhere--erratics from the Ice Age--bleached white with rain. Crotal -growing in their interstices, wild-mint, purple orchises and the kingly -osmunda fern. A strip of tilled land beyond--green corn, for the most -part, and potatoes. Slieve a-Tooey in the distance, a blue shadowy -bulk, crossed and recrossed by mist-wreaths chasing one another over it -in rapid succession. A rainbow framing all. - - - - -THE OPEN ROAD - - -The open road, the sky over it, and the hills beyond. The hills beyond, -those blue, ultimate hills; the clouds that look like hills; the -mystery plucked out of them, and lo, the sea, stretching away into the -vast--white-crested, grey, inscrutable--with a mirage dancing on its -furthest verge! - - - - - [ Transcriber's Note: - - The following changes have been made to the original text. The first - line presents the text as printed in the original, the second the - amended text. - - "The words of the maker o poems are the general light and dark." One - "The words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark." One - - survival of a pagan right of our forefathers. - survival of a pagan rite of our forefathers. - - better. It is ove the hill the wonders are. - better. It is over the hill the wonders are. - - 'Glory be to the Father's, for ye every night for a week. Give us the - 'Glory be to the Father's' for ye every night for a week. Give us the - - ] - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mearing Stones, by Joseph Campbell - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEARING STONES *** - -***** This file should be named 41250-8.txt or 41250-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/2/5/41250/ - -Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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