calling to you! But you are awake again—and you are surely the Dark
Rose living again!”
“I wish my cousins could hear you call me that,” she said, and
laughed; “they would think it a new sort of compliment. When they
want to praise, they say a girl is fair and not dark, and they never
heard the song.”
“It may be that the sleep is on them, too, and it may be you will
call them awake. I am thinking there will be many to answer a call
when you cry it.”
A rainbow shimmered through the mist, and a curious radiance heralded
the breaking of sunrays between the clouds. The storm ended quickly
as it began, and Hugh rose to his feet with the lamb content on his
arm. The raindrops still shone on his gold-brown curls, and the time
had been short in the strange shelter, yet he did not feel as if it
had been: all the generations since O’Donnell made the song seemed
to have been bridged over by the dark, bright beauty of that strange
girl in the gray shadow.
She also arose, but did not emerge; her eyes were on him, slender and
at ease in his homely garb of homespun, weather-stained and worn. The
sun touched his hair into a shimmer of radiance and the white of the
lamb was made whiter by the arrows of the sun now far down the west.
She could not but note a certain patrician cast to his features, and
the slender shapeliness of the hand holding the lamb, and she saw him
as a picture in whatever light he moved, first Shelley, and now—
“Shepherd Hugh of the glen, you would have given me a fine fright,
rushing in here after me, had you been anyone else than yourself,”
she said, “yet I know not a thing of you for all our talk. I am sure
you are a poet, and if there were Irish princes left in Ireland, I
would know you were one of them, but after all I only know your name
is Hugh, and that you have a friend, Shamas, a tinker.”
“And I am only knowing that you are the Dark Rose, and that the
fairies brought you here on eve of Beltain that I might see you once
and be content: my great thanks and my love to them—may they hear me
say it!”
“Content?” she murmured—“not even asking who I might be?”
“Not even asking,” he said, smiling back to her. “I care not a rush
the name others may be putting on you. Queen of fairies, or maid of
the cinders, they may be calling you, but the Dark Rose are you to
me!”
“There may be a day when I come again to Kerry,” she said. “Would I
find you if I asked for Hugh of a glen?”
“I am foster brother to Michal Donn, and his shieling is back of
beyond on the other side there. I am of the Siod.”
“Siod?” and she stared at him; “Sidhe, I read that in tales of
fairies—it is their name! I do not need to be Irish to know that. I
thought you were not mortal!”
“And I knew you could not be,” he retorted in her own mood. “If you
are again on this hill of Kerry, I will be telling you the tale of
that Siod clan. There was a woman who came out of the mists long
ago, as you have, and left thought and mind on a mortal clan. It is
told around the peat fires at fall of night, but they speak of other
things when I join their circle.”
“Was she also a flower?”
“No—she was born of the sea, and the name put on her was Moruadh
(sea-maid), and it became, in time, Maurya. A prince of the Children
of the Sea took her for wife and was banned for it by the druids—and
that was even before Padrig was brought captive slave from Gaul.”
“A prince of the Children of the Sea?”
“Munster clans of the west are called that, for their fathers came
over the sea from some lost land—yes, that is what has been told of
them always.”
“I am coming back some day, Hugh of the Fairies,” she said.
A long signal call came to them. His eyes met hers in question. She
nodded her head.
“They are far away yet,” she said, and she seemed reluctant enough
at the sound. “So you are of the sons of Irish princes, yet you herd
sheep on the Kerry hills?”
“So do others whose genealogies reach to the generations when the
Son of Mary was born; true that is, though many would be doubting
it. Some souls are born for palaces and walls and roofs—others for
the surge of the sea and stout decks—and others to feel ever the
springing grass under foot. I am of that last, and Shamas was telling
my father never to house me, or break my reed pipe until I had
reached height and made my own choice; and I have yet some growing to
do.”
“And what will you be then: herder of sheep?”
“I think I will just be playing the pipe to the sheep and singing old
songs until you are coming again.”
“To the fairies’ rath?”
“I think it will be in the fairies’ rath.”
She broke a spray of the hawthorn bloom, and stood looking at him.
“It has been very wonderful,” she mused. “I will not believe any of
it when I wake tomorrow, but I will take a bit of the hawthorn for
proof. If—if I come back to these hills I will send you a message of
hawthorn, and you will come again and tell me of Ireland’s music and
her poets—perhaps you will then have poems of your own.”
“I am the one would be thankful if that could be,” he said.
Voices were heard on the wind, and the bark of a dog. The sun was
touching the very edge of the far sea.
“Do not move from that pillar, and you will be out of their sight,”
she said. “I will give them a fright to think I was alone in this
waste place. I will tell them a fairy prince was my host: they will
never believe me, but I know it is true.”
She broke the spray of hawthorn in two parts.
“Why did the tinker laugh at you when he sang the song of the
coulin—and what is that? Is it another mystery?”
“It is not. It is the ancient Irish way for men to wear the hair,
long and tied back. Under the old English laws men were punished
for keeping that old custom or using Irish speech. It is me he
is laughing at, and telling me I’ll be sent to the Castle yet in
punishment for my long hair.”
“It makes you look like old pictures,” she said, “and surely a boy
can do that much as he pleases in these days. This is your hawthorn
to prove I was here and had shelter with you. What is the name of
this place?”
“It is Templard—the high temple—and should be sung in a song because
the Dark Rose has stood under the hawthorn shade in this place,” he
said, and she laughed silently at that.
“How they would joy to hear me called dark anything,” she said.
The voices were nearer, and one man’s voice calling, “Rose! Rosa!
Rosalie!”
“It is one of the hundred cousins,” she laughed. “You will see, Hugh
of the Siod, that they call my name in many ways, but only you have
called me Rose the Dark. Fare you well, shepherd boy, until you make
music to call me back to Kerry.”
“I will be making that music,” he said.
She let fall the spray of hawthorn lightly on the white lamb in his
arms just as a dark hound halted on the summit of the earth wall; she
ran to meet him, poised there like a green bird with scarlet wings as
her cloak blew back in the wind.
There were shouts, a clamor of voices, and then the one voice.
“Rose! You here safe, and the peasants searching the bogs for you!”
“Whist!” she called down to them mockingly, “this is no place for
your shouting and your hounds. I have been spending an hour with the
fairies in their rath of Templard, and the rest of you are not to put
foot in it. Not at all after the sun is down,” and she pointed to
the ball of celestial fire sinking beyond oceans—“the mystic hour is
past.”
Then she darted down, laughing, and only the hawthorn spray was
left to show she had not been a vision, laughing, mocking, weeping,
adorable in young beauty.
Once Hugh caught sight of her again. A carriage with black horses
waited on the old road used by the peat-cutters of the bog beyond.
Toward it she walked with a tall man and the hound between them.
A half-dozen men and boys followed through the whins and rocky
pasture—they did not look back, and he knew fear was on them for all
her mocking; and no maid or man of the glen would choose the ruins of
Templard for a resting place at setting of sun on any day.
She halted once on a velvet-green knoll and for a few heartbeats she
stood—a flash of crimson against the deep purple of the sky. She
did not look back, but with upflung hand made a gesture of hail and
farewell, and Hugh smiled at that, and waved in return though he knew
she would not see.
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It was late twilight when he brought down the sheep to the fold, and
Molly Donn, his foster sister, put before him a brown loaf baked in
the hearth oven, the pitcher of new milk, and boiled potatoes, while
a white-haired little old man puffed at his pipe and looked him over.
“You ranged the ewes over far when you took them to the rath of
Templard,” he remarked, and Molly rested the needles in her knitting
to stare at him.
“Shamas man, have you indeed ‘the sight’ that you look over all the
pasture range—and you not beyond the boolie this day?” she asked, and
the old man with the grave mouth, and merry blue eyes, puffed his
pipe and chuckled.
“Have thought with you, Molly girl,” he suggested. “What need of the
second sight, when he sports a twig of hawthorn flower from the fairy
rath on that hill? That hawthorn is ever the first to be blooming.”
“You have sharper eyes than the youth about you, Father Shamas,” said
Hugh, and laughed at the fear in the eyes of Molly. “I was in truth
on that hill, and fell asleep and dreaming in the bracken until the
rain fell—that was when the sheep strayed a bit, but all are safe
home again.”
Molly made the sign to ward off evil, and looked her horror at him.
“Asleep in the bracken of Templard and this on the eve of Beltain!”
she whispered. “Saint Bride to your saving! Fear would be on me over
the dreams of Templard.”
“Save your fears, Molly asthore. The dream was a beautiful dream, and
I am the richer.”
Old Shamas regarded the glowing eyes of the lad. “The dreams of the
young are seed for the harvest of old age,” he said. “It is good to
dream in beauty, else the old days will be gray days.”
“It’s only guessing at that you are, Shamas,” retorted Hugh, “for
there is no age on you—nor will ever be.”
The old man and the lad looked in each other’s eyes with the smiling
content of comradeship, but Molly, turning the heel of the hose, did
not see the look, and was slow in imagination for a Kerry coast woman.
“It’s glib you are growing with the tongue, Hugh, lad,” she
admonished him. “I was never daring to cross my elders, nor was
Michal at your age. When your father is coming back, or sending for
you for the schooling, he will be putting blame on us for the bold
words of you—and God and Mary know it is no fault of mine!”
“True for you,” laughed Hugh, “it is not—Shamas is the one to blame.”
Michal came in at that, shaking the water from his coat-amore, for
the rain was again falling.
“Lucky it is it held off so long,” he said, “for the hunt was up
for a bit of a girl straying on the mountain, and lost from the old
castle.”
“What is witching you?” demanded Molly. “You know well the castle of
Argial is a forsaken place.”
“It has been, but the new heir, Hector Laud, must be giving it an
overlooking, and brought along friends for gay doings.”
“Fine it would be to have a new and young lord of Argial again—that
has never been known in our time,” mused Molly.
“This one is new but not young; Denis and Tim Doherty saw him. He is
a pale, masterful kind of man, and proud at that. They say it will
be a great wonder if he gets the girl he is wanting as mistress of
Argial, for she has lightning in her blood, and the devil’s share of
courage. Well, Time tells the story! That girl it was started the
hunt, and Tim was after getting two shillings for taking his gray
pony and going the bog boreen in the search. No, he was not the one
to find her. She was found, and he earned the two shillings in ease
and comfort.”
“Who was the lost one?” asked Shamas, for Hugh made no question.
“It was the daughter of a Maurice, and she English, and knowing not a
path of all Kerry.”
“Maurice is not a name of England,” mused Shamas, “not at all of
England.”
“Well—God knows! That is their saying, and she has only her beauty
for wealth and her uncle keen on the match when the time comes. She’s
only a bit of a slip yet, and time in plenty ahead! Denis was fair
enchanted by a glimpse of her behind the black horses of Argial, and
them galloping to put fear on a soul! His saying was that the cuckoo
would sing in falling snow for that daughter of Maurice, whoever she
may be.”
Molly on the creepie by the hearthstone clicked her knitting needles,
and glanced her impatience at Michal, busy with his supper.
“That would be the man of it,” she said in disdain of masculine
weaknesses. “Every man-jack of them agog over a bright eye, and never
a knowledgeable word from you of where the child was lost, and who
had the finding of her.”
“Ah, blather of you, Molly! That’s the woman of it—wanting to know
the ins and outs of all things going. Give me another mug of milk,
girl! No one was finding the stray at all. She walked out from
Templard when she got ready, and no fear on her and not a hair of her
head wet! She had mocking and laughter for Laud of Argial and told of
a King of the Fairies who made music for her in the ruins, but Argial
had blackness of thunder in his looks and drove like the devil down
from the mountain.”
“Glory be to God!” breathed Molly, crossing herself. “A slip of a
girl like that to venture in Templard this day! Hugh, lad, when the
sheep were straying over there beyond did you get sight of her?”
But Hugh was sprawled on the hearth with a bit of paper and pencil.
He was tousling his curls for straying thoughts, and making scribbles
there by the glow of the peat fire. Molly repeated her question
before he gave heed to it.
“I saw no daughter of a Maurice there, and no bride of Argial,” he
said stolidly. “What I saw on Templard was a different thing. Did I
not tell you I fell asleep in the bracken and had a dream? Whist,
Molly dear, and let be, for I heard music there and am making a song
of it.”
“Oh, Shamas man,” begged Molly. “Say something for me to put the
fear of God on that lad! You know well it is ill luck to sleep on
a fairies’ rath, and ill luck to make songs to their harping, and
worst luck of all for a maid or man to follow fairy king, or fairy
mistress, to a rath on a Midsummer Eve, or on this eve of Beltain.
Tell it to him, Shamas, for—Bride and Mary to our helping!—it is only
to you he will hearken.”
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And in the old Kerry castle of Argial, a dark old man, in an
invalid’s chair, frowned at the girl called by Hugh the Dark Rose,
and all the laughter and joy were gone from her face.
“I will not have you mock your host and my friend!” he said, and his
clenched hand fell on the tea-table and set the china and silver
a-tinkle. “I will not have it from you! Gerald and you have bread
and comfort under his roof—and that is more than I can give you;
and bread alone is more than I may have at the last—with stocks
going smash, and no hope of retrieving losses, I will not have this
rebellion and mockery of yours!”
The girl looked from his angry eyes to the brandy and soda on the
tea-table.
“I meant to ask you about that, about the little inheritance of
Jerry’s and mine—if—it is gone—?”
“Of course it’s gone—gone long ago—with my own! I tell you there is
only one way of school and comfort for both of you.”
“But, uncle,” the girl went over and stood back of his chair as if
speech were less hard if his eyes were not on her; “Jerry and I have
endless numbers of cousins somewhere here in Ireland—”
“All poorer than church mice; and the ones with means have all gone
to America or the continent. Sensible enough they are, too!”
“Yet there might be some left who would let us make a home with
them—even a home on a farm would not be bad. We are not quite
paupers; surely, we have a little left, and I would work—do anything—”
His laugh with a deal of scorn in it, halted her.
“Do anything! Then do the only sensible thing there is to do. Settle
your mind to be civil and be mistress of Argial when the time comes.
Hector is enough of a connection of the family to accept favors
from. Gerald will be provided for; he will get his bit to secure a
commission, and he would think you a fool to talk of work—and perhaps
a clerk’s grind for him! Why, it is a dower for a princess Hector
Laud is offering for you—and you talk of a group of unknown Irish
cousins, poverty-stricken as yourself! It is too absurd for words.
Don’t let me hear any more of it.”
There was silence for so long a time that the man in the chair grew
restless and turned half around; his voice was more conciliating.
“Be a good girl now! You must know you are the only hope left. Hector
adores you, and your mockery is serious to him. You are too young
to know what is best. Why start a fool’s hunt for Irish cousins you
never saw when an English cousin offers you the key to his treasure
chests?”
“I care little enough for the treasure chests—though I do love the
Kerry hills,” she said at last.
“Well, that’s something! You can have all of them you want when
married, but not a foot shall you go alone on them again while we are
in the castle. And that will only be until tomorrow. You will go back
to school until common sense has ended your flighty rebellion. It is
a choice between starvation and the income of a girl-queen. Poverty
is an enemy to fight against—it will conquer you in the end!”
“It may overpower me when I think of Jerry and his future,” she said
quietly, “but to be overpowered does not mean to be conquered.”
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In an early April a woman rode down the boreen of the glen from
Templard, and her eyes rested often on the simple growths—from cress
of the brook to the buds on the prickly thorn. She reached out and
touched the green ivy in the dusky wood, and pinned a bit of it on
her coat of darker green.
Molly Donn, catching glimpse of her through the open door, flew
hurriedly to combing her hair with one hand, and pushing Shamas
toward the door with the other.
“Go on now—it is herself! Have manners and give her greeting whilst
I make myself tidy. God save her! No word of anyone has overpraised
her!”
Shamas, a little older, a little whiter, did as bidden, and looked
his wonder when the rider spoke.
“You are Shamas? Are you not?” she asked, and her dark eyes had
searching kindness.
“It is Shamas, indeed, I am called, my lady,” he made answer, “though
there is many another of the same name on the Kerry coast, and I’ve
no monopoly.”
“There can be only one here at the foot of Templard,” she said, “one
with—
The ever young blue eyes,
Beneath the thatch of snow.”
“Ah then, you’ve been seeing the lad’s bits of verse, and songs of
the Kerry hills,” he said; and the old face was illumined. “Sure
enough he did not forget his old friends—not even a pet cow or a
sheep! Why, I find myself giving looks to the bog-berries and the
bracken under foot as never before—and all because he bore them in
his mind and put them in his songs across the sea beyond.”
“Yes—I’ve been seeing the songs—and hearing them. My brother is home
from the front and tells me they are sung in the trenches by the
soldiers. He is not well enough to ride, so I have come alone. I
thought you would perhaps tell me a little about the boy who wrote
the ‘Legends of Desmond.’”
Molly appeared at that moment, eager and voluble with offered
hospitality.
“Who could tell you if not Shamas Ronayne?” she asked. “Didn’t he
teach the lad them old tales and songs of old battles?—Indeed, he
did then, and it’s proud we are of Hugh, and joyful that his heart
has remembrance for the glen folk. It’s proud, too, we are that the
lady of Castle Argial has his name among the many who would crave
remembrance of her—and will you please to come within, for a rest on
the way?”
The lady of Argial dismounted, and looked with interest at the low
room, stone-floored, and the walls brown with peat smoke. The simple
furnishings were clean, but the bareness of it all seemed to appall
the visitor.
“And this was the cradle!” she said at last, and looked at Shamas, as
to one who would understand. “Tell me of him.”
“It is not much to tell,” said the old man. “He was ailing as a young
lad, and was left behind when his father sailed for the western
world. The grass under his feet here was the right cure for him. Ere
the day came when his father struck the rich luck of mines and such
wealth as is to be had for the looking over there, the lad Hugh had
a mind full of tales of old Munster—and more than the tales, for he
had the feel of the land and could sing it—yes, he could do that!
When tutors and the learning of books were coming his way, he made
that learning serve for telling the old tales in a new manner and
saving the old songs in print, so cheaply that even the husband of
a one-donkey farm could afford the price of it. Many wise men were
making record of old Irish for the scholars and the learned—that is
what he is saying, but the thing he was wishful for ever was to make
it easy for the lad of the cow-path—and the digger of peat—and the
herring fishers along the shore. Yes, that was the wish of him.”
“He has his wish,” she said. “Hugh Siod is a name well loved by
many.”
“Aye, and hated as well,” murmured Shamas. “You’re not the first
to ride this path asking of him; the sergeant of constabulary has
gathered in more than one copy, and others are hid as the history of
Keating was hid for generations among the Irish. My own is under the
hearth.”
“Whist man,” muttered Molly, who was setting the black kettle on the
hob for making of tea, “why bury a crock of coin only to lift the
cover off for the passer-by?”
But Shamas smiled at the visitor, and lifted the stoneflagging where
a flat package reposed in the excavation beneath.
“Let be, Molly,” he said tolerantly, “the lady of Argial has blood in
her of the nobles who had banishment—‘to hell or Connaught’ put upon
them by the invader. The daughter of Maurice could not be an informer
against her own.”
“She could not,” said the lady of Argial. “My grandfather was killed
for Ireland—and my father went into exile to escape the same enemies.
I am only learning these things now, for it was long kept hidden from
us.”
“Aye! That is often the way of it,” agreed Shamas. “The young in free
lands could not have understanding of it, and what use to put shadow
on them? Look at this now”—and he opened the package and turned the
leaves of the little volume to a tale, _The Wife of Desmond_. “There
now is a lament, second to none ever written: not Dierdre for her
lover—not Nuala in her exile, ever had the heart wail for hearts’
losses equaled by the Irish bride of Desmond at the slaughter of her
infant sons and their father, who had dared Saxon laws to marry in
honor an Irish maid!”
“That was a true tale, and a terrible,” agreed Molly, who was at the
open door watching the path, “but fear goes with it, and what profit
in the printed words of such, when troubles might come to all of us
for the very sight of it here?”
“It teaches the young from songs what they never would glimpse from
the books of historians,” said their visitor. “I had taunts given me
in schools that my people were of jails, and exiles. I carried the
shadow of that in silence all my youth. This book told me they were
not criminals—they were patriots—and my pride in them now is beyond
word. Think of that!—I—who scarcely dared speak the name of them all
my life!”
“And you a grand lady, too!” breathed Molly in amaze. “And it is
noble I am sure your forbears were, and not to be spoke of by the
likes of me who has no reading of books to my knowledge. But indeed
now there have been no bad killings this while back, and it is a good
herring year, and the new litter of pigs gives us promise of comfort
for the winter, to say nothing of the nest-egg Hugh himself has been
sending me! No, my lady, it is myself is glad enough to hear speech
of these things, for Shamas here, and Michal, who is gone to the
harbor, give me no light on it at all; but when a good year is with
us why put in time with reading of the old-time slaughterings?”
“To justify our fathers who sacrificed themselves for freedom. It is
a wonderful word—freedom! The pity is that few value it until after
it has been lost.”
There was weariness in the sweet, deep voice, and a moment of shadow
in the dark eyes, and the old man nodded his head slowly.
“It came your way early,” he said, “but it has been bringing
understanding with it.”
“No,” she said lowly, “this little book brought the understanding. I
owe much to it; I drifted in discontent from port to port until it
found me! I bought a hundred copies for my brother who is afire with
hope these days. Surely, our Irish regiments, fighting abroad, must
win us justice at last here at home!”