One winter evening an old knight in rusted chain-armour rode slowly
along the woody southern slope of Ben Bulben, watching the sun go down
in crimson clouds over the sea. His horse was tired, as after a long
journey, and he had upon his helmet the crest of no neighbouring lord or
king, but a small rose made of rubies that glimmered every moment to a
deeper crimson. His white hair fell in thin curls upon his shoulders,
and its disorder added to the melancholy of his face, which was the face
of one of those who have come but seldom into the world, and always for
its trouble, the dreamers who must do what they dream, the doers who
must dream what they do.
After gazing a while towards the sun, he let the reins fall upon the
neck of his horse, and, stretching out both arms towards the west, he
said, 'O Divine Rose of Intellectual Flame, let the gates of thy peace
be opened to me at last!' And suddenly a loud squealing began in the
woods some hundreds of yards further up the mountain side. He stopped
his horse to listen, and heard behind him a sound of feet and of voices.
'They are beating them to make them go into the narrow path by the
gorge,' said someone, and in another moment a dozen peasants armed with
short spears had come up with the knight, and stood a little apart from
him, their blue caps in their hands. Where do you go with the
spears?' he asked; and one who seemed the leader answered: 'A troop of
wood-thieves came down from the hills a while ago and carried off the
pigs belonging to an old man who lives by Glen Car Lough, and we turned
out to go after them. Now that we know they are four times more than we
are, we follow to find the way they have taken; and will presently tell
our story to De Courcey, and if he will not help us, to Fitzgerald; for
De Courcey and Fitzgerald have lately made a peace, and we do not know
to whom we belong.'
'But by that time,' said the knight, 'the pigs will have been eaten.'
'A dozen men cannot do more, and it was not reasonable that the whole
valley should turn out and risk their lives for two, or for two dozen
pigs.'
'Can you tell me,' said the knight, 'if the old man to whom the pigs
belong is pious and true of heart?'
'He is as true as another and more pious than any, for he says a prayer
to a saint every morning before his breakfast.'
'Then it were well to fight in his cause,' said the knight, 'and if you
will fight against the wood-thieves I will take the main brunt of the
battle, and you know well that a man in armour is worth many like these
wood-thieves, clad in wool and leather.'
And the leader turned to his fellows and asked if they would take the
chance; but they seemed anxious to get back to their cabins.
'Are the wood-thieves treacherous and impious?'
'They are treacherous in all their dealings,' said a peasant, 'and no
man has known them to pray.'
'Then,' said the knight, 'I will give five crowns for the head of every
wood-thief killed by us in the fighting'; and he bid the leader show the
way, and they all went on together. After a time they came to where a
beaten track wound into the woods, and, taking this, they doubled back
upon their previous course, and began to ascend the wooded slope of the
mountains. In a little while the path grew very straight and steep,
and the knight was forced to dismount and leave his horse tied to a
tree-stem. They knew they were on the right track: for they could see
the marks of pointed shoes in the soft clay and mingled with them the
cloven footprints of the pigs. Presently the path became still more
abrupt, and they knew by the ending of the cloven foot-prints that the
thieves were carrying the pigs. Now and then a long mark in the clay
showed that a pig had slipped down, and been dragged along for a little
way. They had journeyed thus for about twenty minutes, when a confused
sound of voices told them that they were coming up with the thieves. And
then the voices ceased, and they understood that they had been overheard
in their turn. They pressed on rapidly and cautiously, and in about five
minutes one of them caught sight of a leather jerkin half hidden by a
hazel-bush. An arrow struck the knight's chain-armour, but glanced off
harmlessly, and then a flight of arrows swept by them with the buzzing
sound of great bees. They ran and climbed, and climbed and ran towards
the thieves, who were now all visible standing up among the bushes
with their still quivering bows in their hands: for they had only their
spears and they must at once come hand to hand. The knight was in the
front and smote down first one and then another of the wood-thieves. The
peasants shouted, and, pressing on, drove the wood-thieves before them
until they came out on the flat top of the mountain, and there they saw
the two pigs quietly grubbing in the short grass, so they ran about them
in a circle, and began to move back again towards the narrow path: the
old knight coming now the last of all, and striking down thief after
thief. The peasants had got no very serious hurts among them, for he had
drawn the brunt of the battle upon himself, as could well be seen from
the bloody rents in his armour; and when they came to the entrance of
the narrow path he bade them drive the pigs down into the valley, while
he stood there to guard the way behind them. So in a moment he was
alone, and, being weak with loss of blood, might have been ended there
and then by the wood-thieves he had beaten off, had fear not made them
begone out of sight in a great hurry.
An hour passed, and they did not return; and now the knight could stand
on guard no longer, but had to lie down upon the grass. A half-hour
more went by, and then a young lad with what appeared to be a number of
cock's feathers stuck round his hat, came out of the path behind him,
and began to move about among the dead thieves, cutting their heads off,
Then he laid the heads in a heap before the knight, and said: 'O great
knight, I have been bid come and ask you for the crowns you promised
for the heads: five crowns a head. They bid me tell you that they have
prayed to God and His Mother to give you a long life, but that they are
poor peasants, and that they would have the money before you die. They
told me this over and over for fear I might forget it, and promised to
beat me if I did.'
The knight raised himself upon his elbow, and opening a bag that hung to
his belt, counted out the five crowns for each head. There were thirty
heads in all.
'O great knight,' said the lad, 'they have also bid me take all care of
you, and light a fire, and put this ointment upon your wounds.' And he
gathered sticks and leaves together, and, flashing his flint and steel
under a mass of dry leaves, had made a very good blaze. Then, drawing of
the coat of mail, he began to anoint the wounds: but he did it clumsily,
like one who does by rote what he had been told. The knight motioned him
to stop, and said: 'You seem a good lad.'
'I would ask something of you for myself.'
'There are still a few crowns,' said the knight; 'shall I give them to
you?'
'O no,' said the lad. 'They would be no good to me. There is only one
thing that I care about doing, and I have no need of money to do it. I
go from village to village and from hill to hill, and whenever I come
across a good cock I steal him and take him into the woods, and I keep
him there under a basket until I get another good cock, and then I set
them to fight. The people say I am an innocent, and do not do me any
harm, and never ask me to do any work but go a message now and then. It
is because I am an innocent that they send me to get the crowns: anyone
else would steal them; and they dare not come back themselves, for now
that you are not with them they are afraid of the wood-thieves. Did you
ever hear how, when the wood-thieves are christened, the wolves are made
their god-fathers, and their right arms are not christened at all?'
'If you will not take these crowns, my good lad, I have nothing for you,
I fear, unless you would have that old coat of mail which I shall soon
need no more.'
'There was something I wanted: yes, I remember now,' said the lad. 'I
want you to tell me why you fought like the champions and giants in the
stories and for so little a thing. Are you indeed a man like us? Are
you not rather an old wizard who lives among these hills, and will not a
wind arise presently and crumble you into dust?'
'I will tell you of myself,' replied the knight, 'for now that I am the
last of the fellowship, 'I may tell all and witness for God. Look at
the Rose of Rubies on my helmet, and see the symbol of my life and of
my hope.' And then he told the lad this story, but with always
more frequent pauses; and, while he told it, the Rose shone a deep
blood-colour in the firelight, and the lad stuck the cock's feathers in
the earth in front of him, and moved them about as though he made them
actors in the play.
'I live in a land far from this, and was one of the Knights of St.
John,' said the old man; 'but I was one of those in the Order who always
longed for more arduous labours in the service of the Most High. At last
there came to us a knight of Palestine, to whom the truth of truths had
been revealed by God Himself. He had seen a great Rose of Fire, and a
Voice out of the Rose had told him how men would turn from the light of
their own hearts, and bow down before outer order and outer fixity, and
that then the light would cease, and none escape the curse except the
foolish good man who could not, and the passionate wicked man who would
not, think. Already, the Voice told him, the wayward light of the heart
was shining out upon the world to keep it alive, with a less clear
lustre, and that, as it paled, a strange infection was touching the
stars and the hills and the grass and the trees with corruption, and
that none of those who had seen clearly the truth and the ancient way
could enter into the Kingdom of God, which is in the Heart of the Rose,
if they stayed on willingly in the corrupted world; and so they must
prove their anger against the Powers of Corruption by dying in the
service of the Rose of God. While the Knight of Palestine was telling
us these things we seemed to see in a vision a crimson Rose spreading
itself about him, so that he seemed to speak out of its heart, and the
air was filled with fragrance. By this we knew that it was the very
Voice of God which spoke to us by the knight, and we gathered about
him and bade him direct us in all things, and teach us how to obey the
Voice. So he bound us with an oath, and gave us signs and words whereby
we might know each other even after many years, and he appointed places
of meeting, and he sent us out in troops into the world to seek good
causes, and die in doing battle for them. At first we thought to die
more readily by fasting to death in honour of some saint; but this he
told us was evil, for we did it for the sake of death, and thus took out
of the hands of God the choice of the time and manner of our death, and
by so doing made His power the less. We must choose our service for its
excellence, and for this alone, and leave it to God to reward us at His
own time and in His own manner. And after this he compelled us to eat
always two at a table to watch each other lest we fasted unduly, for
some among us said that if one fasted for a love of the holiness of
saints and then died, the death would be acceptable. And the years
passed, and one by one my fellows died in the Holy Land, or in warring
upon the evil princes of the earth, or in clearing the roads of robbers;
and among them died the knight of Palestine, and at last I was alone. I
fought in every cause where the few contended against the many, and
my hair grew white, and a terrible fear lest I had fallen under the
displeasure of God came upon me. But, hearing at last how this western
isle was fuller of wars and rapine than any other land, I came hither,
and I have found the thing I sought, and, behold! I am filled with a
great joy.'
Thereat he began to sing in Latin, and, while he sang, his voice grew
fainter and fainter. Then his eyes closed, and his lips fell apart, and
the lad knew he was dead. 'He has told me a good tale,' he said, 'for
there was fighting in it, but I did not understand much of it, and it is
hard to remember so long a story.'
And, taking the knight's sword, he began to dig a grave in the soft
clay. He dug hard, and a faint light of dawn had touched his hair and he
had almost done his work when a cock crowed in the valley below. 'Ah,'
he said, 'I must have that bird'; and he ran down the narrow path to the
valley.