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THE CELTIC TWILIGHT

MEN AND WOMEN, DHOULS AND FAERIES.

W:^B. YEATS.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY J. B. YEATS.

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND LONDON. 1894

A good portion of this book has been printed in the 'National Observer,' awrf/Ziaz/e to thank the proprietors for leave to reprint it here.

Gift T S '06

Time drops in decay Like a candle burnt out. And the mountaitis and woods Have their day, have their day _ But, kindly old rout Of the fire-born moods. You pass not away.

THE HOST.

The host is riding from K?iock?iarea, And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare ; Caolte tossing his burnifig hair,

And Niam calling, * Away, come away ;

' A7id brood no more where the fire is bright, Tilling thy heart with a mortal dream ; For breasts are heaving and eyes a-gleam :

Away, come away, to the dim twilight.

'■Anns are a-waving and lips apart ; And if any gaze on our rushing band. We come between him and the deed of his hand. We come between him afid the hope of his heart.'

The host is rushiiig Uwixt night and day ; Ajid where is there hope or deed as fair 2 Caolte tossing his burning hair.

And Niam calling, 'Away, come away.'

Z-^-

THIS BOOK.

Next to the desire, which every artist feels, to create for himself a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and signifi- cant things of this marred and clumsy universe, I have desired to show in a vision s hing of the face of Ireland to a?iy of my own people who care for things of this kind. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by v.ciy of coinmentary, nothing that I have merely imagined. I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine. The

/Xi

X TJiis Book.

things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them care- fully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into what- ever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like an- other, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.

W. B. Yeats.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

A TELLER OF TALES 3

BELIEF AND UNBELIEF ... II

A VISIONARY . 17

VILLAGE GHOSTS .. 29

A KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP 45

THE SORCERERS .. 55

THE LAST GLEEMAN 67

REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI ... 83

KIDNAPPERS 93

THE UNTIRING ONES I09

THE MAN AND HIS BOOTS II7

A COWARD 123

THE THREE o'bTRNES AND THE EVIL

FAERIES 129

DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES I35

THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE 153

xii Contents.

PACE

THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR 1 59

CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER

OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY 165

THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES ... 169

OUR LADY OF THE HILLS 175

THE GOLDEN AGE I83

A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF

THEIR GHOSTS AND FAERIES 1 89

THE FOUR Vi^INDS OF DESIRE I99

A TELLER OF TALES.

A TELLER OF TALES.

Many of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a little bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin in the village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, ' the most gentle ' — whereby he meant faery — ' place in the whole of County Sligo.' Others hold it, however, but second to Drumcliff and Drumahair. The first time I saw him he was cooking mush- rooms for himself; the next time he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep. He was indeed always cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes (swift as

4 TJie Celtic Tivilight.

the eyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled holes) a melancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy ; the visionary melancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.

And yet there was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went about much pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever recommended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of telling how Col- iumcille cheered up his mother, ' How are you to-day, mother ? ' said the saint. ' Worse,' replied the mother. ' May you be worse to-morrow,' said the saint. The next day Collumcille came again, and exactly the same conversation took place, but the third day the mother said, 'Better, thank God.' And the saint re- pHed, ' May you be better to-morrow.'

A Teller of Tales. 5

He was fond too of telling how the Judge smiles at the last day alike when he re- wards the good and condemns the lost to unceasing flames. He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, ' Am I not annoyed with them ? ' I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. ' I have seen it,' he said, * down there by the water, batting the river with its hands.'

I have copied this account of Paddy Flynn, with a few verbal alterations, from a note-book which I almost filled with his tales and sayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-book regretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled up. Paddy Flynn is dead ; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle of whiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so much liquor

6 The Celtic Tivilight.

filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon it for some days and then died. His body, worn out with old age and hard times, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a great teller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to empty heaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland and earth, to people his stories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample circumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of imagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident ? And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no ex- pression unless there be men who dare to

A Teller of Tales. 7

mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, every- thing is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.

BELIEF AND UNBELIEF.

BELIEF AND UNBELIEF.

There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, ' and little leprechauns, and water- horses, and fallen angels.' I have met also a man with a mohawk tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one

12 The Celtic Twilight.

doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk on his arm said to me, ' they stand to reason.' Even the official mind does not escape this faith.

A Httle girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close under the seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disap- peared one night about three years ago. There was at once great excitement in the neighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken her. A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a broomstick. The local constable was applied to, and he at once instituted a house-to-house search, and at the same time advised the people to burn all the bucalauns (ragweed) on the field she vanished from, because bucalauns are

Belief and Unbelief. 1 3

sacred to the faeries. They spent the whole night burning them, the constable repeating spells the while. In the morn- ing the little girl was found, the story goes, wandering in the field. She said the faeries had taken her away a great distance, riding on a faery horse. At last she saw a big river, and the man who had tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it — such are the topsy- turvydoms of faery glamour — in a cockle- shell. On the way her companions had mentioned the names of several people who were about to die shortly in the village.

Perhaps the constable was right. It is better doubtless to believe much unreason and a little truth than to deny for denial's sake truth and unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush candle to guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth

14 The Celtic Twilight.

to dance before us on the marsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where dwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths, and in our souls, and welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself, whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the dhouls themselves, ' Be ye gone ' ? When all is said and done, how do we not know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees !

A VISIONARY.

A VISIONARY.

A YOUNG man came to see me at my lodgings the other night, and began to talk of the making of the earth and the heavens and much else. I questioned him about his life and his doings. He had written many poems and painted many mystical designs since we met last, but latterly had neither written nor painted, for his whole heart was set upon making his mind strong, vigorous, and calm, and the emotional life of the artist was bad for him, he feared. He recited his poems readily, however. He had them all in his memory. Some indeed had never been written down.

^ >.

1 8 The Celtic Twilight.

They, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the reeds, seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and of Celtic longing for infinite things the world has never seen. Suddenly it seemed to me that he was peering about him a little

eagerly. ' Do you see anything, X ? '

I said. ' A shining, winged woman, covered by her long hair, is standing near the door- way,' he answered, or some such words. ' Is it the influence of some living person who thinks of us, and whose thoughts ap- pear to us in that symbolic form ? ' I said ; for I am well instructed in the ways of the visionaries and in the fashion of their speech. ' No,' he replied ; ' for if it were the thoughts of a person who is alive I should feel the living influence in my living body, and my heart would beat and my breath would fail. It is a spirit. It is some one who is dead or who has never lived.'

A Visionary. 19

I asked what he was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His plea- sure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to half-mad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and con- science-stricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles into his care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging, more than one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and sun them as it were in the subtle light of his mind. Sometimes visions come to him as he talks with them, and he is rumoured to have told divers people true matters of their past days and distant friends, and left them hushed with dread of their strange teacher, who seems scarce more than a boy, and is so much more subtle than the oldest among them.

The poetry he recited me was full of his nature and his visions. Sometimes it

20 The Celtic Twilight.

told of other lives he believes himself to have lived in other centuries, sometimes of people he had talked to, revealing them to their own minds. I told him I would write an article upon him and it, and was told in turn that I might do so if I did not mention his name, for he wished to be always 'unknown, obscure, impersonal.' Next day a bundle of his poems arrived, and. with them a note in these words : ' Here are copies of verses you said you liked. I do not think I could ever write or paint any more. I prepare myself for a cycle of other activities in some other life. I will make rigid my roots and branches. It is not now my turn to burst into leaves and flowers.'

The poems are all endeavours to capture some high, impalpable mood in a net of obscure images. But something can be known of their charm from three verses

A Visiojiary. 2 1

which I rescue gladly from the caprice of the gods who rule over a mystic's manu- script. They are addressed to a girl, whom he knew, I understand, in another life, and tell how he died out of a dream of love centuries before his present body was born.

As from our dreams we died away Far off I felt the outer things,

Your wind-blown tresses round me play, Your bosom's gentle murmurings.

And far away our faces met

As on the verge of the vast spheres ;

And in the night our cheeks were wet, I could not say with dew or tears.

As one within the Mother's heart,

In that hushed dream upon the hight, '

We lived, and then rose up to part. Because her ways are infinite.

One or two other poems have a like per- fection of feehng, but deal with more im- palpable matters. There are fine passages in all, but these will often be imbedded

22 The Celtic Tzvilight.

in thoughts which have evidently a special value to the writer's mind, but are to other men merely the counters of an unknown coinage. To them they seem merely so much brass or copper or tarnished silver at the best. Sometimes he illustrates his verses with Blake-like drawings, in which rather incomplete anatomy does not alto- gether hide extreme beauty of feeling. The faeries in whom he believes have given him many subjects, notably Thomas of Ercildoune sitting motionless in the twilight while a young and beautiful creature leans softly out of the shadow and whispers in his ear. He delights above all in strong effects of colour : spirits who have upon their heads instead of hair the feathers of peacocks ; a phantom reaching from a swirl of flame towards a star; a spirit passing with a globe of iridescent crystal — symbol of the soul — half shut

A Visionary. 23

within his hand. But always under this largess of colour lies some tender homily addressed to man's fragile hopes. This spiritual eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for illumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone. One of these especially comes to mind. A winter or two ago he spent much of the night walking up and down upon the mountain talking to an old peasant who, dumb to most men, poured out his cares

for him. Both were unhappy : X

because he had then first decided that art and poetry were not for him, and the old peasant because his life was ebbing out with no achievement remaining and no hope left him. Both how Celtic ! how full of striving after a something never to be completely expressed in word or deed. The peasant was wandering in his mind with prolonged sorrow. Once he burst

24 The Celtic Twilight.

out with ' God possesses the heavens — God possesses the heavens — but He covets the world ' ; and once he lamented that his old neighbours were gone, and that all had forgotten him : they used to draw a chair to the fire for him in every cabin, and now they said, ' Who is that old fellow there?' 'The fret' [Irish for doom] 'is over me,' he repeated, and then went on to talk once more of God and heaven. More than once also he said, waving his arm towards the mountain, ' Only myself knows what happened under the thorn tree forty years ago ; ' and as he said it the tears upon his face glistened in the moonlight.

This old man always rises before me

when I think of X . Both seek —

one in wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle allegoric poetry — to express a something that lies

A Visio7iary. 25

beyond the range of expression ; and both,

if X will forgive me, have within them

the vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart. The peasant visionaries that are, the landlord duelists that were, and the whole hurly- burly of legends — Cuchulin fighting the sea for two days until the waves pass over him and he dies, Caolte storming the palace of the gods, Oisin seeking in vain for three hundred years to appease his insatiable heart with all the pleasures of faeryland, these two mystics walking up and down upon the mountains uttering the central dreams of their souls in no less dream-laden sentences, and this mind that finds them so interesting — all are a portion of that great Celtic phantasmagoria whose meaning no man has discovered, nor any angel revealed.

VILLAGE GHOSTS.

VILLAGE GHOSTS.

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities ; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on un-

30 The Celtic Twilight.

changing; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk : good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, ' Here are lions.' Across the villages of fisher- men and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, ' Here are ghosts.'

My ghosts inhabit the village of H ,

in Leinster. History has in no manner been burdened by this ancient village, with its crooked lanes, its old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green background of small fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry fishing-luggers. In the annals of entomology it is well

Village Ghosts. 31

known. For a small bay lies westward a little, where he who watches night after night may see a certain rare moth flutter- ing along the edge of the tide, just at the end of evening or the beginning of dawn. A hundred years ago it was carried here from Italy by smugglers in a cargo of silks and laces. If the moth-hunter would throw down his net, and go hunting for ghost tales or tales of the faeries and such-like children of Lillith, he would have need for far less patience.

To approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy. A man was once heard complaining, ' By the cross of Jesus ! how shall I go ? If I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on me. If I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the headless one and another on the quays, and a new one under the old

32 The Celtic Twilight.

churchyard wall. If I go right round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is appearing at Hillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital Lane.'

I never heard which spirit he braved, but feel sure it was not the one in the Hospital Lane. In cholera times a shed had been there set up to receive patients. When the need had gone by, it was pulled down, but ever since the ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and demons and faeries. There is a farmer at

H , Paddy B by name — a man

of great strength, and a teetotaller. His wife and sister-in-law, musing on his great strength, often wonder what he would do if he drank. One night when passing through the Hospital Lane, he saw what he supposed at first to be a tame rabbit ; after a little he found that it was a white cat. When he came near, the creature

Village Ghosts. 33

slowly began to swell larger and larger, and as it grew he felt his own strength ebbing away, as though it were sucked out of him. He turned and ran.

By the Hospital Lane goes the ' Faeries' Path,' Every evening they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cot- tage. One night Mrs, Arbunathy, who lived there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, ' In the name of God, who are you ? ' He got up and went out, saying, ' Never leave the door open at this hour, or evil may come to you.' She woke her hus- band and told him, ' One of the good people has been with us,' said he.

Probably the man braved Mrs. Stewart

34 The Celtic Twilight.

at Hillside Gate. When she lived she was the wife of the Protestant clergyman. ' Her ghost was never known to harm any one,' say the village people ; ' it is only doing a penance upon the earth.' Not far from Hillside Gate, where she haunted, appeared for a short time a much more remarkable spirit. Its haunt was the bogeen, a green lane leading from the western end of the village. I quote its history at length : a typical village tragedy. In a cottage at the village end of the bogeen lived a house-painter, Jim Montgomery, and his wife. They had several children. He was a little dandy, and came of a higher class than his neighbours. His wife was a very big woman. Her husband, who had been expelled from the village choir for drink, gave her a beating one day. Her sister heard of it, and came and took down one

Village Ghosts. 35

of the window shutters — Montgomery was neat about everything, and had shutters on the outside of every window — and beat him with it, being big and strong like her sister. He threatened to prosecute her; she answered that she would break every bone in his body if he did. She never spoke to her sister again, because she had allowed herself to be beaten by so small a man. Jim Montgomery grew worse and worse : his wife soon began to have not enough to eat. She told no one, for she was very proud. Often, too, she would have no fire on a cold night. If any neighbours came in she would say she had let the fire out because she was just going to bed. The people about often heard her husband beating her, but she never told any one. She got very thin. At last one Saturday there was no food in the house for herself and the children. She

$6 The Celtic Twilight.

could bear it no longer, and went to the priest and asked him for some money. He gave her thirty shillings. Her hus- band met her, and took the money, and beat her. On the following Monday she got very ill, and sent for a Mrs. Kelly. Mrs. Kelly, as soon as she saw her, said, * My woman, you are dying,' and sent for the priest and the doctor. She died in ah hour. After her death, as Montgomery neglected the children, the landlord had them taken to the workhouse. A few nights after they had gone, Mrs. Kelly was going home through the bogeen when the ghost of Mrs. Montgomery appeared and followed her. It did not leave her until she reached her own

house. She told the priest, Father S ,

a noted antiquarian, and could not get him to believe her. A few nights after- wards Mrs. Kelly again met the spirit in

Village Ghosts. '^y

the same place. She was in too great terror to go the whole way, but stopped at a neighbour's cottage midway, and asked them to let her in. They answered they were going to bed. She cried out, ' In the name of God let me in, or I will break open the door.' They opened, and so she escaped from the ghost. Next day she told the priest again. This time he believed, and said it would follow her until she spoke to it. The third time she met the spirit in the bogeen as before. She asked what kept it from its rest. The spirit said that its children must be taken from the workhouse, for none of its re- lations were ever there before, and that three masses were to be said for the repose of its soul. ' If my husband does not beUeve you,' she said, ' show him that,' and touched Mrs. Kelly's wrist with three fingers. The places where they touched

38 The Celtic Twilight.

swelled up and blackened. She then vanished. For a time Montgomery would not believe that his wife had appeared : 'she would not show herself to Mrs. Kelly,' he said — ' she with respectable people to appear to.' He was convinced by the three marks, and the children were taken from the workhouse. The priest said the masses, and the shade must have been at rest, for it has not since appeared. Some time afterwards Jim Montgomery died in the workhouse, having come to great poverty through drink.

I know some who believe they have seen the headless ghost upon the quay, and one who, when he passes the old cemetery wall at night, sees a woman with white borders to her cap creep out and follow him. The apparition only leaves him at his own door. The villagers imagine

Village Ghosts. 39

she must follow him to avenge some wrong.

' I will haunt you when I die ' is a favourite threat. His wife was once half- scared to death by what she considers a demon in the shape of a dog. These are a few of the open-air spirits ; the more domestic of their tribe gather within- doors, plentiful as swallows under south- ern eaves.

One night a Mrs. Nolan was watching by her dying child in Fluddey's Lane. Suddenly there was a sound of knocking heard at the door. She did not open, fearing it was some unhuman thing that knocked. The knocking ceased. After a little the front-door and then the back- door were burst open, and closed again. Her husband went to see what was wrong. He found both doors bolted. The child died. The doors were again opened and

40 The Celtic Twilight.

closed as before. Then Mrs. Nolan remembered that she had forgotten to leave window or door open, as the custom is, for the departure of the soul. These strange openings and closings and knock- ings were warnings and reminders from the spirits who attend the dying.

The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it. I re- member two children who slept with their mother and sisters and brothers in one small room. In the room was also a ghost. They sold herrings in the Dublin streets, and did not mind the ghost much, because they knew they would always, sell their fish easily while they slept in the ' ha'nted ' room.

I have some acquaintance among the ghost-seers of western villages. The Con-

Village Ghosts. 41

naught tales are very diiferent from those

of Leinster. These H spirits have

a gloomy, matter-of-fact way with them. They come to announce a death, to fulfil some obligation, to revenge a wrong, to pay their bills even — as did a fisherman's daughter the other day — and then hasten to their rest. All things they do decently and in order. It is demons, and not ghosts, that transform themselves into white cats or black dogs. The people who tell the tales are poor, serious- minded fishing people, who find in the doings of the ghosts the fascination of fear. In the western tales is a whimsical grace, a curious extravagance. The people who recount them live in the most wild and beautiful scenery, under a sky ever loaded and fantastic with flying clouds. They are farmers and labourers, who do a little fishing now and then. They do not

42 TJie Celtic Twilight.

fear the spirits too much to feel an artistic and humorous pleasure in their doings. The ghosts themselves share in their quaint hilarity. In one western town, on whose deserted wharf the grass grows, these spirits have so much vigour that, when a misbeliever ventured to sleep in a haunted house, I have been told they flung him through the window, and his bed after him. In the surrounding villages the creatures use the most strange dis- guises. A dead old gentleman robs the cabbages of his own garden in the shape of a large rabbit. A wicked sea-captain stayed for years inside the plaster of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe, making the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was broken down ; then out of the solid plaster the snipe rushed away whistling.

A KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP.

A KNIGHT OF THE SHEEP.

Away to the north of Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain lives 'a strong farmer,' a knight of the sheep they would have called him in the Gaelic days. Proud of his descent from one of the most fighting clans of the Middle Ages, he is a man of force alike in his words and in his deeds. There is but one man that swears like him, and this man lives far away upon the mountain. ' Father in heaven, what have I done to deserve this ? ' he says when he has lost his pipe ; and no man but he who lives on the mountain can rival his language on a fair day over a

46 The Celtic Twilight.

bargain. He is passionate and abrupt in his movements, and when angry tosses his white beard about with his left hand.

One day I was dining with him when the servant-maid announced a certain Mr. O'Donnell. A sudden silence fell upon the old man and upon his two daughters. At last the eldest daughter said somewhat severely to her father, 'Go and ask him to come in and dine.' The old man went out, and then came in looking greatly relieved, and said, ' He says he will not dine with us.' ' Go out,' said the daugh- ter, ' and ask him into the back parlour, and give him some whiskey.' Her father, who had just finished his dinner, obeyed sullenly, and I heard the door of the back parlour — a little room where the daughters sat and sewed during the even- ing— shut to behind the men. The daughter then turned to me and said,

A Knight of the Sheep. 47

' Mr. O'Donnell is the tax-gatherer, and last year he raised our taxes, and my father was very angry, and when he came, brought him into the dairy, and sent the dairy-woman away on a message, and then swore at him a great deal. "I will teach you, sir," O'Donnell replied, " that the law can protect its officers ; " but my father reminded him that he had no witness. At last my father got tired, and sorry too, and said he would show him a short way home. When they were half-way to the main road they came on a man of my father's who was ploughing, and this somehow brought back remembrance of the wrong. He sent the man away on a message, and began to swear at the tax- gatherer again. When I heard of it I was disgusted that he should have made such a fuss over a 'miserable creature like O'Donnell ; and when I heard a few

48 The Celtic Twilight.

weeks ago that O'Donnell's only son had died and left him heart-broken, I resolved to make him be kind to him next time he came.'

She then went out to see a neighbour, and I sauntered towards the back par- lour. When I came to the door I heard angry voices inside. The two men were evidently getting on to the tax again, for I could hear them bandying figures to and fro. I opened the door ; at sight of my face the farmer was reminded of his peaceful intentions, and asked me if I knew where the whiskey was. I had seen him put it into the cupboard, and was able therefore to find it and get it out, looking at the thin, grief-struck face of the tax-gatherer. He was rather older than my friend, and very much more feeble and worn, and of a very different type. He was not like him, a robust.

A Knight of the Sheep. 49

successful man, but rather one of those whose feet find no resting-place upon the earth, I recognized one of the children of revery, and said, ' You are doubtless of the stock of the old O'Donnells. I know well the hole in the river where their treasure lies buried under the guard of a serpent with many heads.' ' Yes, sur,' he replied, ' I am the last of a line of princes.'

We then fell to talking of many com- monplace things, and my friend did not once toss his beard about with his left hand, but was very friendly. At last the gaunt old tax-gatherer got up to go, and my friend said, 'I hope we will have a glass together next year.' 'No, no,' was the answer, 'I shall be dead next year,' 'I too have lost sons,' said the other, in quite a gentle voice, ' But your sons were not like my son.' And then the

50 TJie Celtic Twilight.

two men parted, with an angry flush and bitter hearts, and had I not cast between them some common words or other, might not have parted, but have fallen rather into an angry discussion of the value of their dead sons. If I had not pity for all the children of revery I should have let them fight it out, and would now have many a wonderful oath to record.

The knight of the sheep would have had the victor)', for no soul that wears this garment of blood and clay can surpass him. He was but once beaten ; and this is his tale of how it was. He and some farm hands were playing at cards in a small cabin that stood against the end of a big barn. A wicked woman had once lived in this cabin. Suddenly one of the players threw down an ace and began to swear without any cause. His swearing was so dreadful that the others

A Knight of the Sheep. 5 1

stood up, and my friend said, ' All is not right here ; there is a spirit in him.' They ran to the door that led into the barn to get away as quickly as possible. The wooden bolt would not move, so the knight of the sheep took a saw which stood against the wall near at hand, and sawed through the bolt, and at once the door flew open with a bang, as though some one had been holding it, and they fled through.

THE SORCERERS.

THE SORCERERS.

In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers, and come across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life were they to unite them either with evil or with good. And yet the wise are of opinion, that wher- ever man is, the dark powers, who feed his rapacities ; no less than the bright beings, who store their honey in the cells of his heart ; and the twilight beings who flit hither and thither ; encompass him

56 The Celtic Twilight.

with their passionate and melancholy mul- titude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or through accident of birth possesses the power of piercing into their hidden abode can see them there, those who were once men or women full of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers cling about us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree ; and that we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic have been but little practised. I have indeed come across very few persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few I have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from the inhabitants of the remote town where they live. It is even possible, though this is perhaps scarcely likely, that

The Sorcerers. 57

their lives will leave no record in the folklore of the district. They are mainly small clerks and the like, and meet for the purpose of their art in a room hung with black hangings. They would not admit me into this room, but finding me not altogether ignorant of the arcane science, showed gladly elsewhere what they would do. ' Come to us,' said their leader, a clerk in a large flour-mill, 'and we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in shapes as solid and heavy as our own.'

I had been talking of the power of communicating in states of trance with the angelical and faery beings, — the children of the day and of the twilight, — and he had been contending that we should only believe in what we can see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of mind. ' Yes,' I said, ' I will come to you,' or

58 The Celtic Tivilight.

some such words ; ' but I will not permit myself to become entranced, and will there- fore know whether these shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched and felt by the ordinary senses than are those I talk of.' I was not denying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of mortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as -he spoke of, seemed unlikely to do more than cast the mind into trance and thereby bring it into the presence of the powers of day, twilight, and darkness.

' But,' he said, ' we have seen them move the furniture hither and thither, and they go at our bidding, and help or harm people who know nothing of them.' I am not giving the exact words, but as accu- rately as I can the substance of our talk.

On the night arranged I turned up about eight, and found the leader sitting

The Sorcerers. 59

alone in almost total darkness in a small back room. He was dressed in a black gown, like an inquisitor's dress in an old drawing, that left nothing of him visible except his eyes, which peered out through two small round holes. Upon the table in front of him was a brass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with painted symbols, two crossed daggers, and certain implements shaped like quern stones, which were used to control the elemental powers in some fashion I did not discover. I also put on a black gown, and remember that it did not fit perfectly, and that it impeded my movements con- siderably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a basket, and cut its throat with . one of the daggers, letting the blood fall into the large bowl. He then opened a book and began an invocation, which was certainly not English, and had a deep

6o TJie Celtic Twilight.

guttural sound. Before he had finished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five, came in, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my left hand. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began to find his eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his hood, affecting me in a curious way. I struggled hard against their influence, and my head began to ache. The invocation continued, and nothing happened for the first few minutes. Then the invoker got up and extinguished the light in the hall, so that no glimmer might come through the slit under the door. There was now no light except from the herbs on the brass dish, and no sound except from the deep guttural murmur of the invocation.

Presently the man at my left swayed himself about, and cried out, ' O god ! O

The Sorcerers. 6i

god ! ' I asked him what ailed him, but he did not know he had spoken. A moment after he said he could see a great serpent moving about the room, and became con- siderably excited. I saw nothing with any definite shape, but thought that black clouds were forming about me. I felt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and that the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony with itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the black clouds, and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again. The two sorcerers now began to see black and white columns moving about the room, and finally a man in a monk's habit, and they became greatly puzzled because I did not see these things also, for to them they were as solid as the table before them. The invoker appeared to be gradually increasing in pov/er, and I

62 The Celtic Twilight.

began to feel as if a tide of darkness was j pouring from him and concentrating itself about me ; and now too I noticed that the man on my left hand had passed into a death-like trance. With a last great effort I drove off the black clouds, but feeling them to be the only shapes I should see without passing into a trance, and having no great love for them, I asked for lights, and after the needful exorcism returned to the ordinary world.

I said to the more powerful of the two sorcerers — ' What would happen if one of your spirits had overpowered me ? ' ' You would go out of this room,' he answered, ' with his character added to your own.' I asked about the origin of his sorcery, but got little of importance, except that he had learned it from his father. He would not tell me more, for he had, it appeared, taken a vow of secrecy.

The Sorcerers. ^i

For some days I could not get over the feeling of having a number of deformed and grotesque figures lingering about me. The Bright Powers are always beautiful and desirable, and the Dim Powers are now beautiful, now quaintly grotesque, but the Dark Powers express their unbalanced natures in shapes of ugliness and horror.

THE LAST GLEEMAN.

THE LAST GLEEMAN.

Michael Moran was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of Dub- lin, in Faddle Alley. A fortnight after birth he went stone blind from illness, and became thereby a blessing to his parents, who were soon able to send him to rhyme and beg at street corners and at the bridges over the Liffey. They may well have wished that their quiver were full of such as he, for, free from the interruption of sight, his mind became a perfect echoing chamber, where every movement of the day and every change

68 The Celtic Twilight.

of public passion whispered itself into rhyme or quaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the ad- mitted rector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver, Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M'Bride from heaven knows where, and that M'Grane, who in after days, when the true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather in borrowed rags, and gave out that there had never been any Moran but himself, and many another, did homage before him, and held him chief of all their tribe. Nor despite his blindness did he find any difficulty in getting a wife, but rather was able to pick and ■ choose, for he was just that mixture of ragamuffin and of genius which is dear to the heart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly conventional herself, loves

The Last Gleeman. 69

the unexpected, the crooked, the bewilder- ing. Nor did he lack despite his rags many excellent things, for it is remem- bered that he ever loved caper sauce, going so far indeed in his honest indig- nation at its absence upon one occasion as to fling a leg of mutton at his wife. He was not, however, much to look at, with his coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy trousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist by a thong of leather : and he would have been a woe- ful shock to the gleeman MacConglinne could that friend of kings have beheld him in prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman, being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In the morning when he had finished his

70 The Celtic Tivilight.

breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would read the newspaper to him, and read on and on until he interrupted with, ' That'll do — I have me meditations ; ' and from these meditations would come the day's store of jest and rhyme. He had the whole Middle Ages under his frieze coat.

He had not, however, MacConglinne's hatred of the Church and clergy, for when the fruit of his meditations did not ripen well, or when the crowd called for some- thing more solid, he would recite or sing a metrical tale or ballad of saint or martyr or of Biblical adventure. He would stand at a street corner, and when a crowd had gathered would begin in some such fashion as follows (I copy the record of one who knew him) — ' Gather round me, boys, gather round me. Boys, am I standin' in puddle ? am I standin' in

The Last Gleeman. 71

wet?' Thereon several boys would cry, ' Ah, no ! yez not ! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with St Mary ; go on with Moses ' — each calling for his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a suspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst out with ' All me buzzim friends are turned backbiters ; ' and after a final ' If yez don't drop your coddin' and deversion I'll lave some of yez a case,' by way of warning to the boys,' begin his recitation, or perhaps still delay, to ask, ' Is there a crowd around me now ? Any blackguard heretic around me ? ' The best-known of his religious tales was St Mary of Egypt, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, condensed from the much longer work of a certain Bishop Coyle. It told how a fast woman of Egypt, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem for no good purpose, and

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then, turning penitent on finding herself withheld from entering the Temple by supernatural interference, fled to the desert and spent the remainder of her life in solitary penance. When at last she was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear her confession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a lion, whom He sent also, dig h6r grave. The poem has the intolerable cadence of the eighteenth century, but was so popular and so often called for that Moran was soon nicknamed Zozimus, and by that name is he remembered. He had also a poem of his own called Moses, which went a Httle nearer poetry without going very near. But he could ill brook so- lemnity, and before long parodied his own verses in the following ragamuffin fashion :

The Last G kern an. 73

In Egypt's land, contagious to the Nile, King Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe in style. She tuk her dip, then walked unto the land, To dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand. A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw A smiling babby in a wad o' straw. She tuk it up, and said with accents mild, ' 'Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?'

His humorous rhymes were, however, more often quips and cranks at the ex- pense of his contemporaries. It was his delight, for instance, to remind a certain shoemaker, noted ahke for display of wealth and for personal uncleanness, of his inconsiderable origin in a song of which but the first stanza has come down to us :

At the dirty end of Dirty Lane, Liv'd a dirty cobbler, Dick Maclane ; His wife was in the old king's reign

A stout brave orange-woman. On Essex Bridge she strained her throat. And six-a-penny was her note. But I>ikey wore a bran-new coat.

He got among the yeomen.

74 T^fi^ Celtic Twilight.

He was a bij^ot, like his clan,

And in the streets he wildly sang,

O Roly, toly, toly raid, with his old jade.

He had troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to face and put down. Once an officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was triumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded his worship of the precedent set by Homer, who was also, he declared, a poet, and a blind man, and a beggarman. He had to face a more serious difficulty as his fame grew. Various imitators started up upon all sides. A certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did shillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs and his get-up upon the stage. One night this actor was at supper with some friends, when dispute arose as to whether his mimicry was overdone or not. It

TJie Last Gleeman. 75

was agreed to settle it by an appeal to the mob. A forty-shilling supper at a famous coffee-house was to be the wager. The actor took up his station at Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran's, and soon gathered a small crowd. He had scarce got through ' In Egypt's land, con- tagious to the Nile,' when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The crowds met in great excitement and laughter. ' Good Christians,' cried the pretender, ' is it possible that any man would mock the poor dark man like that ? '

'Who's that? It's some imposhterer,' replied Moran.

' Begone, you wretch ! it's you'ze the imposhterer. Don't you fear the light of heaven being struck from your eyes for mocking the poor dark man ? '

'Saints and angels, is there no protec-

^6 The Celtic TzviligJit.

tion against this ? You're a most inhuman blaguard to try to deprive me of my honest bread this way,' repHed poor Moran.

' And you, you wretch, won't let me go on with the beautiful poem. Christian people, in your charity won't you beat this man away? he's taking advantage of my darkness.'

The pretender, seeing that -he was having the best of it, thanked the people for their sympathy and protection, and went on with the poem, Moran listening for a time in bewildered silence. After a while Moran protested again with :

' Is it possible that none of yez can know me? Don't yez see it's myself; and that's some one else?'

'Before I proceed any further in this lovely story,' interrupted the pretender, ' I call on yez to contribute your charitable donations to help me to go on.'

TJie Last Gleeman. 'j'j

' Have you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven ? ' cried Moran, put completely beside himself by this last injury. 'Would you rob the poor as well as desave the world? O, was ever such wickedness known ? '

' I leave it to yourselves, my friends,' said the pretender, ' to give to the real dark man, that you all know so well, and save me from that schemer,' and with that he collected some pennies and half-pence. While he was doing so, Moran started his Mary of Egypt, but the indignant crowd seizing his stick were about to belabour him, when they fell back be- wildered anew by his close resemblance to himself. The pretender now called to them to 'just give him a grip of that villain, and he'd soon let him know who the imposhterer was ! ' They led him over ' to Moran, but instead of closing with him

7S The Celtic Twilight.

he thrust a few shilHngs into his hand, and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an actor, and that he had just gained a wager, and so departed amid much enthusiasm, to eat the supper he had won.

In April 1846 word was sent to the priest that Michael Moran was dying. He found him at 15 (now 14J). Patrick Street, on a straw bed, in a room full of raggad ballad-singers come to cheer his last moments. After his death the ballad- singers, with many fiddles and the like, came again and gave him a fine wake, each adding to the merriment whatever he knew in the way of rann, tale, old saw, or quaint rhyme. He had had his day, had said his prayers and made his confession, and why should they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place the next day. A good party of

The Last Gleemati. 79

his admirers and friends got into the hearse with the coffin, for the day was wet and nasty. They had not gone far when one of them burst out with ' It's cruel cowld, isn't it ? ' ' Garra',' rephed another, 'we'll all be as stiff as the corpse when we get to the berrin-ground.' ' Bad cess to him,' said a third ; ' I wish he'd held out another month until the weather got dacent.' A man called Carroll thereupon produced a half-pint of whiskey, and they all drank to the soul of the departed. Unhappily, how- ever, the hearse was over-weighted, and they had not reached the cemetery be- fore the spring broke, and the bottle with it.

Moran must have felt strange and out of place in that other kingdom he was entering, perhaps while his friends were drinking in his honour. Let us hope

8o The Celtic Twilight.

that some kindly middle region was found for him, where he can call dis- hevelled angels about him with some new and more rhythmical form of his old

Gather round me, boys, will yez

Gather round me ? And hear what I have to say

Before ould Salley brings me My bread and jug of tay ;

and fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim. Perhaps he may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the Lily of High Truth, the Rose of Far-sight Beauty, for whose lack so many of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been futile as the blown froth upon the shore.

REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI.

REGINA, REGINA PIGJIEORUM, VENI. /

One night a middle-ag4d man, who had hved all his life far frony the noise of cab- wheels, a young girl, a relative of his, who was reported to be enough of a seer to catch a glimpse of unaccountable Hghts moving over the fields among the cattle^- and myself were walking along a far western sandy shore. We talked of the Dinny Math or faery people, and came in the midst of our talk to a notable haunt of theirs, a shallow cave amid black rocks, with its reflection under it in the wet sea sand. I asked the young girl if she could

84 The Celtic Twilight.

see anything, for I had quite a number of things to ask the Dinny Math. She stood still for a few minutes, and I saw that she was passing into a kind of waking trance, in which the cold sea breeze no longer troubled her, nor the dull boom of the sea distracted her attention. I then called aloud the names of the great faeries, and in a moment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the rocks, and then a sound of confused talk- ing, and of people stamping their feet as if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other friend had been walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed close to us, and as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be inter- rupted, for he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond the rocks. We were however quite alone. The spirits of the place had begun to cast their in-

Regina,Regina Pigmeorum, Vent. 85

fluence over him also. In a moment he was corroborated by the girl, who said that bursts of laughter had begun to mingle with the music, the confused talking, and the noise of feet. She next saw a bright 'light streaming out of the cave, which seemed to have grown much deeper, and a quantity of little people, in various coloured dresses, red predominating, dancing to a tune which she did not recognize.

I then bade her call out to the queen of the little people to come and talk with us. There was, however, no answer to her command. I therefore repeated the words aloud myself, and in a moment a very beautiful tall woman came out of the cave. I too had by this time fallen into a kind of trance, in which what we call the unreal had begun to take upon itself a masterful reality, and was able to see the

86 The Celtic Twilight.

faint gleam of golden ornaments, the shadowy blossom of dim hair. I then bade the girl tell this tall queen to mar- shal her followers according to their natural divisions, that we might see them. I found as before that I had to repeat the command myself. The creatures then came out of the cave, and drew them- selves up, if I remember rightly, in four bands. One of these bands carried quicken boughs in their hands, and another had necklaces made apparently of serpents' scales, but their dress I cannot remember, for I was quite absorbed in that gleaming woman. I asked her to tell the seer whether these caves were the greatest faery haunts in the neighbour- hood. Her lips moved, but the answer was inaudible. I bade the seer lay her hand upon the breast of the queen, and after that she heard every word quite

Regina,Regina Pigmeorum, Vent, ^y

distinctly. No, this was not the greatest faery haunt, for there was a greater one a Httle further ahead. I then asked her whether it was true that she and her people carried away mortals, and if so, whether they put another soul in the place of the one they had taken ? ' We change the bodies,' was her answer. ' Are any of you ever born into mortal life?' ' Yes.' 'Do I know any who were among the Dinny Math before birth ? ' 'You do.' 'Who are they?' 'It would not be lawful for you to know.' I then asked whether she and her people were not ' dramatizations of our moods ' ? ' She does not understand,' said my friend, 'but says that her people are much like human beings^ and do most of the things human beings do.' I asked her other questions, as to her nature, and her pur- pose in the universe, but only seemed to

88 The Celtic Twilight.

puzzle her. At last she appeared to lose patience, for she wrote upon the sands — the sands of vision, not the grating sands under our feet — this message for me — ' Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us.' Seeing that I had offended her, I thanked her for what she had shown and told, and let her depart again into her cave. In a little while the young girl awoke out of her trance, and felt again the cold wind of the world, and began to shiver.

I tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to blurr the record. Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of mine have perished long ago. I love better than any theory the sound of the Gate of Horn swinging upon its hinges, and hold that he alone who has passed the rose-strewn threshold can catch the far glimmer of the Ivory

Regina, Regina Pigmeoriim, Vent. 89

Gate. It were perhaps well for us all if we would but raise the cry Lilly the astrolo- ger raised in Windsor Forest, "Regina, Regina Pigmeorum, Veni," and remember with him, that God visiteth His children in dreams. Tall, glimmering queen, come near, and let me see again the shadowy blossom of thy dim hair.

KIDNAPPERS.

KIDNAPPERS.

A LITTLE north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben Bulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white square in the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand ; no sheep or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more inaccessible place on the planet, and few more encircled by awe to the deep considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of night it swings open, and the unearthly troop rush out. All night the gay rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless perhaps where, in some more than

94 The Celtic Twilight.

commonly ' gentle ' place — Drumclifif or Drum-a-hair — the night-capped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from their doors to see what mischief the * gentry ' are doing. To their trained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and the air is full of shrill voices — a sound like whistling, as an ancient Scottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the angels, who ' speak much in the throat, like the Irish,' as Lilly, the astrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed bride in the neighbourhood, the night- capped ' doctors ' will peer with more than common care, for the unearthly troop do not always return empty-handed. Sometimes a new-wed bride or a new-born baby goes with them into their mountains ; the door swings to behind, and the new- born or the new-wed moves henceforth

Kidnappers. 95

in the bloodless land of Faery ; happy enough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright vapour, for the soul cannot live without sorrow. Through this door of white stone, and the other doors of that land where geabheadh tii an sonas aer pighin ('you can buy joy for a penny'), have gone kings, queens, and princes, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there are none but peasants in these sad chronicles of mine.

Somewhere about the beginning of this century appeared at the western corner of Market Street, Sligo, where the butcher's shop now is, not a palace, as in Keats' s Lamia, but an apothecary's shop, ruled over by a certain unaccountable Dr. Open don. Where he came from, none ever knew. There also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name, whose husband had fallen mysteriously

96 The Celtic Twilight.

sick. The doctors could make nothing of him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he grew. Away went the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop parlour. A black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had just time to see that the side- board was covered with fruit, and to say to herself, ' Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much,' before Dr. Opendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as the cat, and his wife walked behind him dressed in black like- wise. She gave him a guinea, and got a little bottle in return. Her husband re- covered that time. Meanwhile the black doctor cured many people; but one day a rich patient died, and cat, wife, and doctor all vanished the night after. In a year the man Ormsby fell sick once more. Now he was a good-looking man, and his

Kidnappers. 97

wife felt sure the ' gentry ' were coveting him. She went and called on the * faery- doctor ' at Cairnsfoot. As soon as he had heard her tale, he went behind the back door and began muttering, muttering, muttering — making spells. Her husband got well this time also. But after a while he sickened again, the fatal third time, and away went she once more to Cairns- foot, and out went the faery-doctor behind his back door and began muttering, but soon he came in and told her it was no use — her husband would die ; and sure enough the man died, and ever after when she spoke of him Mrs. Ormsby shook her head saying she knew well where he was, and it wasn't in heaven or hell or purgatory either. She probably believed that a log of wood was left behind in his place, but so bewitched that it seemed the dead body of her husband.

98 The Celtic Twilight.

She is dead now herself, but many still living remember her. She was, I believe, for a time a servant or else a kind of pensioner of some relations of my own.

Sometimes those who are carried off are allowed after many years — seven usually —a final glimpse of their friends. Many years ago a woman vanished suddenly from a Sligo garden where she was walking with her husband. When her son, who was then a baby, had grown up he received word in some way, not handed down, that his mother was glamoured by faeries, and imprisoned for the time in a house in Glasgow and longing to see him. Glas- gow in those days of sailing-ships seemed to the peasant mind almost over the verge of the known world, yet he, being a duti- ful son, started away. For a long time he walked the streets of Glasgow ; at last down in a cellar he saw his mother

Kidnappers. 99

working. She was happy, she said, and had the best of good eating, and would he not eat? and therewith laid all kinds of food on the table ; but he, knowing well that she was trying to cast on him the glamour by giving him faery food, that she might keep him with her, refused and came home to his people in Sligo.

Some five miles southward of Sligo is a gloomy and tree-bordered pond, a great gathering-place of water-fowl, called, be- cause of its form, the Heart Lake. It is haunted by stranger things than heron, snipe, or wild duck. Out of this lake, as from the white square stone in Ben Bulben, issues an unearthly troop. Once men began to drain it; suddenly one of them raised a cry that he saw his house in flames. They turned round, and every man there saw his own cottage burning.

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They hurried home to find it was but faery glamour. To this hour on the border of the lake is shown a half-dug trench — the signet of their impiety. A little way from this lake I heard a beautiful and mournful history of faery kidnapping. I heard it from a little old woman in a white cap, who sings to herself in Gaelic, and moves from one foot to the other as though she remembered the dancing of her youth.

A young man going at nightfall to the house of his just married bride, met in the way a jolly company, and with them his bride. They were faeries, and had stolen her as a wife for the chief of their band. To him they seemed only a company of merry mortals. His bride, when she saw her old love, bade him welcome, but was most fearful lest he should eat the faery food, and so be

Kidnappers. lOi

glamoured out of the earth into that bloodless dim nation, wherefore she set him down to play cards with three of the cavalcade; and he played on, realizing nothing until he saw the chief of the band carrying his bride away in his arms. Immediately he started up, and knew that they were faeries ; for slowly all that jolly company melted into shadow and night. He hurried to the house of his beloved. As he drew near came to him the cry of the keeners. She had died some time before he came. Some noteless Gaelic poet had made this into a forgotten ballad, some odd verses of which my white-capped friend remembered and sang for me.

Sometimes one hears of stolen people acting as good genii to the living, as in this tale, heard also close by the haunted pond, of John Kirwan of Castle Hacket.

102 The Celtic Twilight.

The Kirwans are a family much rumoured of in peasant lore, and believed to be the descendants of a man and a spirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that the mother of the present Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe.

John Kirwan was a great horse-racing man, and once landed in Liverpool with a fine horse, going racing somewhere in middle England. That evening, as he walked by the docks, a slip of a boy came up and asked where he was stabling his horse. In such and such a place, he answered. ' Don't put him there,' said the slip of a boy ; ' that stable will be burnt to-night.' He took his horse else- where, and sure enough the stable was burnt down. Next day the boy came and asked as reward to ride as his jockey in the coming race, and then was gone.

Kidnappers. 103

The race-time came round. At the last moment the boy ran forward and mounted, saying, ' If I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in my right hand bet all you are worth.' For, said Paddy Flynn, who told me the tale, ' the left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making the sign of the cross with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a Banshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom.' Well, the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John Kirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, MVhat can I do for you now?' said he. '■ Nothing but this,' said the boy : ' my mother has a cottage on your land — they stole me from the cradle. Be good to her, John Kirwan, and wherever your horses go I will watch that no ill follows them; but you will never see me

104 The Celtic Twilight.

more.' With that he made himself air, and vanished.

Sometimes animals are carried off — apparently drowned animals more than others. In Claremorris, Galway, Paddy Flynn told me, lived a poor widow with one cow and its calf. The cow fell into the river, and was washed away. There was a man thereabouts who went to a red-haired woman — for such are supposed to be wise in these things — and she told him to take the calf down to the edge of the river, and hide himself and watch. He did as she had told him, and as evening came on the calf began to low, and after a while the cow came along the edge of the river and commenced suckling it. Then, as he had been told, he caught the cow's tail. Away they went at a great pace, across hedges and ditches, till they came to a royalty (a name for the little

Kidnappers. 105

circular ditches, commonly called raths or forts, with which Ireland is covered since Pagan times). Therein he saw walking or sitting all the people who had died out of his village in his time. A woman was sitting on the edge with a child on her knees, and she called out to him to mind what the red-haired woman had told him, and he remembered she had said, Bleed the cow. So he stuck his knife into the cow and drew blood. That broke the spell, and he was able to turn her home- ward. ' Do not forget the spancel,' said the woman with the child on her knees ; ' take the inside one.' There were three spancels on a bush ; he took one, and the cow was driven safely home to the widow.

There is hardly a valley or mountain- side where folk cannot tell you of some one pillaged from amongst them. Two

io6 The Celtic TiviligJit.

or three miles from the Heart Lake lives an old woman who was stolen away in her youth. After seven years she was brought home again for some reason or other, but she had no toes left. She had danced them off. Many near the white stone door in Ben Bulben have been stolen away.

It is far easier to be sensible in cities than in many country places I could tell you of. When one walks on those grey roads at evening by the scented elder- bushes of the white cottages, watching the faint mountains gathering the clouds upon their heads, one all too readily discovers, beyond the thin cobweb veil of the senses, those creatures, the goblins, hurry- ing from the white square stone door to the north, or from the Heart Lake in the south.

THE UNTIRING ONES.

THE UNTIRING ONES.

It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike. It is this entanglement of moods which makes us old, and puckers our brows and deepens the furrows about our eyes. If we could love and hate with as good heart as the faeries do, we might grow to be long-lived like them. But until that day their un- tiring joys and sorrows must ever be one-half of their fascination. Love with them never grows weary, nor can the

1 10 The Celtic Tzvilight.

circles of the stars tire out their dancing feet. The Donegal peasants remember this when they bend over the spade, or sit full of the heaviness of the fields beside the griddle at nightfall, and tell stories about it that it may not be forgotten. A short while ago, they say, two faeries, little creatures, one like a young man, one like a young woman, came to a farmer's house, and spent the night sweeping the hearth and setting all tidy. The next night they came again, and while the farmer was away, brought all the furniture up-stairs into one room, and having arranged it round the walls, for the greater grandeur it seems, they began to dance. They danced on and on, and days and days went by, and all the country side came to look at them, but still their feet never tired. The farmer did not dare to live at home the while ; and after three months he

The Untiring Ones. 1 1 1

made up his mind to stand it no more, and went and told them that the priest was coming. The httle creatures when they heard this went back to their own country, and there their joy shall last as long as the points of the rushes are brown, the people say, and that is until God shall burn up the world with a kiss.

But it is not merely faeries who know untiring days, for there have been men and women who, falling under their en- chantment, have attained, perhaps by the right of their God-given spirits, an even more . than faery abundance of life and feeling. It seems that when mortals have gone amid those poor happy leaves of the Imperishable Rose of Beauty, blown hither and thither by the winds that awakened the stars, the dim kingdom has acknowledged their birthright, per- haps a little sadly, and given them of its

112 The Celtic Twilight.

best. Such a mortal was born long ago at a village in the south of Ireland. She lay asleep in a cradle, and her mother sat by rocking her, when a woman of the she (the faeries) came in, and said that the child was chosen to be the bride of the prince of the dim kingdom, but that as it would never do for his wife to grow old and die while he was still in the first ardour of his love, she would be gifted with a faery life. The mother was to take the glowing log out of the fire and bury it in the garden, and her child would live as long as it remained unconsumed. The mother buried the log, and the child grew up, became a beauty, and married the prince of the faeries, who came to her at nightfall. After seven hundred years the prince died, and another prince ruled in his stead and married the beautiful peasant girl in his turn ; and after another

The Untiring Ones. 113

seven hundred years he died also, and an- other prince and another husband, came in his stead, and so on until she had had seven husbands. At last one day the priest of the parish called upon her, and told her that she was a scandal to the whole neighbourhood with her seven hus- bands and her long life. She was very sorry, she said, but she was not to blame, and then she told him about the log, and he went straight out and dug until he found it, and then they burned it, and she died, and was buried like a Christian, and everybody was pleased. Such a mortal too was Clooth-na-bare, who went all over the world seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery life, of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to lake and lake to hill, and setting up a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, until at last she found the deepest water in the

114 ^^^ Celtic Twilight.

world in little Lough la, on the top of the Bird's Mountain at Sligo,

The two little creatures may well dance on, and the woman of the log and Clooth- na-bare sleep in peace, for they have known untrammelled hate and unmixed love, and have never wearied themselves with ' yes ' and ' no,' or entangled their feet with the sorry net of ' maybe ' and * perhaps.' The great winds came and took them up into themselves.

THE MAN AND HIS BOOTS.

• THE MAN AND HIS BOOTS.

There was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of ghosts ; or. sheogues, and ; there , was . a : house .in Donegal ; that had been haunted: as long as man could remember, and. this is, the. story of • how the house got the : better ; of the : man. The man came into; the house. and lighted a - fire . in : the room under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them on the hearth, and stretched : out his feet and ..warmed himself. . .• For , a . time . he prospered in his unbehef; but a.- little while after . the night . had ' fallen, and everything had got .very dark, one . of his

1 1 8 TJie Celtic TiviligJit.

boots began to move. It got up off the floor and gave a kind of slow jump towards the door, and then the other boot did the same, and after that the first boot jumped again. It thereupon dawned upon the man that an invisible being had got into his boots, and was now going away in them. When the boots reached the door they went up- stairs slowly, and then the man heard them go tramp, tramp round the haunted room over his head. A few minutes passed, and he could hear them again upon the stairs, and after that in the passage outside, and then one of them came in at the door, and the other gave a jump past it and came in too. They jumped along towards him, and then one got up and hit him, and afterwards the other hit him, then again the first hit him, and so on, until they drove him out

The Man and his Boots. 1 19

of the room, and finally out of the house. In this way he was kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter. It is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or a sheogue, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work of the she who live in the heart of fantasy.

A COWARD.

A COWARD.

One day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who Hves beyond Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain, and met there a young lad who seemed to be dishked by the two daughters. I asked why they dishked him, and was told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom robust children of nature take to be cowards are but men and women with a nervous system too finely made for their life and work. I looked at the lad; but no, that pink-and-white face and strong body had nothing of

124 I^J^^ Celtic Twilight.

undue sensibility. After a little he told me his story. He had lived a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he was coming home late at night, and suddenly felt himself sinking in, as it were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a dead brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not stop till he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung himself against the door with so much of violence that he broke the thick wooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his wild life, but was a hopeless coward. . Nothing could ever bring him to look, either by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face, and he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, 'the prettiest girl in the country ' persuade him to see her

A Coward. 125

home after a party if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had looked at the face no man can see unchanged — the imponderable face of a spirit.

THE THREE O'BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES.

THE THREE O'BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES.

In the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things. There is more love there than upon the earth ; there is more dancing there than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon the earth. In the begin- ning the earth was perhaps made to fulfil the desire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What wonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom !

130 The Celtic Twilight.

A friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was straying about a rath called ' Cashel Nore.' A man with a haggard face and unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and began digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was work- ing near and asked who the man was. 'That is the third O'Byrne,' was the answer. A few days after he learned this story : A great quantity of treasure had been buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries set to guard it ; but some day it was to be found and belong to the family of the O'Byrnes. Before that day three O'Byrnes must find it and die. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last he got a glimpse of the stone coffin that contained it, but immediately a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the

Three G Byrnes and Evil Faeries. 1 3 1

mountain and tore him to pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished deep into the earth. The second O'Byrne came and dug and dug until he found the coffer, and Hfted the hd and saw the gold shining within. He saw some horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and soon died. The treasure again sank out of sight. The third O'Byrne is now digging. He be- lieves that he will die in some terrible way the moment he finds the treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and the O'Byrne family made rich for ever, and become again a great people, as they were of old.

A peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the shin- bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up ; there was a hole in it ; hie looked through the hole, and saw the

132 The Celtic Twilight.

gold heaped up under the ground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath again he could not find the spot where he had seen it.

DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES.

DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES.

Drumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven ! places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore. Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall to loose the faery riders on the world. The great St. Columba himself was the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed the mountains on one noted oc- casion to get near heaven with his prayers.

136 The Celtic Twilight.

Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain,

covered with short grass, like a green

table-cloth, and lying in the foam midway

between the round cairn-headed Knock-

narea and ' Ben Bulben, famous for

hawks ' :

' But for Benbulben and Knocknarea Many a poor sailor 'd be cast away,'

as the rhyme goes.

At the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and rocks and grass : a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall asleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake 'silly,' the 'good people' having carried off his soul. There is no more ready short-cut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered and smoth- ered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes thither ' full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and

Drumcliff and Rosses. 137

drawing-rooms.' Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and was heard yelping vainly deep underground in a fort far inland. These forts or raths, low circular ditches made before history began, cover all Rosses and all Columkille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most others, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I was poking about there, an unusually intelHgent and 'reading' peasant who had come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and whispered in a timid voice, ' Are you all right, sir ? ' I had been some little while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the dog.

No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by ill-boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose northern slope lie a few

138 The Celtic Twilight.

stray cottages. One night a farmer's young son came from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards it, but the ' glamour ' fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence, cross-legged, and commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined the fence was a horse, and that all night long he went on the most wonderful ride through the country. In the morning he was still beating his fence, and they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for three years before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer tried to level the fort. His cows arxi horses died, and all manner of trouble overtook him, and finally he himself was led home, and left useless with 'his head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death.'

A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is another angle

Drumcli-ff' and Rosses. 139

having also its cave, though this one is not covered with sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the dark- ness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave's mouth two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the strange musicians, but the creatures had gone.

To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of never-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door in the evening, and, in her own words, 'looks at the moun- tains and thinks of the goodness of God,' God is all the nearer, because the pagan powers are not far : because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for hawks, the white square door swings open at sundown, and

I40 The Celtic Twilight,

those wild unchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the White Lady still wanders under the broad cloud night-cap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these things, even though the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no long while since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of her dress touched him. ' He fell down, and was dead three days.' But this is merely the small gossip of faerydom — the little stitches that join this world and the other.

One night as I sat eating Mrs. H 's

soda-bread, her husband told me a longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Those creatures, the 'good people,' love to repeat themselves, and many a poor man from Fin M'Coul to our own days has happened on some such adventure.

Drumcliff and Rossis. 141

' In the times when we used to travel by the canal,' said my entertainer, ' I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued I was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then we walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls milking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked them for a drink of milk. "We have nothing to put it in here," they said, *' but come to the house with us." We went home with them, and sat round the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me, loth to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head. When I had

142 The Celtic Twilight.

eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It grew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loth as ever to leave the good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them a corpse. When I saw them coming I hid behind the door. Says one to the other, putting the corpse on the spit, " Who'll turn the spit ? " Says the other,

" Michael H , come out of that and

turn the meat." I came out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit.

" Michael H ," says the one who

spoke first, " if you let it burn we'll have to put you on the spit instead ; " and on that they went out. I sat there trembling and turning the corpse till towards mid- night. The men came again, and the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But having fallen out over it, they both said they would do me

Drumcliff and Rosses. 143

no harm that time ; and, sitting by the fire,

one of them cried out : " Michael H ,

can you tell me a story?" " Divil a one," said I. On which he caught me by the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing night. Never in all my born days did I see such a night — the darkest night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on

the shoulder, with a " Michael H , can

you tell a story now ? " "I can," says I. In he brought me ; and putting me by the fire, says: "Begin." "I have no story but the one," says I, "that I was sitting here, and you two men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and set me turning it." " That will do," says he ; " ye may go in there and lie down on the bed." And I went, nothing loth; and in the

144 The Celtic Twilight.

morning where was I but in the middle of a green field ! '

' Drumdiff' is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud ; and at a place called Colum- kille's Strand — a place of marsh and mire — on a moonlight night an ancient boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea : a portent of a brave harvest- ing. They have their dread portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon, renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest boscage, and enjoy the conversation of CuchuUin and his heroes. A vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.

Drumchff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath, hillside, sea-

Drumcliff and Rosses. 145

border they gather in all shapes : headless women, men in armour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on. A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumdiff there is a very ancient graveyard. The An7ials of the Foicr Masters have this verse about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871 : 'A pious soldier of the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff.' Not very long ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray, saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was going. It was the 'pious soldier of the race of Con,' says local wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young child; thus (as

L

146 The Celtic Twilight.

belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from the too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of * supernaturals.' To cut your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.

There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the snipe-ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well: for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea. There is a history con- cerning the house and the bush. A man once lived there who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hun- dred pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea captain. This my man knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain, not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in

Driimcliff and Rosses. 147

mid-ocean. Shortly afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered since the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, — the shade of the departed appearing there at times. The bush remains to this day : once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices, they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away ; the troubled ghost, say the neigh- bours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.

My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these many

148 The Celtic Twilight.

years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort — one of the few stone ones in Ireland — under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben : ' They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine : ' for it is dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My friend, 'the sweet Harp-String' (I give no more than his Irish name for fear of gaugers) — the best of all our folk-tale hunters — seems to have the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart, but then he supplies the potheen-\mk.&c?, with grain from his own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the * dhoul ' in Great Eliza's

Drumcliff and Rosses. 149

century, and he has a kind of prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are almost relations of his, if all folk say concerning the parent- age of magicians be true.

THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE.

THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE.

Once a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made them feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break, and they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet, and worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the Icelanders, or ' Danes ' as we call

154 1^^^^ Celtic Twilight,

them and all other dwellers in the Scan- dinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places, and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the custom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people of Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland which once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses itself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as Roughley O'Byrne, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red beards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a boat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike each other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint of hitting out

The Thick Skull of the Forttmate. 155

with the long oars kept the second boat from passing, only to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a man from Roughley O'Byrne was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row, and made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so thin you cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of passionate contempt to- wards the sohcitor who was prosecuting, and cried, 'that little fellow's skull if ye were to hit it would go like an egg-shell,' he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice, ' but a man might wallop away at your lordship's for a fortnight.'

THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR,

THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR.

A SEA captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck- house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow under the hedge ; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper with a Captain Moran on board the s.s. Margaret, then put into a western river from I know not where. I found

l6o The Celtic Twilight.

him a man of many notions all flavoured with personality, as is the way with sailors. He talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all his words broke the hard energy of the man of action.

'Sur,'said he, 'did you ever hear tell of the sea captain's prayer ? '

' No,' said I ; * what is it ? '

' It is,' he replied, ' " O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip." '

* And what does that mean ? '

' It means,' he said, ' that when they come to me some night and wake me up, and say, " Captain, we're going down," that I won't make a fool o' meself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I stand- in' on the bridge, when the third mate comes up to me lookin' mortial bad. Says he, "Captain, all's up with us," Says I, " Didn't you know when you joined that a

The Religion of a Sailor. i6i

certain percentage go down every year ? " "Yes, sur," says he; and says I, "Arn't you paid to go down ? " " Yes, sur," says he; and says I, "Then go down Hke a man, and be damned to you ! " '

He told this tale of himself quietly, simply, as if he talked of the bubbling of the tar between the deck planks in the hot sun, the gathering of barnacles along the keel, or of any other part of the daily circumstance of his calling. Let us look upon him with wonder, for his mind has not fallen into a net of complexity, nor his will melted into thought and dream. Our journey is through other storms and other darkness.

CONCERNING THE NEAR- NESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY.

CONCERNING THE NEARNESS

TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH,

AND PURGATORY.

In Ireland this world and the other are not widely sundered ; sometimes, indeed, it seems almost as if our earthly chattels were no more than the shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the creature why she did not have it cut short. ' It was my grandmother's,' said the child ; ' would you have her going about yonder with her petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days ? ' I

1 66 The Celtic Twilight.

have read a story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had made her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never grow leaky, nor the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the righteous from the unrighteous.

THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES.

THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES.

Sometimes when I have been shut off from common interests, and have for a Httle forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the power of my will to alter in a,ny way. They have their own will, and sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands. One day I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went a circular parapet, and on

I/O The Celtic Twilight.

this parapet sat innumerable apes eating precious stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered green and crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable hunger. I knew that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell of the artist, and that all who sought after beautiful and won- derful things with too avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I have seen into other people's Hells also, and saw in one an infernal Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who weighed on a curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed, but the good deeds left un- done, of certain invisible shades. I could see the scales go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were, I knew, crowding about him. I saw on another occasion a quantity of demons

TJie Eaters of Precious Stones, lyi

of all kinds of shapes— fish-like, serpent- like, ape-like, and dog-like — sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and looking at a moon-like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from the depths of the pit.

OUR LADY OF THE HILLS.

OUR LADY OF THE HILLS.

When we were children we did not say at such a distance from the post- office, or so far from the butcher's or the grocer's, but measured things by the covered well in the wood, or by the burrow of the fox in the hill. We be- longed then to God and to His works, and to things come down from the ancient days. We would not have been greatly surprised had we met the shining feet of an angel among the white mushrooms upon the mountains, for we knew in those days immense despair, unfathomed love — every eternal mood — but now the

176 The Celtic Twilight.

draw-net is about our feet. A few miles eastward of Lough Gill, a young Pro- testant girl, who was both pretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white, wandered up among those mountain mushrooms, and I have a letter of hers telling how she met a troop of children, and became a portion of their dream. When they first saw her they threw them- selves face down in a bed of rushes, as if in a great fear ; but after a little other children came about them, and they got up and followed her almost bravely. She noticed their fear, and presently stood still and held out her arms. A little girl threw herself into them with the cry, ' Ah, you are the Virgin out o' the picture ! ' ' No,' said another, coming near also, ' she is a sky faery, for she has the colour of the sky.' 'No,' said a third, ' she is the faery out of the foxglove

Our Lady of the Hills. 177

grown big.' The other children, however, would have it that she was indeed the Virgin, for she wore the Virgin's colours. Her good Protestant heart was greatly troubled, and she got the children to sit down about her, and tried to explain who she was, but they would have none of her explanation. Finding explanation of no avail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ ? ' Yes,' said one ; ' but we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the Virgin.' ' Tell Him to be good to me,' whispered another into her ear. 'He would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil,' burat out a third.

She talked to them a long time about Christ and the apostles, but was finally in- terrupted by an elderly woman with a stick, who, taking her to be some adventurous hunter for converts, drove the children

178 The Celtic Twilight.

away, despite their explanation that here was the great Queen of Heaven come to walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had gone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the child who was called ' a divil ' jumped down from the high ditch by the lane, and said she would believe her ' an ordinary lady ' if she had ' two skirts,' for ' ladies always had two skirts.' The ' two skirts ' were shown, and the child went away crest- fallen, but a few minutes later jumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, ' Dad's a divil, mum's a divil, and I'm a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady,' and having flung a hand- ful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When my pretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had dropped the tassels of her parasol. A

Our Lady of the Hills. 179

year later she was by chance upon the mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child who had first called her the Virgin out o' the picture, and saw the tassels hanging about the child's neck, and said, ' I am the lady you met last year, who told you about Christ.' 'No, you are not! no, you are not ! no, you are not ! ' was the passionate reply. And after all, it was not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that men pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.

THE GOLDEN AGE.

*

THE GOLDEN AGE.

A WHILE ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time I had been there something was troubhng me, and I had longed for a message from those beings or bodiless moods, or what- ever they be, who inhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw with blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel half dog, moving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal vanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his pink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light ; and I remem-

184 The Celtic Twilight.

bered a peasant belief about two faery dogs who go about representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box, and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and flung into a corner. It said that the world was once all perfect and kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the more innocent

The Golden Age. 185

of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the sad voices would be still ; but alas ! alas ! they must sing and we must weep until the Eternal gates swing open.

We were now getting into the big glass- roofed terminus, and the fiddler put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a copper, and then opened the door and was gone.

A REMONSTRANCE WITH

SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING

SOURED THE DISPOSITION

OF THEIR GHOSTS AND

FAERIES.

A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTS- MEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF THEIR GHOSTS AND FAERIES.

Not only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in front of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it, and dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It would have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An Irish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature. For in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and spirits. They only ill-treat each

190 The Celtic Tivilight.

other in reason. Each admits the other side to have feeUngs. There are points beyond which neither will go. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man Campbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his horse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a needle into her. They came to a river, and she grew very restless, fearing to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her. She cried out, ' Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-like slave (the needle) out of me.' They came to an inn. He turned the light of a lantern on her ; immediately she dropped down like a falling star, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they treat the faeries as one is treated in an old GaeHc poem. A faery loved a little child who used to cut turf at

A Remonstrance with Scotsmen. 191

the side of a faery hill. Every day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted knife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take long, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done so quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped her. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little child take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her make three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out of the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off with a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm into the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand through the treachery of the child.

In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even the

192 The Celtic Twilight.

Devil religious. 'Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the minister?' he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we have left them alone. To be sure, the 'loyal minority' knocked out the eye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 171 1, in the town of Carrickfergus. But then the * loyal minority ' is half Scottish. You have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would hke to have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes ran in his head, and made him the great

A Remonstrance with Scotsmen. 193

musician he was. In Scotland you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls. Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day ; but more in sadness than in anger have they said it. The Catholic religion likes to keep on good terms with its neighbours.

These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each country the whole world of sprites and gobhns. For their gay and graceful doings you must go to Ireland ; for their deeds of terror to Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of make- believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is made to turn a

corpse all night on a spit before the fire, o

194 T^f^^ Celtic Tivilight.

we do not feel anxious ; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the dew on his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have soured the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and gobhns. The piper M'Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched into a sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a long time the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a mile, when they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased suddenly. Some time went by, when his dog came out of the cavern completely flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of the cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake where treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close to the coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he

A Remonstrance ivith Scotsmen. 195

came. He rose to the surface ; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen the treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while his heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw the rest of his body.

These water-goblins and water-monsters are prominent in Scottish folk-lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our tales turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one of these monsters. He is ardently beHeved in by many, but that does not prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding it with conscious phantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day for congers in the monster hole. Return- ing home, a great eel on my shoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail

196 TJie Celtic Twilight.

sweeping the ground behind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an immense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had broken my line and escaped. * That was him,' said the fisherman. ' Did you ever hear how he made my brother emigrate ? My brother was a diver, you know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast comes up to him, and says, "What are you after?" " Stones, sur," says he. " Don't you think you had better be going?" "Yes, sur," says he. And that's why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because l>e got poor, but that's not true.'

You — you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and air and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We — we exchange civiUties with the world beyond.

THE FOUR WINDS OF DESIRE.

THE FOUR WINDS OF DESIRE.

In the notes at the end of Beside the Fire, Dr. Hyde contrasts with certain tales of Indian jugglery an old Gaelic account of a magician who threw a rope- ladder into the air and then sent climbing up it all manner of men and beasts. It reads like an allegory to explain the charms of folk and faery-tales : a parable to show how man mounts to the infinite by the ladder of the impossible. When our narrow rooms, our short lives, our soon-ended passions and emotions, put us out of conceit with sooty and finite reality, we have only to read some story

200 The Celtic Twilight.

like Dr. Hyde's 'Paudeen O'Kelly and the Weasel,' and listen to the witch com- plaining to the robber, ' Why did you bring away my gold that I was for five hundred years gathering through the hills and hollows of the world ? ' Here at last is a universe where all is large and intense enough to almost satisfy the emotions of man. Certainly such -stories are not a criticism of life but rather an extension, thereby much more closely resembling Homer than that last and most admirable phase of 'the improving book,' a social drama by Henrik Ibsen. They are as existence and not a thought, and make our world of tea-tables seem but a shabby penumbra.

It is perhaps, therefore, by no means strange that the age of 'realism' should be also the harvest-time of folk-lore. We grow tired of tuning our fiddles to the

The Four Winds of Desire. 201

clank of this our heavy chain, and lay them down to listen gladly to one who tells us of men hundreds of years old and endlessly mirthful. Our new-wakened interest in the impossible has been of the greatest service to Irish folk-literature. Until about five years ago the only writers who had dealt with the subject at any length were Crofton Croker, a second- hand bookseller named Kennedy, and an anonymous writer in The Dublin and London Magazine for 1825 and 1828. Others, it is true, had incorporated (like Gerald Griffin) odd folk-tales in the pages of long novels, or based on them (like Carleton and Lover) stories of peasant life. Croker was certainly no ideal col- lector. He altered his materials without word or warning, and could never resist the chance of turning some naive faery tale into a drunken peasant's dream. With all

2C2 The Celtic TwiligJit.

his buoyant humour and imagination he was continually guilty of that great sin against art — the sin of rationalism. He tried to take aAvay from his stories the impossibility that makes them dear to us. Nor could he quite desist from dressing his personages in the dirty rags of the stage Irishman. Kennedy, an incompar- ably worse writer, had one great advantage : he believed in his goblins as sincerely as any peasant. He has explained in his Legendary Fictions that he could tell a number of spells for raising the faeries, but he will not — for fear of putting his readers up' to mischief. Years went by, and it seemed that we should never have another gathering. Then about five years ago came Lady Wilde's two volumes, and David Fitzgerald's contributions to the Revue Celtique ; with M'Anally's inac- curate and ill-written Irish Wonders, and

The Four Winds of Desire. 203

Curtin's fine collection a little later ; and now appears Dr. Hyde's incomparable book. There has been published in five years as much Irish folk-lore as in the foregoing fifty. Its quality, too, is higher. Dr. Hyde's volume is the best written of any. He has caught and faith- fully reproduced the peasant idiom and phrase. In becoming scientifically ac- curate, he has not ceased to be a man of letters. His fifteen translations from traditional Gaelic originals are models of what such translations should be. Unlike Campbell of Islay, he has not been con- tent merely to turn the Gaelic into English ; but where the idiom is radically different he has searched out colloquial equivalents from among the English- speaking peasants. The Gaelic is printed side by side with the English, so that the substantial accuracy of his versions can

204 T^f^^ Celtic Twilight.

always be tested. The result is many pages in which you can hear in imagina- tion the very voice of the sennachie, and almost smell the smoke of his turf fire.

Now and then Dr. Hyde has collected stories which he was compelled to write out in his own Irish through the impossi- bility, he tells us, of taking them down word for word at the time. He has only printed a half of one story of this kind in Beside the Fire. One wishes he had not been so rigorous in the matter, especially as it is for this reason, I con- clude, that Teig O'Kane, still the weirdest of Irish folk-tales, has been omitted. It has been printed elsewhere, but one would gladly have his stories under one cover. He is so completely a Gael, alike in thought and literary idiom, that I do not think he could falsify a folk-tale if he tried. At the most he would change

The Four Winds of Desire. 205

it as a few years' passing from sennachie to sennachie must do perforce. Two villages a mile apart will have different versions of the same story; why, then, should Dr. Hyde exclude his own reverent adoptions ? We cannot all read them in the Gaelic of his Leabhar Sgeulaighteachta. Is it the evil communications of that very scientific person, Mr. Alfred Nutt (he contributes learned notes), which have robbed us of the latter pages of Guleesh na Guss Dhu ? We might at least have had some outline of the final adventures of the young faery seer and the French princess. After all, imaginative impulse — the quintessence of life — is our great need from folk-lore. When we have banqueted let Learning gather the crumbs into her larder, and welcome. She will serve them up again in time of famine. Dr. Hyde has four tales of hidden

2o6 The Celtic Twilight.

treasure, five stories of adventure with a princess or a fortune at the end, a legend of a haunted forest, and a tale of a man who grew very thin and weakly through swallowing a hungry newt, which was only dislodged when made wildly athirst by a heavy dinner of salt pork and the allurement of a running stream. Love, fortune, adventure, wonder — the four winds of desire ! There is also a chapter of quaint riddles in rhyme. The whole book is full of charming expressions. The French princess is described as 'the loveliest woman on the ridge of the world. The rose and the lily were fighting to- gether in her face, and one could not tell which would get the victory.' Here and there, too, is a piece of delicate observation, as when Guleesh na Guss Dhu waits for the faeries listening to 'the cronawn (hum) of the insects,' and

The Four Wmds of Desire. 207

watching ' the fadoques and fibeens (golden and green clover) rising and lying, lying and rising, as they do on a fine night.' The riddles also have no lack of poetry. Here is a description of a boreen or little country lane :

* From house to house he goes, A messenger small and slight, And whether it rains or snows He sleeps outside in the night.'

And here is one of the lintel on a wet

day —

' There's a poor man at rest, With a stick beneath his breast, And he breaking his heart a-crying.'

These riddles are the possession of children, and have the simple fancifulness of childhood.

It is small wonder that this book should be beautiful, for it is the chronicle of that world of glory and surprise imagined in the unknown by the peasant as he leant pain-

2o8 The Celtic Tivilight.

fully over his spade. His spiritual desires ascended into heaven, but all he could dream of material well-being and freedom was lavished upon this world of kings and goblins. We who have less terrible a need dream less splendidly. Dr. Hyde bids us know that all this exultant world of fancies is passing away, soon to exist for none but stray scholars and the gentle- men of the sun-myth. He has written on his title-page this motto from an old Gaelic poem : * They are like a mist on the coming of night that is scattered away by a light breath of wind.' I know that this is the common belief of folk-lorists, but I do not feel certain that it is altogether true. Much, no doubt, will perish — perhaps the whole tribe of folk-tales proper; but the faery and ghost kingdom is more stubborn than men dream of. It will perhaps be always going and never gone. I have

The Four Winds of Desire. 209

talked with many who believe they have seen it, and I have had my own glimpse of unaccountable things. Why should Swedenborg alone have visions? Surely the mantle of Coleridge's ' man of ten centuries ' is large enough to cover the witch-doctors at any rate. There is not so much difference between them. Swedenborg's assertion, in the Spiritual Diary, that 'the angels do not like butter,' would make admirable folk-lore. Dr. Hyde finds a sun-myth in one of his most ancient stories. The sun and the revolving seasons have not yet done helping to draw legends from the right minds. Some time ago a friend of mine talked with an old Irish peasant who had seen a vision of a great tree, amid whose branches two animals, one white and one black, pursued each other continually ; and wherever the white beast came the branches burst into

2IO The Celtic Twilight.

foliage, and wherever the black one, then all withered away. The changing of the seasons, among the rest, is here very palpable. Only let it be quite plain that the peasant's vision meant much more than the mere atmospheric allegory of the learned. He saw within his tree the birth and death of all things. It cast a light of imagination on his own dull cattle- minding and earth-turning destiny, and gave him heart to repeat the Gaelic proverb — 'The lake is not burdened by its swan, a steed by its bridle, or a man by the soul that is in him.'

INTO THE TWILIGHT.

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,

Come clear of the nets of wrojig and

right; Latigh, heart, again in the gray twilight;

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Thy mother Eri is always young. Dew ever shining a?id twilight gray ; Though hope fall from thee or love decay,

Burni7ig in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upo?i hill. For there the jnystical brotherhood Of the flood atid flame, of the hight and wood. Laugh out their whimsy and work out their will.

212 The Celtic Tivilight.

And God stands whiding his lonely horn ; And Time and the World are ever in

flight. And love is less kind than the gray twilight, And hope is less dear- than the dew of the morn.

Richard Clay &• Sons, Limited, London & Siingay.

n ■:n ^-

UBRARY OF CONGRESS

014 547 804 2 $^