HANRAHAN was walking the roads one time near Kinvara at the fall of
day, and he heard the sound of a fiddle from a house a little way
off the roadside. He turned up the path to it, for he never had the
habit of passing by any place where there was music or dancing or good
company, without going in. The man of the house was standing at the
door, and when Hanrahan came near he knew him and he said: ‘A welcome
before you, Hanrahan, you have been lost to us this long time.’ But
the woman of the house came to the door and she said to her husband:
‘I would be as well pleased for Hanrahan not to come in to-night, for
he has no good name now among the priests, or with women that mind
themselves, and I wouldn’t wonder from his walk if he has a drop of
drink taken.’ But the man said, ‘I will never turn away Hanrahan of the
poets from my door,’ and with that he bade him enter.
There were a good many neighbours gathered in the house, and some of
them remembered Hanrahan; but some of the little lads that were in the
corners had only heard of him, and they stood up to have a view of him,
and one of them said: ‘Is not that Hanrahan that had the school, and
that was brought away by Them?’ But his mother put her hand over his
mouth and bade him be quiet, and not be saying things like that. ‘For
Hanrahan is apt to grow wicked,’ she said, ‘if he hears talk of that
story, or if anyone goes questioning him.’ One or another called out
then, asking him for a song, but the man of the house said it was no
time to ask him for a song, before he had rested himself; and he gave
him whiskey in a glass, and Hanrahan thanked him and wished him good
health and drank it off.
The fiddler was tuning his fiddle for another dance, and the man of
the house said to the young men, they would all know what dancing was
like when they saw Hanrahan dance, for the like of it had never been
seen since he was there before. Hanrahan said he would not dance, he
had better use for his feet now, travelling as he was through the
five provinces of Ireland. Just as he said that, there came in at
the half-door Oona, the daughter of the house, having a few bits of
bog deal from Connemara in her arms for the fire. She threw them on
the hearth and the flame rose up, and showed her to be very comely
and smiling, and two or three of the young men rose up and asked for
a dance. But Hanrahan crossed the floor and brushed the others away,
and said it was with him she must dance, after the long road he had
travelled before he came to her. And it is likely he said some soft
word in her ear, for she said nothing against it, and stood out with
him, and there were little blushes in her cheeks. Then other couples
stood up, but when the dance was going to begin, Hanrahan chanced to
look down, and he took notice of his boots that were worn and broken,
and the ragged grey socks showing through them; and he said angrily it
was a bad floor, and the music no great things, and he sat down in the
dark place beside the hearth. But if he did, the girl sat down there
with him.
The dancing went on, and when that dance was over another was called
for, and no one took much notice of Oona and Red Hanrahan for a while,
in the corner where they were. But the mother grew to be uneasy, and
she called to Oona to come and help her to set the table in the inner
room. But Oona that had never refused her before, said she would come
soon, but not yet, for she was listening to whatever he was saying
in her ear. The mother grew yet more uneasy then, and she would come
nearer them, and let on to be stirring the fire or sweeping the hearth,
and she would listen for a minute to hear what the poet was saying
to her child. And one time she heard him telling about white-handed
Deirdre, and how she brought the sons of Usnach to their death; and
how the blush in her cheeks was not so red as the blood of kings’ sons
that was shed for her, and her sorrows had never gone out of mind;
and he said it was maybe the memory of her that made the cry of the
plover on the bog as sorrowful in the ear of the poets as the keening
of young men for a comrade. And there would never have been that memory
of her, he said, if it was not for the poets that had put her beauty
in their songs. And the next time she did not well understand what he
was saying, but as far as she could hear, it had the sound of poetry
though it was not rhymed, and this is what she heard him say: ‘The sun
and the moon are the man and the girl, they are my life and your life,
they are travelling and ever travelling through the skies as if under
the one hood. It was God made them for one another. He made your life
and my life before the beginning of the world, he made them that they
might go through the world, up and down, like the two best dancers that
go on with the dance up and down the long floor of the barn, fresh and
laughing, when all the rest are tired out and leaning against the wall.’
The old woman went then to where her husband was playing cards, but
he would take no notice of her, and then she went to a woman of
the neighbours and said: ‘Is there no way we can get them from one
another?’ and without waiting for an answer she said to some young men
that were talking together: ‘What good are you when you cannot make
the best girl in the house come out and dance with you? And go now
the whole of you,’ she said, ‘and see can you bring her away from the
poet’s talk.’ But Oona would not listen to any of them, but only moved
her hand as if to send them away. Then they called to Hanrahan and said
he had best dance with the girl himself, or let her dance with one of
them. When Hanrahan heard what they were saying he said: ‘That is so, I
will dance with her; there is no man in the house must dance with her
but myself.’
He stood up with her then, and led her out by the hand, and some of the
young men were vexed, and some began mocking at his ragged coat and his
broken boots. But he took no notice, and Oona took no notice, but they
looked at one another as if all the world belonged to themselves alone.
But another couple that had been sitting together like lovers stood out
on the floor at the same time, holding one another’s hands and moving
their feet to keep time with the music. But Hanrahan turned his back on
them as if angry, and in place of dancing he began to sing, and as he
sang he held her hand, and his voice grew louder, and the mocking of
the young men stopped, and the fiddle stopped, and there was nothing
heard but his voice that had in it the sound of the wind. And what he
sang was a song he had heard or had made one time in his wanderings on
Slieve Echtge, and the words of it as they can be put into English were
like this:
O Death’s old bony finger
Will never find us there
In the high hollow townland
Where love’s to give and to spare;
Where boughs have fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Where rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
An old man plays the bagpipes
In a gold and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.
And while he was singing it Oona moved nearer to him, and the colour
had gone from her cheek, and her eyes were not blue now, but grey with
the tears that were in them, and anyone that saw her would have thought
she was ready to follow him there and then from the west to the east of
the world.
But one of the young men called out: ‘Where is that country he is
singing about? Mind yourself, Oona, it is a long way off, you might
be a long time on the road before you would reach to it.’ And another
said: ‘It is not to the Country of the Young you will be going if you
go with him, but to Mayo of the bogs.’ Oona looked at him then as if
she would question him, but he raised her hand in his hand, and called
out between singing and shouting: ‘It is very near us that country is,
it is on every side; it may be on the bare hill behind it is, or it may
be in the heart of the wood.’ And he said out very loud and clear: ‘In
the heart of the wood; oh, death will never find us in the heart of
the wood. And will you come with me there, Oona?’ he said.
But while he was saying this the two old women had gone outside the
door, and Oona’s mother was crying, and she said: ‘He has put an
enchantment on Oona. Can we not get the men to put him out of the
house?’
‘That is a thing you cannot do,’ said the other woman, ‘for he is a
poet of the Gael, and you know well if you would put a poet of the Gael
out of the house, he would put a curse on you that would wither the
corn in the fields and dry up the milk of the cows, if it had to hang
in the air seven years.’
‘God help us,’ said the mother, ‘and why did I ever let him into the
house at all, and the wild name he has!’
‘It would have been no harm at all to have kept him outside, but there
would great harm come upon you if you put him out by force. But listen
to the plan I have to get him out of the house by his own doing,
without anyone putting him from it at all.’
It was not long after that the two women came in again, each of them
having a bundle of hay in her apron. Hanrahan was not singing now, but
he was talking to Oona very fast and soft, and he was saying: ‘The
house is narrow but the world is wide, and there is no true lover
that need be afraid of night or morning or sun or stars or shadows
or evening, or any earthly thing.’ ‘Hanrahan,’ said the mother then,
striking him on the shoulder, ‘will you give me a hand here for a
minute?’ ‘Do that, Hanrahan,’ said the woman of the neighbours, ‘and
help us to make this hay into a rope, for you are ready with your
hands, and a blast of wind has loosened the thatch on the haystack.’
‘I will do that for you,’ said he, and he took the little stick in his
hands, and the mother began giving out the hay, and he twisting it, but
he was hurrying to have done with it, and to be free again. The women
went on talking and giving out the hay, and encouraging him, and saying
what a good twister of a rope he was, better than their own neighbours
or than anyone they had ever seen. And Hanrahan saw that Oona was
watching him, and he began to twist very quick and with his head high,
and to boast of the readiness of his hands, and the learning he had
in his head, and the strength in his arms. And as he was boasting, he
went backward, twisting the rope always till he came to the door that
was open behind him, and without thinking he passed the threshold and
was out on the road. And no sooner was he there than the mother made
a sudden rush, and threw out the rope after him, and she shut the door
and the half-door and put a bolt upon them.
She was well pleased when she had done that, and laughed out loud, and
the neighbours laughed and praised her. But they heard him beating
at the door, and saying words of cursing outside it, and the mother
had but time to stop Oona that had her hand upon the bolt to open it.
She made a sign to the fiddler then, and he began a reel, and one of
the young men asked no leave but caught hold of Oona and brought her
into the thick of the dance. And when it was over and the fiddle had
stopped, there was no sound at all of anything outside, but the road
was as quiet as before.
As to Hanrahan, when he knew he was shut out and that there was neither
shelter nor drink nor a girl’s ear for him that night, the anger and
the courage went out of him, and he went on to where the waves were
beating on the strand.
He sat down on a big stone, and he began swinging his right arm and
singing slowly to himself, the way he did always to hearten himself
when every other thing failed him. And whether it was that time or
another time he made the song that is called to this day ‘The Twisting
of the Rope,’ and that begins, ‘What was the dead cat that put me in
this place,’ is not known.
But after he had been singing awhile, mist and shadows seemed to gather
about him, sometimes coming out of the sea, and sometimes moving upon
it. It seemed to him that one of the shadows was the queen-woman he had
seen in her sleep at Slieve Echtge; not in her sleep now, but mocking,
and calling out to them that were behind her: ‘He was weak, he was
weak, he had no courage.’ And he felt the strands of the rope in his
hand yet, and went on twisting it, but it seemed to him as he twisted,
that it had all the sorrows of the world in it. And then it seemed to
him as if the rope had changed in his dream into a great water-worm
that came out of the sea, and that twisted itself about him, and held
him closer and closer, and grew from big to bigger till the whole of
the earth and skies were wound up in it, and the stars themselves were
but the shining of the ridges of its skin. And then he got free of it,
and went on, shaking and unsteady, along the edge of the strand, and
the grey shapes were flying here and there around him. And this is what
they were saying, ‘It is a pity for him that refuses the call of the
daughters of the Sidhe, for he will find no comfort in the love of the
women of the earth to the end of life and time, and the cold of the
grave is in his heart for ever. It is death he has chosen; let him die,
let him die, let him die.’