turned out the light.
“But I dare,” she whispered, and slipped out and down to the stables
in the moonless night!
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
Through the gray forest, darkening to green, she rode. And over the
high moor the black horse sped like a night-bird skimming the earth.
She was filled with a great exultation—the cloud under which she
had been oppressed seemed to lift when she emerged from the forest
of Argial. She knew she was doing the thing she had longed to do
always—and if there was but hawthorn abloom on the height it would be
recompense!
Willingly and joyously the horse ran to the first circle of the rath,
but beyond that he would not go! In vain she whispered—in vain she
petted and caressed him. He planted his feet and pointed his ears
and reared only to come down again in the same spot. She walked him
quietly to a different point and tried again—nearer he would not
approach.
She slid from his back and petted him—he was wet and trembling.
“This then must be the place of parting,” she whispered. “Why should
you have fear of it?”
She wondered why she whispered where there were none to hear, but
could not answer her own query. There seemed to be utter stillness
on the world, and she scarce heard her own footfalls as she went up
and up over the circles, her eyes straining for first glimpse of the
hawthorn—if it should not be in bloom!
But it was. Even in the night without moon she could see the soft
white of it, and as she crossed the third circle the whiteness of it
grew more clear until she glanced above to see what sudden light of
star was reflected by it.
The sky was the same, and the stars were the same; the mass of bloom
gave out its own soft radiance in the night.
And besides the bloom there was a movement. She heard a breaking
branch, and halted there, breathless, listening!
Then his voice—the voice she had listened for—the voice like no
other—spoke.
“Come no nearer!” it said. “I broke the hawthorn for you and have
waited four days and four nights—longer I may not. Hush! Do not speak
to me! I know the thing you would know—and the thing Shamas has
asked—and it is for you to see.”
She did not speak, for she could not! A strange cold wall seemed to
circle her, and her eyes were drawn to the shadow of the cromlechs
where the two had once sheltered from storm. She peered forward as
dim light fell on the darkness under the arch—and through it—as if
far away, and seen through reversed opera glasses, she perceived men
in uniform—other men in civilian dress—a stone wall very high—and a
man there who appeared to dominate—it was Hector Laud of Argial. Men
with rifles passed across the scene, and a man under guard entered.
He wore a cap, and her heart leaped and then grew cold—cold as her
speechless lips.
He was questioned by Argial, and by others; he shook his head. He
spoke, but she could not hear the words. Once he smiled at them in
a tired way, as at some question many times answered. Argial turned
aside and made a sign; a man with a white handkerchief folded it
and moved forward, but the man alone by the wall waved him away. He
removed his cap and let it fall beside him on the paving; he spoke a
brief word or two, looking straight ahead as if into her eyes, and
then stepped back against the wall and made a signal. The wind tossed
aside the lock of bronze-gold hair on his forehead and he stood an
instant with his hand over his eyes.
Then something happened, and he sank forward and lay there and
shadows blotted all out as the men, Hector Laud among them, bent over
the fallen body!
“That is how it was,” she heard him say. “I have at last done
something for the land, and so dared come again to meet you here. O
Dark Rose—I have sung your songs as I could—but strength is going
again. Hush—do not speak! You will rest and wake to find the hawthorn
abloom. You will grieve—but green hope will cover your life! You will
not be without love—without music!”
He moved out from the screen of the white bloom, and the radiance of
it shone on his face, grave and pale. In his left hand he bore the
broken branch; his eyes were luminous and wonderful in the starlight.
A puff of wind blew aside the curls over his forehead, and she would
have cried out if she could, for a dark mark was there—the open path
of the lead of death! He lifted his hand, and it also was pierced.
“No,” he said, reading her thought, “they do not use nails in palms
today for their crucifixions, but we still die—guiltless!”
She strove to break through the frozen silence in which she was
locked—only to speak to him once—once! Only to tell him—
But his luminous eyes forbade, though the smile there was the smile
of perfect understanding. Music came from somewhere about them—the
_suantre_ by which earth-cares are silenced—she felt her eyes closing
under its magic—many harp strings were sounding softly afar off—was
it the lullaby he had once sung to her under the druid arch? She did
not know—she was so nearly wrapped in slumber.
But through that mist of far harmonies there came one clear, low
voice—his young voice singing the prophecy of the _Dark Rosaleen_.
_Your holy delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel!
And I will rear your royal throne
Again in golden sheen!
’Tis you shall reign, and reign alone
My Dark Rosaleen!
My Own Rosaleen!_
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It was there they found her asleep in the early dawn, wrapped in the
green-hooded cloak and the spray of hawthorn across her breast.
Only Shamas and Hector Laud came over the third circle, and Shamas
crossed himself at the sight.
“It is a priest we should have brought with us to this place,” he
said, “for no living woman would sleep on Templard.”
Laud of Argial was blanched by fear, and halted on the edge of the
rath and called to the man holding the horses below.
But she wakened at the shout, and stood up. The languor of sweet
sleep was still on her eyes and she smiled at Shamas, whose gaze was
the first to meet hers. The hawthorn fell at her feet; she lifted it,
looked at the dew on it and on the cloth of her cloak—and remembered!
Her eyes were dark lightning as she faced Argial.
“Not one step nearer, so long as you live, and may yours be a long
life—and remorseful!” she said. “My question to you has been answered
without you, and this place is too sacred for your feet!”
“You are a raving madwoman,” he cried, and his face flushed red in
anger. “Who else would range the forests at night and sleep on the
moors alone?”
“I was not alone, Shamas,” she said, ignoring Argial and looking
only at the old man. “He was with me here. Yes—he kept tryst with me
on Templard and sang me to sleep with a song of hope! It is true,
Shamas! He came back from the dead to do that, and he left this
broken bloom here as witness when I would waken; it is true, Shamas!”
“I believe it is true,” said the old man, “for sleep was put on me,
too—a heavy sleep of rest—and that is the first sleep coming to me
for four nights—his soul is no longer calling us to hearken—God and
Mary save him!”
“Four nights,” she repeated. “Yes, that is what he said—four days and
nights he was waiting for me, and the blossoms held for me here!”
Laud of Argial glared at the two and uttered an oath of destruction
on the old man.
“Are you both maniacs?” he demanded. “How did you know to tell us to
follow her tracks to Templard? And who is the lover who sings you to
sleep. You—you—shameless with your peasant mates!”
“It is the man you had killed in secret against a prison wall four
days ago,” she said steadily, but without looking at him. And to
Shamas she said: “That is indeed how Hugh Siod died! He saved my
brother and died for it. Did they think to silence his songs by
killing the poet?”
“You are both insane rebels!” shouted Argial. “A second time I have
followed you to this place of secret meetings—and it will be the
last—you shall go in a locked room of Argial until you are sane
again!”
“I will go in no room of Argial ever again,” she said. “The cart of
Shamas or Michal will bring my wounded to me in some more simple
abiding place; and friends will be found.”
“They will surely,” said Shamas, “and honor will be yours—and love
will be yours.”
“You are moon-struck Irish dreamers, silly as children! Do you think
I will allow you to disgrace Argial with a scandal of this sort? You
will go back with me if I have to call those men below to bind and
carry you!”
“Man,” said Shamas, stepping between them, “go easy with your threats
in Kerry. She has but to call out to the men down there what she told
to us here of Hugh Siod—and you might not yourself see Argial ever
again!”
“Stand aside! I have my rights—she is mine—she is—”
“No!” said Shamas Ronayne with such quiet force that Argial moved a
step back at the intensity of the soft voice. “No, Argial! Rights
of her you have never had, and there are many knowing that! She was
traded to you by a gambler who did not own her—and that in her
young, unknowing years! There was never bond of right between you
two, and now there is foul murder dividing you!”
Argial glared cold fury at the incredible peasant.
“And this is your new sort of courtier?” he sneered at her; “the
sweepings of the mud-huts!”
She drew a great breath of freedom and shook back the hood from her
dark hair. The first rays of the sun struck the gray pillars back of
her, and the white hawthorn, and flooded her with the rosy radiance
of a new day.
“It is, indeed!” she said, and a throb of exultation was in her
voice. “Both peasants and princes come from the huts of our land.
They are the souls to whom he sung of freedom; they will be my
courtiers—and my brothers, and my sons! Hugh Siod came back from
death to sing a prophecy here to me—I will live among his people and
work for that prophecy all my days!”
Argial scowled from her to the stalwart Kerry man climbing the hill,
and turned away.
Shamas gazed at her with a reflected light of joy on his face.
“_O Kathleen na Hulihan, your face is like a star_,” he murmured.
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
According to official records it was six days after Beltain ere the
dominating political group of Dublin Castle was forced to make public
an account of the execution, without trial, of the writer, whose
palm and brain were pierced by the same bullet in the jail-yard on
the twenty-sixth day of April! There had been ten days of absolute
secrecy covering the matter, and the explanation of Argial to his
superiors concerning its ultimate publicity gave him a bad hour.
To tell them that a girl on an old rath on a Kerry hill had seen a
vision of that death, and could not be silenced, was an absurdity not
to be advanced.
The investigating board was composed of hard-headed unimaginative
men, and Argial preferred reprimand from them for lack of executive
ability, rather than be ridiculed by them for repeating any such
curious phantasies as those evolved by the Irish mind!
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
Lullaby
[Music: _Traditional._]
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The books mentioned below have been of much assistance to me while
preparing these tales of Ancient Ireland, and I hereby express my
indebtedness to the authors of the respective volumes.
Graves, Alfred Perceval, _Songs of Erin_. Boosey & Co., London.
Gregory, Lady Isabella Augusta, _Book of Saints and Wonders_.
Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Hull, Eleanor, _Textbook of Irish Literature_. Benziger Brothers.
Hyde, Douglas, _Literary History of Ireland, from the Earliest
Times to the Present Day_. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Joyce, Patrick Weston, _Ancient Irish Music_. Longmans, Green &
Co.
Keating, Geoffrey (1570?-1644?), _History of Ireland_ (_Foras
Feasa ar Eirinn’_, preface signed by the author in 1629).
Mangan, James Clarence, _Complete Poems_. P. J. Kenedy & Sons.
Meyer, Kuno, Translation from the _Book of Lismore_.
Petrie, George, _Ancient Collection of the Music of Ireland_.
_Annals of the Four Masters._ Compiled by three scholars of the
historic O’Clery house and Peregrin O’Duidenan, the historian and
genealogist, early in the seventeenth century, and produced by
John Colgan in 1645. The annals begin with the deluge, and close
with the year 1616.
The initial letters used at the beginning of the Tales, and other
decorations in book and cover, are taken from _The Book of Kells_,
acknowledged to be the most beautiful illuminated vellum in the
known world. This ancient volume is the work of an unnamed Irish monk
of Kells monastery in the seventh century. The weird and commanding
beauty of the pages have been at once both the inspiration and
despair of artists for centuries, and the wonder of line and color
would be unbelievable but for the ancient manuscript treasured at
Trinity College, Dublin. The soul of an artist went into the precious
volume known even in tenth-century Europe as the “wonder of the Far
Western World.”
The music for the book was arranged by Geraldine G. Saltzberg.
All quoted verses or chants are in italic.
M. E. R.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the
text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 40 “His forest was ful” changed to “His forest was full”