The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath slept very late that morning, but
when she did awaken her impatience was so urgent that she could
scarcely delay to eat her breakfast. Immediately after she had
eaten she put on her bonnet and shawl and went through the pine
wood in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. In a short time she
reached the rocky field, and, walking over to the tree in the
southeast corner, she picked up a small stone and hammered loudly
against the trunk of the tree. She hammered in a peculiar fashion,
giving two knocks and then three knocks, and then one knock. A
voice came up from the hole.
“Who is that, please?” said the voice.
“Ban na Droid of Inis Magrath, and well you know it,” was her reply.
“I am coming up, Noble Woman,” said the voice, and in another
moment the Leprecaun leaped out of the hole.
“Where are Seumas and Brigid Beg?” said the Thin Woman sternly.
“How would I know where they are?” replied the Leprecaun. “Wouldn’t
they be at home now?”
“If they were at home I wouldn’t have come here looking for them,”
was her reply. “It is my belief that you have them.”
“Search me,” said the Leprecaun, opening his waistcoat.
“They are down there in your little house,” said the Thin Woman
angrily, “and the sooner you let them up the better it will be for
yourself and your five brothers.”
“Noble Woman,” said the Leprecaun, “you can go down yourself into
our little house and look. I can’t say fairer than that.”
“I wouldn’t fit down there,” said she. “I’m too big.”
“You know the way for making yourself little,” replied the
Leprecaun.
“But I mightn’t be able to make myself big again,” said the Thin
Woman, “and then you and your dirty brothers would have it all your
own way. If you don’t let the children up,” she continued, “I’ll
raise the Shee of Croghan Conghaile against you. You know what
happened to the Cluricauns of Oilean na Glas when they stole the
Queen’s baby—It will be a worse thing than that for you. If the
children are not back in my house before moonrise this night, I’ll
go round to my people. Just tell that to your five ugly brothers.
Health with you,” she added, and strode away.
“Health with yourself, Noble Woman,” said the Leprecaun, and he
stood on one leg until she was out of sight and then he slid down
into the hole again.
When the Thin Woman was going back through the pine wood she saw
Meehawl MacMurrachu travelling in the same direction and his brows
were in a tangle of perplexity.
“God be with you, Meehawl MacMurrachu,” said she.
“God and Mary be with you, ma’am,” he replied, “I am in great
trouble this day.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” said the Thin Woman.
“I came up to have a talk with your husband about a particular
thing.”
“If it’s talk you want you have come to a good house, Meehawl.”
“He’s a powerful man right enough,” said Meehawl.
After a few minutes the Thin Woman spoke again. “I can get the reek
of his pipe from here. Let you go right in to him now and I’ll stay
outside for a while, for the sound of your two voices would give me
a pain in my head.”
“Whatever will please you will please me, ma’am,” said her
companion, and he went into the little house.
Meehawl MacMurrachu had good reason to be perplexed. He was the
father of one child only, and she was the most beautiful girl in
the whole world. The pity of it was that no one at all knew she
was beautiful, and she did not even know it herself. At times when
she bathed in the eddy of a mountain stream and saw her reflection
looking up from the placid water she thought that she looked very
nice, and then a great sadness would come upon her, for what is the
use of looking nice if there is nobody to see one’s beauty? Beauty,
also, is usefulness. The arts as well as the crafts, the graces
equally with the utilities must stand up in the marketplace and be
judged by the gombeen men.
The only house near to her father’s was that occupied by Bessie
Hannigan. The other few houses were scattered widely with long,
quiet miles of hill and bog between them, so that she had hardly
seen more than a couple of men beside her father since she was
born. She helped her father and mother in all the small businesses
of their house, and every day also she drove their three cows and
two goats to pasture on the mountain slopes. Here through the sunny
days the years had passed in a slow, warm thoughtlessness wherein,
without thinking, many thoughts had entered into her mind and many
pictures hung for a moment like birds in the thin air. At first,
and for a long time, she had been happy enough; there were many
things in which a child might be interested: the spacious heavens
which never wore the same beauty on any day; the innumerable little
creatures living among the grasses or in the heather; the steep
swing of a bird down from the mountain to the infinite plains
below; the little flowers which were so contented each in its
peaceful place; the bees gathering food for their houses, and the
stout beetles who are always losing their way in the dusk. These
things, and many others, interested her. The three cows after they
had grazed for a long time would come and lie by her side and look
at her as they chewed their cud, and the goats would prance from
the bracken to push their heads against her breast because they
loved her.
Indeed, everything in her quiet world loved this girl: but very
slowly there was growing in her consciousness an unrest, a
disquietude to which she had hitherto been a stranger. Sometimes an
infinite weariness oppressed her to the earth. A thought was born
in her mind and it had no name. It was growing and could not be
expressed. She had no words wherewith to meet it, to exorcise or
greet this stranger who, more and more insistently and pleadingly,
tapped upon her doors and begged to be spoken to, admitted and
caressed and nourished. A thought is a real thing and words are
only its raiment, but a thought is as shy as a virgin; unless it
is fittingly apparelled we may not look on its shadowy nakedness:
it will fly from us and only return again in the darkness crying
in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with
aching minds, listening and divining, we at last fashion for it
those symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she could
not understand the touch that came to her from afar and yet how
intimately, the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly personal.
The standard of either language or experience was not hers; she
could listen but not think, she could feel but not know, her eyes
looked forward and did not see, her hands groped in the sunlight
and felt nothing. It was like the edge of a little wind which
stirred her tresses but could not lift them, or the first white
peep of the dawn which is neither light nor darkness. But she
listened, not with her ears but with her blood. The fingers of her
soul stretched out to clasp a stranger’s hand, and her disquietude
was quickened through with an eagerness which was neither physical
nor mental, for neither her body nor her mind was definitely
interested. Some dim region between these grew alarmed and watched
and waited and did not sleep or grow weary at all.
One morning she lay among the long, warm grasses. She watched
a bird who soared and sang for a little time, and then it sped
swiftly away down the steep air and out of sight in the blue
distance. Even when it was gone the song seemed to ring in her
ears. It seemed to linger with her as a faint, sweet echo, coming
fitfully, with little pauses as though a wind disturbed it, and
careless, distant eddies. After a few moments she knew it was not a
bird. No bird’s song had that consecutive melody, for their themes
are as careless as their wings. She sat up and looked about her,
but there was nothing in sight: the mountains sloped gently above
her and away to the clear sky; around her the scattered clumps of
heather were drowsing in the sunlight; far below she could see her
father’s house, a little grey patch near some trees—and then the
music stopped and left her wondering.
She could not find her goats anywhere although for a long time she
searched. They came to her at last of their own accord from behind
a fold in the hills, and they were more wildly excited than she
had ever seen them before. Even the cows forsook their solemnity
and broke into awkward gambols around her. As she walked home that
evening a strange elation taught her feet to dance. Hither and
thither she flitted in front of the beasts and behind them. Her
feet tripped to a wayward measure. There was a tune in her ears
and she danced to it, throwing her arms out and above her head
and swaying and bending as she went. The full freedom of her body
was hers now: the lightness and poise and certainty of her limbs
delighted her, and the strength that did not tire delighted her
also. The evening was full of peace and quietude, the mellow, dusky
sunlight made a path for her feet, and everywhere through the wide
fields birds were flashing and singing, and she sang with them a
song that had no words and wanted none.
The following day she heard the music again, faint and thin,
wonderfully sweet and as wild as the song of a bird, but it was a
melody which no bird would adhere to. A theme was repeated again
and again. In the middle of trills, grace-notes, runs and catches
it recurred with a strange, almost holy, solemnity,—a hushing,
slender melody full of austerity and aloofness. There was something
in it to set her heart beating. She yearned to it with her ears and
her lips. Was it joy, menace, carelessness? She did not know, but
this she did know, that however terrible it was personal to her.
It was her unborn thought strangely audible and felt rather than
understood.
On that day she did not see anybody either. She drove her charges
home in the evening listlessly and the beasts also were very quiet.
When the music came again she made no effort to discover where it
came from. She only listened, and when the tune was ended she saw
a figure rise from the fold of a little hill. The sunlight was
gleaming from his arms and shoulders but the rest of his body was
hidden by the bracken, and he did not look at her as he went away
playing softly on a double pipe.
[Illustration: He stood waist-deep in greenery fronting her
squarely]
The next day he did look at her. He stood waist-deep in greenery
fronting her squarely. She had never seen so strange a face before.
Her eyes almost died on him as she gazed and he returned her look
for a long minute with an intent, expressionless regard. His hair
was a cluster of brown curls, his nose was little and straight, and
his wide mouth drooped sadly at the corners. His eyes were wide and
most mournful, and his forehead was very broad and white. His sad
eyes and mouth almost made her weep.
When he turned away he smiled at her, and it was as though the
sun had shone suddenly in a dark place, banishing all sadness
and gloom. Then he went mincingly away. As he went he lifted the
slender double reed to his lips and blew a few careless notes.
The next day he fronted her as before, looking down to her eyes
from a short distance. He played for only a few moments, and
fitfully, and then he came to her. When he left the bracken the
girl suddenly clapped her hands against her eyes affrighted.
There was something different, terrible about him. The upper part
of his body was beautiful, but the lower part.... She dared not
look at him again. She would have risen and fled away but she
feared he might pursue her, and the thought of such a chase and
the inevitable capture froze her blood. The thought of anything
behind us is always terrible. The sound of pursuing feet is worse
than the murder from which we fly—So she sat still and waited but
nothing happened. At last, desperately, she dropped her hands. He
was sitting on the ground a few paces from her. He was not looking
at her but far away sidewards across the spreading hill. His legs
were crossed; they were shaggy and hoofed like the legs of a goat:
but she would not look at these because of his wonderful, sad,
grotesque face. Gaiety is good to look upon and an innocent face
is delightful to our souls, but no woman can resist sadness or
weakness, and ugliness she dare not resist. Her nature leaps to
be the comforter. It is her reason. It exalts her to an ecstasy
wherein nothing but the sacrifice of herself has any proportion.
Men are not fathers by instinct but by chance, but women are
mothers beyond thought, beyond instinct which is the father of
thought. Motherliness, pity, self-sacrifice—these are the charges
of her primal cell, and not even the discovery that men are
comedians, liars, and egotists will wean her from this. As she
looked at the pathos of his face she repudiated the hideousness of
his body. The beast which is in all men is glossed by women; it is
his childishness, the destructive energy inseparable from youth and
high spirits, and it is always forgiven by women, often forgotten,
sometimes, and not rarely, cherished and fostered.
After a few moments of this silence he placed the reed to his lips
and played a plaintive little air, and then he spoke to her in a
strange voice, coming like a wind from distant places.
“What is your name, Shepherd Girl?” said he.
“Caitilin, Ingin Ni Murrachu,” she whispered.
“Daughter of Murrachu,” said he, “I have come from a far place
where there are high hills. The men and maidens who follow their
flocks in that place know me and love me for I am the Master of
the Shepherds. They sing and dance and are glad when I come to
them in the sunlight; but in this country no people have done any
reverence to me. The shepherds fly away when they hear my pipes in
the pastures; the maidens scream in fear when I dance to them in
the meadows. I am very lonely in this strange country. You also,
although you danced to the music of my pipes, have covered your
face against me and made no reverence.”
“I will do whatever you say if it is right,” said she.
“You must not do anything because it is right, but because it is
your wish. Right is a word and Wrong is a word, but the sun shines
in the morning and the dew falls in the dusk without thinking of
these words which have no meaning. The bee flies to the flower and
the seed goes abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd Girl?—it
is wrong also. I come to you because the bee goes to the flower—it
is wrong! If I did not come to you to whom would I go? There is no
right and no wrong but only the will of the gods.”
“I am afraid of you,” said the girl.
“You fear me because my legs are shaggy like the legs of a goat.
Look at them well, O Maiden, and know that they are indeed the
legs of a beast and then you will not be afraid any more. Do you
not love beasts? Surely you should love them for they yearn to you
humbly or fiercely, craving your hand upon their heads as I do. If
I were not fashioned thus I would not come to you because I would
not need you. Man is a god and a brute. He aspires to the stars
with his head but his feet are contented in the grasses of the
field, and when he forsakes the brute upon which he stands then
there will be no more men and no more women and the immortal gods
will blow this world away like smoke.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” said the girl.
“I want you to want me. I want you to forget right and wrong; to be
as happy as the beasts, as careless as the flowers and the birds.
To live to the depths of your nature as well as to the heights.
Truly there are stars in the heights and they will be a garland for
your forehead. But the depths are equal to the heights. Wondrous
deep are the depths, very fertile is the lowest deep. There are
stars there also, brighter than the stars on high. The name of the
heights is Wisdom and the name of the depths is Love. How shall
they come together and be fruitful if you do not plunge deeply
and fearlessly? Wisdom is the spirit and the wings of the spirit,
Love is the shaggy beast that goes down. Gallantly he dives, below
thought, beyond Wisdom, to rise again as high above these as he had
first descended. Wisdom is righteous and clean, but Love is unclean
and holy. I sing of the beast and the descent: the great unclean
purging itself in fire: the thought that is not born in the measure
or the ice or the head, but in the feet and the hot blood and the
pulse of fury. The Crown of Life is not lodged in the sun: the wise
gods have buried it deeply where the thoughtful will not find it,
nor the good: but the Gay Ones, the Adventurous Ones, the Careless
Plungers, they will bring it to the wise and astonish them. All
things are seen in the light—How shall we value that which is easy
to see? But the precious things which are hidden, they will be more
precious for our search: they will be beautiful with our sorrow:
they will be noble because of our desire for them. Come away with
me, Shepherd Girl, through the fields, and we will be careless and
happy, and we will leave thought to find us when it can, for that
is the duty of thought, and it is more anxious to discover us than
we are to be found.”
So Caitilin Ni Murrachu arose and went with him through the fields,
and she did not go with him because of love, nor because his words
had been understood by her, but only because he was naked and
unashamed.