At the place, close to the Dead Man's Point, at the Rosses, where the
disused pilot-house looks out to sea through two round windows like
eyes, a mud cottage stood in the last century. It also was a watchhouse,
for a certain old Michael Bruen, who had been a smuggler in his day,
and was still the father and grandfather of smugglers, lived there, and
when, after nightfall, a tall schooner crept over the bay from Roughley,
it was his business to hang a horn lanthorn in the southern window, that
the news might travel to Dorren's Island, and from thence, by another
horn lanthorn, to the village of the Rosses. But for this glimmering of
messages, he had little communion with mankind, for he was very old, and
had no thought for anything but for the making of his soul, at the foot
of the Spanish crucifix of carved oak that hung by his chimney, or bent
double over the rosary of stone beads brought to him a cargo of silks
and laces out of France. One night he had watched hour after hour,
because a gentle and favourable wind was blowing, and _La Mere de
Misericorde_ was much overdue; and he was about to lie down upon his
heap of straw, seeing that the dawn was whitening the east, and that the
schooner would not dare to round Roughley and come to an anchor after
daybreak; when he saw a long line of herons flying slowly from Dorren's
Island and towards the pools which lie, half choked with reeds, behind
what is called the Second Rosses. He had never before seen herons flying
over the sea, for they are shore-keeping birds, and partly because this
had startled him out of his drowsiness, and more because the long
delay of the schooner kept his cupboard empty, he took down his rusty
shot-gun, of which the barrel was tied on with a piece of string, and
followed them towards the pools.
When he came close enough to hear the sighing of the rushes in the
outermost pool, the morning was grey over the world, so that the tall
rushes, the still waters, the vague clouds, the thin mists lying among
the sand-heaps, seemed carved out of an enormous pearl. In a little he
came upon the herons, of whom there were a great number, standing with
lifted legs in the shallow water; and crouching down behind a bank of
rushes, looked to the priming of his gun, and bent for a moment over his
rosary to murmur: 'Patron Patrick, let me shoot a heron; made into a pie
it will support me for nearly four days, for I no longer eat as in my
youth. If you keep me from missing I will say a rosary to you every
night until the pie is eaten.' Then he lay down, and, resting his gun
upon a large stone, turned towards a heron which stood upon a bank of
smooth grass over a little stream that flowed into the pool; for he
feared to take the rheumatism by wading, as he would have to do if he
shot one of those which stood in the water. But when he looked along
the barrel the heron was gone, and, to his wonder and terror, a man of
infinitely great age and infirmity stood in its place. He lowered the
gun, and the heron stood there with bent head and motionless feathers,
as though it had slept from the beginning of the world. He raised the
gun, and no sooner did he look along the iron than that enemy of all
enchantment brought the old man again before him, only to vanish when he
lowered the gun for the second time. He laid the gun down, and crossed
himself three times, and said a _Paternoster_ and an _Ave Maria_, and
muttered half aloud: 'Some enemy of God and of my patron is standing
upon the smooth place and fishing in the blessed water,' and then aimed
very carefully and slowly. He fired, and when the smoke had gone saw an
old man, huddled upon the grass and a long line of herons flying with
clamour towards the sea. He went round a bend of the pool, and coming
to the little stream looked down on a figure wrapped in faded clothes of
black and green of an ancient pattern and spotted with blood. He shook
his head at the sight of so great a wickedness. Suddenly the clothes
moved and an arm was stretched upwards towards the rosary which hung
about his neck, and long wasted fingers almost touched the cross. He
started back, crying: 'Wizard, I will let no wicked thing touch my
blessed beads'; and the sense of a The Old great danger just escaped
made him tremble.
'If you listen to me,' replied a voice so faint that it was like a sigh,
'you will know that I am not a wizard, and you will let me kiss the
cross before I die.'
'I will listen to you,' he answered, 'but I will not let you touch my
blessed beads,' and sitting on the grass a little way from the dying
man, he reloaded his gun and laid it across his knees and composed
himself to listen.
'I know not how many generations ago we, who are now herons, were the
men of learning of the King Leaghaire; we neither hunted, nor went to
battle, nor listened to the Druids preaching, and even love, if it came
to us at all, was but a passing fire. The Druids and the poets told us,
many and many a time, of a new Druid Patrick; and most among them were
fierce against him, while a few thought his doctrine merely the doctrine
of the gods set out in new symbols, and were for giving him welcome; but
we yawned in the midst of their tale. At last they came crying that he
was coming to the king's house, and fell to their dispute, but we would
listen to neither party, for we were busy with a dispute about the
merits of the Great and of the Little Metre; nor were we disturbed
when they passed our door with sticks of enchantment under their arms,
travelling towards the forest to contend against his coming, nor when
they returned after nightfall with torn robes and despairing cries; for
the click of our knives writing our thoughts in Ogham filled us with
peace and our dispute filled us with joy; nor even when in the morning
crowds passed us to hear the strange Druid preaching the commandments of
his god. The crowds passed, and one, who had laid down his knife to yawn
and stretch himself, heard a voice speaking far off, and knew that the
Druid Patrick was preaching within the king's house; but our hearts were
deaf, and we carved and disputed and read, and laughed a thin laughter
together. In a little we heard many feet coming towards the house, and
presently two tall figures stood in the door, the one in white, the
other in a crimson robe; like a great lily and a heavy poppy; and we
knew the Druid Patrick and our King Leaghaire. We laid down the slender
knives and bowed before the king, but when the black and green robes had
ceased to rustle, it was not the loud rough voice of King Leaghaire that
spoke to us, but a strange voice in which there was a rapture as of
one speaking from behind a battlement of Druid flame: "I preached the
commandments of the Maker of the world," it said; "within the king's
house and from the centre of the earth to the windows of Heaven there
was a great silence, so that the eagle floated with unmoving wings in
the white air, and the fish with unmoving fins in the dim water, while
the linnets and the wrens and the sparrows stilled there ever-trembling
tongues in the heavy boughs, and the clouds were like white marble,
and the rivers became their motionless mirrors, and the shrimps in the
far-off sea-pools were still enduring eternity in patience, although it
was hard." And as he named these things, it was like a king numbering
his people. "But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken
staves, and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with
anger. O, little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although
the summer pass above you with innumerable feet. O, men who have no part
in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but dwell
with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot touch you as
they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons cannot sweep about
you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a curse, and change you
to an example for ever and ever; you shall become grey herons and stand
pondering in grey pools and flit over the world in that hour when it is
most full of sighs, having forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet
found the flame of the sun; and you shall preach to the other herons
until they also are like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and
your deaths shall come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of
certainty may visit your hearts."'
The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen bent
over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to understand
something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for a long time,
had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his dream. The old man
of learning had crawled along the grass, and was now trying to draw the
cross down low enough for his lips to reach it.
'You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck
the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not have
trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh and was
still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green clothes,
for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to understand that he
had something the man of learning wanted and pleaded for, and now that
the blessed beads were safe, his fear had nearly all gone; and surely,
he thought, if that big cloak, and that little tight-fitting cloak
under it, were warm and without holes, Saint Patrick would take the
enchantment out of them and leave them fit for human use. But the black
and green clothes fell away wherever his fingers touched them, and while
this was a new wonder, a slight wind blew over the pool and crumbled the
old man of learning and all his ancient gear into a little heap of dust,
and then made the little heap less and less until there was nothing but
the smooth green grass.