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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Rose, by W. B. Yeats
+#5 in our series by W. B. Yeats
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+
+Title: The Secret Rose
+
+Author: W. B. Yeats
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5795]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 1, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET ROSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET ROSE:
+
+BY
+
+W.B. YEATS
+
+THE SECRET ROSE:
+
+   DEDICATION TO A.E.
+   TO THE SECRET ROSE
+   THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST
+   OUT OF THE ROSE
+   THE WISDOM OF THE KING
+   THE HEART OF THE SPRING
+   THE CURSE OF THE FIRES AND OF THE SHADOWS
+   THE OLD MEN OF THE TWILIGHT
+   WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD
+   OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE
+   BITTER TONGUE
+
+
+
+
+
+As for living, our servants will do that for us.
+--_Villiers de L'Isle Adam._
+
+Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles
+made in her face by old age, wept, and wondered why she had twice
+been carried away.--_Leonardo da Vinci_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_My dear A.E.--I dedicate this book to you because, whether you
+think it well or ill written, you will sympathize with the sorrows
+and the ecstasies of its personages, perhaps even more than I do
+myself. Although I wrote these stories at different times and in
+different manners, and without any definite plan, they have but one
+subject, the war of spiritual with natural order; and how can I
+dedicate such a book to anyone but to you, the one poet of modern
+Ireland who has moulded a spiritual ecstasy into verse? My friends in
+Ireland sometimes ask me when I am going to write a really national
+poem or romance, and by a national poem or romance I understand them
+to mean a poem or romance founded upon some famous moment of Irish
+history, and built up out of the thoughts and feelings which move the
+greater number of patriotic Irishmen. I on the other hand believe
+that poetry and romance cannot be made by the most conscientious
+study of famous moments and of the thoughts and feelings of others,
+but only by looking into that little, infinite, faltering, eternal
+flame that we call ourselves. If a writer wishes to interest a
+certain people among whom he has grown up, or fancies he has a duty
+towards them, he may choose for the symbols of his art their legends,
+their history, their beliefs, their opinions, because he has a right
+to choose among things less than himself, but he cannot choose among
+the substances of art. So far, however, as this book is visionary it
+is Irish for Ireland, which is still predominantly Celtic, has
+preserved with some less excellent things a gift of vision, which has
+died out among more hurried and more successful nations: no shining
+candelabra have prevented us from looking into the darkness, and when
+one looks into the darkness there is always something there.
+
+W.B. YEATS._
+
+
+
+
+TO THE SECRET ROSE
+
+     Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
+     Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
+     Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre,
+     Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
+     And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
+     Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep
+     Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold
+     The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
+     Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
+     Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise
+     In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
+     Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
+     Who met Fand walking among flaming dew,
+     By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
+     And lost the world and Emir for a kiss;
+     And him who drove the gods out of their liss
+     And till a hundred morns had flowered red
+     Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
+     And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
+     And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
+     Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
+     And him who sold tillage and house and goods,
+     And sought through lands and islands numberless years
+     Until he found with laughter and with tears
+     A woman of so shining loveliness
+     That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
+     A little stolen tress. I too await
+     The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
+     When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
+     Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
+     Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
+     Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
+
+
+
+
+THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST.
+
+A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked,
+along the road that wound from the south to the town of Sligo. Many
+called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift,
+Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured
+doublet, and had pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of
+the blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field of Gold;
+but his eating and sleeping places where the four provinces of Eri,
+and his abiding place was not upon the ridge of the earth. His eyes
+strayed from the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town
+battlements to a row of crosses which stood out against the sky upon
+a hill a little to the eastward of the town, and he clenched his
+fist, and shook it at the crosses. He knew they were not empty, for
+the birds were fluttering about them; and he thought how, as like as
+not, just such another vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them;
+and he muttered: 'If it were hanging or bowstringing, or stoning or
+beheading, it would be bad enough. But to have the birds pecking your
+eyes and the wolves eating your feet! I would that the red wind of
+the Druids had withered in his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who
+brought the tree of death out of barbarous lands, or that the
+lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot of the mountain, had
+smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by the green-haired
+and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep sea.'
+
+While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and the sweat came out
+upon his face, and he knew not why, for he had looked upon many
+crosses. He passed over two hills and under the battlemented gate,
+and then round by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was
+studded with great nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the
+lay brother who was the porter, and of him he asked a place in the
+guest-house. Then the lay brother took a glowing turf on a shovel,
+and led the way to a big and naked outhouse strewn with very dirty
+rushes; and lighted a rush-candle fixed between two of the stones of
+the wall, and set the glowing turf upon the hearth and gave him two
+unlighted sods and a wisp of straw, and showed him a blanket hanging
+from a nail, and a shelf with a loaf of bread and a jug of water, and
+a tub in a far corner. Then the lay brother left him and went back to
+his place by the door. And Cumhal the son of Cormac began to blow
+upon the glowing turf that he might light the two sods and the wisp
+of straw; but the sods and the straw would not light, for they were
+damp. So he took off his pointed shoes, and drew the tub out of the
+corner with the thought of washing the dust of the highway from his
+feet; but the water was so dirty that he could not see the bottom. He
+was very hungry, for he had not eaten all that day; so he did not
+waste much anger upon the tub, but took up the black loaf, and bit
+into it, and then spat out the bite, for the bread was hard and
+mouldy. Still he did not give way to his anger, for he had not
+drunken these many hours; having a hope of heath beer or wine at his
+day's end, he had left the brooks untasted, to make his supper the
+more delightful. Now he put the jug to his lips, but he flung it from
+him straightway, for the water was bitter and ill-smelling. Then he
+gave the jug a kick, so that it broke against the opposite wall, and
+he took down the blanket to wrap it about him for the night. But no
+sooner did he touch it than it was alive with skipping fleas. At
+this, beside himself with anger, he rushed to the door of the guest-
+house, but the lay brother, being well accustomed to such outcries,
+had locked it on the outside; so he emptied the tub and began to beat
+the door with it, till the lay brother came to the door and asked
+what ailed him, and why he woke him out of sleep. 'What ails me!'
+shouted Cumhal, 'are not the sods as wet as the sands of the Three
+Rosses? and are not the fleas in the blanket as many as the waves of
+the sea and as lively? and is not the bread as hard as the heart of a
+lay brother who has forgotten God? and is not the water in the jug as
+bitter and as ill-smelling as his soul? and is not the foot-water the
+colour that shall be upon him when he has been charred in the Undying
+Fires?' The lay brother saw that the lock was fast, and went back to
+his niche, for he was too sleepy to talk with comfort. And Cumhal
+went on beating at the door, and presently he heard the lay brother's
+foot once more, and cried out at him, 'O cowardly and tyrannous race
+of friars, persecutors of the bard and the gleeman, haters of life
+and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O
+race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with
+deceit!'
+
+'Gleeman,' said the lay brother, 'I also make rhymes; I make many
+while I sit in my niche by the door, and I sorrow to hear the bards
+railing upon the friars. Brother, I would sleep, and therefore I make
+known to you that it is the head of the monastery, our gracious
+abbot, who orders all things concerning the lodging of travellers.'
+
+'You may sleep,' said Cumhal, 'I will sing a bard's curse on the
+abbot. 'And he set the tub upside down under the window, and stood
+upon it, and began to sing in a very loud voice. The singing awoke
+the abbot, so that he sat up in bed and blew a silver whistle until
+the lay brother came to him. 'I cannot get a wink of sleep with that
+noise,' said the abbot. 'What is happening?'
+
+'It is a gleeman,' said the lay brother, 'who complains of the sods,
+of the bread, of the water in the jug, of the foot-water, and of the
+blanket. And now he is singing a bard's curse upon you, O brother
+abbot, and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and
+your grandmother, and upon all your relations.'
+
+'Is he cursing in rhyme?'
+
+'He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in every line of his
+curse.'
+
+The abbot pulled his night-cap off and crumpled it in his hands, and
+the circular brown patch of hair in the middle of his bald head
+looked like an island in the midst of a pond, for in Connaught they
+had not yet abandoned the ancient tonsure for the style then coming
+into use. 'If we do not somewhat,' he said, 'he will teach his curses
+to the children in the street, and the girls spinning at the doors,
+and to the robbers upon Ben Bulben.'
+
+'Shall I go, then,' said the other, 'and give him dry sods, a fresh
+loaf, clean water in a jug, clean foot-water, and a new blanket, and
+make him swear by the blessed Saint Benignus, and by the sun and
+moon, that no bond be lacking, not to tell his rhymes to the children
+in the street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and the robbers
+upon Ben Bulben?'
+
+'Neither our Blessed Patron nor the sun and moon would avail at all,'
+said the abbot; 'for to-morrow or the next day the mood to curse
+would come upon him, or a pride in those rhymes would move him, and
+he would teach his lines to the children, and the girls, and the
+robbers. Or else he would tell another of his craft how he fared in
+the guest-house, and he in his turn would begin to curse, and my name
+would wither. For learn there is no steadfastness of purpose upon the
+roads, but only under roofs and between four walls. Therefore I bid
+you go and awaken Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf,
+Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother
+Peter. And they shall take the man, and bind him with ropes, and dip
+him in the river that he shall cease to sing. And in the morning,
+lest this but make him curse the louder, we will crucify him.'
+
+'The crosses are all full,' said the lay brother.
+
+'Then we must make another cross. If we do not make an end of him
+another will, for who can eat and sleep in peace while men like him
+are going about the world? Ill should we stand before blessed Saint
+Benignus, and sour would be his face when he comes to judge us at the
+Last Day, were we to spare an enemy of his when we had him under our
+thumb! Brother, the bards and the gleemen are an evil race, ever
+cursing and ever stirring up the people, and immoral and immoderate
+in all things, and heathen in their hearts, always longing after the
+Son of Lir, and Aengus, and Bridget, and the Dagda, and Dana the
+Mother, and all the false gods of the old days; always making poems
+in praise of those kings and queens of the demons, Finvaragh, whose
+home is under Cruachmaa, and Red Aodh of Cnocna-Sidhe, and Cleena of
+the Wave, and Aoibhell of the Grey Rock, and him they call Donn of
+the Vats of the Sea; and railing against God and Christ and the
+blessed Saints.' While he was speaking he crossed himself, and when
+he had finished he drew the nightcap over his ears, to shut out the
+noise, and closed his eyes, and composed himself to sleep.
+
+The lay brother found Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little
+Wolf, Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and
+Brother Peter sitting up in bed, and he made them get up. Then they
+bound Cumhal, and they dragged him to the river, and they dipped him
+in it at the place which was afterwards called Buckley's Ford.
+
+'Gleeman,' said the lay brother, as they led him back to the guest-
+house, 'why do you ever use the wit which God has given you to make
+blasphemous and immoral tales and verses? For such is the way of your
+craft. I have, indeed, many such tales and verses well nigh by rote,
+and so I know that I speak true! And why do you praise with rhyme
+those demons, Finvaragh, Red Aodh, Cleena, Aoibhell and Donn? I, too,
+am a man of great wit and learning, but I ever glorify our gracious
+abbot, and Benignus our Patron, and the princes of the province. My
+soul is decent and orderly, but yours is like the wind among the
+salley gardens. I said what I could for you, being also a man of many
+thoughts, but who could help such a one as you?'
+
+'Friend,' answered the gleeman, 'my soul is indeed like the wind, and
+it blows me to and fro, and up and down, and puts many things into my
+mind and out of my mind, and therefore am I called the Swift, Wild
+Horse.' And he spoke no more that night, for his teeth were
+chattering with the cold.
+
+The abbot and the friars came to him in the morning, and bade him get
+ready to be crucified, and led him out of the guest-house. And while
+he still stood upon the step a flock of great grass-barnacles passed
+high above him with clanking cries. He lifted his arms to them and
+said, 'O great grass-barnacles, tarry a little, and mayhap my soul
+will travel with you to the waste places of the shore and to the
+ungovernable sea!' At the gate a crowd of beggars gathered about
+them, being come there to beg from any traveller or pilgrim who might
+have spent the night in the guest-house. The abbot and the friars led
+the gleeman to a place in the woods at some distance, where many
+straight young trees were growing, and they made him cut one down and
+fashion it to the right length, while the beggars stood round them in
+a ring, talking and gesticulating. The abbot then bade him cut off
+another and shorter piece of wood, and nail it upon the first. So
+there was his cross for him; and they put it upon his shoulder, for
+his crucifixion was to be on the top of the hill where the others
+were. A half-mile on the way he asked them to stop and see him juggle
+for them; for he knew, he said, all the tricks of Aengus the Subtle-
+hearted. The old friars were for pressing on, but the young friars
+would see him: so he did many wonders for them, even to the drawing
+of live frogs out of his ears. But after a while they turned on him,
+and said his tricks were dull and a shade unholy, and set the cross
+on his shoulders again. Another half-mile on the way, and he asked
+them to stop and hear him jest for them, for he knew, he said, all
+the jests of Conan the Bald, upon whose back a sheep's wool grew. And
+the young friars, when they had heard his merry tales, again bade him
+take up his cross, for it ill became them to listen to such follies.
+Another half-mile on the way, he asked them to stop and hear him sing
+the story of White-breasted Deirdre, and how she endured many
+sorrows, and how the sons of Usna died to serve her. And the young
+friars were mad to hear him, but when he had ended they grew angry,
+and beat him for waking forgotten longings in their hearts. So they
+set the cross upon his back and hurried him to the hill.
+
+When he was come to the top, they took the cross from him, and began
+to dig a hole to stand it in, while the beggars gathered round, and
+talked among themselves. 'I ask a favour before I die,' says Cumhal.
+
+'We will grant you no more delays,' says the abbot.
+
+'I ask no more delays, for I have drawn the sword, and told the
+truth, and lived my vision, and am content.'
+
+'Would you, then, confess?'
+
+' By sun and moon, not I; I ask but to be let eat the food I carry in
+my wallet. I carry food in my wallet whenever I go upon a journey,
+but I do not taste of it unless I am well-nigh starved. I have not
+eaten now these two days.'
+
+'You may eat, then,' says the abbot, and he turned to help the friars
+dig the hole.
+
+The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried bacon out of
+his wallet and laid them upon the ground. 'I will give a tithe to the
+poor,' says he, and he cut a tenth part from the loaf and the bacon.
+'Who among you is the poorest?' And thereupon was a great clamour,
+for the beggars began the history of their sorrows and their poverty,
+and their yellow faces swayed like Gara Lough when the floods have
+filled it with water from the bogs.
+
+He listened for a little, and, says he, 'I am myself the poorest, for
+I have travelled the bare road, and by the edges of the sea; and the
+tattered doublet of particoloured cloth upon my back and the torn
+pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because of the towered
+city full of noble raiment which was in my heart. And I have been the
+more alone upon the roads and by the sea because I heard in my heart
+the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more subtle
+than Aengus, the Subtle-hearted, and more full of the beauty of
+laughter than Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears
+than White-breasted Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to
+them that are lost in the darkness. Therefore, I award the tithe to
+myself; but yet, because I am done with all things, I give it unto
+you.'
+
+So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars, and
+they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But
+meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it
+upright in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and
+trampled it level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars
+stared on, sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking,
+they also got up to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon
+as they had gone a little way, the wolves, who had been showing
+themselves on the edge of a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and
+the birds wheeled closer and closer. 'Stay, outcasts, yet a little
+while,' the crucified one called in a weak voice to the beggars, 'and
+keep the beasts and the birds from me.' But the beggars were angry
+because he had called them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at
+him, and went their way. Then the wolves gathered at the foot of the
+cross, and the birds flew lower and lower. And presently the birds
+lighted all at once upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began
+to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his feet. 'Outcasts,' he
+moaned, 'have you also turned against the outcast?'
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF THE ROSE.
+
+
+One winter evening an old knight in rusted chain-armour rode slowly
+along the woody southern slope of Ben Bulben, watching the sun go
+down in crimson clouds over the sea. His horse was tired, as after a
+long journey, and he had upon his helmet the crest of no neighbouring
+lord or king, but a small rose made of rubies that glimmered every
+moment to a deeper crimson. His white hair fell in thin curls upon
+his shoulders, and its disorder added to the melancholy of his face,
+which was the face of one of those who have come but seldom into the
+world, and always for its trouble, the dreamers who must do what they
+dream, the doers who must dream what they do.
+
+After gazing a while towards the sun, he let the reins fall upon the
+neck of his horse, and, stretching out both arms towards the west, he
+said, 'O Divine Rose of Intellectual Flame, let the gates of thy
+peace be opened to me at last!' And suddenly a loud squealing began
+in the woods some hundreds of yards further up the mountain side. He
+stopped his horse to listen, and heard behind him a sound of feet and
+of voices. 'They are beating them to make them go into the narrow
+path by the gorge,' said someone, and in another moment a dozen
+peasants armed with short spears had come up with the knight, and
+stood a little apart from him, their blue caps in their hands. Where
+do you go with the spears?' he asked; and one who seemed the leader
+answered: 'A troop of wood-thieves came down from the hills a while
+ago and carried off the pigs belonging to an old man who lives by
+Glen Car Lough, and we turned out to go after them. Now that we know
+they are four times more than we are, we follow to find the way they
+have taken; and will presently tell our story to De Courcey, and if
+he will not help us, to Fitzgerald; for De Courcey and Fitzgerald
+have lately made a peace, and we do not know to whom we belong.'
+
+'But by that time,' said the knight, 'the pigs will have been eaten.'
+
+'A dozen men cannot do more, and it was not reasonable that the whole
+valley should turn out and risk their lives for two, or for two dozen
+pigs.'
+
+'Can you tell me,' said the knight, 'if the old man to whom the pigs
+belong is pious and true of heart?'
+
+'He is as true as another and more pious than any, for he says a
+prayer to a saint every morning before his breakfast.'
+
+'Then it were well to fight in his cause,' said the knight, 'and if
+you will fight against the wood-thieves I will take the main brunt of
+the battle, and you know well that a man in armour is worth many like
+these wood-thieves, clad in wool and leather.'
+
+And the leader turned to his fellows and asked if they would take the
+chance; but they seemed anxious to get back to their cabins.
+
+'Are the wood-thieves treacherous and impious?'
+
+'They are treacherous in all their dealings,' said a peasant, 'and no
+man has known them to pray.'
+
+'Then,' said the knight, 'I will give five crowns for the head of
+every wood-thief killed by us in the fighting'; and he bid the leader
+show the way, and they all went on together. After a time they came
+to where a beaten track wound into the woods, and, taking this, they
+doubled back upon their previous course, and began to ascend the
+wooded slope of the mountains. In a little while the path grew very
+straight and steep, and the knight was forced to dismount and leave
+his horse tied to a tree-stem. They knew they were on the right
+track: for they could see the marks of pointed shoes in the soft clay
+and mingled with them the cloven footprints of the pigs. Presently
+the path became still more abrupt, and they knew by the ending of the
+cloven foot-prints that the thieves were carrying the pigs. Now and
+then a long mark in the clay showed that a pig had slipped down, and
+been dragged along for a little way. They had journeyed thus for
+about twenty minutes, when a confused sound of voices told them that
+they were coming up with the thieves. And then the voices ceased, and
+they understood that they had been overheard in their turn. They
+pressed on rapidly and cautiously, and in about five minutes one of
+them caught sight of a leather jerkin half hidden by a hazel-bush. An
+arrow struck the knight's chain-armour, but glanced off harmlessly,
+and then a flight of arrows swept by them with the buzzing sound of
+great bees. They ran and climbed, and climbed and ran towards the
+thieves, who were now all visible standing up among the bushes with
+their still quivering bows in their hands: for they had only their
+spears and they must at once come hand to hand. The knight was in the
+front and smote down first one and then another of the wood-thieves.
+The peasants shouted, and, pressing on, drove the wood-thieves before
+them until they came out on the flat top of the mountain, and there
+they saw the two pigs quietly grubbing in the short grass, so they
+ran about them in a circle, and began to move back again towards the
+narrow path: the old knight coming now the last of all, and striking
+down thief after thief. The peasants had got no very serious hurts
+among them, for he had drawn the brunt of the battle upon himself, as
+could well be seen from the bloody rents in his armour; and when they
+came to the entrance of the narrow path he bade them drive the pigs
+down into the valley, while he stood there to guard the way behind
+them. So in a moment he was alone, and, being weak with loss of
+blood, might have been ended there and then by the wood-thieves he
+had beaten off, had fear not made them begone out of sight in a great
+hurry.
+
+An hour passed, and they did not return; and now the knight could
+stand on guard no longer, but had to lie down upon the grass. A half-
+hour more went by, and then a young lad with what appeared to be a
+number of cock's feathers stuck round his hat, came out of the path
+behind him, and began to move about among the dead thieves, cutting
+their heads off, Then he laid the heads in a heap before the knight,
+and said: 'O great knight, I have been bid come and ask you for the
+crowns you promised for the heads: five crowns a head. They bid me
+tell you that they have prayed to God and His Mother to give you a
+long life, but that they are poor peasants, and that they would have
+the money before you die. They told me this over and over for fear I
+might forget it, and promised to beat me if I did.'
+
+The knight raised himself upon his elbow, and opening a bag that hung
+to his belt, counted out the five crowns for each head. There were
+thirty heads in all.
+
+'O great knight,' said the lad, 'they have also bid me take all care
+of you, and light a fire, and put this ointment upon your wounds.'
+And he gathered sticks and leaves together, and, flashing his flint
+and steel under a mass of dry leaves, had made a very good blaze.
+Then, drawing of the coat of mail, he began to anoint the wounds: but
+he did it clumsily, like one who does by rote what he had been told.
+The knight motioned him to stop, and said: 'You seem a good lad.'
+
+'I would ask something of you for myself.'
+
+'There are still a few crowns,' said the knight; 'shall I give them
+to you?'
+
+'O no,' said the lad. 'They would be no good to me. There is only one
+thing that I care about doing, and I have no need of money to do it.
+I go from village to village and from hill to hill, and whenever I
+come across a good cock I steal him and take him into the woods, and
+I keep him there under a basket until I get another good cock, and
+then I set them to fight. The people say I am an innocent, and do not
+do me any harm, and never ask me to do any work but go a message now
+and then. It is because I am an innocent that they send me to get the
+crowns: anyone else would steal them; and they dare not come back
+themselves, for now that you are not with them they are afraid of the
+wood-thieves. Did you ever hear how, when the wood-thieves are
+christened, the wolves are made their god-fathers, and their right
+arms are not christened at all?'
+
+'If you will not take these crowns, my good lad, I have nothing for
+you, I fear, unless you would have that old coat of mail which I
+shall soon need no more.'
+
+'There was something I wanted: yes, I remember now,' said the lad. 'I
+want you to tell me why you fought like the champions and giants in
+the stories and for so little a thing. Are you indeed a man like us?
+Are you not rather an old wizard who lives among these hills, and
+will not a wind arise presently and crumble you into dust?'
+
+'I will tell you of myself,' replied the knight, 'for now that I am
+the last of the fellowship, 'I may tell all and witness for God. Look
+at the Rose of Rubies on my helmet, and see the symbol of my life and
+of my hope.' And then he told the lad this story, but with always
+more frequent pauses; and, while he told it, the Rose shone a deep
+blood-colour in the firelight, and the lad stuck the cock's
+feathers in the earth in front of him, and moved them about as though
+he made them actors in the play.
+
+'I live in a land far from this, and was one of the Knights of St.
+John,' said the old man; 'but I was one of those in the Order who
+always longed for more arduous labours in the service of the Most
+High. At last there came to us a knight of Palestine, to whom the
+truth of truths had been revealed by God Himself. He had seen a great
+Rose of Fire, and a Voice out of the Rose had told him how men would
+turn from the light of their own hearts, and bow down before outer
+order and outer fixity, and that then the light would cease, and none
+escape the curse except the foolish good man who could not, and the
+passionate wicked man who would not, think. Already, the Voice told
+him, the wayward light of the heart was shining out upon the world to
+keep it alive, with a less clear lustre, and that, as it paled, a
+strange infection was touching the stars and the hills and the grass
+and the trees with corruption, and that none of those who had seen
+clearly the truth and the ancient way could enter into the Kingdom of
+God, which is in the Heart of the Rose, if they stayed on willingly
+in the corrupted world; and so they must prove their anger against
+the Powers of Corruption by dying in the service of the Rose of God.
+While the Knight of Palestine was telling us these things we seemed
+to see in a vision a crimson Rose spreading itself about him, so that
+he seemed to speak out of its heart, and the air was filled with
+fragrance. By this we knew that it was the very Voice of God which
+spoke to us by the knight, and we gathered about him and bade him
+direct us in all things, and teach us how to obey the Voice. So he
+bound us with an oath, and gave us signs and words whereby we might
+know each other even after many years, and he appointed places of
+meeting, and he sent us out in troops into the world to seek good
+causes, and die in doing battle for them. At first we thought to die
+more readily by fasting to death in honour of some saint; but this he
+told us was evil, for we did it for the sake of death, and thus took
+out of the hands of God the choice of the time and manner of our
+death, and by so doing made His power the less. We must choose our
+service for its excellence, and for this alone, and leave it to God
+to reward us at His own time and in His own manner. And after this he
+compelled us to eat always two at a table to watch each other lest we
+fasted unduly, for some among us said that if one fasted for a love
+of the holiness of saints and then died, the death would be
+acceptable. And the years passed, and one by one my fellows died in
+the Holy Land, or in warring upon the evil princes of the earth, or
+in clearing the roads of robbers; and among them died the knight of
+Palestine, and at last I was alone. I fought in every cause where the
+few contended against the many, and my hair grew white, and a
+terrible fear lest I had fallen under the displeasure of God came
+upon me. But, hearing at last how this western isle was fuller of
+wars and rapine than any other land, I came hither, and I have found
+the thing I sought, and, behold! I am filled with a great joy.'
+
+Thereat he began to sing in Latin, and, while he sang, his voice grew
+fainter and fainter. Then his eyes closed, and his lips fell apart,
+and the lad knew he was dead. 'He has told me a good tale,' he said,
+'for there was fighting in it, but I did not understand much of it,
+and it is hard to remember so long a story.'
+
+And, taking the knight's sword, he began to dig a grave in the soft
+clay. He dug hard, and a faint light of dawn had touched his hair and
+he had almost done his work when a cock crowed in the valley below.
+'Ah,' he said, 'I must have that bird'; and he ran down the narrow
+path to the valley.
+
+
+
+
+THE WISDOM OF THE KING.
+
+
+The High-Queen of the Island of Woods had died in childbirth, and her
+child was put to nurse with a woman who lived in a hut of mud and
+wicker, within the border of the wood. One night the woman sat
+rocking the cradle, and pondering over the beauty of the child, and
+praying that the gods might grant him wisdom equal to his beauty.
+There came a knock at the door, and she got up, not a little
+wondering, for the nearest neighbours were in the dun of the High-
+King a mile away; and the night was now late. 'Who is knocking?' she
+cried, and a thin voice answered, 'Open! for I am a crone of the grey
+hawk, and I come from the darkness of the great wood.' In terror she
+drew back the bolt, and a grey-clad woman, of a great age, and of a
+height more than human, came in and stood by the head of the cradle.
+The nurse shrank back against the wall, unable to take her eyes from
+the woman, for she saw by the gleaming of the firelight that the
+feathers of the grey hawk were upon her head instead of hair. But the
+child slept, and the fire danced, for the one was too ignorant and
+the other too full of gaiety to know what a dreadful being stood
+there. 'Open!' cried another voice, 'for I am a crone of the grey
+hawk, and I watch over his nest in the darkness of the great wood.'
+The nurse opened the door again, though her fingers could scarce hold
+the bolts for trembling, and another grey woman, not less old than
+the other, and with like feathers instead of hair, came in and stood
+by the first. In a little, came a third grey woman, and after her a
+fourth, and then another and another and another, until the hut was
+full of their immense bodies. They stood a long time in perfect
+silence and stillness, for they were of those whom the dropping of
+the sand has never troubled, but at last one muttered in a low thin
+voice: 'Sisters, I knew him far away by the redness of his heart
+under his silver skin'; and then another spoke: 'Sisters, I knew him
+because his heart fluttered like a bird under a net of silver cords
+'; and then another took up the word: 'Sisters, I knew him because
+his heart sang like a bird that is happy in a silver cage.' And after
+that they sang together, those who were nearest rocking the cradle
+with long wrinkled fingers; and their voices were now tender and
+caressing, now like the wind blowing in the great wood, and this was
+their song:
+
+     Out of sight is out of mind:
+     Long have man and woman-kind,
+     Heavy of will and light of mood,
+     Taken away our wheaten food,
+     Taken away our Altar stone;
+     Hail and rain and thunder alone,
+     And red hearts we turn to grey,
+     Are true till Time gutter away.
+
+When the song had died out, the crone who had first spoken, said: 'We
+have nothing more to do but to mix a drop of our blood into his
+blood.' And she scratched her arm with the sharp point of a spindle,
+which she had made the nurse bring to her, and let a drop of blood,
+grey as the mist, fall upon the lips of the child; and passed out
+into the darkness. Then the others passed out in silence one by one;
+and all the while the child had not opened his pink eyelids or the
+fire ceased to dance, for the one was too ignorant and the other too
+full of gaiety to know what great beings had bent over the cradle.
+
+When the crones were gone, the nurse came to her courage again, and
+hurried to the dun of the High-King, and cried out in the midst of
+the assembly hall that the Sidhe, whether for good or evil she knew
+not, had bent over the child that night; and the king and his poets
+and men of law, and his huntsmen, and his cooks, and his chief
+warriors went with her to the hut and gathered about the cradle, and
+were as noisy as magpies, and the child sat up and looked at them.
+
+Two years passed over, and the king died fighting against the Fer
+Bolg; and the poets and the men of law ruled in the name of the
+child, but looked to see him become the master himself before long,
+for no one had seen so wise a child, and tales of his endless
+questions about the household of the gods and the making of the world
+went hither and thither among the wicker houses of the poor.
+Everything had been well but for a miracle that began to trouble all
+men; and all women, who, indeed, talked of it without ceasing. The
+feathers of the grey hawk had begun to grow in the child's hair, and
+though, his nurse cut them continually, in but a little while they
+would be more numerous than ever. This had not been a matter of great
+moment, for miracles were a little thing in those days, but for an
+ancient law of Eri that none who had any blemish of body could sit
+upon the throne; and as a grey hawk was a wild thing of the air which
+had never sat at the board, or listened to the songs of the poets in
+the light of the fire, it was not possible to think of one in whose
+hair its feathers grew as other than marred and blasted; nor could
+the people separate from their admiration of the wisdom that grew in
+him a horror as at one of unhuman blood. Yet all were resolved that
+he should reign, for they had suffered much from foolish kings and
+their own disorders, and moreover they desired to watch out the
+spectacle of his days; and no one had any other fear but that his
+great wisdom might bid him obey the law, and call some other, who had
+but a common mind, to reign in his stead.
+
+When the child was seven years old the poets and the men of law were
+called together by the chief poet, and all these matters weighed and
+considered. The child had already seen that those about him had hair
+only, and, though they had told him that they too had had feathers
+but had lost them because of a sin committed by their forefathers,
+they knew that he would learn the truth when he began to wander into
+the country round about. After much consideration they decreed a new
+law commanding every one upon pain of death to mingle artificially
+the feathers of the grey hawk into his hair; and they sent men with
+nets and slings and bows into the countries round about to gather a
+sufficiency of feathers. They decreed also that any who told the
+truth to the child should be flung from a cliff into the sea.
+
+The years passed, and the child grew from childhood into boyhood and
+from boyhood into manhood, and from being curious about all things he
+became busy with strange and subtle thoughts which came to him in
+dreams, and with distinctions between things long held the same and
+with the resemblance of things long held different. Multitudes came
+from other lands to see him and to ask his counsel, but there were
+guards set at the frontiers, who compelled all that came to wear the
+feathers of the grey hawk in their hair. While they listened to him
+his words seemed to make all darkness light and filled their hearts
+like music; but, alas, when they returned to their own lands his
+words seemed far off, and what they could remember too strange and
+subtle to help them to live out their hasty days. A number indeed did
+live differently afterwards, but their new life was less excellent
+than the old: some among them had long served a good cause, but when
+they heard him praise it and their labour, they returned to their own
+lands to find what they had loved less lovable and their arm lighter
+in the battle, for he had taught them how little a hair divides the
+false and true; others, again, who had served no cause, but wrought
+in peace the welfare of their own households, when he had expounded
+the meaning of their purpose, found their bones softer and their will
+less ready for toil, for he had shown them greater purposes; and
+numbers of the young, when they had heard him upon all these things,
+remembered certain words that became like a fire in their hearts, and
+made all kindly joys and traffic between man and man as nothing, and
+went different ways, but all into vague regret.
+
+When any asked him concerning the common things of life; disputes
+about the mear of a territory, or about the straying of cattle, or
+about the penalty of blood; he would turn to those nearest him for
+advice; but this was held to be from courtesy, for none knew that
+these matters were hidden from him by thoughts and dreams that filled
+his mind like the marching and counter-marching of armies. Far less
+could any know that his heart wandered lost amid throngs of
+overcoming thoughts and dreams, shuddering at its own consuming
+solitude.
+
+Among those who came to look at him and to listen to him was the
+daughter of a little king who lived a great way off; and when he saw
+her he loved, for she was beautiful, with a strange and pale beauty
+unlike the women of his land; but Dana, the great mother, had decreed
+her a heart that was but as the heart of others, and when she
+considered the mystery of the hawk feathers she was troubled with a
+great horror. He called her to him when the assembly was over and
+told her of her beauty, and praised her simply and frankly as though
+she were a fable of the bards; and he asked her humbly to give him
+her love, for he was only subtle in his dreams. Overwhelmed with his
+greatness, she half consented, and yet half refused, for she longed
+to marry some warrior who could carry her over a mountain in his
+arms. Day by day the king gave her gifts; cups with ears of gold and
+findrinny wrought by the craftsmen of distant lands; cloth from over
+sea, which, though woven with curious figures, seemed to her less
+beautiful than the bright cloth of her own country; and still she was
+ever between a smile and a frown; between yielding and withholding.
+He laid down his wisdom at her feet, and told how the heroes when
+they die return to the world and begin their labour anew; how the
+kind and mirthful Men of Dea drove out the huge and gloomy and
+misshapen People from Under the Sea; and a multitude of things that
+even the Sidhe have forgotten, either because they happened so long
+ago or because they have not time to think of them; and still she
+half refused, and still he hoped, because he could not believe that a
+beauty so much like wisdom could hide a common heart.
+
+There was a tall young man in the dun who had yellow hair, and was
+skilled in wrestling and in the training of horses; and one day when
+the king walked in the orchard, which was between the foss and the
+forest, he heard his voice among the salley bushes which hid the
+waters of the foss. 'My blossom,' it said, 'I hate them for making
+you weave these dingy feathers into your beautiful hair, and all that
+the bird of prey upon the throne may sleep easy o' nights'; and then
+the low, musical voice he loved answered: 'My hair is not beautiful
+like yours; and now that I have plucked the feathers out of your hair
+I will put my hands through it, thus, and thus, and thus; for it
+casts no shadow of terror and darkness upon my heart.' Then the king
+remembered many things that he had forgotten without understanding
+them, doubtful words of his poets and his men of law, doubts that he
+had reasoned away, his own continual solitude; and he called to the
+lovers in a trembling voice. They came from among the salley bushes
+and threw themselves at his feet and prayed for pardon, and he
+stooped down and plucked the feathers out of the hair of the woman
+and then turned away towards the dun without a word. He strode into
+the hall of assembly, and having gathered his poets and his men of
+law about him, stood upon the dais and spoke in a loud, clear voice:
+'Men of law, why did you make me sin against the laws of Eri? Men of
+verse, why did you make me sin against the secrecy of wisdom, for law
+was made by man for the welfare of man, but wisdom the gods have
+made, and no man shall live by its light, for it and the hail and the
+rain and the thunder follow a way that is deadly to mortal things?
+Men of law and men of verse, live according to your kind, and call
+Eocha of the Hasty Mind to reign over you, for I set out to find my
+kindred.' He then came down among them, and drew out of the hair of
+first one and then another the feathers of the grey hawk, and, having
+scattered them over the rushes upon the floor, passed out, and none
+dared to follow him, for his eyes gleamed like the eyes of the birds
+of prey; and no man saw him again or heard his voice. Some believed
+that he found his eternal abode among the demons, and some that he
+dwelt henceforth with the dark and dreadful goddesses, who sit all
+night about the pools in the forest watching the constellations
+rising and setting in those desolate mirrors.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF THE SPRING.
+
+
+A very old man, whose face was almost as fleshless as the foot of a
+bird, sat meditating upon the rocky shore of the flat and hazel-
+covered isle which fills the widest part of the Lough Gill. A russet-
+faced boy of seventeen years sat by his side, watching the swallows
+dipping for flies in the still water. The old man was dressed in
+threadbare blue velvet, and the boy wore a frieze coat and a blue
+cap, and had about his neck a rosary of blue beads. Behind the two,
+and half hidden by trees, was a little monastery. It had been burned
+down a long while before by sacrilegious men of the Queen's party,
+but had been roofed anew with rushes by the boy, that the old man
+might find shelter in his last days. He had not set his spade,
+however, into the garden about it, and the lilies and the roses of
+the monks had spread out until their confused luxuriancy met and
+mingled with the narrowing circle of the fern. Beyond the lilies and
+the roses the ferns were so deep that a child walking among them
+would be hidden from sight, even though he stood upon his toes; and
+beyond the fern rose many hazels and small oak trees.
+
+'Master,' said the boy, 'this long fasting, and the labour of
+beckoning after nightfall with your rod of quicken wood to the beings
+who dwell in the waters and among the hazels and oak-trees, is too
+much for your strength. Rest from all this labour for a little, for
+your hand seemed more heavy upon my shoulder and your feet less
+steady under you to-day than I have known them. Men say that you are
+older than the eagles, and yet you will not seek the rest that
+belongs to age.' He spoke in an eager, impulsive way, as though his
+heart were in the words and thoughts of the moment; and the old man
+answered slowly and deliberately, as though his heart were in distant
+days and distant deeds.
+
+'I will tell you why I have not been able to rest,' he said. 'It is
+right that you should know, for you have served me faithfully these
+five years and more, and even with affection, taking away thereby a
+little of the doom of loneliness which always falls upon the wise.
+Now, too, that the end of my labour and the triumph of my hopes is at
+hand, it is the more needful for you to have this knowledge.'
+
+'Master, do not think that I would question you. It is for me to keep
+the fire alight, and the thatch close against the rain, and strong,
+lest the wind blow it among the trees; and it is for me to take the
+heavy books from the shelves, and to lift from its corner the great
+painted roll with the names of the Sidhe, and to possess the while an
+incurious and reverent heart, for right well I know that God has made
+out of His abundance a separate wisdom for everything which lives,
+and to do these things is my wisdom.'
+
+'You are afraid,' said the old man, and his eyes shone with a
+momentary anger.
+
+'Sometimes at night,' said the boy, 'when you are reading, with the
+rod of quicken wood in your hand, I look out of the door and see, now
+a great grey man driving swine among the hazels, and now many little
+people in red caps who come out of the lake driving little white cows
+before them. I do not fear these little people so much as the grey
+man; for, when they come near the house, they milk the cows, and they
+drink the frothing milk, and begin to dance; and I know there is good
+in the heart that loves dancing; but I fear them for all that. And I
+fear the tall white-armed ladies who come out of the air, and move
+slowly hither and thither, crowning themselves with the roses or with
+the lilies, and shaking about their living hair, which moves, for so
+I have heard them tell each other, with the motion of their thoughts,
+now spreading out and now gathering close to their heads. They have
+mild, beautiful faces, but, Aengus, son of Forbis, I fear all these
+beings, I fear the people of Sidhe, and I fear the art which draws
+them about us.'
+
+'Why,' said the old man, 'do you fear the ancient gods who made the
+spears of your father's fathers to be stout in battle, and the little
+people who came at night from the depth of the lakes and sang among
+the crickets upon their hearths? And in our evil day they still watch
+over the loveliness of the earth. But I must tell you why I have
+fasted and laboured when others would sink into the sleep of age, for
+without your help once more I shall have fasted and laboured to no
+good end. When you have done for me this last thing, you may go and
+build your cottage and till your fields, and take some girl to wife,
+and forget the ancient gods. I have saved all the gold and silver
+pieces that were given to me by earls and knights and squires for
+keeping them from the evil eye and from the love-weaving enchantments
+of witches, and by earls' and knights' and squires' ladies for
+keeping the people of the Sidhe from making the udders of their
+cattle fall dry, and taking the butter from their churns. I have
+saved it all for the day when my work should be at an end, and now
+that the end is at hand you shall not lack for gold and silver pieces
+enough to make strong the roof-tree of your cottage and to keep
+cellar and larder full. I have sought through all my life to find the
+secret of life. I was not happy in my youth, for I knew that it would
+pass; and I was not happy in my manhood, for I knew that age was
+coming; and so I gave myself, in youth and manhood and age, to the
+search for the Great Secret. I longed for a life whose abundance
+would fill centuries, I scorned the life of fourscore winters. I
+would be--nay, I _will_ be!--like the Ancient Gods of the land.
+I read in my youth, in a Hebrew manuscript I found in a Spanish
+monastery, that there is a moment after the Sun has entered the Ram
+and before he has passed the Lion, which trembles with the Song of
+the Immortal Powers, and that whosoever finds this moment and listens
+to the Song shall become like the Immortal Powers themselves; I came
+back to Ireland and asked the fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they
+knew when this moment was; but though all had heard of it, there was
+none could find the moment upon the hour-glass. So I gave myself to
+magic, and spent my life in fasting and in labour that I might bring
+the Gods and the Fairies to my side; and now at last one of the
+Fairies has told me that the moment is at hand. One, who wore a red
+cap and whose lips were white with the froth of the new milk,
+whispered it into my ear. Tomorrow, a little before the close of the
+first hour after dawn, I shall find the moment, and then I will go
+away to a southern land and build myself a palace of white marble
+amid orange trees, and gather the brave and the beautiful about me,
+and enter into the eternal kingdom of my youth. But, that I may hear
+the whole Song, I was told by the little fellow with the froth of the
+new milk on his lips, that you must bring great masses of green
+boughs and pile them about the door and the window of my room; and
+you must put fresh green rushes upon the floor, and cover the table
+and the rushes with the roses and the lilies of the monks. You must
+do this to-night, and in the morning at the end of the first hour
+after dawn, you must come and find me.'
+
+'Will you be quite young then?' said the boy.
+
+'I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and
+tired, and you must help me to my chair and to my books.'
+
+When the boy had left Aengus son of Forbis in his room, and had
+lighted the lamp which, by some contrivance of the wizard's, gave
+forth a sweet odour as of strange flowers, he went into the wood and
+began cutting green boughs from the hazels, and great bundles of
+rushes from the western border of the isle, where the small rocks
+gave place to gently sloping sand and clay. It was nightfall before
+he had cut enough for his purpose, and well-nigh midnight before he
+had carried the last bundle to its place, and gone back for the roses
+and the lilies. It was one of those warm, beautiful nights when
+everything seems carved of precious stones. Sleuth Wood away to the
+south looked as though cut out of green beryl, and the waters that
+mirrored them shone like pale opal. The roses he was gathering were
+like glowing rubies, and the lilies had the dull lustre of pearl.
+Everything had taken upon itself the look of something imperishable,
+except a glow-worm, whose faint flame burnt on steadily among the
+shadows, moving slowly hither and thither, the only thing that seemed
+alive, the only thing that seemed perishable as mortal hope. The boy
+gathered a great armful of roses and lilies, and thrusting the glow-
+worm among their pearl and ruby, carried them into the room, where
+the old man sat in a half-slumber. He laid armful after armful upon
+the floor and above the table, and then, gently closing the door,
+threw himself upon his bed of rushes, to dream of a peaceful manhood
+with his chosen wife at his side, and the laughter of children in his
+ears. At dawn he rose, and went down to the edge of the lake, taking
+the hour-glass with him. He put some bread and a flask of wine in the
+boat, that his master might not lack food at the outset of his
+journey, and then sat down to wait until the hour from dawn had gone
+by. Gradually the birds began to sing, and when the last grains of
+sand were falling, everything suddenly seemed to overflow with their
+music. It was the most beautiful and living moment of the year; one
+could listen to the spring's heart beating in it. He got up and went
+to find his master. The green boughs filled the door, and he had to
+make a way through them. When he entered the room the sunlight was
+falling in flickering circles on floor and walls and table, and
+everything was full of soft green shadows. But the old man sat
+clasping a mass of roses and lilies in his arms, and with his head
+sunk upon his breast. On the table, at his left hand, was a leathern
+wallet full of gold and silver pieces, as for a journey, and at his
+right hand was a long staff. The boy touched him and he did not move.
+He lifted the hands but they were quite cold, and they fell heavily.
+
+'It were better for him,' said the lad, 'to have told his beads and
+said his prayers like another, and not to have spent his days in
+seeking amongst the Immortal Powers what he could have found in his
+own deeds and days had he willed. Ah, yes, it were better to have
+said his prayers and kissed his beads!' He looked at the threadbare
+blue velvet, and he saw it was covered with the pollen of the
+flowers, and while he was looking at it a thrush, who had alighted
+among the boughs that were piled against the window, began to sing.
+
+
+
+
+THE CURSE OF THE FIRES AND OF THE SHADOWS.
+
+
+One summer night, when there was peace, a score of Puritan troopers
+under the pious Sir Frederick Hamilton, broke through the door of the
+Abbey of the White Friars which stood over the Gara Lough at Sligo.
+As the door fell with a crash they saw a little knot of friars,
+gathered about the altar, their white habits glimmering in the steady
+light of the holy candles. All the monks were kneeling except the
+abbot, who stood upon the altar steps with a great brazen crucifix in
+his hand. 'Shoot them!' cried Sir Frederick Hamilton, but none
+stirred, for all were new converts, and feared the crucifix and the
+holy candles. The white lights from the altar threw the shadows of
+the troopers up on to roof and wall. As the troopers moved about, the
+shadows began a fantastic dance among the corbels and the memorial
+tablets. For a little while all was silent, and then five troopers
+who were the body-guard of Sir Frederick Hamilton lifted their
+muskets, and shot down five of the friars. The noise and the smoke
+drove away the mystery of the pale altar lights, and the other
+troopers took courage and began to strike. In a moment the friars lay
+about the altar steps, their white habits stained with blood. 'Set
+fire to the house!' cried Sir Frederick Hamilton, and at his word one
+went out, and came in again carrying a heap of dry straw, and piled
+it against the western wall, and, having done this, fell back, for
+the fear of the crucifix and of the holy candles was still in his
+heart. Seeing this, the five troopers who were Sir Frederick
+Hamilton's body-guard darted forward, and taking each a holy candle
+set the straw in a blaze. The red tongues of fire rushed up and
+flickered from corbel to corbel and from tablet to tablet, and crept
+along the floor, setting in a blaze the seats and benches. The dance
+of the shadows passed away, and the dance of the fires began. The
+troopers fell back towards the door in the southern wall, and watched
+those yellow dancers springing hither and thither.
+
+For a time the altar stood safe and apart in the midst of its white
+light; the eyes of the troopers turned upon it. The abbot whom they
+had thought dead had risen to his feet and now stood before it with
+the crucifix lifted in both hands high above his head. Suddenly he
+cried with a loud voice, 'Woe unto all who smite those who dwell
+within the Light of the Lord, for they shall wander among the
+ungovernable shadows, and follow the ungovernable fires!' And having
+so cried he fell on his face dead, and the brazen crucifix rolled
+down the steps of the altar. The smoke had now grown very thick, so
+that it drove the troopers out into the open air. Before them were
+burning houses. Behind them shone the painted windows of the Abbey
+filled with saints and martyrs, awakened, as from a sacred trance,
+into an angry and animated life. The eyes of the troopers were
+dazzled, and for a while could see nothing but the flaming faces of
+saints and martyrs. Presently, however, they saw a man covered with
+dust who came running towards them. 'Two messengers,' he cried, 'have
+been sent by the defeated Irish to raise against you the whole
+country about Manor Hamilton, and if you do not stop them you will be
+overpowered in the woods before you reach home again! They ride
+north-east between Ben Bulben and Cashel-na-Gael.'
+
+Sir Frederick Hamilton called to him the five troopers who had first
+fired upon the monks and said, 'Mount quickly, and ride through the
+woods towards the mountain, and get before these men, and kill them.'
+
+In a moment the troopers were gone, and before many moments they had
+splashed across the river at what is now called Buckley's Ford, and
+plunged into the woods. They followed a beaten track that wound along
+the northern bank of the river. The boughs of the birch and quicken
+trees mingled above, and hid the cloudy moonlight, leaving the
+pathway in almost complete darkness. They rode at a rapid trot, now
+chatting together, now watching some stray weasel or rabbit scuttling
+away in the darkness. Gradually, as the gloom and silence of the
+woods oppressed them, they drew closer together, and began to talk
+rapidly; they were old comrades and knew each other's lives. One was
+married, and told how glad his wife would be to see him return safe
+from this harebrained expedition against the White Friars, and to
+hear how fortune had made amends for rashness. The oldest of the
+five, whose wife was dead, spoke of a flagon of wine which awaited
+him upon an upper shelf; while a third, who was the youngest, had a
+sweetheart watching for his return, and he rode a little way before
+the others, not talking at all. Suddenly the young man stopped, and
+they saw that his horse was trembling. 'I saw something,' he said,
+'and yet I do not know but it may have been one of the shadows. It
+looked like a great worm with a silver crown upon his head.' One of
+the five put his hand up to his forehead as if about to cross
+himself, but remembering that he had changed his religion he put it
+down, and said: 'I am certain it was but a shadow, for there are a
+great many about us, and of very strange kinds.' Then they rode on in
+silence. It had been raining in the earlier part of the day, and the
+drops fell from the branches, wetting their hair and their shoulders.
+In a little they began to talk again. They had been in many battles
+against many a rebel together, and now told each other over again the
+story of their wounds, and so awakened in their hearts the strongest
+of all fellowships, the fellowship of the sword, and half forgot the
+terrible solitude of the woods.
+
+Suddenly the first two horses neighed, and then stood still, and
+would go no further. Before them was a glint of water, and they knew
+by the rushing sound that it was a river. They dismounted, and after
+much tugging and coaxing brought the horses to the river-side. In the
+midst of the water stood a tall old woman with grey hair flowing over
+a grey dress. She stood up to her knees in the water, and stooped
+from time to time as though washing. Presently they could see that
+she was washing something that half floated. The moon cast a
+flickering light upon it, and they saw that it was the dead body of a
+man, and, while they were looking at it, an eddy of the river turned
+the face towards them, and each of the five troopers recognised at
+the same moment his own face. While they stood dumb and motionless
+with horror, the woman began to speak, saying slowly and loudly: 'Did
+you see my son? He has a crown of silver on his head, and there are
+rubies in the crown.' Then the oldest of the troopers, he who had
+been most often wounded, drew his sword and cried: 'I have fought for
+the truth of my God, and need not fear the shadows of Satan,' and
+with that rushed into the water. In a moment he returned. The woman
+had vanished, and though he had thrust his sword into air and water
+he had found nothing.
+
+The five troopers remounted, and set their horses at the ford, but
+all to no purpose. They tried again and again, and went plunging
+hither and thither, the horses foaming and rearing. 'Let us,' said
+the old trooper, 'ride back a little into the wood, and strike the
+river higher up.' They rode in under the boughs, the ground-ivy
+crackling under the hoofs, and the branches striking against their
+steel caps. After about twenty minutes' riding they came out again
+upon the river, and after another ten minutes found a place where it
+was possible to cross without sinking below the stirrups. The wood
+upon the other side was very thin, and broke the moonlight into long
+streams. The wind had arisen, and had begun to drive the clouds
+rapidly across the face of the moon, so that thin streams of light
+seemed to be dancing a grotesque dance among the scattered bushes and
+small fir-trees. The tops of the trees began also to moan, and the
+sound of it was like the voice of the dead in the wind; and the
+troopers remembered the belief that tells how the dead in purgatory
+are spitted upon the points of the trees and upon the points of the
+rocks. They turned a little to the south, in the hope that they might
+strike the beaten path again, but they could find no trace of it.
+
+Meanwhile, the moaning grew louder and louder, and the dance of the
+white moon-fires more and more rapid. Gradually they began to be
+aware of a sound of distant music. It was the sound of a bagpipe, and
+they rode towards it with great joy. It came from the bottom of a
+deep, cup-like hollow. In the midst of the hollow was an old man with
+a red cap and withered face. He sat beside a fire of sticks, and had
+a burning torch thrust into the earth at his feet, and played an old
+bagpipe furiously. His red hair dripped over his face like the iron
+rust upon a rock. 'Did you see my wife?' he cried, looking up a
+moment; 'she was washing! she was washing!' 'I am afraid of him,'
+said the young trooper, 'I fear he is one of the Sidhe.' 'No,' said
+the old trooper, 'he is a man, for I can see the sun-freckles upon
+his face. We will compel him to be our guide'; and at that he drew
+his sword, and the others did the same. They stood in a ring round
+the piper, and pointed their swords at him, and the old trooper then
+told him that they must kill two rebels, who had taken the road
+between Ben Bulben and the great mountain spur that is called Cashel-
+na-Gael, and that he must get up before one of them and be their
+guide, for they had lost their way. The piper turned, and pointed to
+a neighbouring tree, and they saw an old white horse ready bitted,
+bridled, and saddled. He slung the pipe across his back, and, taking
+the torch in his hand, got upon the horse, and started off before
+them, as hard as he could go.
+
+The wood grew thinner and thinner, and the ground began to slope up
+toward the mountain. The moon had already set, and the little white
+flames of the stars had come out everywhere. The ground sloped more
+and more until at last they rode far above the woods upon the wide
+top of the mountain. The woods lay spread out mile after mile below,
+and away to the south shot up the red glare of the burning town. But
+before and above them were the little white flames. The guide drew
+rein suddenly, and pointing upwards with the hand that did not hold
+the torch, shrieked out, 'Look; look at the holy candles!' and then
+plunged forward at a gallop, waving the torch hither and thither. 'Do
+you hear the hoofs of the messengers?' cried the guide. 'Quick,
+quick! or they will be gone out of your hands!' and he laughed as
+with delight of the chase. The troopers thought they could hear far
+off, and as if below them, rattle of hoofs; but now the ground began
+to slope more and more, and the speed grew more headlong moment by
+moment. They tried to pull up, but in vain, for the horses seemed to
+have gone mad. The guide had thrown the reins on to the neck of the
+old white horse, and was waving his arms and singing a wild Gaelic
+song. Suddenly they saw the thin gleam of a river, at an immense
+distance below, and knew that they were upon the brink of the abyss
+that is now called Lug-na-Gael, or in English the Stranger's Leap.
+The six horses sprang forward, and five screams went up into the air,
+a moment later five men and horses fell with a dull crash upon the
+green slopes at the foot of the rocks.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MEN OF THE TWILIGHT.
+
+
+At the place, close to the Dead Man's Point, at the Rosses, where the
+disused pilot-house looks out to sea through two round windows like
+eyes, a mud cottage stood in the last century. It also was a
+watchhouse, for a certain old Michael Bruen, who had been a smuggler
+in his day, and was still the father and grandfather of smugglers,
+lived there, and when, after nightfall, a tall schooner crept over
+the bay from Roughley, it was his business to hang a horn lanthorn in
+the southern window, that the news might travel to Dorren's Island,
+and from thence, by another horn lanthorn, to the village of the
+Rosses. But for this glimmering of messages, he had little communion
+with mankind, for he was very old, and had no thought for anything
+but for the making of his soul, at the foot of the Spanish crucifix
+of carved oak that hung by his chimney, or bent double over the
+rosary of stone beads brought to him a cargo of silks and laces out
+of France. One night he had watched hour after hour, because a gentle
+and favourable wind was blowing, and _La Mere de Misericorde_
+was much overdue; and he was about to lie down upon his heap of
+straw, seeing that the dawn was whitening the east, and that the
+schooner would not dare to round Roughley and come to an anchor after
+daybreak; when he saw a long line of herons flying slowly from
+Dorren's Island and towards the pools which lie, half choked with
+reeds, behind what is called the Second Rosses. He had never before
+seen herons flying over the sea, for they are shore-keeping birds,
+and partly because this had startled him out of his drowsiness, and
+more because the long delay of the schooner kept his cupboard empty,
+he took down his rusty shot-gun, of which the barrel was tied on with
+a piece of string, and followed them towards the pools.
+
+When he came close enough to hear the sighing of the rushes in the
+outermost pool, the morning was grey over the world, so that the tall
+rushes, the still waters, the vague clouds, the thin mists lying
+among the sand-heaps, seemed carved out of an enormous pearl. In a
+little he came upon the herons, of whom there were a great number,
+standing with lifted legs in the shallow water; and crouching down
+behind a bank of rushes, looked to the priming of his gun, and bent
+for a moment over his rosary to murmur: 'Patron Patrick, let me shoot
+a heron; made into a pie it will support me for nearly four days, for
+I no longer eat as in my youth. If you keep me from missing I will
+say a rosary to you every night until the pie is eaten.' Then he lay
+down, and, resting his gun upon a large stone, turned towards a heron
+which stood upon a bank of smooth grass over a little stream that
+flowed into the pool; for he feared to take the rheumatism by wading,
+as he would have to do if he shot one of those which stood in the
+water. But when he looked along the barrel the heron was gone, and,
+to his wonder and terror, a man of infinitely great age and infirmity
+stood in its place. He lowered the gun, and the heron stood there
+with bent head and motionless feathers, as though it had slept from
+the beginning of the world. He raised the gun, and no sooner did he
+look along the iron than that enemy of all enchantment brought the
+old man again before him, only to vanish when he lowered the gun for
+the second time. He laid the gun down, and crossed himself three
+times, and said a _Paternoster_ and an _Ave Maria_, and
+muttered half aloud: 'Some enemy of God and of my patron is standing
+upon the smooth place and fishing in the blessed water,' and then
+aimed very carefully and slowly. He fired, and when the smoke had
+gone saw an old man, huddled upon the grass and a long line of herons
+flying with clamour towards the sea. He went round a bend of the
+pool, and coming to the little stream looked down on a figure wrapped
+in faded clothes of black and green of an ancient pattern and spotted
+with blood. He shook his head at the sight of so great a wickedness.
+Suddenly the clothes moved and an arm was stretched upwards towards
+the rosary which hung about his neck, and long wasted fingers almost
+touched the cross. He started back, crying: 'Wizard, I will let no
+wicked thing touch my blessed beads'; and the sense of a The Old
+great danger just escaped made him tremble.
+
+'If you listen to me,' replied a voice so faint that it was like a
+sigh, 'you will know that I am not a wizard, and you will let me kiss
+the cross before I die.'
+
+'I will listen to you,' he answered, 'but I will not let you touch my
+blessed beads,' and sitting on the grass a little way from the dying
+man, he reloaded his gun and laid it across his knees and composed
+himself to listen.
+
+'I know not how many generations ago we, who are now herons, were the
+men of learning of the King Leaghaire; we neither hunted, nor went to
+battle, nor listened to the Druids preaching, and even love, if it
+came to us at all, was but a passing fire. The Druids and the poets
+told us, many and many a time, of a new Druid Patrick; and most among
+them were fierce against him, while a few thought his doctrine merely
+the doctrine of the gods set out in new symbols, and were for giving
+him welcome; but we yawned in the midst of their tale. At last they
+came crying that he was coming to the king's house, and fell to their
+dispute, but we would listen to neither party, for we were busy with
+a dispute about the merits of the Great and of the Little Metre; nor
+were we disturbed when they passed our door with sticks of
+enchantment under their arms, travelling towards the forest to
+contend against his coming, nor when they returned after nightfall
+with torn robes and despairing cries; for the click of our knives
+writing our thoughts in Ogham filled us with peace and our dispute
+filled us with joy; nor even when in the morning crowds passed us to
+hear the strange Druid preaching the commandments of his god. The
+crowds passed, and one, who had laid down his knife to yawn and
+stretch himself, heard a voice speaking far off, and knew that the
+Druid Patrick was preaching within the king's house; but our hearts
+were deaf, and we carved and disputed and read, and laughed a thin
+laughter together. In a little we heard many feet coming towards the
+house, and presently two tall figures stood in the door, the one in
+white, the other in a crimson robe; like a great lily and a heavy
+poppy; and we knew the Druid Patrick and our King Leaghaire. We laid
+down the slender knives and bowed before the king, but when the black
+and green robes had ceased to rustle, it was not the loud rough voice
+of King Leaghaire that spoke to us, but a strange voice in which
+there was a rapture as of one speaking from behind a battlement of
+Druid flame: "I preached the commandments of the Maker of the world,"
+it said; "within the king's house and from the centre of the earth to
+the windows of Heaven there was a great silence, so that the eagle
+floated with unmoving wings in the white air, and the fish with
+unmoving fins in the dim water, while the linnets and the wrens and
+the sparrows stilled there ever-trembling tongues in the heavy
+boughs, and the clouds were like white marble, and the rivers became
+their motionless mirrors, and the shrimps in the far-off sea-pools
+were still enduring eternity in patience, although it was hard." And
+as he named these things, it was like a king numbering his people.
+"But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken staves,
+and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with anger. O,
+little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although the
+summer pass above you with innumerable feet. O, men who have no part
+in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but
+dwell with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot
+touch you as they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons
+cannot sweep about you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a
+curse, and change you to an example for ever and ever; you shall
+become grey herons and stand pondering in grey pools and flit over
+the world in that hour when it is most full of sighs, having
+forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet found the flame of the
+sun; and you shall preach to the other herons until they also are
+like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and your deaths shall
+come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of certainty may
+visit your hearts."'
+
+The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen
+bent over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to
+understand something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for
+a long time, had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his
+dream. The old man of learning had crawled along the grass, and was
+now trying to draw the cross down low enough for his lips to reach
+it.
+
+'You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck
+the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not
+have trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh
+and was still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green
+clothes, for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to
+understand that he had something the man of learning wanted and
+pleaded for, and now that the blessed beads were safe, his fear had
+nearly all gone; and surely, he thought, if that big cloak, and that
+little tight-fitting cloak under it, were warm and without holes,
+Saint Patrick would take the enchantment out of them and leave them
+fit for human use. But the black and green clothes fell away wherever
+his fingers touched them, and while this was a new wonder, a slight
+wind blew over the pool and crumbled the old man of learning and all
+his ancient gear into a little heap of dust, and then made the little
+heap less and less until there was nothing but the smooth green
+grass.
+
+
+
+
+WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD.
+
+
+The little wicker houses at Tullagh, where the Brothers were
+accustomed to pray, or bend over many handicrafts, when twilight had
+driven them from the fields, were empty, for the hardness of the
+winter had brought the brotherhood together in the little wooden
+house under the shadow of the wooden chapel; and Abbot Malathgeneus,
+Brother Dove, Brother Bald Fox, Brother Peter, Brother Patrick,
+Brother Bittern, Brother Fair-Brows, and many too young to have won
+names in the great battle, sat about the fire with ruddy faces, one
+mending lines to lay in the river for eels, one fashioning a snare
+for birds, one mending the broken handle of a spade, one writing in a
+large book, and one shaping a jewelled box to hold the book; and
+among the rushes at their feet lay the scholars, who would one day be
+Brothers, and whose school-house it was, and for the succour of whose
+tender years the great fire was supposed to leap and flicker. One of
+these, a child of eight or nine years, called Olioll, lay upon his
+back looking up through the hole in the roof, through which the smoke
+went, and watching the stars appearing and disappearing in the smoke
+with mild eyes, like the eyes of a beast of the field. He turned
+presently to the Brother who wrote in the big book, and whose duty
+was to teach the children, and said, 'Brother Dove, to what are the
+stars fastened?' The Brother, rejoicing to see so much curiosity in
+the stupidest of his scholars, laid down the pen and said, 'There are
+nine crystalline spheres, and on the first the Moon is fastened, on
+the second the planet Mercury, on the third the planet Venus, on the
+fourth the Sun, on the fifth the planet Mars, on the sixth the planet
+Jupiter, on the seventh the planet Saturn; these are the wandering
+stars; and on the eighth are fastened the fixed stars; but the ninth
+sphere is a sphere of the substance on which the breath of God moved
+in the beginning.'
+
+'What is beyond that?' said the child. 'There is nothing beyond that;
+there is God.'
+
+And then the child's eyes strayed to the jewelled box, where one
+great ruby was gleaming in the light of the fire, and he said, 'Why
+has Brother Peter put a great ruby on the side of the box?'
+
+'The ruby is a symbol of the love of God.'
+
+'Why is the ruby a symbol of the love of God?'
+
+'Because it is red, like fire, and fire burns up everything, and
+where there is nothing, there is God.'
+
+The child sank into silence, but presently sat up and said, 'There is
+somebody outside.'
+
+'No,' replied the Brother. 'It is only the wolves; I have heard them
+moving about in the snow for some time. They are growing very wild,
+now that the winter drives them from the mountains. They broke into a
+fold last night and carried off many sheep, and if we are not careful
+they will devour everything.'
+
+'No, it is the footstep of a man, for it is heavy; but I can hear the
+footsteps of the wolves also.'
+
+He had no sooner done speaking than somebody rapped three times, but
+with no great loudness.
+
+'I will go and open, for he must be very cold.'
+
+'Do not open, for it may be a man-wolf, and he may devour us all.'
+
+But the boy had already drawn back the heavy wooden bolt, and all the
+faces, most of them a little pale, turned towards the slowly-opening
+door.
+
+'He has beads and a cross, he cannot be a man-wolf,' said the child,
+as a man with the snow heavy on his long, ragged beard, and on the
+matted hair, that fell over his shoulders and nearly to his waist,
+and dropping from the tattered cloak that but half-covered his
+withered brown body, came in and looked from face to face with mild,
+ecstatic eyes. Standing some way from the fire, and with eyes that
+had rested at last upon the Abbot Malathgeneus, he cried out, 'O
+blessed abbot, let me come to the fire and warm myself and dry the
+snow from my beard and my hair and my cloak; that I may not die of
+the cold of the mountains, and anger the Lord with a wilful
+martyrdom.'
+
+'Come to the fire,' said the abbot, 'and warm yourself, and eat the
+food the boy Olioll will bring you. It is sad indeed that any for
+whom Christ has died should be as poor as you.'
+
+The man sat over the fire, and Olioll took away his now dripping
+cloak and laid meat and bread and wine before him; but he would eat
+only of the bread, and he put away the wine, asking for water. When
+his beard and hair had begun to dry a little and his limbs had ceased
+to shiver with the cold, he spoke again.
+
+'O blessed abbot, have pity on the poor, have pity on a beggar who
+has trodden the bare world this many a year, and give me some labour
+to do, the hardest there is, for I am the poorest of God's poor.'
+
+Then the Brothers discussed together what work they could put him to,
+and at first to little purpose, for there was no labour that had not
+found its labourer in that busy community; but at last one remembered
+that Brother Bald Fox, whose business it was to turn the great quern
+in the quern-house, for he was too stupid for anything else, was
+getting old for so heavy a labour; and so the beggar was put to the
+quern from the morrow.
+
+The cold passed away, and the spring grew to summer, and the quern
+was never idle, nor was it turned with grudging labour, for when any
+passed the beggar was heard singing as he drove the handle round. The
+last gloom, too, had passed from that happy community, for Olioll,
+who had always been stupid and unteachable, grew clever, and this was
+the more miraculous because it had come of a sudden. One day he had
+been even duller than usual, and was beaten and told to know his
+lesson better on the morrow or be sent into a lower class among
+little boys who would make a joke of him. He had gone out in tears,
+and when he came the next day, although his stupidity, born of a mind
+that would listen to every wandering sound and brood upon every
+wandering light, had so long been the byword of the school, he knew
+his lesson so well that he passed to the head of the class, and from
+that day was the best of scholars. At first Brother Dove thought this
+was an answer to his own prayers to the Virgin, and took it for a
+great proof of the love she bore him; but when many far more fervid
+prayers had failed to add a single wheatsheaf to the harvest, he
+began to think that the child was trafficking with bards, or druids,
+or witches, and resolved to follow and watch. He had told his thought
+to the abbot, who bid him come to him the moment he hit the truth;
+and the next day, which was a Sunday, he stood in the path when the
+abbot and the Brothers were coming from vespers, with their white
+habits upon them, and took the abbot by the habit and said, 'The
+beggar is of the greatest of saints and of the workers of miracle. I
+followed Olioll but now, and by his slow steps and his bent head I
+saw that the weariness of his stupidity was over him, and when he
+came to the little wood by the quern-house I knew by the path broken
+in the under-wood and by the footmarks in the muddy places that he
+had gone that way many times. I hid behind a bush where the path
+doubled upon itself at a sloping place, and understood by the tears
+in his eyes that his stupidity was too old and his wisdom too new to
+save him from terror of the rod. When he was in the quern-house I
+went to the window and looked in, and the birds came down and perched
+upon my head and my shoulders, for they are not timid in that holy
+place; and a wolf passed by, his right side shaking my habit, his
+left the leaves of a bush. Olioll opened his book and turned to the
+page I had told him to learn, and began to cry, and the beggar sat
+beside him and comforted him until he fell asleep. When his sleep was
+of the deepest the beggar knelt down and prayed aloud, and said, "O
+Thou Who dwellest beyond the stars, show forth Thy power as at the
+beginning, and let knowledge sent from Thee awaken in his mind,
+wherein is nothing from the world, that the nine orders of angels may
+glorify Thy name"; and then a light broke out of the air and wrapped
+Aodh, and I smelt the breath of roses. I stirred a little in my
+wonder, and the beggar turned and saw me, and, bending low, said, "O
+Brother Dove, if I have done wrong, forgive me, and I will do
+penance. It was my pity moved me"; but I was afraid and I ran away,
+and did not stop running until I came here.' Then all the Brothers
+began talking together, one saying it was such and such a saint, and
+one that it was not he but another; and one that it was none of
+these, for they were still in their brotherhoods, but that it was
+such and such a one; and the talk was as near to quarreling as might
+be in that gentle community, for each would claim so great a saint
+for his native province. At last the abbot said, 'He is none that you
+have named, for at Easter I had greeting from all, and each was in
+his brotherhood; but he is Aengus the Lover of God, and the first of
+those who have gone to live in the wild places and among the wild
+beasts. Ten years ago he felt the burden of many labours in a
+brotherhood under the Hill of Patrick and went into the forest that
+he might labour only with song to the Lord; but the fame of his
+holiness brought many thousands to his cell, so that a little pride
+clung to a soul from which all else had been driven. Nine years ago
+he dressed himself in rags, and from that day none has seen him,
+unless, indeed, it be true that he has been seen living among the
+wolves on the mountains and eating the grass of the fields. Let us go
+to him and bow down before him; for at last, after long seeking, he
+has found the nothing that is God; and bid him lead us in the pathway
+he has trodden.'
+
+They passed in their white habits along the beaten path in the wood,
+the acolytes swinging their censers before them, and the abbot, with
+his crozier studded with precious stones, in the midst of the
+incense; and came before the quern-house and knelt down and began to
+pray, awaiting the moment when the child would wake, and the Saint
+cease from his watch and come to look at the sun going down into the
+unknown darkness, as his way was.
+
+
+
+
+OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE
+BITTER TONGUE.
+
+
+Costello had come up from the fields and lay upon the ground before
+the door of his square tower, resting his head upon his hands and
+looking at the sunset, and considering the chances of the weather.
+Though the customs of Elizabeth and James, now going out of fashion
+in England, had begun to prevail among the gentry, he still wore the
+great cloak of the native Irish; and the sensitive outlines of his
+face and the greatness of his indolent body had a commingling of
+pride and strength which belonged to a simpler age. His eyes wandered
+from the sunset to where the long white road lost itself over the
+south-western horizon and to a horseman who toiled slowly up the
+hill. A few more minutes and the horseman was near enough for his
+little and shapeless body, his long Irish cloak, and the dilapidated
+bagpipes hanging from his shoulders, and the rough-haired garron
+under him, to be seen distinctly in the grey dusk. So soon as he had
+come within earshot, he began crying: 'Is it sleeping you are, Tumaus
+Costello, when better men break their hearts on the great white
+roads? Get up out of that, proud Tumaus, for I have news! Get up out
+of that, you great omadhaun! Shake yourself out of the earth, you
+great weed of a man!'
+
+Costello had risen to his feet, and as the piper came up to him
+seized him by the neck of his jacket, and lifting him out of his
+saddle threw him on to the ground.
+
+'Let me alone, let me alone,' said the other, but Costello still
+shook him.
+
+'I have news from Dermott's daughter, Winny,' The great fingers were
+loosened, and the piper rose gasping.
+
+'Why did you not tell me,' said Costello, that you came from her? You
+might have railed your fill.'
+
+'I have come from her, but I will not speak unless I am paid for my
+shaking.'
+
+Costello fumbled at the bag in which he carried his money, and it was
+some time before it would open, for the hand that had overcome many
+men shook with fear and hope. 'Here is all the money in my bag,' he
+said, dropping a stream of French and Spanish money into the hand of
+the piper, who bit the coins before he would answer.
+
+'That is right, that is a fair price, but I will not speak till I
+have good protection, for if the Dermotts lay their hands upon me in
+any boreen after sundown, or in Cool-a-vin by day, I will be left to
+rot among the nettles of a ditch, or hung on the great sycamore,
+where they hung the horse-thieves last Beltaine four years.' And
+while he spoke he tied the reins of his garron to a bar of rusty iron
+that was mortared into the wall.
+
+'I will make you my piper and my bodyservant,' said Costello, 'and no
+man dare lay hands upon the man, or the goat, or the horse, or the
+dog that is Tumaus Costello's.'
+
+'And I will only tell my message,' said the other, flinging the
+saddle on the ground, 'in the corner of the chimney with a noggin in
+my hand, and a jug of the Brew of the Little Pot beside me, for
+though I am ragged and empty, my forbears were well clothed and full
+until their house was burnt and their cattle harried seven centuries
+ago by the Dillons, whom I shall yet see on the hob of hell, and they
+screeching'; and while he spoke the little eyes gleamed and the thin
+hands clenched.
+
+Costello led him into the great rush-strewn hall, where were none of
+the comforts which had begun to grow common among the gentry, but a
+feudal gauntness and bareness, and pointed to the bench in the great
+chimney; and when he had sat down, filled up a horn noggin and set it
+on the bench beside him, and set a great black jack of leather beside
+the noggin, and lit a torch that slanted out from a ring in the wall,
+his hands trembling the while; and then turned towards him and said:
+'Will Dermott's daughter come to me, Duallach, son of Daly?'
+
+'Dermott's daughter will not come to you, for her father has set
+women to watch her, but she bid me tell you that this day sennight
+will be the eve of St. John and the night of her betrothal to Namara
+of the Lake, and she would have you there that, when they bid her
+drink to him she loves best, as the way is, she may drink to you,
+Tumaus Costello, and let all know where her heart is, and how little
+of gladness is in her marriage; and I myself bid you go with good men
+about you, for I saw the horse-thieves with my own eyes, and they
+dancing the "Blue Pigeon" in the air.' And then he held the now empty
+noggin towards Costello, his hand closing round it like the claw of a
+bird, and cried: 'Fill my noggin again, for I would the day had come
+when all the water in the world is to shrink into a periwinkle-shell,
+that I might drink nothing but Poteen.'
+
+Finding that Costello made no reply, but sat in a dream, he burst
+out: 'Fill my noggin, I tell you, for no Costello is so great in the
+world that he should not wait upon a Daly, even though the Daly
+travel the road with his pipes and the Costello have a bare hill, an
+empty house, a horse, a herd of goats, and a handful of cows.'
+'Praise the Dalys if you will,' said Costello as he filled the
+noggin, 'for you have brought me a kind word from my love.'
+
+For the next few days Duallach went hither and thither trying to
+raise a bodyguard, and every man he met had some story of Costello,
+how he killed the wrestler when but a boy by so straining at the belt
+that went about them both that he broke the big wrestler's back; how
+when somewhat older he dragged fierce horses through a ford in the
+Unchion for a wager; how when he came to manhood he broke the steel
+horseshoe in Mayo; how he drove many men before him through Rushy
+Meadow at Drum-an-air because of a malevolent song they had about his
+poverty; and of many another deed of his strength and pride; but he
+could find none who would trust themselves with any so passionate and
+poor in a quarrel with careful and wealthy persons like Dermott of
+the Sheep and Namara of the Lake.
+
+Then Costello went out himself, and after listening to many excuses
+and in many places, brought in a big half-witted fellow, who followed
+him like a dog, a farm-labourer who worshipped him for his strength,
+a fat farmer whose forefathers had served his family, and a couple of
+lads who looked after his goats and cows; and marshalled them before
+the fire in the empty hall. They had brought with them their stout
+cudgels, and Costello gave them an old pistol apiece, and kept them
+all night drinking Spanish ale and shooting at a white turnip which
+he pinned against the wall with a skewer. Duallach of the pipes sat
+on the bench in the chimney playing 'The Green Bunch of Rushes', 'The
+Unchion Stream,' and 'The Princes of Breffeny' on his old pipes, and
+railing now at the appearance of the shooters, now at their clumsy
+shooting, and now at Costello because he had no better servants. The
+labourer, the half-witted fellow, the farmer and the lads were all
+well accustomed to Duallach's railing, for it was as inseparable from
+wake or wedding as the squealing of his pipes, but they wondered at
+the forbearance of Costello, who seldom came either to wake or
+wedding, and if he had would scarce have been patient with a scolding
+piper.
+
+On the next evening they set out for Cool-a-vin, Costello riding a
+tolerable horse and carrying a sword, the others upon rough-haired
+garrons, and with their stout cudgels under their arms. As they rode
+over the bogs and in the boreens among the hills they could see fire
+answering fire from hill to hill, from horizon to horizon, and
+everywhere groups who danced in the red light on the turf,
+celebrating the bridal of life and fire. When they came to Dermott's
+house they saw before the door an unusually large group of the very
+poor, dancing about a fire, in the midst of which was a blazing
+cartwheel, that circular dance which is so ancient that the gods,
+long dwindled to be but fairies, dance no other in their secret
+places. From the door and through the long loop-holes on either side
+came the pale light of candles and the sound of many feet dancing a
+dance of Elizabeth and James.
+
+They tied their horses to bushes, for the number so tied already
+showed that the stables were full, and shoved their way through a
+crowd of peasants who stood about the door, and went into the great
+hall where the dance was. The labourer, the half-witted fellow, the
+farmer and the two lads mixed with a group of servants who were
+looking on from an alcove, and Duallach sat with the pipers on their
+bench, but Costello made his way through the dancers to where Dermott
+of the Sheep stood with Namara of the Lake pouring Poteen out of a
+porcelain jug into horn noggins with silver rims.
+
+'Tumaus Costello,' said the old man, 'you have done a good deed to
+forget what has been, and to fling away enmity and come to the
+betrothal of my daughter to Namara of the Lake.'
+
+'I come,' answered Costello, 'because when in the time of Costello De
+Angalo my forbears overcame your forbears and afterwards made peace,
+a compact was made that a Costello might go with his body-servants
+and his piper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a
+Dermott with his body-servants and his piper to every feast given by
+a Costello for ever.'
+
+'If you come with evil thoughts and armed men,' said the son of
+Dermott flushing,' no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to
+swing the sword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wife's
+clan have come out of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants
+have come down from the Ox Mountains'; and while he spoke he kept his
+hand inside his coat as though upon the handle of a weapon.
+
+'No,' answered Costello, 'I but come to dance a farewell dance with
+your daughter.'
+
+Dermott drew his hand out of his coat and went over to a tall pale
+girl who was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes
+fixed upon the ground.
+
+'Costello has come to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you
+will never see one another again.'
+
+The girl lifted her eyes and gazed at Costello, and in her gaze was
+that trust of the humble in the proud, the gentle in the violent,
+which has been the tragedy of woman from the beginning. Costello led
+her among the dancers, and they were soon drawn into the rhythm of
+the Pavane, that stately dance which, with the Saraband, the Gallead,
+and the Morrice dances, had driven out, among all but the most Irish
+of the gentry, the quicker rhythms of the verse-interwoven,
+pantomimic dances of earlier days; and while they danced there came
+over them the unutterable melancholy, the weariness with the world,
+the poignant and bitter pity for one another, the vague anger against
+common hopes and fears, which is the exultation of love. And when a
+dance ended and the pipers laid down their pipes and lifted their
+horn noggins, they stood a little from the others waiting pensively
+and silently for the dance to begin again and the fire in their
+hearts to leap up and to wrap them anew; and so they danced and
+danced Pavane and Saraband and Gallead and Morrice through the night
+long, and many stood still to watch them, and the peasants came about
+the door and peered in, as though they understood that they would
+gather their children's children about them long hence, and tell how
+they had seen Costello dance with Dermott's daughter Oona, and become
+by the telling themselves a portion of ancient romance; but through
+all the dancing and piping Namara of the Lake went hither and thither
+talking loudly and making foolish jokes that all might seem well with
+him, and old Dermott of the Sheep grew redder and redder, and looked
+oftener and oftener at the doorway to see if the candles there grew
+yellow in the dawn.
+
+At last he saw that the moment to end had come, and, in a pause after
+a dance, cried out from where the horn noggins stood that his
+daughter would now drink the cup of betrothal; then Oona came over to
+where he was, and the guests stood round in a half-circle, Costello
+close to the wall to the right, and the piper, the labourer, the
+farmer, the half-witted man and the two farm lads close behind him.
+The old man took out of a niche in the wall the silver cup from which
+her mother and her mother's mother had drunk the toasts of their
+betrothals, and poured Poteen out of a porcelain jug and handed the
+cup to his daughter with the customary words, 'Drink to him whom you
+love the best.'
+
+She held the cup to her lips for a moment, and then said in a clear
+soft voice: 'I drink to my true love, Tumaus Costello.'
+
+And then the cup rolled over and over on the ground, ringing like a
+bell, for the old man had struck her in the face and the cup had
+fallen, and there was a deep silence.
+
+There were many of Namara's people among the servants now come out of
+the alcove, and one of them, a story-teller and poet, a last remnant
+of the bardic order, who had a chair and a platter in Namara's
+kitchen, drew a French knife out of his girdle and made as though he
+would strike at Costello, but in a moment a blow had hurled him to
+the ground, his shoulder sending the cup rolling and ringing again.
+The click of steel had followed quickly, had not there come a
+muttering and shouting from the peasants about the door and from
+those crowding up behind them; and all knew that these were no
+children of Queen's Irish or friendly Namaras and Dermotts, but of
+the wild Irish about Lough Gara and Lough Cara, who rowed their skin
+coracles, and had masses of hair over their eyes, and left the right
+arms of their children unchristened that they might give the stouter
+blows, and swore only by St. Atty and sun and moon, and worshipped
+beauty and strength more than St. Atty or sun and moon.
+
+Costello's hand had rested upon the handle of his sword and his
+knuckles had grown white, but now he drew it away, and, followed by
+those who were with him, strode towards the door, the dancers giving
+way before him, the most angrily and slowly, and with glances at the
+muttering and shouting peasants, but some gladly and quickly, because
+the glory of his fame was over him. He passed through the fierce and
+friendly peasant faces, and came where his good horse and the rough-
+haired garrons were tied to bushes; and mounted and bade his ungainly
+bodyguard mount also and ride into the narrow boreen. When they had
+gone a little way, Duallach, who rode last, turned towards the house
+where a little group of Dermotts and Namaras stood next to a more
+numerous group of countrymen, and cried: 'Dermott, you deserve to be
+as you are this hour, a lantern without a candle, a purse without a
+penny, a sheep without wool, for your hand was ever niggardly to
+piper and fiddler and story-teller and to poor travelling people.' He
+had not done before the three old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains had
+run towards their horses, and old Dermott himself had caught the
+bridle of a garron of the Namaras and was calling to the others to
+follow him; and many blows and many deaths had been had not the
+countrymen caught up still glowing sticks from the ashes of the fires
+and hurled them among the horses with loud cries, making all plunge
+and rear, and some break from those who held them, the whites of
+their eyes gleaming in the dawn.
+
+For the next few weeks Costello had no lack of news of Oona, for now
+a woman selling eggs or fowls, and now a man or a woman on pilgrimage
+to the Well of the Rocks, would tell him how his love had fallen ill
+the day after St. John's Eve, and how she was a little better or a
+little worse, as it might be; and though he looked to his horses and
+his cows and goats as usual, the common and uncomely, the dust upon
+the roads, the songs of men returning from fairs and wakes, men
+playing cards in the corners of fields on Sundays and Saints' Days,
+the rumours of battles and changes in the great world, the deliberate
+purposes of those about him, troubled him with an inexplicable
+trouble; and the country people still remember how when night had
+fallen he would bid Duallach of the Pipes tell, to the chirping of
+the crickets, 'The Son of Apple,' 'The Beauty of the World,' 'The
+King of Ireland's Son,' or some other of those traditional tales
+which were as much a piper's business as 'The Green Bunch of Rushes,'
+'The Unchion Stream,' or 'The Chiefs of Breffeny'; and while the
+boundless and phantasmal world of the legends was a-building, would
+abandon himself to the dreams of his sorrow.
+
+Duallach would often pause to tell how some clan of the wild Irish
+had descended from an incomparable King of the Blue Belt, or Warrior
+of the Ozier Wattle, or to tell with many curses how all the
+strangers and most of the Queen's Irish were the seed of the
+misshapen and horned People from Under the Sea or of the servile and
+creeping Ferbolg; but Costello cared only for the love sorrows, and
+no matter whither the stories wandered, whether to the Isle of the
+Red Lough, where the blessed are, or to the malign country of the Hag
+of the East, Oona alone endured their shadowy hardships; for it was
+she and no king's daughter of old who was hidden in the steel tower
+under the water with the folds of the Worm of Nine Eyes round and
+about her prison; and it was she who won by seven years of service
+the right to deliver from hell all she could carry, and carried away
+multitudes clinging with worn fingers to the hem of her dress; and it
+was she who endured dumbness for a year because of the little thorn
+of enchantment the fairies had thrust into her tongue; and it was a
+lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gave so great
+a light that men threshed by it from sundown to sunrise, and awoke so
+great a wonder that kings spent years in wandering or fell before
+unknown armies in seeking to discover her hiding-place; for there was
+no beauty in the world but hers, no tragedy in the world but hers:
+and when at last the voice of the piper, grown gentle with the wisdom
+of old romance, was silent, and his rheumatic steps had toiled
+upstairs and to bed, and Costello had dipped his fingers into the
+little delf font of holy water and begun to pray to Mary of the Seven
+Sorrows, the blue eyes and star-covered dress of the painting in the
+chapel faded from his imagination, and the brown eyes and homespun
+dress of Dermott's daughter Winny came in their stead; for there was
+no tenderness in the passion who keep their hearts pure for love or
+for hatred as other men for God, for Mary and for the Saints, and
+who, when the hour of their visitation arrives, come to the Divine
+Essence by the bitter tumult, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the
+desolate Rood ordained for immortal passions in mortal hearts.
+
+One day a serving-man rode up to Costello, who was helping his two
+lads to reap a meadow, and gave him a letter, and rode away without a
+word; and the letter contained these words in English: 'Tumaus
+Costello, my daughter is very ill. The wise woman from Knock-na-Sidhe
+has seen her, and says she will die unless you come to her. I
+therefore bid you come to her whose peace you stole by treachery.-
+DERMOTT, THE SON OF DERMOTT.'
+
+Costello threw down his scythe, and sent one of the lads for
+Duallach, who had become woven into his mind with Oona, and himself
+saddled his great horse and Duallach's garron.
+
+When they came to Dermott's house it was late afternoon, and Lough
+Gara lay down below them, blue, mirror-like, and deserted; and though
+they had seen, when at a distance, dark figures moving about the
+door, the house appeared not less deserted than the Lough. The door
+stood half open, and Costello knocked upon it again and again, so
+that a number of lake gulls flew up out of the grass and circled
+screaming over his head, but there was no answer.
+
+'There is no one here,' said Duallach, 'for Dermott of the Sheep is
+too proud to welcome Costello the Proud,' and he threw the door open,
+and they saw a ragged, dirty, very old woman, who sat upon the floor
+leaning against the wall. Costello knew that it was Bridget Delaney,
+a deaf and dumb beggar; and she, when she saw him, stood up and made
+a sign to him to follow, and led him and his companion up a stair and
+down a long corridor to a closed door. She pushed the door open and
+went a little way off and sat down as before; Duallach sat upon the
+ground also, but close to the door, and Costello went and gazed upon
+Winny sleeping upon a bed. He sat upon a chair beside her and waited,
+and a long time passed and still she slept on, and then Duallach
+motioned to him through the door to wake her, but he hushed his very
+breath, that she might sleep on, for his heart was full of that
+ungovernable pity which makes the fading heart of the lover a shadow
+of the divine heart. Presently he turned to Duallach and said: 'It is
+not right that I stay here where there are none of her kindred, for
+the common people are always ready to blame the beautiful.' And then
+they went down and stood at the door of the house and waited, but the
+evening wore on and no one came.
+
+'It was a foolish man that called you Proud Costello,' Duallach cried
+at last; 'had he seen you waiting and waiting where they left none
+but a beggar to welcome you, it is Humble Costello he would have
+called you.'
+
+Then Costello mounted and Duallach mounted, but when they had ridden
+a little way Costello tightened the reins and made his horse stand
+still. Many minutes passed, and then Duallach cried: 'It is no wonder
+that you fear to offend Dermott of the Sheep, for he has many
+brothers and friends, and though he is old, he is a strong man and
+ready with his hands, and he is of the Queen's Irish, and the enemies
+of the Gael are upon his side.'
+
+And Costello answered flushing and looking towards the house: 'I
+swear by the Mother of God that I will never return there again if
+they do not send after me before I pass the ford in the Brown River,'
+and he rode on, but so very slowly that the sun went down and the
+bats began to fly over the bogs. When he came to the river he
+lingered awhile upon the bank among the flowers of the flag, but
+presently rode out into the middle and stopped his horse in a foaming
+shallow. Duallach, however, crossed over and waited on a further bank
+above a deeper place. After a good while Duallach cried out again,
+and this time very bitterly: 'It was a fool who begot you and a fool
+who bore you, and they are fools of all fools who say you come of an
+old and noble stock, for you come of whey-faced beggars who travelled
+from door to door, bowing to gentles and to serving-men.
+
+With bent head, Costello rode through the river and stood beside him,
+and would have spoken had not hoofs clattered on the further bank and
+a horseman splashed towards them. It was a serving-man of Dermott's,
+and he said, speaking breathlessly like one who had ridden hard:
+'Tumaus Costello, I come to bid you again to Dermott's house. When
+you had gone, his daughter Winny awoke and called your name, for you
+had been in her dreams. Bridget Delaney the Dummy saw her lips move
+and the trouble upon her, and came where we were hiding in the wood
+above the house and took Dermott of the Sheep by the coat and brought
+him to his daughter. He saw the trouble upon her, and bid me ride his
+own horse to bring you the quicker.'
+
+Then Costello turned towards the piper Duallach Daly, and taking him
+about the waist lifted him out of the saddle and hurled him against a
+grey rock that rose up out of the river, so that he fell lifeless
+into the deep place, and the waters swept over the tongue which God
+had made bitter, that there might be a story in men's ears in after
+time. Then plunging his spurs into the horse, he rode away furiously
+toward the north-west, along the edge of the river, and did not pause
+until he came to another and smoother ford, and saw the rising moon
+mirrored in the water. He paused for a moment irresolute, and then
+rode into the ford and on over the Ox Mountains, and down towards the
+sea; his eyes almost continually resting upon the moon which
+glimmered in the dimness like a great white rose hung on the lattice
+of some boundless and phantasmal world. But now his horse, long dark
+with sweat and breathing hard, for he kept spurring it to an extreme
+speed, fell heavily, hurling him into the grass at the roadside. He
+tried to make it stand up, and failing in this, went on alone towards
+the moonlight; and came to the sea and saw a schooner lying there at
+anchor. Now that he could go no further because of the sea, he found
+that he was very tired and the night very cold, and went into a
+shebeen close to the shore and threw himself down upon a bench. The
+room was full of Spanish and Irish sailors who had just smuggled a
+cargo of wine and ale, and were waiting a favourable wind to set out
+again. A Spaniard offered him a drink in bad Gaelic. He drank it
+greedily and began talking wildly and rapidly.
+
+For some three weeks the wind blew inshore or with too great
+violence, and the sailors stayed drinking and talking and playing
+cards, and Costello stayed with them, sleeping upon a bench in the
+shebeen, and drinking and talking and playing more than any. He soon
+lost what little money he had, and then his horse, which some one had
+brought from the mountain boreen, to a Spaniard, who sold it to a
+farmer from the mountains, and then his long cloak and his spurs and
+his boots of soft leather. At last a gentle wind blew towards Spain,
+and the crew rowed out to their schooner, singing Gaelic and Spanish
+songs, and lifted the anchor, and in a little while the white sails
+had dropped under the horizon. Then Costello turned homeward, his
+life gaping before him, and walked all day, coming in the early
+evening to the road that went from near Lough Gara to the southern
+edge of Lough Cay. Here he overtook a great crowd of peasants and
+farmers, who were walking very slowly after two priests and a group
+of well-dressed persons, certain of whom were carrying a coffin. He
+stopped an old man and asked whose burying it was and whose people
+they were, and the old man answered: 'It is the burying of Oona,
+Dermott's daughter, and we are the Namaras and the Dermotts and their
+following, and you are Tumaus Costello who murdered her.'
+
+Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men who
+looked at him with fierce eyes and only vaguely understanding what he
+had heard, for now that he had lost the understanding that belongs to
+good health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty
+which had been so long the world's heart could pass away. Presently
+he stopped and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered:
+'We are carrying Dermott's daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be
+buried in the island of the Holy Trinity,' and the man stooped and
+picked up a stone and cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek
+and making the blood flow out over his face. Costello went on
+scarcely feeling the blow, and coming to those about the coffin,
+shouldered his way into the midst of them, and laying his hand upon
+the coffin, asked in a loud voice: 'Who is in this coffin?'
+
+The three Old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains caught up stones and bid
+those about them do the same; and he was driven from the road,
+covered with wounds, and but for the priests would surely have been
+killed.
+
+When the procession had passed on, Costello began to follow again,
+and saw from a distance the coffin laid upon a large boat, and those
+about it get into other boats, and the boats move slowly over the
+water to Insula Trinitatis; and after a time he saw the boats return
+and their passengers mingle with the crowd upon the bank, and all
+disperse by many roads and boreens. It seemed to him that Winny was
+somewhere on the island smiling gently as of old, and when all had
+gone he swam in the way the boats had been rowed and found the new-
+made grave beside the ruined Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and threw
+himself upon it, calling to Oona to come to him. Above him the square
+ivy leaves trembled, and all about him white moths moved over white
+flowers, and sweet odours drifted through the dim air.
+
+He lay there all that night and through the day after, from time to
+time calling her to come to him, but when the third night came he had
+forgotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in the
+earth beneath; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not
+come to him.
+
+Just before dawn, the hour when the peasants hear his ghostly voice
+crying out, his pride awoke and he called loudly: 'Winny, daughter of
+Dermott of the Sheep, if you do not come to me I will go and never
+return to the island of the Holy Trinity,' and before his voice had
+died away a cold and whirling wind had swept over the island and he
+saw many figures rushing past, women of the Sidhe with crowns of
+silver and dim floating drapery; and then Oona, but no longer smiling
+gently, for she passed him swiftly and angrily, and as she passed
+struck him upon the face crying: 'Then go and never return.'
+
+He would have followed, and was calling out her name, when the whole
+glimmering company rose up into the air, and, rushing together in the
+shape of a great silvery rose, faded into the ashen dawn.
+
+Costello got up from the grave, understanding nothing but that he had
+made his beloved angry and that she wished him to go, and wading out
+into the lake, began to swim. He swam on and on, but his limbs were
+too weary to keep him afloat, and her anger was heavy about him, and
+when he had gone a little way he sank without a struggle, like a man
+passing into sleep and dreams.
+
+The next day a poor fisherman found him among the reeds upon the lake
+shore, lying upon the white lake sand with his arms flung out as
+though he lay upon a rood, and carried him to his own house. And the
+very poor lamented over him and sang the keen, and when the time had
+come, laid him in the Abbey on Insula Trinitatis with only the ruined
+altar between him and Dermott's daughter, and planted above them two
+ash-trees that in after days wove their branches together and mingled
+their trembling leaves.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Rose, by W. B. Yeats
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET ROSE ***
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