The little wicker houses at Tullagh, where the Brothers were accustomed
to pray, or bend over many handicrafts, when twilight had driven them
from the fields, were empty, for the hardness of the winter had brought
the brotherhood together in the little wooden house under the shadow of
the wooden chapel; and Abbot Malathgeneus, Brother Dove, Brother
Bald Fox, Brother Peter, Brother Patrick, Brother Bittern, Brother
Fair-Brows, and many too young to have won names in the great battle,
sat about the fire with ruddy faces, one mending lines to lay in the
river for eels, one fashioning a snare for birds, one mending the
broken handle of a spade, one writing in a large book, and one shaping
a jewelled box to hold the book; and among the rushes at their feet lay
the scholars, who would one day be Brothers, and whose school-house
it was, and for the succour of whose tender years the great fire was
supposed to leap and flicker. One of these, a child of eight or nine
years, called Olioll, lay upon his back looking up through the hole in
the roof, through which the smoke went, and watching the stars appearing
and disappearing in the smoke with mild eyes, like the eyes of a beast
of the field. He turned presently to the Brother who wrote in the big
book, and whose duty was to teach the children, and said, 'Brother Dove,
to what are the stars fastened?' The Brother, rejoicing to see so much
curiosity in the stupidest of his scholars, laid down the pen and
said, 'There are nine crystalline spheres, and on the first the Moon
is fastened, on the second the planet Mercury, on the third the planet
Venus, on the fourth the Sun, on the fifth the planet Mars, on the sixth
the planet Jupiter, on the seventh the planet Saturn; these are the
wandering stars; and on the eighth are fastened the fixed stars; but
the ninth sphere is a sphere of the substance on which the breath of God
moved in the beginning.'
'What is beyond that?' said the child. 'There is nothing beyond that;
there is God.'
And then the child's eyes strayed to the jewelled box, where one great
ruby was gleaming in the light of the fire, and he said, 'Why has
Brother Peter put a great ruby on the side of the box?'
'The ruby is a symbol of the love of God.'
'Why is the ruby a symbol of the love of God?'
'Because it is red, like fire, and fire burns up everything, and where
there is nothing, there is God.'
The child sank into silence, but presently sat up and said, 'There is
somebody outside.'
'No,' replied the Brother. 'It is only the wolves; I have heard them
moving about in the snow for some time. They are growing very wild, now
that the winter drives them from the mountains. They broke into a fold
last night and carried off many sheep, and if we are not careful they
will devour everything.'
'No, it is the footstep of a man, for it is heavy; but I can hear the
footsteps of the wolves also.'
He had no sooner done speaking than somebody rapped three times, but
with no great loudness.
'I will go and open, for he must be very cold.'
'Do not open, for it may be a man-wolf, and he may devour us all.'
But the boy had already drawn back the heavy wooden bolt, and all the
faces, most of them a little pale, turned towards the slowly-opening
door.
'He has beads and a cross, he cannot be a man-wolf,' said the child, as
a man with the snow heavy on his long, ragged beard, and on the matted
hair, that fell over his shoulders and nearly to his waist, and dropping
from the tattered cloak that but half-covered his withered brown body,
came in and looked from face to face with mild, ecstatic eyes. Standing
some way from the fire, and with eyes that had rested at last upon the
Abbot Malathgeneus, he cried out, 'O blessed abbot, let me come to the
fire and warm myself and dry the snow from my beard and my hair and my
cloak; that I may not die of the cold of the mountains, and anger the
Lord with a wilful martyrdom.'
'Come to the fire,' said the abbot, 'and warm yourself, and eat the food
the boy Olioll will bring you. It is sad indeed that any for whom Christ
has died should be as poor as you.'
The man sat over the fire, and Olioll took away his now dripping cloak
and laid meat and bread and wine before him; but he would eat only of
the bread, and he put away the wine, asking for water. When his beard
and hair had begun to dry a little and his limbs had ceased to shiver
with the cold, he spoke again.
'O blessed abbot, have pity on the poor, have pity on a beggar who has
trodden the bare world this many a year, and give me some labour to do,
the hardest there is, for I am the poorest of God's poor.'
Then the Brothers discussed together what work they could put him to,
and at first to little purpose, for there was no labour that had not
found its labourer in that busy community; but at last one remembered
that Brother Bald Fox, whose business it was to turn the great quern in
the quern-house, for he was too stupid for anything else, was getting
old for so heavy a labour; and so the beggar was put to the quern from
the morrow.
The cold passed away, and the spring grew to summer, and the quern was
never idle, nor was it turned with grudging labour, for when any passed
the beggar was heard singing as he drove the handle round. The last
gloom, too, had passed from that happy community, for Olioll, who had
always been stupid and unteachable, grew clever, and this was the more
miraculous because it had come of a sudden. One day he had been even
duller than usual, and was beaten and told to know his lesson better
on the morrow or be sent into a lower class among little boys who would
make a joke of him. He had gone out in tears, and when he came the next
day, although his stupidity, born of a mind that would listen to every
wandering sound and brood upon every wandering light, had so long been
the byword of the school, he knew his lesson so well that he passed to
the head of the class, and from that day was the best of scholars. At
first Brother Dove thought this was an answer to his own prayers to the
Virgin, and took it for a great proof of the love she bore him; but when
many far more fervid prayers had failed to add a single wheatsheaf
to the harvest, he began to think that the child was trafficking with
bards, or druids, or witches, and resolved to follow and watch. He had
told his thought to the abbot, who bid him come to him the moment he hit
the truth; and the next day, which was a Sunday, he stood in the path
when the abbot and the Brothers were coming from vespers, with their
white habits upon them, and took the abbot by the habit and said, 'The
beggar is of the greatest of saints and of the workers of miracle. I
followed Olioll but now, and by his slow steps and his bent head I saw
that the weariness of his stupidity was over him, and when he came to
the little wood by the quern-house I knew by the path broken in the
under-wood and by the footmarks in the muddy places that he had gone
that way many times. I hid behind a bush where the path doubled upon
itself at a sloping place, and understood by the tears in his eyes that
his stupidity was too old and his wisdom too new to save him from terror
of the rod. When he was in the quern-house I went to the window and
looked in, and the birds came down and perched upon my head and my
shoulders, for they are not timid in that holy place; and a wolf passed
by, his right side shaking my habit, his left the leaves of a bush.
Olioll opened his book and turned to the page I had told him to learn,
and began to cry, and the beggar sat beside him and comforted him until
he fell asleep. When his sleep was of the deepest the beggar knelt down
and prayed aloud, and said, "O Thou Who dwellest beyond the stars, show
forth Thy power as at the beginning, and let knowledge sent from Thee
awaken in his mind, wherein is nothing from the world, that the nine
orders of angels may glorify Thy name;" and then a light broke out of
the air and wrapped Aodh, and I smelt the breath of roses. I stirred a
little in my wonder, and the beggar turned and saw me, and, bending low,
said, "O Brother Dove, if I have done wrong, forgive me, and I will do
penance. It was my pity moved me;" but I was afraid and I ran away, and
did not stop running until I came here.' Then all the Brothers began
talking together, one saying it was such and such a saint, and one that
it was not he but another; and one that it was none of these, for they
were still in their brotherhoods, but that it was such and such a
one; and the talk was as near to quarreling as might be in that
gentle community, for each would claim so great a saint for his native
province. At last the abbot said, 'He is none that you have named, for
at Easter I had greeting from all, and each was in his brotherhood; but
he is Aengus the Lover of God, and the first of those who have gone to
live in the wild places and among the wild beasts. Ten years ago he felt
the burden of many labours in a brotherhood under the Hill of Patrick
and went into the forest that he might labour only with song to the
Lord; but the fame of his holiness brought many thousands to his cell,
so that a little pride clung to a soul from which all else had been
driven. Nine years ago he dressed himself in rags, and from that day
none has seen him, unless, indeed, it be true that he has been seen
living among the wolves on the mountains and eating the grass of the
fields. Let us go to him and bow down before him; for at last, after
long seeking, he has found the nothing that is God; and bid him lead us
in the pathway he has trodden.'
They passed in their white habits along the beaten path in the wood,
the acolytes swinging their censers before them, and the abbot, with his
crozier studded with precious stones, in the midst of the incense; and
came before the quern-house and knelt down and began to pray, awaiting
the moment when the child would wake, and the Saint cease from his watch
and come to look at the sun going down into the unknown darkness, as his
way was.
OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE BITTER TONGUE.
Costello had come up from the fields and lay upon the ground before the
door of his square tower, resting his head upon his hands and looking
at the sunset, and considering the chances of the weather. Though the
customs of Elizabeth and James, now going out of fashion in England, had
begun to prevail among the gentry, he still wore the great cloak of the
native Irish; and the sensitive outlines of his face and the greatness
of his indolent body had a commingling of pride and strength which
belonged to a simpler age. His eyes wandered from the sunset to where
the long white road lost itself over the south-western horizon and to
a horseman who toiled slowly up the hill. A few more minutes and the
horseman was near enough for his little and shapeless body, his long
Irish cloak, and the dilapidated bagpipes hanging from his shoulders,
and the rough-haired garron under him, to be seen distinctly in the grey
dusk. So soon as he had come within earshot, he began crying: 'Is it
sleeping you are, Tumaus Costello, when better men break their hearts
on the great white roads? Get up out of that, proud Tumaus, for I have
news! Get up out of that, you great omadhaun! Shake yourself out of the
earth, you great weed of a man!'
Costello had risen to his feet, and as the piper came up to him seized
him by the neck of his jacket, and lifting him out of his saddle threw
him on to the ground.
'Let me alone, let me alone,' said the other, but Costello still shook
him.
'I have news from Dermott's daughter, Winny,' The great fingers were
loosened, and the piper rose gasping.
'Why did you not tell me,' said Costello, that you came from her? You
might have railed your fill.'
'I have come from her, but I will not speak unless I am paid for my
shaking.'
Costello fumbled at the bag in which he carried his money, and it was
some time before it would open, for the hand that had overcome many men
shook with fear and hope. 'Here is all the money in my bag,' he said,
dropping a stream of French and Spanish money into the hand of the
piper, who bit the coins before he would answer.
'That is right, that is a fair price, but I will not speak till I have
good protection, for if the Dermotts lay their hands upon me in any
boreen after sundown, or in Cool-a-vin by day, I will be left to rot
among the nettles of a ditch, or hung on the great sycamore, where they
hung the horse-thieves last Beltaine four years.' And while he spoke he
tied the reins of his garron to a bar of rusty iron that was mortared
into the wall.
'I will make you my piper and my bodyservant,' said Costello, 'and no
man dare lay hands upon the man, or the goat, or the horse, or the dog
that is Tumaus Costello's.'
'And I will only tell my message,' said the other, flinging the saddle
on the ground, 'in the corner of the chimney with a noggin in my hand,
and a jug of the Brew of the Little Pot beside me, for though I am
ragged and empty, my forbears were well clothed and full until their
house was burnt and their cattle harried seven centuries ago by the
Dillons, whom I shall yet see on the hob of hell, and they screeching';
and while he spoke the little eyes gleamed and the thin hands clenched.
Costello led him into the great rush-strewn hall, where were none of the
comforts which had begun to grow common among the gentry, but a feudal
gauntness and bareness, and pointed to the bench in the great chimney;
and when he had sat down, filled up a horn noggin and set it on the
bench beside him, and set a great black jack of leather beside the
noggin, and lit a torch that slanted out from a ring in the wall, his
hands trembling the while; and then turned towards him and said: 'Will
Dermott's daughter come to me, Duallach, son of Daly?'
'Dermott's daughter will not come to you, for her father has set women
to watch her, but she bid me tell you that this day sennight will be the
eve of St. John and the night of her betrothal to Namara of the Lake,
and she would have you there that, when they bid her drink to him she
loves best, as the way is, she may drink to you, Tumaus Costello, and
let all know where her heart is, and how little of gladness is in her
marriage; and I myself bid you go with good men about you, for I saw the
horse-thieves with my own eyes, and they dancing the "Blue Pigeon" in
the air.' And then he held the now empty noggin towards Costello, his
hand closing round it like the claw of a bird, and cried: 'Fill my
noggin again, for I would the day had come when all the water in the
world is to shrink into a periwinkle-shell, that I might drink nothing
but Poteen.'
Finding that Costello made no reply, but sat in a dream, he burst out:
'Fill my noggin, I tell you, for no Costello is so great in the world
that he should not wait upon a Daly, even though the Daly travel the
road with his pipes and the Costello have a bare hill, an empty house, a
horse, a herd of goats, and a handful of cows.' 'Praise the Dalys if you
will,' said Costello as he filled the noggin, 'for you have brought me a
kind word from my love.'
For the next few days Duallach went hither and thither trying to raise
a bodyguard, and every man he met had some story of Costello, how he
killed the wrestler when but a boy by so straining at the belt that went
about them both that he broke the big wrestler's back; how when somewhat
older he dragged fierce horses through a ford in the Unchion for a
wager; how when he came to manhood he broke the steel horseshoe in Mayo;
how he drove many men before him through Rushy Meadow at Drum-an-air
because of a malevolent song they had about his poverty; and of many
another deed of his strength and pride; but he could find none who
would trust themselves with any so passionate and poor in a quarrel with
careful and wealthy persons like Dermott of the Sheep and Namara of the
Lake.
Then Costello went out himself, and after listening to many excuses and
in many places, brought in a big half-witted fellow, who followed him
like a dog, a farm-labourer who worshipped him for his strength, a fat
farmer whose forefathers had served his family, and a couple of lads who
looked after his goats and cows; and marshalled them before the fire
in the empty hall. They had brought with them their stout cudgels,
and Costello gave them an old pistol apiece, and kept them all night
drinking Spanish ale and shooting at a white turnip which he pinned
against the wall with a skewer. Duallach of the pipes sat on the
bench in the chimney playing 'The Green Bunch of Rushes', 'The Unchion
Stream,' and 'The Princes of Breffeny' on his old pipes, and railing now
at the appearance of the shooters, now at their clumsy shooting, and
now at Costello because he had no better servants. The labourer, the
half-witted fellow, the farmer and the lads were all well accustomed to
Duallach's railing, for it was as inseparable from wake or wedding as
the squealing of his pipes, but they wondered at the forbearance of
Costello, who seldom came either to wake or wedding, and if he had would
scarce have been patient with a scolding piper.
On the next evening they set out for Cool-a-vin, Costello riding a
tolerable horse and carrying a sword, the others upon rough-haired
garrons, and with their stout cudgels under their arms. As they rode
over the bogs and in the boreens among the hills they could see
fire answering fire from hill to hill, from horizon to horizon, and
everywhere groups who danced in the red light on the turf, celebrating
the bridal of life and fire. When they came to Dermott's house they saw
before the door an unusually large group of the very poor, dancing about
a fire, in the midst of which was a blazing cartwheel, that circular
dance which is so ancient that the gods, long dwindled to be but
fairies, dance no other in their secret places. From the door and
through the long loop-holes on either side came the pale light of
candles and the sound of many feet dancing a dance of Elizabeth and
James.
They tied their horses to bushes, for the number so tied already showed
that the stables were full, and shoved their way through a crowd of
peasants who stood about the door, and went into the great hall where
the dance was. The labourer, the half-witted fellow, the farmer and
the two lads mixed with a group of servants who were looking on from an
alcove, and Duallach sat with the pipers on their bench, but Costello
made his way through the dancers to where Dermott of the Sheep stood
with Namara of the Lake pouring Poteen out of a porcelain jug into horn
noggins with silver rims.
'Tumaus Costello,' said the old man, 'you have done a good deed to
forget what has been, and to fling away enmity and come to the betrothal
of my daughter to Namara of the Lake.'
'I come,' answered Costello, 'because when in the time of Costello De
Angalo my forbears overcame your forbears and afterwards made peace, a
compact was made that a Costello might go with his body-servants and his
piper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a Dermott with
his body-servants and his piper to every feast given by a Costello for
ever.'
'If you come with evil thoughts and armed men,' said the son of Dermott
flushing,' no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to swing the
sword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wife's clan have come
out of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants have come down
from the Ox Mountains'; and while he spoke he kept his hand inside his
coat as though upon the handle of a weapon.
'No,' answered Costello, 'I but come to dance a farewell dance with your
daughter.'
Dermott drew his hand out of his coat and went over to a tall pale girl
who was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes fixed upon
the ground.
'Costello has come to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you will
never see one another again.'
The girl lifted her eyes and gazed at Costello, and in her gaze was that
trust of the humble in the proud, the gentle in the violent, which has
been the tragedy of woman from the beginning. Costello led her among the
dancers, and they were soon drawn into the rhythm of the Pavane, that
stately dance which, with the Saraband, the Gallead, and the Morrice
dances, had driven out, among all but the most Irish of the gentry, the
quicker rhythms of the verse-interwoven, pantomimic dances of earlier
days; and while they danced there came over them the unutterable
melancholy, the weariness with the world, the poignant and bitter pity
for one another, the vague anger against common hopes and fears, which
is the exultation of love. And when a dance ended and the pipers laid
down their pipes and lifted their horn noggins, they stood a little from
the others waiting pensively and silently for the dance to begin again
and the fire in their hearts to leap up and to wrap them anew; and
so they danced and danced Pavane and Saraband and Gallead and Morrice
through the night long, and many stood still to watch them, and the
peasants came about the door and peered in, as though they understood
that they would gather their children's children about them long hence,
and tell how they had seen Costello dance with Dermott's daughter Oona,
and become by the telling themselves a portion of ancient romance; but
through all the dancing and piping Namara of the Lake went hither and
thither talking loudly and making foolish jokes that all might seem
well with him, and old Dermott of the Sheep grew redder and redder, and
looked oftener and oftener at the doorway to see if the candles there
grew yellow in the dawn.
At last he saw that the moment to end had come, and, in a pause after
a dance, cried out from where the horn noggins stood that his daughter
would now drink the cup of betrothal; then Oona came over to where he
was, and the guests stood round in a half-circle, Costello close to
the wall to the right, and the piper, the labourer, the farmer, the
half-witted man and the two farm lads close behind him. The old man took
out of a niche in the wall the silver cup from which her mother and her
mother's mother had drunk the toasts of their betrothals, and poured
Poteen out of a porcelain jug and handed the cup to his daughter with
the customary words, 'Drink to him whom you love the best.'
She held the cup to her lips for a moment, and then said in a clear soft
voice: 'I drink to my true love, Tumaus Costello.'
And then the cup rolled over and over on the ground, ringing like a
bell, for the old man had struck her in the face and the cup had fallen,
and there was a deep silence.
There were many of Namara's people among the servants now come out of
the alcove, and one of them, a story-teller and poet, a last remnant
of the bardic order, who had a chair and a platter in Namara's kitchen,
drew a French knife out of his girdle and made as though he would strike
at Costello, but in a moment a blow had hurled him to the ground, his
shoulder sending the cup rolling and ringing again. The click of steel
had followed quickly, had not there come a muttering and shouting from
the peasants about the door and from those crowding up behind them;
and all knew that these were no children of Queen's Irish or friendly
Namaras and Dermotts, but of the wild Irish about Lough Gara and Lough
Cara, who rowed their skin coracles, and had masses of hair over their
eyes, and left the right arms of their children unchristened that they
might give the stouter blows, and swore only by St. Atty and sun and
moon, and worshipped beauty and strength more than St. Atty or sun and
moon.
Costello's hand had rested upon the handle of his sword and his knuckles
had grown white, but now he drew it away, and, followed by those who
were with him, strode towards the door, the dancers giving way before
him, the most angrily and slowly, and with glances at the muttering and
shouting peasants, but some gladly and quickly, because the glory of
his fame was over him. He passed through the fierce and friendly peasant
faces, and came where his good horse and the rough-haired garrons were
tied to bushes; and mounted and bade his ungainly bodyguard mount
also and ride into the narrow boreen. When they had gone a little way,
Duallach, who rode last, turned towards the house where a little
group of Dermotts and Namaras stood next to a more numerous group of
countrymen, and cried: 'Dermott, you deserve to be as you are this hour,
a lantern without a candle, a purse without a penny, a sheep without
wool, for your hand was ever niggardly to piper and fiddler and
story-teller and to poor travelling people.' He had not done before the
three old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains had run towards their horses,
and old Dermott himself had caught the bridle of a garron of the Namaras
and was calling to the others to follow him; and many blows and many
deaths had been had not the countrymen caught up still glowing sticks
from the ashes of the fires and hurled them among the horses with loud
cries, making all plunge and rear, and some break from those who held
them, the whites of their eyes gleaming in the dawn.
For the next few weeks Costello had no lack of news of Oona, for now a
woman selling eggs or fowls, and now a man or a woman on pilgrimage to
the Well of the Rocks, would tell him how his love had fallen ill the
day after St. John's Eve, and how she was a little better or a little
worse, as it might be; and though he looked to his horses and his cows
and goats as usual, the common and uncomely, the dust upon the roads,
the songs of men returning from fairs and wakes, men playing cards
in the corners of fields on Sundays and Saints' Days, the rumours of
battles and changes in the great world, the deliberate purposes of those
about him, troubled him with an inexplicable trouble; and the country
people still remember how when night had fallen he would bid Duallach
of the Pipes tell, to the chirping of the crickets, 'The Son of Apple,'
'The Beauty of the World,' 'The King of Ireland's Son,' or some other
of those traditional tales which were as much a piper's business as
'The Green Bunch of Rushes,' 'The Unchion Stream,' or 'The Chiefs of
Breffeny'; and while the boundless and phantasmal world of the legends
was a-building, would abandon himself to the dreams of his sorrow.
Duallach would often pause to tell how some clan of the wild Irish had
descended from an incomparable King of the Blue Belt, or Warrior of the
Ozier Wattle, or to tell with many curses how all the strangers and most
of the Queen's Irish were the seed of the misshapen and horned People
from Under the Sea or of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costello
cared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the stories
wandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are,
or to the malign country of the Hag of the East, Oona alone endured
their shadowy hardships; for it was she and no king's daughter of old
who was hidden in the steel tower under the water with the folds of the
Worm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who won
by seven years of service the right to deliver from hell all she could
carry, and carried away multitudes clinging with worn fingers to the hem
of her dress; and it was she who endured dumbness for a year because of
the little thorn of enchantment the fairies had thrust into her tongue;
and it was a lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gave
so great a light that men threshed by it from sundown to sunrise, and
awoke so great a wonder that kings spent years in wandering or fell
before unknown armies in seeking to discover her hiding-place; for there
was no beauty in the world but hers, no tragedy in the world but hers:
and when at last the voice of the piper, grown gentle with the wisdom of
old romance, was silent, and his rheumatic steps had toiled upstairs and
to bed, and Costello had dipped his fingers into the little delf font of
holy water and begun to pray to Mary of the Seven Sorrows, the blue
eyes and star-covered dress of the painting in the chapel faded from his
imagination, and the brown eyes and homespun dress of Dermott's daughter
Winny came in their stead; for there was no tenderness in the passion
who keep their hearts pure for love or for hatred as other men for God,
for Mary and for the Saints, and who, when the hour of their visitation
arrives, come to the Divine Essence by the bitter tumult, the Garden
of Gethsemane, and the desolate Rood ordained for immortal passions in
mortal hearts.
One day a serving-man rode up to Costello, who was helping his two lads
to reap a meadow, and gave him a letter, and rode away without a word;
and the letter contained these words in English: 'Tumaus Costello, my
daughter is very ill. The wise woman from Knock-na-Sidhe has seen her,
and says she will die unless you come to her. I therefore bid you come
to her whose peace you stole by treachery.-DERMOTT, THE SON OF DERMOTT.'
Costello threw down his scythe, and sent one of the lads for Duallach,
who had become woven into his mind with Oona, and himself saddled his
great horse and Duallach's garron.
When they came to Dermott's house it was late afternoon, and Lough Gara
lay down below them, blue, mirror-like, and deserted; and though they
had seen, when at a distance, dark figures moving about the door, the
house appeared not less deserted than the Lough. The door stood half
open, and Costello knocked upon it again and again, so that a number of
lake gulls flew up out of the grass and circled screaming over his head,
but there was no answer.
'There is no one here,' said Duallach, 'for Dermott of the Sheep is too
proud to welcome Costello the Proud,' and he threw the door open, and
they saw a ragged, dirty, very old woman, who sat upon the floor leaning
against the wall. Costello knew that it was Bridget Delaney, a deaf and
dumb beggar; and she, when she saw him, stood up and made a sign to
him to follow, and led him and his companion up a stair and down a long
corridor to a closed door. She pushed the door open and went a little
way off and sat down as before; Duallach sat upon the ground also, but
close to the door, and Costello went and gazed upon Winny sleeping upon
a bed. He sat upon a chair beside her and waited, and a long time passed
and still she slept on, and then Duallach motioned to him through the
door to wake her, but he hushed his very breath, that she might sleep
on, for his heart was full of that ungovernable pity which makes the
fading heart of the lover a shadow of the divine heart. Presently he
turned to Duallach and said: 'It is not right that I stay here where
there are none of her kindred, for the common people are always ready to
blame the beautiful.' And then they went down and stood at the door of
the house and waited, but the evening wore on and no one came.
'It was a foolish man that called you Proud Costello,' Duallach cried
at last; 'had he seen you waiting and waiting where they left none but a
beggar to welcome you, it is Humble Costello he would have called you.'
Then Costello mounted and Duallach mounted, but when they had ridden a
little way Costello tightened the reins and made his horse stand still.
Many minutes passed, and then Duallach cried: 'It is no wonder that
you fear to offend Dermott of the Sheep, for he has many brothers and
friends, and though he is old, he is a strong man and ready with his
hands, and he is of the Queen's Irish, and the enemies of the Gael are
upon his side.'
And Costello answered flushing and looking towards the house: 'I swear
by the Mother of God that I will never return there again if they do not
send after me before I pass the ford in the Brown River,' and he rode
on, but so very slowly that the sun went down and the bats began to fly
over the bogs. When he came to the river he lingered awhile upon the
bank among the flowers of the flag, but presently rode out into the
middle and stopped his horse in a foaming shallow. Duallach, however,
crossed over and waited on a further bank above a deeper place. After
a good while Duallach cried out again, and this time very bitterly: 'It
was a fool who begot you and a fool who bore you, and they are fools of
all fools who say you come of an old and noble stock, for you come of
whey-faced beggars who travelled from door to door, bowing to gentles
and to serving-men.
With bent head, Costello rode through the river and stood beside him,
and would have spoken had not hoofs clattered on the further bank and a
horseman splashed towards them. It was a serving-man of Dermott's, and
he said, speaking breathlessly like one who had ridden hard: 'Tumaus
Costello, I come to bid you again to Dermott's house. When you had gone,
his daughter Winny awoke and called your name, for you had been in her
dreams. Bridget Delaney the Dummy saw her lips move and the trouble upon
her, and came where we were hiding in the wood above the house and took
Dermott of the Sheep by the coat and brought him to his daughter. He
saw the trouble upon her, and bid me ride his own horse to bring you the
quicker.'
Then Costello turned towards the piper Duallach Daly, and taking him
about the waist lifted him out of the saddle and hurled him against a
grey rock that rose up out of the river, so that he fell lifeless into
the deep place, and the waters swept over the tongue which God had made
bitter, that there might be a story in men's ears in after time. Then
plunging his spurs into the horse, he rode away furiously toward the
north-west, along the edge of the river, and did not pause until he came
to another and smoother ford, and saw the rising moon mirrored in the
water. He paused for a moment irresolute, and then rode into the ford
and on over the Ox Mountains, and down towards the sea; his eyes almost
continually resting upon the moon which glimmered in the dimness like
a great white rose hung on the lattice of some boundless and phantasmal
world. But now his horse, long dark with sweat and breathing hard, for
he kept spurring it to an extreme speed, fell heavily, hurling him into
the grass at the roadside. He tried to make it stand up, and failing in
this, went on alone towards the moonlight; and came to the sea and saw a
schooner lying there at anchor. Now that he could go no further because
of the sea, he found that he was very tired and the night very cold,
and went into a shebeen close to the shore and threw himself down upon
a bench. The room was full of Spanish and Irish sailors who had just
smuggled a cargo of wine and ale, and were waiting a favourable wind to
set out again. A Spaniard offered him a drink in bad Gaelic. He drank it
greedily and began talking wildly and rapidly.
For some three weeks the wind blew inshore or with too great violence,
and the sailors stayed drinking and talking and playing cards, and
Costello stayed with them, sleeping upon a bench in the shebeen, and
drinking and talking and playing more than any. He soon lost what little
money he had, and then his horse, which some one had brought from
the mountain boreen, to a Spaniard, who sold it to a farmer from the
mountains, and then his long cloak and his spurs and his boots of soft
leather. At last a gentle wind blew towards Spain, and the crew rowed
out to their schooner, singing Gaelic and Spanish songs, and lifted
the anchor, and in a little while the white sails had dropped under the
horizon. Then Costello turned homeward, his life gaping before him, and
walked all day, coming in the early evening to the road that went from
near Lough Gara to the southern edge of Lough Cay. Here he overtook a
great crowd of peasants and farmers, who were walking very slowly after
two priests and a group of well-dressed persons, certain of whom were
carrying a coffin. He stopped an old man and asked whose burying it was
and whose people they were, and the old man answered: 'It is the burying
of Oona, Dermott's daughter, and we are the Namaras and the Dermotts and
their following, and you are Tumaus Costello who murdered her.'
Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men who
looked at him with fierce eyes and only vaguely understanding what he
had heard, for now that he had lost the understanding that belongs to
good health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty which
had been so long the world's heart could pass away. Presently he stopped
and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered: 'We are
carrying Dermott's daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be buried in the
island of the Holy Trinity,' and the man stooped and picked up a stone
and cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek and making the blood
flow out over his face. Costello went on scarcely feeling the blow, and
coming to those about the coffin, shouldered his way into the midst of
them, and laying his hand upon the coffin, asked in a loud voice: 'Who
is in this coffin?'
The three Old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains caught up stones and bid
those about them do the same; and he was driven from the road, covered
with wounds, and but for the priests would surely have been killed.
When the procession had passed on, Costello began to follow again, and
saw from a distance the coffin laid upon a large boat, and those about
it get into other boats, and the boats move slowly over the water to
Insula Trinitatis; and after a time he saw the boats return and their
passengers mingle with the crowd upon the bank, and all disperse by
many roads and boreens. It seemed to him that Winny was somewhere on the
island smiling gently as of old, and when all had gone he swam in the
way the boats had been rowed and found the new-made grave beside the
ruined Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and threw himself upon it, calling to
Oona to come to him. Above him the square ivy leaves trembled, and all
about him white moths moved over white flowers, and sweet odours drifted
through the dim air.
He lay there all that night and through the day after, from time to
time calling her to come to him, but when the third night came he had
forgotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in the
earth beneath; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not come
to him.
Just before dawn, the hour when the peasants hear his ghostly voice
crying out, his pride awoke and he called loudly: 'Winny, daughter
of Dermott of the Sheep, if you do not come to me I will go and never
return to the island of the Holy Trinity,' and before his voice had died
away a cold and whirling wind had swept over the island and he saw many
figures rushing past, women of the Sidhe with crowns of silver and dim
floating drapery; and then Oona, but no longer smiling gently, for she
passed him swiftly and angrily, and as she passed struck him upon the
face crying: 'Then go and never return.'
He would have followed, and was calling out her name, when the whole
glimmering company rose up into the air, and, rushing together in the
shape of a great silvery rose, faded into the ashen dawn.
Costello got up from the grave, understanding nothing but that he had
made his beloved angry and that she wished him to go, and wading out
into the lake, began to swim. He swam on and on, but his limbs were too
weary to keep him afloat, and her anger was heavy about him, and when
he had gone a little way he sank without a struggle, like a man passing
into sleep and dreams.
The next day a poor fisherman found him among the reeds upon the lake
shore, lying upon the white lake sand with his arms flung out as though
he lay upon a rood, and carried him to his own house. And the very poor
lamented over him and sang the keen, and when the time had come, laid
him in the Abbey on Insula Trinitatis with only the ruined altar between
him and Dermott's daughter, and planted above them two ash-trees that
in after days wove their branches together and mingled their trembling
leaves.