A man wearing the grey frieze coat and the soft black hat of the
peasantry rode up to the Monastery gate on a wiry, long-tailed nag. When
he rang the bell at the hall-door there was a clatter of sandals on a
flagged hall inside.
The door was opened by a lay Brother in a brown habit, a girdle about
the waist from which a great Rosary beads was suspended. The peasant
turned a soft black hat nervously in his hands as he delivered his
message. The Friar who visited ailing people was, he said, wanted. A
young man was lying very ill away up on the hills. Nothing that had been
done for him was of any account. He was now very low, and his people
were troubled. Maybe the Friar would come and raise his holy hands over
Kevin Hooban?
The peasant gave some account of how the place might be reached. Half an
hour later the Spanish Friar was on a side-car on his way to the
mountain. I was on the other side of the car. The Spanish Friar spoke
English badly. The peasantry--most of whom had what they called _Béarla
briste_ (broken English)--could understand only an occasional word of
what he said. At moments of complete deadlock I, a Mass server, acted as
a sort of interpreter. For this, and for whatever poor companionship I
afforded, I found myself on the sick call.
The road brought us by a lake which gave a chilly air to the landscape
in the winter day, then past a strip of country meagrely wooded. We
turned into a narrow road that struck the hills at once, skirting a
sloping place covered with scrub and quite dark, like a black patch on
the landscape. After that it was a barren pasture, prolific only in
bleached boulders of rocks, of bracken that lay wasted, of broom that
was sere. It was a very still afternoon, not a breath of wind stirring.
Sheep looking bulky in their heavy fleeces lay about in the grass, so
motionless that they might be the work of a vigorous sculptor. The
branches of the trees were so still, so delicate in their outlines
against the pale sky, that they made one uneasy; they seemed to have
lost the art of waving, as if leaves should never again flutter upon
them. A net-work of low stone walls put loosely together, marking off
the absurdly small fields, straggled over the face of the landscape,
looking in the curious evening light like a great grey web fantastically
spun by some humorous spider. The brown figure of a shepherd with a
sheep crook in his hand rose up on a distant hill. He might be a sacred
figure in the red chancel of the western sky. In a moment he was gone,
leaving one doubtful if he had not been an illusion. A long army of
starlings trailed rapidly across the horizon, a wriggling motion marking
their course like the motion in the body of a gigantic snake. Everything
on the hills seemed, as the light reddened and failed, to grow vast,
grotesque. The silence which reigned over it all was oppressive.
Stray cabins skirted the roadside. Some people moved about them, leaving
one the impression of a remoteness that was melancholy. The women in
their bare feet made little curtesies to the Friar. Children in long
dresses ran into the cabins at sight of the strangers, like rabbits
scuttling back to their burrows. Having found refuge they looked out
over the half-doors as the car passed, their eyes sparkling, humorous,
full of an alert inquisitiveness, their faces fresh as the wind.
A group of people swung along the road, speaking volubly in Irish,
giving one the impression that they had made a great journey across the
range of hills. They gave us a salutation that was also a blessing. We
pulled up the car and they gathered about the Friar, looking up at him
from under their broad-brimmed black hats, the countenances for the most
part dark and primitive, the type more of Firbolg than Milesian origin.
When the Friar spoke to them they paused, shuffled, looked at each
other, puzzled. Half unconsciously I repeated the priest's words for
them.
"Oh, you are heading for the house where Kevin Hooban is lying sick?"
"Yes."
"The priest is going to read over him?"
"Yes."
"And maybe they are expecting him?"
"Yes."
"We heard it said he is very low, a strangeness coming over him."
"Is the house far?"
"No, not too far when you are once a-past the demesne wall, with the ivy
upon it. Keep on the straight road. You will come to a stream and a
gullet and a road clipping into the hills from it to the right; go past
that road. West of that you will see two poplar trees. Beyond them you
will come to a boreen. Turn down that boreen; it is very narrow, and you
had best turn up one side of the car and both sit together, or maybe the
thorny hedges would be slashing you on the face in the darkness of the
place. At the end of the boreen you will come to a shallow river, and it
having a shingle bottom. Put the mare to it and across with you. Will
you be able to remember all that?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Very well. Listen now. When you are across the river with the shingly
bottom draw up on the back meadow. You will see a light shining to the
north. Let one bawl out of you and Patch Keetly will be at hand to take
the mare by the head. He will bring you to the house where Kevin Hooban
is lying in his trouble. And God grant, Father, that you will be able to
reach out a helping hand to him, and to put your strength in holy words
between him and them that has a hold of him; he is a fine young man
without fault or blemish, and the grandest maker of music that ever put
a lip to the fideóg. Keep an eye out for the poplar trees."
"Very good. God be with you."
"God speed you kindly."
We drove on. As we did so we tried to piece the directions together. The
two poplar trees appeared to touch some curious strain of humour in the
Spanish Friar. But it all came to pass as the prophet had spoken. We
came to the ivy wall, to the stream, the gullet, the road that clipped
into the hills to the right, and a long way beyond it the two poplar
trees, tall, shadowy, great in their loneliness on the hills, sentinels
that appeared to guard some mountain frontier. The light had rapidly
gone. The whole landscape had swooned away into a vague, dark chaos.
Overhead the stars began to show, the air was cutting; it bit with
frost. And then we turned down the dark boreen, the mare venturing into
it with some misgiving. I think the Friar was praying in an undertone in
his native Basque as we passed through the narrow mountain boreen. At
the end of it we came to the shallow river with the shingly bottom.
Again the mare required some persuasion before she ventured in, the
wheels crunching on the gravel, her fetlocks splashing the slow-moving,
chocolate-coloured water. On the opposite bank we reached a sort of
plateau, seen vaguely in the light. I "let a bawl out of me." It was
like the cry of some lonely, lost bird on the wing. The Friar shook with
laughter. I could feel the little rock of his body on the springs of the
car. A figure came suddenly out of the darkness and silently took the
mare by the head. The car moved on across the vague back meadow. Patch
Keetly was piloting us to a light that shone in the north.
People were standing about the front of the long, low-thatched house.
Lights shone in all the windows, the door stood open. The people did
not speak or draw near as we got down from the car. There was a fearful
silence about the place. The grouping of the people expressed mystery.
They eyed us from their curiously aloof angles. They seemed as much a
part of the atmosphere of the hills, as fixed in the landscape as the
little clumps of furze or the two lonely poplars that mounted guard over
the mouth of the boreen.
"Won't the holy Father be going into the house?" Patch Keetly asked. "I
will unyoke the mare and give her a share of oats in the stable."
The Friar spoke to me in an undertone, and we crossed to the open door
of the house.
The door led directly into the kitchen. Two women were standing well
back from the door, something respectful, a little mysterious and a
little fearful in their attitude. Their eyes were upon the Friar, and
from their expressions they might have expected some sort of apparition
to cross the threshold. They made a curtesy to him, dipping their bodies
in a little sudden jerk. Nobody else was in the kitchen, and, despite
the almost oppressive formality of their attitude, they somehow
conveyed a sense of the power of women in the household in time of
crisis. They were in supreme command, the men all outside, when a life
had to be battled for. The elder of the women came forward and spoke to
the priest, bidding him welcome. The reception looked as if it had been
rehearsed, both women painfully anxious to do what was right.
There appeared some little misunderstanding, and I was too dazed with
the cold--which I had only fully felt when I got off the car and found
my legs cramped--to come to the rescue as interpreter. The Spanish Friar
was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of
meeting them with a smile. The misunderstanding and the embarrassment
seemed to thaw the formality of the reception. The women looked
relieved. They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had
no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly
superior person, one who might patronise them, make a flutter in their
home, appal them by expecting a great deal of attention, in short, be
"very Englified." The Spanish Friar had very quick intuitions and some
subtle way of his own for conveying his emotions and his requirements.
He was in spirit nearer to the peasantry than many of the Friars who
themselves came from the flesh of the peasantry. And these two peasant
women, very quick in both their intuitions and their intelligence,
seemed at the very moment of the breakdown of the first attempt at
conversation to understand him and he to understand them. The elder of
the women led the priest into a room off the kitchen where I knew Kevin
Hooban lay ill.
The younger woman put a chair before the fire and invited me to sit
there. While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step
of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments.
Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass. It contained
what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow
river with the shingly bottom. I must have expressed some little
surprise, even doubt, in my face, for she held the glass closer, as if
reassuring me. There was something that inspired confidence in her
manner. I took the glass and sipped the liquid. It left a half-burned,
peaty taste in the mouth, and somehow smacked very native in its
flavour. I thought of the hills, the lonely bushes, the slow movement of
the chocolate-coloured river, the men with the primitive dark faces
under the broad-brimmed hats, their mysterious, even dramatic way of
grouping themselves around the lighted house. The peaty liquid seemed a
brew out of the same atmosphere. I knew it was poteen. And in a moment I
felt it coursing through my body, warming my blood. The young woman
stood by the fire, half in shadow, half in the yellow flame of the turf
fire, her attitude quiet but tense, very alert for any movement in the
sick room.
The door of the room stood slightly open, and the low murmur of the
Friar's voice reciting a prayer in Latin could be heard. The young woman
sighed, her bosom rising and falling in a quick breath of pain. Then she
made the sign of the Cross.
"My brother is very low," she said, sitting down by the fire after a
time. Her eyes were upon the fire. Her face was less hard than the
faces I had seen on the hills. She looked good-natured.
"Is he long ill?"
"This long while. But to look at him you would conceit he was as sound
as a trout. First he was moody, moping about the place, and no way
wishful for company. Hours he would spend below at the butt of the
meadow, nearby the water, sitting under the thorn bush and he playing
upon the fideóg. Then he began to lose the use of his limbs, and crying
he used to be within in the room. Some of the people who have knowledge
say he is lying under a certain influence. He cannot speak now. The holy
Friar will know what is best to be done."
When the Friar came out of the room he was divesting himself of the
embroidered stole he had put over his shoulders.
The white-capped old woman had excitement in her face as she followed
him.
"Kevin spoke," she said to the other. "He looked up at the blessed man
and he made an offer to cross himself. I could not hear the words he
was speaking, that soft they come from his lips."
"Kevin will live," said the younger woman, catching some of the
excitement of her mother. She stood tensely, drawn up near the fire,
gazing vacantly but intently across the kitchen, as if she would will it
so passionately that Kevin should live that he would live. She moved
suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly across the floor and disappeared into the
room.
The priest sat by the fire for some time, the old woman standing by,
respectful, but her eyes riveted upon him as if she would pluck from him
all the secrets of existence. The priest was conscious, a little uneasy,
and a little amused, at this abnormal scrutiny. Some shuffling sounded
outside the house as if a drove of shy animals had come down from the
mountain and approached the dwelling. Presently the door creaked. I
looked at it uneasily. The atmosphere of the place, the fumes of the
poteen in my head, the heat of the fire, had given me a more powerful
impression of the mysterious, the weird. Nothing showed at the door for
some time, but I kept my eye upon it. I was rewarded. A cluster of heads
and shoulders of men, swarthy, gloomy, some awful foreboding in the
expression of their faces, hung round the door and peered silently down
at the Friar seated at the fire. Again I had the sense that they would
not be surprised to see any sort of apparition. The heads disappeared,
and there was more shuffling outside the windows as if shy animals were
hovering around the house. The door creaked again, and another bunch of
heads and shoulders made a cluster about it. They looked, as far as I
could see them, the same group of heads, but I had the feeling that they
were fresh spectators. They were taking their view in turn.
The priest ventured some conversation with the woman of the house.
"Do you think will Kevin live, Father?"
"He should have more courage," the Friar said.
"We will all have more courage now that you have read over him."
"Keep the faith. It is all in the hands of God. It is only what is
pleasing to Him that will come to pass."
"Blessed be His Holy Name." The woman inclined her head as she spoke
the words. The priest rose to go.
The young girl came out of the room. "Kevin will live," she said. "He
spoke to me." Her eyes were shining as she gazed at her mother.
"Could you tell what words he spoke?"
"I could. He said, 'In the month of April, when the water runs clear in
the river, I will be playing the fideóg.' That is what Kevin said."
"When the river is clear--playing the fideóg," the elder woman repeated,
some look of trouble, almost terror, in her face. "The cross of Christ
between him and that fideóg!"
The priest was moving to the door and I followed. As I did so I got a
glimpse, through the partly open room door, of the invalid. I saw the
long, pallid, nervous-looking face of a young man on the pillow. A light
fell on his brow, and I thought it had the height, and the arch, the
good shape sloping backward to the long head, of a musician. The eyes
were shining with an unnatural brightness. It was the face of an artist,
an idealist, intensified, idealised, by illness, by suffering, by
excitement, and I wondered if the vision which Kevin Hooban had of
playing the fideóg by the river, when it ran clear in April, were a
vision of his heaven or his earth.
We left the house. Patch Keetly was taking the loop from a trace as he
harnessed the mare in the yellow light of a stable lantern. We mounted
the car. The groups of men drew about us, their movements again sounding
like the shuffling of shy animals on the sod, and they broke silence for
the first time.
There was more said about Kevin Hooban. From various allusions, vague
and unsubstantial, little touches in the kind, musical voices, I
gathered that they believed him to be under the influence of the Good
People. The sense of mystery and ill-omen came back to me, and I carried
away a memory of the dark figures of the people grouped about the lonely
lighted house, standing there in sorrow for the flute-player, the grass
at their feet sparkling with frost.