Hanrahan, that was never long in one place, was back again among the
villages that are at the foot of Slieve Echtge, Illeton and Scalp and
Ballylee, stopping sometimes in one house and sometimes in another, and
finding a welcome in every place for the sake of the old times and of
his poetry and his learning. There was some silver and some copper money
in the little leather bag under his coat, but it was seldom he needed to
take anything from it, for it was little he used, and there was not one
of the people that would have taken payment from him. His hand had grown
heavy on the blackthorn he leaned on, and his cheeks were hollow and
worn, but so far as food went, potatoes and milk and a bit of oaten
cake, he had what he wanted of it; and it is not on the edge of so wild
and boggy a place as Echtge a mug of spirits would be wanting, with the
taste of the turf smoke on it. He would wander about the big wood at
Kinadife, or he would sit through many hours of the day among the
rushes about Lake Belshragh, listening to the streams from the hills, or
watching the shadows in the brown bog pools; sitting so quiet as not to
startle the deer that came down from the heather to the grass and the
tilled fields at the fall of night. As the days went by it seemed as if
he was beginning to belong to some world out of sight and misty, that
has for its mearing the colours that are beyond all other colours and
the silences that are beyond all silences of this world. And sometimes
he would hear coming and going in the wood music that when it stopped
went from his memory like a dream; and once in the stillness of midday
he heard a sound like the clashing of many swords, that went on for long
time without any break. And at the fall of night and at moonrise the
lake would grow to be like a gateway of silver and shining stones, and
there would come from its silence the faint sound of keening and of
frightened laughter broken by the wind, and many pale beckoning hands.
He was sitting looking into the water one evening in harvest time,
thinking of all the secrets that were shut into the lakes and the
mountains, when he heard a cry coming from the south, very faint at
first, but getting louder and clearer as the shadow of the rushes grew
longer, till he could hear the words, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful;
the birds in the air, the moths under the leaves, the flies over the
water look at me, for they never saw any one so beautiful as myself. I
am young; I am young: look upon me, mountains; look upon me, perishing
woods, for my body will shine like the white waters when you have been
hurried away. You and the whole race of men, and the race of the beasts
and the race of the fish and the winged race are dropping like a candle
that is nearly burned out, but I laugh out because I am in my youth.'
The voice would break off from time to time, as if tired, and then it
would begin again, calling out always the same words, 'I am beautiful,
I am beautiful.' Presently the bushes at the edge of the little lake
trembled for a moment, and a very old woman forced her way among them,
and passed by Hanrahan, walking with very slow steps. Her face was of
the colour of earth, and more wrinkled than the face of any old hag that
was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in wisps, and the rags
she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by all
weathers. She passed by him with her eyes wide open, and her head high,
and her arms hanging straight beside her, and she went into the shadow
of the hills towards the west.
A sort of dread came over Hanrahan when he saw her, for he knew her to
be one Winny Byrne, that went begging from place to place crying always
the same cry, and he had often heard that she had once such wisdom that
all the women of the neighbours used to go looking for advice from her,
and that she had a voice so beautiful that men and women would come from
every part to hear her sing at a wake or a wedding; and that the Others,
the great Sidhe, had stolen her wits one Samhain night many years ago,
when she had fallen asleep on the edge of a rath, and had seen in her
dreams the servants of Echtge of the hills.
And as she vanished away up the hillside, it seemed as if her cry, 'I
am beautiful, I am beautiful,' was coming from among the stars in the
heavens.
There was a cold wind creeping among the rushes, and Hanrahan began to
shiver, and he rose up to go to some house where there would be a fire
on the hearth. But instead of turning down the hill as he was used, he
went on up the hill, along the little track that was maybe a road and
maybe the dry bed of a stream. It was the same way Winny had gone, and
it led to the little cabin where she stopped when she stopped in any
place at all. He walked very slowly up the hill as if he had a great
load on his back, and at last he saw a light a little to the left, and
he thought it likely it was from Winny's house it was shining, and he
turned from the path to go to it. But clouds had come over the sky, and
he could not well see his way, and after he had gone a few steps his
foot slipped and he fell into a bog drain, and though he dragged himself
out of it, holding on to the roots of the heather, the fall had given
him a great shake, and he felt better fit to lie down than to go
travelling. But he had always great courage, and he made his way on,
step by step, till at last he came to Winny's cabin, that had no window,
but the light was shining from the door. He thought to go into it and
to rest for a while, but when he came to the door he did not see Winny
inside it, but what he saw was four old grey-haired women playing cards,
but Winny herself was not among them. Hanrahan sat down on a heap of
turf beside the door, for he was tired out and out, and had no wish for
talking or for card-playing, and his bones and his joints aching the
way they were. He could hear the four women talking as they played, and
calling out their hands. And it seemed to him that they were saying,
like the strange man in the barn long ago: 'Spades and Diamonds, Courage
and Power. Clubs and Hearts, Knowledge and Pleasure.' And he went on
saying those words over and over to himself; and whether or not he was
in his dreams, the pain that was in his shoulder never left him. And
after a while the four women in the cabin began to quarrel, and each one
to say the other had not played fair, and their voices grew from loud to
louder, and their screams and their curses, till at last the whole
air was filled with the noise of them around and above the house, and
Hanrahan, hearing it between sleep and waking, said: 'That is the sound
of the fighting between the friends and the ill-wishers of a man that is
near his death. And I wonder,' he said, 'who is the man in this lonely
place that is near his death.'
It seemed as if he had been asleep a long time, and he opened his eyes,
and the face he saw over him was the old wrinkled face of Winny of the
Cross Road. She was looking hard at him, as if to make sure he was not
dead, and she wiped away the blood that had grown dry on his face with a
wet cloth, and after a while she partly helped him and partly lifted him
into the cabin, and laid him down on what served her for a bed. She gave
him a couple of potatoes from a pot on the fire, and, what served him
better, a mug of spring water. He slept a little now and again, and
sometimes he heard her singing to herself as she moved about the house,
and so the night wore away. When the sky began to brighten with the dawn
he felt for the bag; where his little store of money was, and held it
out to her, and she took out a bit of copper and a bit of silver money,
but she let it drop again as if it was nothing to her, maybe because
it was not money she was used to beg for, but food and rags; or maybe
because the rising of the dawn was filling her with pride and a new
belief in her own great beauty. She went out and cut a few armfuls of
heather, and brought it in and heaped it over Hanrahan, saying something
about the cold of the morning, and while she did that he took notice of
the wrinkles in her face, and the greyness of her hair, and the broken
teeth that were black and full of gaps. And when he was well covered
with the heather she went out of the door and away down the side of the
mountain, and he could hear her cry, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful,'
getting less and less as she went, till at last it died away altogether.
Hanrahan lay there through the length of the day, in his pains and his
weakness, and when the shadows of the evening were falling he heard
her voice again coming up the hillside, and she came in and boiled the
potatoes and shared them with him the same way as before. And one day
after another passed like that, and the weight of his flesh was heavy
about him. But little by little as he grew weaker he knew there were
some greater than himself in the room with him, and that the house began
to be filled with them; and it seemed to him they had all power in their
hands, and that they might with one touch of the hand break down the
wall the hardness of pain had built about him, and take him into their
own world. And sometimes he could hear voices, very faint and joyful,
crying from the rafters or out of the flame on the hearth, and other
times the whole house was filled with music that went through it like a
wind. And after a while his weakness left no place for pain, and there
grew up about him a great silence like the silence in the heart of a
lake, and there came through it like the flame of a rushlight the faint
joyful voices ever and always.
One morning he heard music somewhere outside the door, and as the day
passed it grew louder and louder until it drowned the faint joyful
voices, and even Winny's cry upon the hillside at the fall of evening.
About midnight and in a moment, the walls seemed to melt away and to
leave his bed floating on a pale misty light that shone on every side
as far as the eye could see; and after the first blinding of his eyes he
saw that it was full of great shadowy figures rushing here and there.
At the same time the music came very clearly to him, and he knew that it
was but the continual clashing of swords.
'I am after my death,' he said, 'and in the very heart of the music of
Heaven. O Cheruhim and Seraphim, receive my soul!'
At his cry the light where it was nearest to him filled with sparks
of yet brighter light, and he saw that these were the points of swords
turned towards his heart; and then a sudden flame, bright and burning
like God's love or God's hate, swept over the light and went out and he
was in darkness. At first he could see nothing, for all was as dark as
if there was black bog earth about him, but all of a sudden the fire
blazed up as if a wisp of straw had been thrown upon it. And as he
looked at it, the light was shining on the big pot that was hanging from
a hook, and on the flat stone where Winny used to bake a cake now and
again, and on the long rusty knife she used to be cutting the roots of
the heather with, and on the long blackthorn stick he had brought into
the house himself. And when he saw those four things, some memory came
into Hanrahan's mind, and strength came back to him, and he rose sitting
up in the bed, and he said very loud and clear: 'The Cauldron, the
Stone, the Sword, the Spear. What are they? Who do they belong to? And I
have asked the question this time,' he said.
And then he fell back again, weak, and the breath going from him.
Winny Byrne, that had been tending the fire, came over then, having her
eyes fixed on the bed; and the faint laughing voices began crying out
again, and a pale light, grey like a wave, came creeping over the room,
and he did not know from what secret world it came. He saw Winny's
withered face and her withered arms that were grey like crumbled earth,
and weak as he was he shrank back farther towards the wall. And then
there came out of the mud-stiffened rags arms as white and as shadowy as
the foam on a river, and they were put about his body, and a voice that
he could hear well but that seemed to come from a long way off said to
him in a whisper: 'You will go looking for me no more upon the breasts
of women.'
'Who are you?' he said then.
'I am one of the lasting people, of the lasting unwearied Voices, that
make my dwelling in the broken and the dying, and those that have lost
their wits; and I came looking for you, and you are mine until the whole
world is burned out like a candle that is spent. And look up now,' she
said, 'for the wisps that are for our wedding are lighted.'
He saw then that the house was crowded with pale shadowy hands, and
that every hand was holding what was sometimes like a wisp lighted for a
marriage, and sometimes like a tall white candle for the dead.
When the sun rose on the morning of the morrow Winny of the Cross
Roads rose up from where she was sitting beside the body, and began her
begging from townland to townland, singing the same song as she walked,
'I am beautiful, I am beautiful. The birds in the air, the moths under
the leaves, the flies over the water look at me. Look at me, perishing
woods, for my body will be shining like the lake water after you have
been hurried away. You and the old race of men, and the race of the
beasts, and the race of the fish, and the winged race, are wearing away
like a candle that has been burned out. But I laugh out loud, because I
am in my youth.'
She did not come back that night or any night to the cabin, and it was
not till the end of two days that the turf cutters going to the bog
found the body of Red Owen Hanrahan, and gathered men to wake him and
women to keen him, and gave him a burying worthy of so great a poet.