He was a drifting silent man full of hidden passion, and loved wild
islands, because there, set out in the light of day, he saw what lay
hidden in himself. There is passage after passage in which he dwells
upon some moment of excitement. He describes the shipping of pigs at
Kilronan on the North Island for the English market: 'when the steamer
was getting near, the whole drove was moved down upon the slip and the
curraghs were carried out close to the sea. Then each beast was caught
in its turn and thrown on its side, while its legs were hitched
together in a single knot, with a tag of rope remaining, by which it
could be carried.
Probably the pain inflicted was not great, yet the animals shut their
eyes and shrieked with almost human intonations, till the suggestion of
the noise became so intense that the men and women who were merely
looking on grew wild with excitement, and the pigs waiting their turn
foamed at the mouth and tore each other with their teeth.
After a while there was a pause. The whole slip was covered with amass
of sobbing animals, with here and there a terrified woman crouching
among the bodies and patting some special favourite, to keep it quiet
while the curraghs were being launched. Then the screaming began again
while the pigs were carried out and laid in their places, with a
waistcoat tied round their feet to keep them from damaging the canvas.
They seemed to know where they were going, and looked up at me over the
gunnel with an ignoble desperation that made me shudder to think that I
had eaten this whimpering flesh. When the last curragh went out, I was
left on the slip with a band of women and children, and one old boar
who sat looking out over the sea.
The women were over-excited, and when I tried to talk to them they
crowded round me and began jeering and shrieking at me because I am not
married. A dozen screamed at a time, and so rapidly that I could not
understand all they were saying, yet I was able to make out that they
were taking advantage of the absence of their husbands to give me the
full volume of their contempt. Some little boys who were listening
threw themselves down, writhing with laughter among the sea-weed, and
the young girls grew red and embarrassed and stared down in the surf.'
The book is full of such scenes. Now it is a crowd going by train to
the Parnell celebration, now it is a woman cursing her son who made
himself a spy for the police, now it is an old woman keening at a
funeral. Kindred to his delight in the harsh grey stones, in the
hardship of the life there, in the wind and in the mist, there is
always delight in every moment of excitement, whether it is but the
hysterical excitement of the women over the pigs, or some primary
passion. Once indeed, the hidden passion instead of finding expression
by its choice among the passions of others, shows itself in the most
direct way of all, that of dream. 'Last night,' he writes, at
Innismaan, 'after walking in a dream among buildings with strangely
intense light on them, I heard a faint rhythm of music beginning far
away on some stringed instrument.
It came closer to me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume with
an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near the sound
began to move in my nerves and blood, to urge me to dance with them.
I knew that if I yielded I would be carried away into some moment of
terrible agony, so I struggled to remain quiet, holding my knees
together with my hands.
The music increased continually, sounding like the strings of harps
tuned to a forgotten scale, and having a resonance as searching as the
strings of the 'cello.
Then the luring excitement became more powerful than my will, and my
limbs moved in spite of me.
In a moment I was swept away in a whirlwind of notes. My breath and my
thoughts and every impulse of my body became a form of the dance, till
I could not distinguish between the instrument or the rhythm and my own
person or consciousness. For a while it seemed an excitement that was
filled with joy; then it grew into an ecstasy where all existence was
lost in the vortex of movement. I could not think that there had been a
life beyond the whirling of the dance.
Then with a shock, the ecstasy turned to agony and rage. I struggled to
free myself but seemed only to increase the passion of the steps I
moved to. When I shrieked I could only echo the notes of the rhythm. At
last, with a movement of uncontrollable frenzy I broke back to
consciousness and awoke.
I dragged myself trembling to the window of the cottage and looked out.
The moon was glittering across the bay and there was no sound anywhere
on the island.'