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THE COMING OF CUCULAIN
By Standish O’grady
Author of
“THE TRIUMPH AND PASSING OF CUCULAIN”
“IN THE GATES OF THE NORTH”
“THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE”
ETC.
PREFACE
There are three great cycles of Gaelic literature. The first treats
of the gods; the second of the Red Branch Knights of Ulster and their
contemporaries; the third is the so-called Ossianic. Of the Ossianic,
Finn is the chief character; of the Red Branch cycle, Cuculain, the hero
of our tale.
Cuculain and his friends are historical characters, seen as it were
through mists of love and wonder, whom men could not forget, but for
centuries continued to celebrate in countless songs and stories.
They were not literary phantoms, but actual existences; imaginary and
fictitious characters, mere creatures of idle fancy, do not live and
flourish so in the world’s memory. And as to the gigantic stature and
superhuman prowess and achievements of those antique heroes, it must not
be forgotten that all art magnifies, as if in obedience to some strong
law; and so, even in our own times, Grattan, where he stands in artistic
bronze, is twice as great as the real Grattan thundering in the Senate.
I will therefore ask the reader, remembering the large manner of the
antique literature from which our tale is drawn, to forget for a
while that there is such a thing as scientific history, to give his
imagination a holiday, and follow with kindly interest the singular
story of the boyhood of Cuculain, “battle-prop of the valour and torch
of the chivalry of the Ultonians.”
I have endeavoured so to tell the story as to give a general idea of
the cycle, and of primitive heroic Irish life as reflected in that
literature, laying the cycle, so far as accessible, under contribution
to furnish forth the tale. Within a short compass I would bring before
swift modern readers the more striking aspects of a literature so vast
and archaic as to repel all but students.
STANDISH O’GRADY -- A TRIBUTE BY A. E.
In this age we read so much that we lay too great a burden on the
imagination. It is unable to create images which are the spiritual
equivalent of the words on the printed page, and reading becomes for too
many an occupation of the eye rather than of the mind. How rarely--out
of the multitude of volumes a man reads in his lifetime--can he remember
where or when he read any particular book, or with any vividness recall
the mood it evoked in him. When I close my eyes, and brood in memory
over the books which most profoundly affected me, I find none excited my
imagination more than Standish O’Grady’s epical narrative of Cuculain.
Whitman said of his Leaves of Grass, “Camerado, this is no book: who
touches this touches a man” and O’Grady might have boasted of his Bardic
History of Ireland, written with his whole being, that there was more
than a man in it, there was the soul of a people, its noblest and most
exalted life symbolised in the story of one heroic character.
With reference to Ireland, I was at the time I read like many others who
were bereaved of the history of their race. I was as a man who, through
some accident, had lost memory of his past, who could recall no more
than a few months of new life, and could not say to what songs his
cradle had been rocked, what mother had nursed him, who were the
playmates of childhood or by what woods and streams he had wandered.
When I read O’Grady I was as such a man who suddenly feels ancient
memories rushing at him, and knows he was born in a royal house, that he
had mixed with the mighty of heaven and earth and had the very noblest
for his companions. It was the memory of race which rose up within me as
I read, and I felt exalted as one who learns he is among the children
of kings. That is what O’Grady did for me and for others who were my
contemporaries, and I welcome these reprints of his tales in the hope
that he will go on magically recreating for generations yet unborn the
ancestral life of their race in Ireland. For many centuries the youth
of Ireland as it grew up was made aware of the life of bygone ages, and
there were always some who remade themselves in the heroic mould before
they passed on. The sentiment engendered by the Gaelic literature was an
arcane presence, though unconscious of itself, in those who for the
past hundred years had learned another speech. In O’Grady’s writings the
submerged river of national culture rose up again, a shining torrent,
and I realised as I bathed in that stream, that the greatest spiritual
evil one nation could inflict on another was to cut off from it the
story of the national soul. For not all music can be played upon any
instrument, and human nature for most of us is like a harp on which can
be rendered the music written for the harp but not that written for the
violin. The harp strings quiver for the harp-player alone, and he who
can utter his passion through the violin is silent before an unfamiliar
instrument. That is why the Irish have rarely been deeply stirred by
English literature though it is one of the great literatures of the
world. Our history was different and the evolutionary product was a
peculiarity of character, and the strings of our being vibrate most in
ecstasy when the music evokes ancestral moods or embodies emotions akin
to these. I am not going to argue the comparative worth of the Gaelic
and English tradition. All I can say is that the traditions of our own
country move us more than the traditions of any other. Even if there was
not essential greatness in them we would love them for the same reasons
which bring back so many exiles to revisit the haunts of childhood. But
there was essential greatness in that neglected bardic literature which
O’Grady was the first to reveal in a noble manner. He had the spirit
of an ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer, his birth delayed
in time perhaps that he might renew for a sophisticated people the
elemental simplicity and hardihood men had when the world was young
and manhood was prized more than any of its parts, more than thought
or beauty or feeling. He has created for us or rediscovered one figure
which looms in the imagination as a high comrade of Hector, Achilles,
Ulysses, Rama or Yudisthira, as great in spirit as any. Who could extol
enough his Cuculain, that incarnation of Gaelic chivalry, the fire and
gentleness, the beauty and heroic ardour or the imaginative splendour
of the episodes in his retelling of the ancient story. There are writers
who bewitch us by a magical use of words, whose lines glitter like
jewels, whose effects are gained by an elaborate art and who deal with
the subtlest emotions. Others again are simple as an Egyptian image and
yet are more impressive and you remember them less for the sentence than
for a grandiose effect. They are not so much concerned with the art of
words as with the creation of great images informed with magnificence of
spirit. They are not lesser artists but greater, for there is a greater
art in the simplification of form in the statue of Memnon than there
is in the intricate detail of a bronze by Benvenuto Cellini. Standish
O’Grady had in his best moments that epic wholeness and simplicity, and
the figure of Cuculain amid his companions of the Red Branch which he
discovered and refashioned for us is I think the greatest spiritual gift
any Irishman for centuries has given to Ireland.
I know it will be said that this is a scientific age, the world is so
full of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young Ireland to
brood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with enchanters, who
harnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and who talked with
the ancient gods, and that it would be much better for youth to be
scientific and practical. Do not believe it, dear Irish boy, dear Irish
girl. I know as well as any the economic needs of our people. They must
not be overlooked, but keep still in your hearts some desires which
might enter Paradise. Keep in your souls some images of magnificence
so that hereafter the halls of heaven and the divine folk may not seem
altogether alien to the spirit. These legends have passed the test
of generations for century after century, and they were treasured
and passed on to those who followed, and that was because there was
something in them akin to the immortal spirit. Humanity cannot carry
with it through time the memory of all its deeds and imaginations, and
it burdens itself only in a new era with what was highest among the
imaginations of the ancestors. What is essentially noble is never out of
date. The figures carved by Phidias for the Parthenon still shine by the
side of the greatest modern sculpture. There has been no evolution of
the human form to a greater beauty than the ancient Greeks saw and the
forms they carved are not strange to us, and if this is true of the
outward form it is true of the indwelling spirit. What is essentially
noble is contemporary with all that is splendid to-day, and, until the
mass of men are equal in spirit, the great figures of the past will
affect us less as memories than as prophecies of the Golden Age to which
youth is ever hurrying in its heart.
O’Grady in his stories of the Red Branch rescued from the past what was
contemporary to the best in us to-day, and he was equal in his gifts
as a writer to the greatest of his bardic predecessors in Ireland. His
sentences are charged with a heroic energy, and, when he is telling a
great tale, their rise and fall are like the flashing and falling of
the bright sword of some great champion in battle, or the onset and
withdrawal of Atlantic surges. He can at need be beautifully tender
and quiet. Who that has read his tale of the young Finn and the Seven
Ancients will forget the weeping of Finn over the kindness of the
famine-stricken old men, and their wonder at his weeping and the
self-forgetful pathos of their meditation unconscious that it was their
own sacrifice called forth the tears of Finn. “Youth,” they said, “has
many sorrows that cold age cannot comprehend.”
There are critics repelled by the abounding energy in O’Grady’s
sentences. It is easy to point to faults due to excess and abundance,
but how rare in literature is that heroic energy and power. There is
something arcane and elemental in it, a quality that the most careful
stylist cannot attain, however he uses the file, however subtle he is.
O’Grady has noticed this power in the ancient bards and we find it in
his own writing. It ran all through the Bardic History, the Critical
and Philosophical History, and through the political books, “The Tory
Democracy” and “All Ireland.” There is this imaginative energy in the
tale of Cuculain, in all its episodes, the slaying of the hound, the
capture of the Laity Macha, the hunting of the enchanted deer, the
capture of the wild swans, the fight at the ford and the awakening of
the Red Branch. In the later tale of Red Hugh which he calls “The Flight
of the Eagle” there is the same quality of power joined with a shining
simplicity in the narrative which rises into a poetic ecstacy in that
wonderful chapter where Red Hugh, escaping from the Pale, rides through
the Mountain Gates of Ulster, and sees high above him Slieve Mullion,
a mountain of the Gods, the birthplace of legend “more mythic than
Avernus” and O’Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past, and
the great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals,
and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, “the last great secular
champion of the Gael,” and inspires him for the fulfilment of his
destiny. We might say of Red Hugh and indeed of all O’Grady’s heroes
that they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain. From Red Hugh down to
the boys who have such enchanting adventures in “Lost on Du Corrig” and
“The Chain of Gold” they have all a natural and hardy purity of mind,
a beautiful simplicity of character, and one can imagine them all in an
hour of need, being faithful to any trust like the darling of the Red
Branch. These shining lads never grew up amid books. They are as much
children of nature as the Lucy of Wordsworth’s poetry. It might be said
of them as the poet of the Kalevala sang of himself,
“Winds and waters my instructors.”
These were O’Grady’s own earliest companions and no man can find better
comrades than earth, water, air and sun. I imagine O’Grady’s own
youth was not so very different from the youth of Red Hugh before his
captivity; that he lived on the wild and rocky western coast, that he
rowed in coracles, explored the caves, spoke much with hardy natural
people, fishermen and workers on the land, primitive folk, simple in
speech, but with that fundamental depth men have who are much in nature
in companionship with the elements, the elder brothers of humanity: it
must have been out of such a boyhood and such intimacies with natural
and unsophisticated people that there came to him the understanding of
the heroes of the Red Branch. How pallid, beside the ruddy chivalry
who pass huge and fleet and bright through O’Grady’s pages, appear
Tennyson’s bloodless Knights of the Round Table, fabricated in the study
to be read in the drawing-room, as anaemic as Burne Jones’ lifeless men
in armour. The heroes of ancient Irish legend reincarnated in the mind
of a man who could breathe into them the fire of life, caught from sun
and wind, their ancient deities, and send them, forth to the world to
do greater deeds, to act through many men and speak through many voices.
What sorcery was in the Irish mind that it has taken so many years to
win but a little recognition for this splendid spirit; and that others
who came after him, who diluted the pure fiery wine of romance he gave
us with literary water, should be as well known or more widely read. For
my own part I can only point back to him and say whatever is Irish in me
he kindled to life, and I am humble when I read his epic tale, feeling
how much greater a thing it is for the soul of a writer to have been the
habitation of a demigod than to have had the subtlest intellections.
We praise the man who rushes into a burning mansion and brings out its
greatest treasure. So ought we to praise this man who rescued from the
perishing Gaelic tradition its darling hero and restored him to us,
and I think now that Cuculain will not perish, and he will be invisibly
present at many a council of youth, and he will be the daring which
lifts the will beyond itself and fires it for great causes, and he will
also be the courtesy which shall overcome the enemy that nothing else
may overcome.
I am sure that Standish O’Grady would rather I should speak of his work
and its bearing on the spiritual life of Ireland, than about himself,
and, because I think so, in this reverie I have followed no set plan but
have let my thoughts run as they will. But I would not have any to think
that this man was only a writer, or that he could have had the heroes
of the past for spiritual companions, without himself being inspired to
fight dragons and wizardy. I have sometimes regretted that contemporary
politics drew O’Grady away from the work he began so greatly. I have
said to myself he might have given us an Oscar, a Diarmuid or a Caoilte,
an equal comrade to Cuculain, but he could not, being lit up by the
spirit of his hero, be merely the bard and not the fighter, and no man
in Ireland intervened in the affairs of his country with a superior
nobility of aim. He was the last champion of the Irish aristocracy and
still more the voice of conscience for them, and he spoke to them of
their duty to the nation as one might imagine some fearless prophet
speaking to a council of degenerate princes. When the aristocracy failed
Ireland he bade them farewell, and wrote the epitaph of their class in
words whose scorn we almost forget because of their sounding melody
and beauty. He turned his mind to the problems of democracy and more
especially of those workers who are trapped in the city, and he pointed
out for them the way of escape and how they might renew life in the
green fields close to Earth, their ancient mother and nurse. He used
too exalted a language for those to whom he spoke to understand, and it
might seem that all these vehement appeals had failed but that we know
that what is fine never really fails. When a man is in advance of his
age, a generation unborn when he speaks, is born in due time and finds
in him its inspiration. O’Grady may have failed in his appeal to the
aristocracy of his own time but he may yet create an aristocracy of
character and intellect in Ireland. The political and social writings
will remain to uplift and inspire and to remind us that the man who
wrote the stories of heroes had a bravery of his own and a wisdom of his
own. I owe so much to Standish O’Grady that I would like to leave it on
record that it was he who made me conscious and proud of my country, and
recalled my mind, that might have wandered otherwise over too wide and
vague a field of thought, to think of the earth under my feet and the
children of our common mother. There hangs in the Municipal Gallery of
Dublin the portrait of a man with brooding eyes, and scrawled on the
canvas is the subject of his bitter meditation, “The Lost Land.” I hope
that O’Grady will find before he goes back to Tir-na-noge that Ireland
has found again through him what seemed lost for ever, the law of its
own being, and its memories which go back to the beginning of the world.
THE COMING OF CUCULAIN
CHAPTER I
THE RED BRANCH
“There were giants in the earth in those days, the same
were mighty men which were of yore men of renown.”
The Red Branch feasted one night in their great hall at Emain Macha.
So vast was the hall that a man, such as men are now, standing in
the centre and shouting his loudest, would not be heard at the
circumference, yet the low laughter of the King sitting at one end was
clearly audible to those who sat around the Champion at the other. The
sons of Dithorba made it, giants of the elder time, labouring there
under the brazen shoutings of Macha and the roar of her sounding thongs.
Its length was a mile and nine furlongs and a cubit. With her brooch pin
she ploughed its outline upon the plain, and its breadth was not much
less. Trees such as the earth nourished then upheld the massy roof
beneath which feasted that heroic brood, the great-hearted children of
Rury, huge offspring of the gods and giants of the dawn of time. For
mighty exceedingly were these men. At the noise of them running to
battle all Ireland shook, and the illimitable Lir [Footnote: Lir was the
sea-god, the Oceanns of the Celt; no doubt the same as the British Lear,
the wild, white-headed old king, who had such singular daughters; two,
monsters of cruelty, and one, exquisitely sweet, kind, and serene, viz.:
Storm, Hurricane, and Calm.] trembled in his watery halls; the roar of
their brazen chariots reverberated from the solid canopy of heaven, and
their war-steeds drank rivers dry.
A vast murmur rose from the assembly, for like distant thunder or the
far-off murmuring of agitated waters was the continuous hum of their
blended conversation and laughter, while, ever and anon, cleaving the
many-tongued confusion, uprose friendly voices, clearer and stronger
than battle-trumpets, when one hero challenged another to drink, wishing
him victory and success, and his words rang round the hollow dome.
Innumerable candles, tall as spears, illuminated the scene. The eyes
of the heroes sparkled, and their faces, white and ruddy, beamed with
festal mirth and mutual affection. Their yellow hair shone. Their
banqueting attire, white and scarlet, glowed against the outer gloom.
Their round brooches and mantle-pins of gold, or silver, or golden
bronze, their drinking vessels and instruments of festivity, flashed and
glittered in the light. They rejoiced in their glory and their might,
and in the inviolable amity in which they were knit together, a host
of comrades, a knot of heroic valour and affection which no strength or
cunning, and no power, seen or unseen, could ever relax or untie.
At one extremity of the vast hall, upon a raised seat, sat their young
king, Concobar Mac Nessa, slender, handsome, and upright. A canopy
of bronze, round as the bent sling of the Sun-god, the long-handed,
far-shooting son of Ethlend, [Footnote: This was the god Lu Lam-fada,
i.e., Lu, the Long-Handed. The rainbow was his sling. Remember that
the rod sling, familiar enough now to Irish boys, was the weapon of the
ancient Irish, and not the sling which is made of two cords.] encircled
his head. At his right hand lay a staff of silver. Far away at the other
end of the hall, on a raised seat, sat the Champion Fergus Mac Roy,
like a colossus. The stars and clouds of night were round his head and
shoulders seen through the wide and high entrance of the dun, whose
doors no man had ever seen closed and barred. Aloft, suspended from the
dim rafters, hung the naked forms of great men clear against the dark
dome, having the cords of their slaughter around their necks and their
white limbs splashed with blood. Kings were they who had murmured
against the sovereignty of the Red Branch. Through the wide doorway
out of the night flew a huge bird, black and grey, unseen, and soaring
upwards sat upon the rafters, its eyes like burning fire. It was
the Mor-Reega, [Footnote: There were three war goddesses:--(1) Badb
(pronounced Byve); (2) Macha, already referred to; (3) The Mor-Rigu
or Mor-Reega, who was the greatest of the three.] or Great Queen, the
far-striding terrible daughter of Iarnmas (Iron-Death). Her voice was
like the shouting of ten thousand men. Dear to her were these heroes.
More she rejoiced in them feasting than in the battle-prowess of the
rest.
When supper was ended their bard, in his singing robes and girt around
the temples with a golden fillet, stood up and sang. He sang how once a
king of the Ultonians, having plunged into the sea-depths, there slew a
monster which had wrought much havoc amongst fishers and seafaring men.
The heroes attended to his song, leaning forward with bright eyes. They
applauded the song and the singer, and praised the valour of the heroic
man [Footnote: This was Fergus Mac Leda, Fergus, son of Leda, one of the
more ancient kings of Ulster. His contest with the sea-monster is the
theme of a heroic tale.] who had done that deed. Then the champion
struck the table with his clenched hand, and addressed the assembly.
Wrath and sorrow were in his voice. It resembled the brool of lions
heard afar by seafaring men upon some savage shore on a still night.
“Famous deeds,” he said, “are not wrought now amongst the Red Branch.
I think we are all become women. I grow weary of these huntings in the
morning and mimic exercises of war, and this training of steeds and
careering of brazen chariots stained never with aught but dust and mire,
and these unearned feastings at night and vain applause of the brave
deeds of our forefathers. Come now, let us make an end of this. Let us
conquer Banba [Footnote: One of Ireland’s many names.] wholly in all her
green borders, and let the realms of Lir, which sustain no foot of
man, be the limit of our sovereignty. Let us gather the tributes of all
Ireland, after many battles and much warlike toil. Then more sweetly
shall we drink while the bards chaunt our own prowess. Once I knew a
coward who boasted endlessly about his forefathers, and at last my anger
rose, and with a flat hand I slew him in the middle of his speech, and
paid no eric, for he was nothing. We have the blood of heroes in our
veins, and we sit here nightly boasting about them; about Rury, whose
name we bear, being all his children; and Macha the warrioress, who
brought hither bound the sons of Dithorba and made them rear this mighty
dun; and Combat son of Fiontann; and my namesake Fergus,[Footnote: This
was the king already referred to who slew the sea-monster. The monster
had left upon him that mark and memorial of the struggle.] whose crooked
mouth was no dishonour, and the rest of our hero sires; and we consume
the rents and tributes of Ulster which they by their prowess conquered
to us, and which flow hither in abundance from every corner of the
province. Valiant men, too, will one day come hither and slay us as I
slew that boaster, and here in Emain Macha their bards will praise them.
Then in the halls of the dead shall we say to our sires, ‘All that you
got for us by your blood and your sweat that have we lost, and the glory
of the Red Branch is at an end.’”
That speech was pleasing to the Red Branch, and they cried out that
Fergus Mac Roy had spoken well. Then all at once, on a sudden impulse,
they sang the battle-song of the Ultonians, and shouted for the war
so that the building quaked and rocked, and in the hall of the weapons
there was a clangour of falling shields, and men died that night for
extreme dread, so mightily shouted the Ultonians around their king and
around Fergus. When the echoes and reverberations of that shout ceased
to sound in the vaulted roof and in the far recesses and galleries, then
there arose somewhere upon the night a clear chorus of treble voices,
singing, too, the war-chant of the Ultonians, as when rising out of the
clangour of brazen instruments of music there shrills forth the clear
sound of fifes. For the immature scions of the Red Branch, boys and
tender youths, awakened out of slumber, heard them, and from remote
dormitories responded to their sires, and they cried aloud together and
shouted. The trees of Ulster shed their early leaves and buds at that
shout, and birds fell dead from the branches.
Concobar struck the brazen canopy with his silver rod. The smitten brass
rang like a bell, and the Ultonians in silence hearkened for the words
of their clear-voiced king.
“No ruler of men,” he said, “however masterful and imperious, could
withstand this torrent of martial ardour which rolls to-night through
the souls of the children of Rury, still less I, newly come to this high
throne, having been but as it were yesterday your comrade and equal,
till Fergus, to my grief, resigned the sovereignty, and caused me, a
boy, to be made king of Ulla and captain of the Red Branch. But now
I say, ere we consider what province or territory shall first see the
embattled Red Branch cross her borders, let us enquire of Cathvah the
Ard-Druid, whether the omens be propitious, and whether through his art
he is able to reveal to us some rite to be performed or prohibition to
be observed.”
That proposal was not pleasing to Fergus, but it pleased the Red Branch,
and they praised the wisdom of their king.
Then Cathvah the Ard-Druid [Footnote: High Druid, or Chief Druid.
Similarly we have Ard-Ri or High King.] spake.
“It hath been foretold,” he said, “long since, that the Ultonians shall
win glory such as never was and never will be, and that their fame shall
endure till the world’s end. But, first, there are prophecies to be
accomplished and predictions to be fulfilled. For ere these things may
be there shall come a child to Emain Macha, attended by clear portents
from the gods; through him shall arise our deathless fame. Also it hath
been foretold that there shall be great divisions and fratricidal strife
amongst the children of Rury, a storm of war which shall strip the Red
Branch nigh bare.”
Fergus was wroth at this, and spoke words of scorn concerning the
diviner, and concerning all omens, prohibitions, and prophecies.
Concobar, too, and all the Red Branch, rebuked the prophet. Yet he stood
against them like a rock warred on by winds which stand immovable, let
them rage as they will, and refused to take back his words. Then said
Concobar:
“Many are the prophecies which came wandering down upon the mouths
of men, but they are not all to be trusted alike. Of those which have
passed thy lips, O Cathvah, we utterly reject the last, and think the
less of thee for having reported it. But the former which concerns the
child of promise hath been ever held a sure prophecy, and as such passed
down through all the diviners from the time of Amargin, the son of
Milesius, who first prophesied for the Gael. And now being arch-king of
the Ultonians, I command thee to divine for us when the coming of the
child shall be.”
Then Cathvah, the Ard-Druid, put on his divining apparel and took his
divining instruments in his hands, and made his symbols of power upon
the air. And at first he was silent, and, being in a trance, stared out
before him with wide eyes full of wonder and amazement, directing
his gaze to the east. In the end he cried out with a loud voice, and
prophesying, sang this lay:
“Yea, he is coming. He draweth nigh.
Verily It is he whom I behold--
The predicted one--the child of many prophecies--
Chief flower of the Branch that is over all--
The mainstay of Emaiti Macha--the battle-prop of the Ultonians--
The torch of the valour and chivalry of the North--
The star that is to shine for ever upon the forehead of the Gael.
It is he who slumbers upon Slieve Fuad--
The child who is like a star--
Like a star upon Slieve Fuad.
There is a light around him never kindled at the hearth of Lu,
The Grey of Macha keeps watch and ward for him,
[Footnote: Madia’s celebrated grey war-steed. The meaning
of the allusion will be understood presently.]
And the whole mountain is filled with the Tuatha de Danan.”
[Footnote: These were the gods of the pagan Irish.
Tuatha=nations, De=gods, Danan=of Dana. So it means
the god nations sprung from Dana also called Ana. She
is referred to in an ancient Irish Dictionary as Mater
deorurn Hibernensium.]
Then his vision passed from the Druid, he raised up his long white hands
and gave thanks to the high gods of Erin that he had lived to see this
day.
When Cathvah had made an end of speaking there was a great silence in
the hall.