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THE WIND BLOWETH
by
DONN BYRNE
Author of "Messer Marco Polo," etc.
Illustrated by George Bellows
[Illustration]
New York
The Century Co.
Copyright, 1922, by
The Century Co.
Printed in U. S. A.
A DEDICATION: A PRAYER
Whilst I was working on the various problems of "The Wind
Bloweth"--problems of wisdom, of color, of phrasing, and trying to
capture the elusive, unbearable ache that is the mainspring of humanity,
and doing this through the medium of a race I knew best, a race that
affirms the divinity of Jesus and yet believes in the little people of
the hills, a race that loves its own land, and yet will wander the wide
world over, a race that loves battle, and yet always falls--whilst doing
this, it seemed to me that I was capturing for an instant a beauty that
was dying slowly, imperceptibly, but would soon be gone.
Perhaps it was the lilt of a Gaelic song in these pages that brought a
sorrow on me. That very sweet language will be gone soon, if not gone
already, and no book learning will revive the suppleness of idiom, that
haunting misty loveliness.... It is a very pathetic thing to see a
literature and a romance die.
But then, what ever dies? There is only change. For people in the coming
times the economist and the expert in politics may have the beauty and
wisdom old men have known in poems and strange tales. A mammoth building
is as romantic to a new age as were the subtle carvings of Phidias to
Greeks of old. For the master of commerce an oil-driven steel ship has
the beauty old folk have seen in cloudy pyramids of sail. What we have
considered beautiful will be quaint. And their tolerant smile will hurt
us under the wind-swept grass.
To whomever this writing of mine may give a moment's thought, a moment's
dreaming, I would ask a privilege, to call out of the romantic sunset
the memories of Irish writers whom it is deep in my heart to praise, not
masters of verse, but those whom in English we call novelists, being too
exact in matters of language to name them poets: the Four Masters of
Donegal who dedicated their tradition _do chum gloire De agus onora na h
Eireann_,--to the glory of God and the honor of Ireland,--so high their
motive was. And Thomas Moore, not as author of Irish ballads or of
"Lalla Rookh," but as writer of "The Epicurean." And Lever and Lover.
And William Carleton from the County of Tyrone. And gentle Gerald
Griffin, dead at his desk. And Michael and John Banim, with their
"O'Hara Tales." And Sheridan Le Fanu, and Fitz-James O'Brien, who fell
fighting for America. And Charles Kickham, who wrote "Knocknagow." And I
was all but forgetting Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson's friend.
Old fathers, old masters, I will never believe but that you wrote
because it sprang from you as the lark sings in the high air. No little
sum of money, no great man's patronage, no doffed caps of the populace,
could have moved you to strike out or write in one line. Old fathers,
let me say aloud your names; it will give me bravery. And, sirs, take
this book kindly to you. It is written caring nothing for money, nothing
for light acclaim. Its faults are because I cannot write better yet....
DONN BYRNE
CONTENTS
PART PAGE
I DANCING TOWN 3
II THE WAKE AT ARDEE 57
III THE MOUTH OF HONEY 109
IV THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 169
V THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 229
VI THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 287
VII THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER AND THE GLORY 353
PART ONE
DANCING TOWN
§ 1
Because it was his fourteenth birthday they had allowed him a day off
from school, his mother doubtfully, his uncles Alan and Robin with their
understanding grin. And because there was none else for him to play with
at hurling or foot-ball, the other children now droning in class over
Cæsar's Gallic War, he had gone up the big glen. It was a very
adventurous thing to go up the glen while other boys were droning their
Latin like a bagpipe being inflated, while the red-bearded schoolmaster
drowsed like a dog. First you went down the graveled path, past the
greened sun-dial, then through the gate, then a half-mile or so along
the road, green along the edges with the green of spring, and lined with
the May hawthorn, white, clean as air, with a fragrance like sustained
music, a long rill of rolling white cloud. There was nothing in the
world like the hawthorn. First it put out little bluish-green buds firm
as elastic, and then came a myriad of white stars. And then the white
drift turned a delicate red, dropped, and the scarlet haws came out, a
tasteless bread-like fruit you shared with the birds, and the stone of
it you could whip through your lips like a bullet....
He left the main road and turned into a loaning that came down the
mountain-side, a thing that once might have been a road, if there had
been any need for it, or energy to make it. But now it was only a wedge
of common land bounded on both sides by a low stone wall. Inside one
wall was a path, and inside the other a little rill, and betwixt the two
of them were firm moss and stones. And here the moss was yellowish-green
and there red as blood. And the rill was edged with ferns and queer blue
flowers whose names he did not know in English, and now the water just
gurgled over the rounded stones, and now it dropped into a well where it
was colorless and cold and fresh as the air itself, and oftentimes at
the bottom of a pool like that would be a great green frog with eyes
that popped like the schoolmaster's....
And to the left of the loaning as he walked toward the mountain was a
plantation of fir-trees, twenty acres or more, the property of the third
cousin of his mother's brother-in-law, a melancholy, thin-handed man
who lived on the Mediterranean--a Campbell, too, though one would never
take him for an Ulster Scot, with his la-di-da ways and his Spanish
lady. But the queer thing about the plantation was this, that within,
half a mile through the trees, were the ruins of a house, bare walls and
bracken and a wee place where there were five graves, two of them
children's. A strange thing the lonely graves. In summer the sun would
shine through the clearing of the trees, and there was always a bird
singing somewhere near. But it was a gey lonely place for five folk to
lie there, at all times and seasons, and in the moonlight and in the
sunlight, and when the rain dripped from the fir-trees. And all the
company they had was the red fox slipping through the trees or the
rabbit hopping like a child at play or the hare-wide-eyed in the
bracken. They must have been an unsociable folk in life to build a house
in the woods, and they were an unsociable folk in death not to go to the
common graveyard, where the dead folk were together, warm and kindly
lying gently as in their beds....
He turned now from the loaning to the mountain-side, passing through the
heather on a little path the sheep made with their sharp cloven hoofs.
In single file the sheep would go up the mountain-side, obedient as
nuns, following the tinkle of the wether's bell, and they hunting a new
pasture they would crop like rabbits. Now was a stunted ash, now a
rowan-tree with its red berries--_crann caorthainn_ they call it in
Gaidhlig,--and now was a holly bush would have red berries when all the
bitter fruit of the rowan-tree was gone and the rolling sleets of winter
came over Antrim like a shroud. Everywhere about him now was the
heather, the brown, the purple heather with the perfect little flower
that people called bells, all shades of red it was, and not often you
would come across a sprig of white heather, and white heather brought
you luck, just as much luck as a four-leaved shamrock brought, and
fairer, more gallant luck.
A very silent place a mountain was, wee Shane Campbell thought, not a
lonely but a silent place. A lonely place was a place you might be
afraid, as in a wood, but a mountain was only a place apart. Down in the
fields were the big brooks, with the willow branches and great trout in
the streams; and fat cattle would low with a foolish cry like a man
wouldn't be all there, and come home in the evenings to be milked,
satisfied and comfortable as a minister; wee calves shy as babies;
donkeys with the cross of Christ on their back; goats would butt you
and you not looking; hens a-cackle, and cocks strutting like a
militiaman and him back from the camp; quiet horses had the strength of
twenty men, and scampering colts had legs on them like withes. Up here
was nothing, but you never missed them.
The only thing to break the silence up here was the cry of an occasional
bird, the plaintive call of the plover, the barking of an eagle, the
note of the curlew, a whinny as of a horse of Lilliput, the strange
noise a pheasant makes and it rising from the heather: _whir-r-r_, like
a piece of elastic snapping. Barring these you'd hear nothing at all.
And barring a mountainy man or woman, and they cutting turf, you'd meet
nothing unless it were the sheep.
You'd never hear the sheep, and you coming; you'd turn a wee bluff in
the hill, and there they were looking, a long, solemn, grayish-white
line, with aloof, cold eyes. You could never faze them. They'd look at
you cool as anything, and "What license have you to be here?" you'd
think they were saying. Very stupid, but unco dignified, the sheep.
But up to the top of the mountain, where wee Shane was going, you'd find
no sheep; too bare and rocky there. There'd be nothing there but a
passing bird. On the top of the mountain was a little dark lake into
which you couldn't see more than a foot, though they said the depth of
it went down to the sea. There were no fish in it, people said, and that
was a queer thing, water without fish in it, wee Shane thought, like a
country without inhabitants. In the sea were a power of fish, and in the
rivers were salmon, long and thick as a man, and pike with snouts and
ominous teeth, and furry otters, about which there was great discussion
as to whether they were fish or animal ... In the lake in the
lowlands--Lochkewn, the Quiet Lake--were trout with red and gold and
black speckles; and perch with spiked fins; and dark roach were easy to
catch with a worm; and big gray bream were tasty as to bait, needing
paste held by sheep's wool; and big eels would put a catch in your
breath.
But in the lake on the mountain-top were no fish at all, and that was a
strange thing ...
There was another eery thing about the mountain, and a thing wee Shane
was slightly afraid of. Oftentimes you'd be sitting by that lake, and
sunlight all around you, and you'd turn to come down, and there'd be a
cloud beneath you, a cloud that rolled in armfuls of wool that bound the
mountain as by a ring; and the lonely call of a bird ... and you'd feel
shut off from the kindly earth, as if you were on another planet maybe,
or caught up into the air by some flying demon, and you knew the world
was spinning like a ball through the treeless fields of space.
And what could a wee fellow do up there then but sit quiet and cry and
be terribly afraid? And your cry would be heard no more than the
whinnying of the curlew.... Or you might venture down through it, and
that was more terrible still, for the strange host of the air had their
domicile in the clouds, and there they held cruel congress, speaking in
their speechless tongue, and out of the clouds they took shape and
substance ... their cold, malevolent eyes, their smoky antennæ of hands
... and nothing to turn to for company, not even the moody badger or the
unfriendly sheep. There was no going down. You must stay there by the
lake, and even then the cloud might creep upward until it capped
mountain and lake, and enveloped a wee fellow scared out of his wits....
Nevertheless, he was going to the top of that mountain, clouds or no
clouds. For he had heard it said that the mirage of Portcausey was being
seen again--the Devil's Troopers, and the _Oilean-gan-talamh-ar-bith_,
the Isle of No Land At All, and the Swinging City, and they were to be
seen in the blue heat haze over the sea from the Mountain of Fionn....
And wee Shane was going to see it, clouds or no clouds, host or no host
of the air.
§ 2
He had won half-ways up the mountain now, and from the brae of heather
he could see the glen stretch like a furrow to the sea. The Irish
Channel they called it on the maps in school, but _Struth na Maoile_ it
was to every one in the country-side, the waters of Moyle. Very green,
very near, very gentle they seemed to-day, but often they roared like
giants in frenzy, fanned to fury by the winds of the nine glens, as a
bellows livens a fire. But to-day it was like a lake, so gentle.... And
there was purple Scotland, hardly, you'd think, a stone's throw from the
shore--the Mull of Cantyre, a resounding name, like a line in a poem. It
was from Mull that Moyle came, _maol_ in Gaidhlig, bald or bluff ... a
moyley was a cow without horns. The Lowlanders were coming into the Mull
now, and the Highlanders being pushed north to Argyll, and westward to
the islands, like Oran and Islay. He knew the Islay men, great rugged
fishers with immense hands and their feet small as a girl's. They sang
the saddest sea-chanty in the world:
_'S tric mi sealltuinn o'n chnoc a's airde,
Dh' fheuch am faic mi fear a'bhata;
An tig thu'n aniugh, no'n tig thu amaireach,
'S mur tig thu idir, gur truagh a ta mi._
"From the highest hilltop I watched to see my boatman," went the sense
of it. "Will you come to-day or will you come to-morrow? And if you
never come--O God! help me!"
And there was a chorus to it that was like a keening for the dead:
_Fhir a' bhata na horo eile! Fhir a' bhata na horo eile!
Fhir a' bhata na horo eile! Mo shoraidh slan leat, fhir a' bhata!_
My heart's good-by to you, O man of the boat!
But nearer than Islay was their own Raghery--Rathlin Island the maps had
it--he could see it now to the north. A strange little world of its own,
with great caves where the wind howled like a starving wolf, and the
black divers went into the water like a bullet. It was in the caves of
Raghery that the Bruce took refuge, and it was there he saw the spider
of Scots legend.... Rathlin was queer and queer.... There were many
women with the second sight, it was told, and the men were very big,
very shy, very gentle, except when the drink was in them, and then they
would rage like the sea.
A strange, mystical water, the Moyle, to have two isles in it like Islay
of the pipers and Raghery of the black caves. It was over Moyle that
Columkill went in his little coracle to be a hermit in Iona, the
gentlest saint that Ireland ever knew. And it was over the Moyle that
Patrick came, landing whilst the Druids turned their cursing stones and
could not prevail against him. And it was on the Moyle that the Children
of Lir swam and they turned into three white swans, with their great
white wings like sails and their black feet like sweeps.... And in the
night-time they sang a strange, sad music, and the echoes of it were
still in the nine glens....
And northerly again were the pillars of the Giant's Causeway, blue-black
against the sun. They were made so that the Finn MacCool, the champion
of the giants, could take a running jump over to Scotland and he going
deer-hunting in the forests of Argyll. So the country folk said, but wee
Shane thought different, knew different. The Druids had made it for
their own occult designs, the Druids, that terrible, powerful clan with
their magic batons, and their sinister cursing-stones, and their long,
white, benevolent beards....
And there, green and well kept as a duke's garden, was the Royal Links
of Portrush. And the Irish golfers said that it was harder than St.
Andrew's in Scotland and better kept. There King James had played a game
before he went down to the defeat of the Boyne Water.
"And if he golfed as well as he fought," Shane's Uncle Robin used to
laugh, "they s'ould never have let him tee up a ball on the course!"
_Eigh!_ how wonderful it all was! wee Shane felt: Raghery and the waters
of Moyle; Portrush and the Giant's Causeway; the nine glens with the
purple heather, and the streams that sang as they cantered to the sea;
the crowing grouse and the whinnying curlew, and the eagles barking on
the cliffs; the trout that rose in the summer's evening, and the red
berries of the rowan; the cold, clear lakes, and the braes where the
blueberries grow. He could well understand the stories they told of
Napper Tandy, and the great rebel in the gardens of Versailles. Napoleon
had found him weeping amid all that beauty.
"Don't be afraid, Napper Tandy. I shall keep my word and send General
Hoche to Ireland."
"It's not that, sir; it's not that." And Tandy could not keep the tears
back. "Och, County Antrim, it's far I'm from you now!"
§ 3
He had reached the cairn of round stones that marks the town land of
Drimsleive, and was turning the brae when a voice called to him:
"Eh, wee fellow, is it mitching from school you are?"
An old woman in a plaid shawl was coming slowly down the hillside. He
recognized her for Bridget Roe MacFarlane of Cushendhu, a cotter tenant
of his Uncle Alan's.
"No, cummer," he told her; "I'm not mitching. I got the day off."
"For God's sake! if it isn't wee Shane Campbell! And what are doing up
the mountain, wee Shane?"
"Ah, just dandering."
"I was up mysel'," she went on, "to the top of it, because I heard tell
there was a cure for sore eyes in the bit lake on the top. Not that I
put much store in such cures, but there's no use letting anything by. I
got a pair of specs from a peddling man of Ballymena," said she, "but
they don't seem to do me much good. I'm queer and afeared about my
eyes, hinny. It would be a hard thing for me to go blind and none about
the wee bit house but mysel'."
"Ay! I should think it would be a terrible thing to be a dark person,"
wee Shane nodded.
"Och, it wouldn't be so bad if you were born that way, for you'd know no
different. And if you went blind and you young, there's things you could
take up to take the strain from your head like a man takes up piping.
When you're old it's gey hard. If you're an old man itself, it's not so
bad, for there'll always be a soft woman to take care of you. But if
you're an old cummer, without chick or child, it's hard, _agra vig_. My
little love, it's hard."
"Maybe it's in your head, Bridget Roe. My Uncle Robin says there's a lot
of sickness that's just in your head."
"I trust to my God so, and maybe your Uncle Robin's right, for there
does be a lot in my head, and it going around like a spinning-wheel. I'm
a experienced woman, wee Shane, too experienced, and that's the trouble.
You've no' heard because you're too young and you would no' understand.
I was away from here for twenty years," she said, "for more nor twenty.
And I knew a power of men in my time, big men, were needful of me. And
a power of trouble I raised, too, and it does be coming back to me and
me in my old days.... But you'll be wanting to be getting on?"
"Och, no, Bridgeen Roe; there's no hurry."
"It does me good to have a wee crack, the folk I see are so few ... Aye!
There was a power of trouble. There were two men killed themselves and
families broken up all by reason of me. I meant no harm, wee Shane, but
it happened, and it does be troubling me in my old days. And I sit there
afeared by the peat fire, and when I've thought too much on it, I get up
and go to the half-door. And I look out on the Moyle, wee Shane, and I
think: that's been roaring since the first tick of time, and I see the
stars so many of them, and the moon that never changed its shape or
size, and it comes to me that nothing matters in the long run, that the
killed men were no more nor caught trout, and the rent families no more
nor birds' nests fallen from a tree.... None of us are big enough that
anything we do matters.... And then another feeling comes on me, that
God is around, and that He'll be dreadful hard.... And a wee bit of luck
comes my way. The hens, maybe, are laying well, and there's a high price
on the eggs, and I think, sure He's the Kindly Man, after all.... But
if my eyes leave me, Shane Beg, what will I do? Sure, I won't have the
moon or the stars or the waters of Moyle to put things in their place.
And there'll be no luck about me, so as I'll know Himself is the
Unforgiving Man."
"But some one will take care of you, Bridget Roe."
"And who, _agra_? 'Tis not me to go to the poorhouse, and take charity
like a cold potato. And my name is MacFarlane, wee Shane, and they're a
clan that fights till it dies, that never gives in. And it isn't to the
big ones I knew I'd be writing for help.... Sure I see them now, what's
left alive of them, sitting by their firesides, figuring out their life,
and tired with the puzzle of it; and then they'll remember me for an
instant, and a wee joy will come to them in the dim twilight. They'll
remember as you'd remember an old song you hadn't rightly got the air
of. But you knew it was sweet and there was a grand swing to it.... Aye,
they'll remember me, and they looking into the heart of the fire.... And
you wouldn't have me write them now and tell them I'm only an old
_cailleach_ in a cabin on the mountain-side, and my eyes, that they'll
remember, are dull like marbles.... You wouldn't understand, wee
Shane.... But I'm blethering too much about myself. And where is it you
were going, my little jo? Where is it?"
"I heard tell the Dancers were to be seen from the mountain-top over the
sea, and I thought maybe I'd go up and gi'e them a look, cummer ... just
a look."
"So you would, wee Shane, so you would. You wouldn't be your father's
son or your uncles' nephew if you were to let a marvel like that pass
by. It's after adventure you are, and you only four and ten years old.
'T is early you begin, the Campbells of Cosnamara.
"But sure that isn't adventure, cummer, to be seeing the Dancers in the
heat haze of the day. Adventures are robbers and fighting Indians and
things like in Sir Walter Scott."
"Oh, sure everything's adventure, hinny, every time you go looking for
something queer and strange, and something with a fine shape and color
to it. Adventure isn't in the quick fist and the nimble foot; it's in
the hungry heart and the itching mind. Isn't it myself that knows, that
was a wild and wilful girl, and went out into the world for more nor
twenty years, and came back the like of an old bitch fox, harried by
hunting, and looking for and mindful of the burrow where she was
thrown?... As we're made, we're made, wee fellow; you're either a
salmon that hungers for the sea, or a cunning old trout that kens its
own pool and is content.... Adventures! Hech aye!"
"Well, I hope your eyes get better, cummer. I do so."
"I know you mean it, Shaneen Beg, and maybe your wish will help them,
maybe it will."
"Well, I'll be going on my way, Bridget Roe."
"And I'll be finishing mines, wee Shane Campbell. And I hope to my God
you're better off at the end nor me--me that once talked to earls and
barons, and now clucks to a wheen o' hens; me that once had my coach and
pair, and now have only an ass with a creel o' turf; and no care of
money once on me, and now all I have is my spinning-wheel, and the flax
not what it used to be, but getting coarser. And my eyes going out, that
were the delight of many ... I hope you're better off nor me at the end
of the hard and dusty road, wee Shane. I hope to my God so...."
§ 4
He thought hard of what the cummer of Cushendhu had said about his
family, and he on the last leg of the mountain. That he was his
father's son puzzled him more than that he was his uncles' nephew, for
there was little mention of his father in the house. At the dead man's
name his prim Huguenot mother from Nantes pursed her mouth, and in her
presence even his uncles were uncomfortable, those great, gallant men.
All he knew was that his father, Colquitto Campbell, had been a great
Gaelic poet, and that his father and mother had not quite been good
friends. Once his Uncle Robin had stopped before a ballad-singer in
Ballycastle when the man was striking up a tune:
On the deck of this lonely ship to America bound,
A husk in my throat and a mist of tears in my eyes--
His Uncle Robin had given the man a guinea.
"Why for did you give the singing man a golden piece, Uncle Robin?"
"For the sake of an old song, laddie, an old and sad song.... A song
your father made.... It was like seeing his ghost...."
"But my father, Uncle Robin--"
"Your father was the heart of corn, wee Shane, for all they say against
him.... I never knew a higher, cleaner heart, but he was easy
discourag't.... Aye, easy thrown down and easy led away.... I was fond
of him.... Am ... always, and no matter.... However ... shall we go and
see the racing boats, wee fellow?"
And that was all he ever got from Uncle Robin. But he knew some of his
father's songs that were sung in the country-side ...
_Is truagh, a ghradh, gan me agas thu im Bla chliath!
No air an traigh bhain an ait nach robh duine riamh,
Seachd oidhche, seachd la, gan tamh, gan chodal, gan bhiadh,
Ach thusa bhi 'm ghraidh's lamh geal thardam gu fial!_
"O God! my loved one, that you and I were in Dublin town! Or on a white
strand, where no foot ever touched before. Day in, night in, without
food or sleep, what mattered it? But you to be loving me and your white
arm around me so generously!"
He couldn't understand the song, though the lilt of the words captured
him. What should people accept being without food or sleep? And what
good was a white arm generously around one? However, that was love, and
it was a mystery.... But that song could not have been to his mother. He
could not imagine her being generous with even a white arm. And none
would want to be with her on a strand without food or sleep; that he
instinctively felt. She was a high, proud cliff, stern and proud and
beautiful, and that song was a song of May-time and the green
rushes....
And other songs of his father's were sung: "Maidne Fhoghmhair--Autumn
Mornings," and "In Uir-chill an Chreagain--In the Green Graveyard of
Creggan...."
A queer thing that all that should be left of his father was a chill
silence and a song a man might raise at the rising of the moon....
Silent he was in his grave, dumb as a stone, and all his uncles were
silent, too, barring the little smile at the corners of their mouths,
that was but the murmuring of the soul.... There were paintings of them
all and they young in the house, their high heads, their hawks' eyes,
Alan and Robin and Mungo.... And Mungo, too, was dead with Wellington in
the Peninsula. He and three of his men were all left of the Antrim
company. "Christ! have I lost this fight, too?" He laughed and a French
ball took him in the gullet. "Be damned to that!" He coughed. "He might
have got me in a cleaner place!" And that was the end of Mungo....
And Alan had gone with Sir John Franklin to the polar seas, and come
back with the twisted grin. "'T was a grand thing you did, Alan, to live
through and come back from the wasted lands." "'T was a grand thing they
did, to find the channel o' trade. But me, I went to find the north
pole, with the white bear by the side of it, like you see in the
story-books. And I never got within the length of Ireland o' 't! Trade,
aye; but what's trade to me? It's a unco place, the world!"
His father he could imagine: "Poor Colquitto Campbell! He wanted to bark
like an eagle, and he made a wee sweet sound, like a canary-bird! Ah,
well, give the bottle the sunwise turn, man o' the house, and come
closer to me, a _bheilin tana nan bpog_, O slender mouth of the kisses!"
His father, wee Shane thought, must have worn the twisted grin, too.
He knew what the twisted grin meant. It meant defeat. He had seen it on
his Uncle Alan's face when he lost the championship of Ireland on the
golf links of Portrush. And that morning he had been so confident! "'T
is the grand golf I'll play the day, and the life tingling in my
finger-tips!" And great golf he did play, with his ripping passionate
shots, but a thirty-foot putt on the home green beat him. All through
the match his face had been dour, but now came the outstretched hand and
the smile at the corner of the mouth:
"Congratulations, sir! 'T is yourself has the grand eye for the hard
putt on the tricky green!"
The wee grin meant that Alan had been beaten.
And Uncle Robin, too, the wisest and oldest of them all, who had been to
Arabia and had been all through Europe and was Goethe's friend, he had
the twisted grin of the beaten man. Only occasionally you could get past
the grin of Uncle Robin, as he had gotten past it the day Uncle Robin
had spoken of his brother, Shane's father. And sometimes when a great
hush was on the mountains and the Moyle was silent, Uncle Robin would
murmer a verse of his great poet friend's:
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
The sharp u's and heavy gutturals were so like Gaidhlig, it seemed queer
wee Shane could not understand the poem; but Uncle Robin translated it
into Gaidhlig:
_Os cionn na morbheanna
Ta sith_--
And the melody of it was like the plucking of a harper's strings. So
much in so little, and every note counted, and the last line like a dim
quaint bar:
_Beidh sith agad fein!_ "You will rest, too!"
A queer thing, the men who were beaten and smiled. A queer thing the men
who, beaten, were more gallant than the winners. A queer thing for the
cummer of Cushendhu to say, she who was so wise after the hot
foolishness of youth, that he was his uncles' nephew and his father's
son. A queer thing that. A queer, dark, and secret thing.
§ 5
The memory of his Uncle Robin stuck in his mind and he going up the
mountain. His Uncle Robin knew all there was to be known in the world,
the immense learned man. When he was spoken to of anything strange, he
had always an explanation for it. When the mirage off Portrush was
mentioned, he could talk at length of strange African mirages that the
travelers see in the desert at the close of day, oases and palm-trees
and minarets, so you would think you were near to a town or a green
pasture and you miles and miles away. And there was a sight to be seen
off Sicily that the ignorant Italian people thought was the work of
Morgan le Fay. And in the Alps was a horror men spoke of and called the
Specter of the Brocken.
All these strange occurrences were as simple as the alphabet to Uncle
Robin. He would explain it as a sight reflected on the cloud and thrown
on a sea of mist or a desert as on a screen, using difficult words, like
"refraction," and words from Euclid, like "angles." But Uncle Alan would
object, Uncle Alan mistrusting difficult words and words from Euclid.
Alan would raise his head from splicing a fishing-rod or cleaning the
lock of a gun or polishing a snaffle:
"You were ay the one for explanations, Robin. Maybe you've got an
explanation for the gift?" By the gift Uncle Alan meant the second
sight.
"Ah, sure; 't is only mind reading and sympathy."
"O my God! Now listen, Robin. You ken when you dragged me from the
horse-show the last time we were in Dublin, to the library of the
What-you-may-call-him--Archæological Society or so'thin'. You ken the
book you showed me about Antrim, and what was seen off the cliffs one
time. There was a great black arm in the air, and a hand to the wrist
of it, and to the shoulder a crosspiece with a ring, like one end of an
anchor. And that disappeared. And then immediately there showed a ship,
with the masts and sails and tackles and men, and it sailed stern
foremost and it sank stern foremost, all in the red sky. And then there
was a fort with a castle on the top of it and there were fire and smoke
coming out of it, as if a grand fight was on. And the fort divided into
two ships, that chased each other, and then sank. Then there was a
chariot with two horses, and chasing that was a strange thing like a
serpent, a snake's head at one end, and a bulk at the other like a
snail's house. And it gained on the chariot and gave it a blow. And out
of the chariot came a bull, and after it came a dog, and the bull and
the dog fought as in a gaming-pit. And then suddenly all was clear, no
cloud or mist or anything in the northern air. Am I right or am n't I?
Wasn't that in the book, Robin More?"
"It was."
"And now, Robin, my man, wasn't that signed by respectable people: Mr.
Allye, a minister, and a Lieutenant Dunsterville and a Lieutenant Dwine
and Mr. Bates and twelve others, all of whom saw it near or around the
time of the Boyne Water? Wasn't it signed by the decent people?"
"It was."
"And what explanation have you got for that, you and your master of arts
of Trinity College!"
"They were daft--gone in the head. Daft or drunk."
"My song! And maybe John was daft when he saw the vision of Patmos!"
"I would no' be surprised."
"Na, Robin More; you would not be surprised if you saw a trout that
cantered or a horse that flew. You'd have an explanation. You're the
queer hard man to live with, Robin, with your explanations."
Willie John Boyd, the servant boy, removed his cutty pipe and hazarded a
suggestion.
"Queer things happened in the auld days."
"If there were queerer things nor you in the auld days," Alan laughed,
"it must have been like a circus."
But mightn't they both be right? wee Shane thought, and he trudging up
the mountain-side. His Uncle Alan knew an awful lot. There was none
could coax a trout from a glass-clear pool with a dry fly like Alan
Campbell. He knew the weather, when it would storm and when it would
clear, and from what point the wind would blow to-morrow. He could nurse
along the difficult flax and knew the lair of the otter and had a great
eye for hunting fox and a better eye for a horse than a Gipsy. Might
there not be things in nature, as he said, that none knew of? And
mightn't there be explanations for them, as Uncle Robin, who had read
every book, claimed there were? Mightn't they both be right, who thought
each other wrong, and they arguing by the red fire, fighting and
snarling like dogs and loving each other with the strange soft love of
lovers when the trees are a-rustle and the moon high?
§ 6
He had thought to come up to the top of the mountain where the cairn
was, and the dark and deepest lake, and to sit down in the heather and
wait half an hour maybe while the curlew called, and then have Dancing
Town take form and color before his eyes, hold it until every detail was
visible, and then fade gently out as twilight fades into night. He had
thought to be prepared and receptive.
But suddenly it was upon him, in the air, over the waters of Moyle....
A sweep of fear ran over him, and he grew cold, so strange it was, so
against nature. Clear and high, as in some old print, and white and
green, the town and shore came to him. The May afternoon was in it, hot
and golden, but the town itself was in morning sunlight. A clutter of
great houses and little houses, all white, a great church, and a squat
dun fort, and about it and in it were green spaces and palm-trees that
swayed to a ghostly breeze. And the green ran down to a white beach, and
on the beach foamy waves curled like a man's beard. And in the air the
town quivered and danced, as imaged trees seem to dance on running
water....
On one side was Ireland, and _on one_ side was Scotland, and high in the
air between them was Dancing Town....
No one was in the streets that wee Shane could see, and yet the town was
lifeful, some tropical city where the green jalousies were closed in the
heat of the midday sun, and where no one was on the streets, barring
some unseen old beggar or peddling woman drowsing in the shade. The town
was sleeping not with the sleep of Scotland, that is the sleep of dead
majestic, melancholy kings, nor with the sleep of Ireland, that is
tired and harassed and old. It was not as lonely as sleeping lakes are
where the bittern booms like a drum.... It slept as a child sleeps, lips
apart and chubby fingers uncurled, and happy.... And all the time it
quivered in the clear air....
In the morning, wee Shane thought, it woke to bright happiness, the
green parrakeets chattered, the monkeys whistled, the lizards basked in
the sun. And the generation of the town came out and gossiped and worked
merrily, until the heat of the sun began to strike with the strokes of a
mallet, and then they went into the cool, dark houses and slept as
children sleep. And then came blue twilight, and lamps were lit in the
green spaces, and into the odorous night would come the golden rounded
women with smiles like honey, and the graceful feline men.... A woman's
laughter, a man's song.... And the moon rising on tropic seas, while a
guitar hummed with a deep vibrant note.... And the perfume of strange
tropic trees....
But meantime the town danced in the clear air.... And--
"It's gone!" said wee Shane.
One moment it was there, and the next there were only Ireland and
Scotland and the waters of Moyle, and a ship going drowsily for the
Clyde.
And for a long time he waited, thinking Dancing Town might come again.
But it did not come. The schooner off the Mull lay over, and the Moyle
awoke. A breeze rambled up the mountain, and the heather tinkled its
strange dry tinkle. And afar off a curlew called, and a grouse crowed in
defiance.
The moment of magic was by, and wee Shane went down the mountain.
§ 7
As he went down the mountain he tried to puzzle out the why and
wherefore of Dancing Town.
Of course there were things you could not explain, like the banshee; or
the Naked Hangman, who strides through the valleys on midsummer's eve
with his gallows under his arm; or the Death Coach, with its headless
horses and its headless driver. There was no use bringing these matters
up to Uncle Robin. Uncle Robin would only laugh and shout: "Havers,
bairn! Wha's been filling your wee head with nonsense?" But you could no
more deny their existence than you could that of Apollyon, whom you read
about in "Pilgrim's Progress," and who wandered up and down the world
and to and fro in it; or of the fairies, whose sweet little piping many
heard at night as they passed the forts of the little people; or of the
tiny cobbling leprechawns, who knew where the Danes had hid their store
of gold in crocks such as hold butter.... Of these there was no
explanation but the Act of God. And Uncle Robin was queer. He put no
store in the Act of God.
[Illustration]
Now, if it had been an angel he had seen in the high air, it would have
been the Act--or the banshee, and her crooning and keening by the
riverside, with her white cloak, her red, burnished hair.... But it was
an island he had seen, a dancing town, with his own hard wee Scots-Irish
eyes. And that was not an Act of God; it was a fact, and so outside his
Uncle Alan's bailiwick and within his Uncle Robin's. His Uncle Robin
would say it was the reflected image of some place in the world. Aye,
he'd take his Uncle Robin's word for that. But where was it? Surely, as
yet, it was undiscovered. It had the quiet of a June evening, that land
had, and a grand shimmering beauty.... And if it was known where it was,
wouldn't the mountainy folk be leaving their cabins, and the strong
farmers their plowed lands, and the whining tinkers be hoofing the road
for it? If it was known where that land was....
It occurred to him it must have been that land his father meant and he
writing his poem of the Green Graveyard of Creggan. While he was
sleeping under the weeping yew-trees the young queen had touched the
sleeping poet on the shoulder.
"_A shiolaigh charthannaigh_," she said, "O kindly kinsman, _na
caithtear thusa ins na nealtaibh broin_, let you not be thrown under the
clouds of sorrow! _Acht eirigh in do sheasamh_, but rise in your
standing, _agas gluais liomsa siar' sa' rod_, and travel with me
westward in the road. _Go Tir Dheas na Meala_, to the shimmering land of
honey where the foreigner has not the sway. And you will find pleasantry
in white halls persuading me to the strains of music."
Surely his father, too, had seen Dancing Town!
And it was an old story that Oisin had found it, when he rode with the
princess over the waves on a white horse whose hoofs never touched
water, and he abode with her in _Tir nan Og_, in the Land of Them Who
are Young, for a thousand years or more, until the great homesickness
for Ireland took him, that takes the strongest, and he came for a visit
on the white horse; but the girths of the saddle broke, and he fell to
the ground, and the horse flew away. And he who had been strong and
young and beautiful became old and bald and blind, and Patrick of the
Bells and Crosses took him, and put him with the groaning penitents, who
beat their breasts under the fear of hell. And he, who had known Tir nan
Og and the Silver Woman, was a drooling ancient with a wee lad to lead
him.... But that was just a winter's tale with no sense to it.
But there were other things in books that had the ring of truth to them.
There was the voyage of Maeldun, who had set out in his coracle, and
visited strange islands. The Island of Huge Ants was one, and wee Shane
had seen in his geography book pictures of armadillos, and he shrewdly
surmised that Maeldun had been to South America. And there was the
Island of Red-Hot Animals, but that was a poser. Still and all, the
rhinoceros had armor like an old knight's, and that would surely get
red-hot under the suns of the equator. It would explain, too, why the
rhinoceros favored the water, like a cow in July.... Sure that was it:
Maeldun had been to Africa. And Maeldun, too, had found the Fortunate
Isle. Brendan, too, had known it. Wasn't it in old charts--St. Brendan's
Isle? He said he found it, and surely a saint of God wouldn't lie....
Och, it was there somewhere, but people were different from what they
were in the ancient days. They didn't bother. If they had told his
father about it, sure all Colquitto would have done was to call for pen
and paper.
"_Mo bhron air an fhairrge_," he would have written: "My grief on the
sea--how it comes between me and the land where my mind might be easy--"
And then he'd have lain back and chanted it. "'_Avourneen_, did you ever
in all your life hear a poem as good as my poem? Sure old Homer's
jealous in the black clouds. Was there ever a Greek poet the equal of a
Gaelic one? _Anois, teacht an Earraigh_--now the moment spring comes in,
't is I will hoist sail, _inneosad mo sheol_...."
And Alan Donn might have started to find it, but at the first golf links
he'd stop, "to take the conceit out of the local people, and to give
them something to talk of, and they old men," or to match his coursing
greyhound against any dog in the world for a ten-pound note, or to
deluther some red-cheeked likely woman....
And Uncle Robin might hear of it, and he'd sit down and write a book,
saying where it probably was, and how you might get there, and what the
people were like, and whom they were probably descended from.... And
the book would be in all the libraries of the world, and people would be
writing him telling him what a great head was on him, and he'd mutter:
"Nonsense! Nonsense! All nonsense!" and stroke his great red beard....
But wouldn't it be the funny thing, the queer and funny thing, if he
himself, wee Shane Campbell, were to go out and discover that island,
and to own it, and to have it marked in the maps and charts, "Wee Shane
Campbell's Island," for all to read and see?...
"Decent wee fellow, is it about here somewhere the house of the McFees?"
Shane had turned into the main road that ran along the sea-shore on the
way homeward when the voice hailed him. It was a great black-bearded
man, sitting on the ditch, holding his shoes in his hand. His face was
tanned to mahogany, and in his ears were little gold rings. He wore
clothes that were obviously new, obviously uncomfortable.
"If you keep on the road about a half a mile and then turn to the left,
and keep on there until you come to a loaning near a well with a
hawthorn-bush couching over it, and turn to the left down that loaning,
you'll come to it. It's a wee thatched house, needing a coat of
whitewash. It's got a byre with a slate roof, and a rowan-tree near it.
You canna' miss it."
"Now isn't that the queer thing," the big man said, "me that thought I
knew every art and part of this country, and that could find my way in
the dark from Java Head to Poplar Parish, can't remember the place where
I was born and reared? Forty years of traveling on the main ocean and
thinking long for this place, and now when I come back I know no more
about it than a fish does of dry land." He stood up painfully. "And me
that thought I would come back leaping like a hare am now killed
entirely with the soreness of my feet."
"You're not accustomed to walking, then, honest man?"
"'Deed, and you may say I'm not, decent wee fellow. I'm a sailorman, and
aboard ship there's very little use for the feet. You've got to be quick
as a fish with the hands, and have great strength in the arms of you.
And you must have toes to grip, and thighs to brace you against the
heeling timbers. But to be walking somewhere for long, hitting the road
with your feet like you'd be hitting a wall with your head, it's
unnatural to a sailing man. A half a mile, did you say?"
"Honest man," said wee Shane, troubled, "are you looking for any one in
the house of the McFees?"
"For a woman that bore me and put me to her breast. An old woman now,
decent wee fellow."
"You'll no' find her, honest man."
"She's dead?"
"I saw her with the pennies on her eyes not two months gone."
"So my mother's dead," said the big man. "So my mother's dead. Ah, well,
all her troubles are over. It's forty years since I saw her, and she the
strapping woman. And in forty years she must have had a power of
trouble."
"She looked unco peaceful, honest man."
"The dead are always peaceful, decent wee fellow. So my mother's dead.
Well, that alters things."
"You'll be staying at home then, honest man?"
"I'll be going back to sea, decent wee fellow. I had intended to stay at
home and be with the old woman in her last days, the like of a pilot
that brings a ship in, as you might say. But it would have been queer
and hard. Herself, now, had no word of English?"
"Old Annapla McFee spoke only the Gaidhlig."
"And the Gaidhlig is gone from me, as the flower goes from the
fruit-tree. And there could have been little conversation betwixt us,
she remembering fairs and dances and patterns in the Gaidhlig, and me
thinking of strange foreign ports in the English tongue. Poor company
I'd have been for an old woman and she making her last mooring. I'd have
been little assistance. Forty years between us--strange ports and deep
soundings. Oh, we'd have been making strange."
"Ah, maybe not, honest man."
"How could it have been any other way, decent wee lad? She'd have been
the strange, pitiful old cummer to me, who minded her the strapping
woman, and I'd have been a queer bearded man to her, who minded me only
as a wee fellow, the terror of the glen. People change every day, and
there's a lot of change in forty years.
"And, besides, it would have been gey hard on me, wee lad. The grape and
spade would be clumsy to my hands, there being no life to them after the
swinging spars. And my fingers, used to splicing rope, would not have
the touch for milking a cow. And I'd feel lost, wee fellow, some day and
me plowing a field, to see a fine ship on the waters, out of Glasgow
port for the Plate maybe, and to think of it off the Brazils, and the
pampero coming quick as a thrown knife, and me not aboard to help
shorten sail or take a trick at the wheel. And it might have made me
ugly toward the old woman. And I wouldn't have had that at all, at
all.... But she's finished the voyage, poor cummer.... And it's a high
ship and a capstan shanty for me again ... all's well...."
"It's a wonder, honest man, you wouldn't stay on land at peace and you
forty years at sea."
"Well, it's a queer thing, decent wee fellow, but once you get the salt
water in your blood you're gone. A queer itching is in your veins. It's
like a disease. It is so. It spoils you for the fire on winter nights
and for the hay-fields in the month o' June. And it puts a great bar
between you and the folk o' dry land, such as there is between a
fighting man and a cowardly fellow. It's the salt in the blood, I think;
but you'd have to ask a doctor about that.