AT the place, close to the Dead Man’s Point, at the Rosses, where
the disused pilot-house looks out to sea through two round windows
like eyes, a mud cottage stood in the last century. It also was a
watchhouse, for a certain old Michael Bruen, who had been a smuggler
in his day, and was still the father and grandfather of smugglers,
lived there, and when, after nightfall, a tall schooner crept over the
bay from Roughley, it was his business to hang a horn lanthorn in the
southern window, that the news might travel to Dorren’s Island, and
from thence, by another horn lanthorn, to the village of the Rosses.
But for this glimmering of messages, he had little communion with
mankind, for he was very old, and had no thought for anything but for
the making of his soul, at the foot of the Spanish crucifix of carved
oak that hung by his chimney, or bent double over the rosary of stone
beads brought to him in a cargo of silks and laces out of France. One
night he had watched hour after hour, because a gentle and favourable
wind was blowing, and _La Mère de Miséricorde_ was much overdue; and
he was about to lie down upon his heap of straw, seeing that the dawn
was whitening the east, and that the schooner would not dare to round
Roughley and come to an anchor after daybreak; when he saw a long line
of herons flying slowly from Dorren’s Island and towards the pools
which lie, half choked with reeds, behind what is called the Second
Rosses. He had never before seen herons flying over the sea, for they
are shore-keeping birds, and partly because this had startled him out
of his drowsiness, and more because the long delay of the schooner
kept his cupboard empty, he took down his rusty shot-gun, of which the
barrel was tied on with a piece of string, and followed them towards
the pools.
When he came close enough to hear the sighing of the rushes in the
outermost pool, the morning was grey over the world, so that the tall
rushes, the still waters, the vague clouds, the thin mist lying among
the sand-heaps, seemed carved out of an enormous pearl. In a little he
came upon the herons, of whom there were a great number, standing with
lifted legs in the shallow water; and crouching down behind a bank of
rushes, looked to the priming of his gun, and bent for a moment over
his rosary to murmur: ‘Patron Patrick, let me shoot a heron; made into
a pie it will support me for nearly four days, for I no longer eat as
in my youth. If you keep me from missing I will say a rosary to you
every night until the pie is eaten.’ Then he lay down, and, resting his
gun upon a large stone, turned towards a heron which stood upon a bank
of smooth grass over a little stream that flowed into the pool; for he
feared to take the rheumatism by wading, as he would have to do if he
shot one of those which stood in the water. But when he looked along
the barrel the heron was gone, and, to his wonder and terror, a man of
infinitely great age and infirmity stood in its place. He lowered the
gun, and the heron stood there with bent head and motionless feathers,
as though it had slept from the beginning of the world. He raised the
gun, and no sooner did he look along the iron than that enemy of all
enchantment brought the old man again before him, only to vanish when
he lowered the gun for the second time. He laid the gun down, and
crossed himself three times, and said a _Paternoster_ and an _Ave
Maria_, and muttered half aloud: ‘Some enemy of God and of my patron
is standing upon the smooth place and fishing in the blessed water,’
and then aimed very carefully and slowly. He fired, and when the smoke
had gone saw an old man, huddled upon the grass and a long line of
herons flying with clamour towards the sea. He went round a bend of the
pool, and coming to the little stream looked down on a figure wrapped
in faded clothes of black and green of an ancient pattern and spotted
with blood. He shook his head at the sight of so great a wickedness.
Suddenly the clothes moved and an arm was stretched upwards towards
the rosary which hung about his neck, and long wasted fingers almost
touched the cross. He started back, crying: ‘Wizard, I will let no
wicked thing touch my blessed beads’; and the sense of a great danger
just escaped made him tremble.
‘If you listen to me,’ replied a voice so faint that it was like a
sigh, ‘you will know that I am not a wizard, and you will let me kiss
the cross before I die.’
‘I will listen to you,’ he answered, ‘but I will not let you touch my
blessed beads,’ and sitting on the grass a little way from the dying
man, he reloaded his gun and laid it across his knees and composed
himself to listen.
‘I know not how many generations ago we, who are now herons, were the
men of learning of the King Leaghaire; we neither hunted, nor went to
battle, nor listened to the Druids preaching, and even love, if it
came to us at all, was but a passing fire. The Druids and the poets
told us, many and many a time, of a new Druid Patrick; and most among
them were fierce against him, while a few thought his doctrine merely
the doctrine of the gods set out in new symbols, and were for giving
him welcome; but we yawned in the midst of their tale. At last they
came crying that he was coming to the king’s house, and fell to their
dispute, but we would listen to neither party, for we were busy with
a dispute about the merits of the Great and of the Little Metre; nor
were we disturbed when they passed our door with sticks of enchantment
under their arms, travelling towards the forest to contend against his
coming, nor when they returned after nightfall with torn robes and
despairing cries; for the click of our knives writing our thoughts in
Ogham filled us with peace and our dispute filled us with joy; nor
even when in the morning crowds passed us to hear the strange Druid
preaching the commandments of his god. The crowds passed, and one, who
had laid down his knife to yawn and stretch himself, heard a voice
speaking far off, and knew that the Druid Patrick was preaching within
the king’s house; but our hearts were deaf, and we carved and disputed
and read, and laughed a thin laughter together. In a little we heard
many feet coming towards the house, and presently two tall figures
stood in the door, the one in white, the other in a crimson robe; like
a great lily and a heavy poppy; and we knew the Druid Patrick and our
King Leaghaire. We laid down the slender knives and bowed before the
king, but when the black and green robes had ceased to rustle, it was
not the loud rough voice of King Leaghaire that spoke to us, but a
strange voice in which there was a rapture as of one speaking from
behind a battlement of Druid flame: “I preached the commandments of the
Maker of the world,” it said; “within the king’s house and from the
centre of the earth to the windows of Heaven there was a great silence,
so that the eagle floated with unmoving wings in the white air, and
the fish with unmoving fins in the dim water, while the linnets and
the wrens and the sparrows stilled their ever-trembling tongues in
the heavy boughs, and the clouds were like white marble, and the
rivers became their motionless mirrors, and the shrimps in the far-off
sea-pools were still, enduring eternity in patience, although it was
hard.” And as he named these things, it was like a king numbering his
people. “But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken
staves, and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with
anger. O, little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although
the summer pass above you with innumerable feet. O, men who have no
part in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom,
but dwell with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot
touch you as they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons cannot
sweep about you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a curse,
and change you to an example for ever and ever; you shall become grey
herons and stand pondering in grey pools and flit over the world in
that hour when it is most full of sighs, having forgotten the flame of
the stars and not yet found the flame of the sun; and you shall preach
to the other herons until they also are like you, and are an example
for ever and ever; and your deaths shall come to you by chance and
unforeseen, that no fire of certainty may visit your hearts.”’
The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen
bent over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to
understand something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for a
long time, had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his dream.
The old man of learning had crawled along the grass, and was now trying
to draw the cross down low enough for his lips to reach it.
‘You must not touch my blessed beads,’ cried the voteen, and struck
the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not have
trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh and was
still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green clothes,
for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to understand that
he had something the man of learning wanted and pleaded for, and now
that the blessed beads were safe, his fear had nearly all gone; and
surely, he thought, if that big cloak, and that little tight-fitting
cloak under it, were warm and without holes, Saint Patrick would take
the enchantment out of them and leave them fit for human use. But the
black and green clothes fell away wherever his fingers touched them,
and while this was a new wonder, a slight wind blew over the pool and
crumbled the old man of learning and all his ancient gear into a little
heap of dust, and then made the little heap less and less until there
was nothing but the smooth green grass.