THE ROCK OF DOON
“Hills o’ my heart!
Let the herdsman who walks in your high haunted places
Give him strength and courage, and weave his dreams alway:
Let your cairn-heaped hero-dead reveal their grand exultant faces.
And the Gentle Folk be good to him betwixt the dark and day.”
ETHNA CARBERY.
SIR John O’Neill paid his formal call on the Australians, tactfully
choosing a day so hopelessly wet as to forbid any thought of fishing or
“bog-lepping.” Bog excursions had a peculiar fascination for Norah and
the boys, who loved rambling among the deep brown pools, leaping from
tuft to tuft of sound grass, and making experiments—frequently
disastrous—in mossy surfaces that looked sound, but were very likely to
prove quagmires which effectually removed any lurking doubt in Norah’s
mind that an Irish bog could be boggy. They sought the bogs in almost
all weathers. But the day that brought Sir John to the old house on
Lough Aniller was one of such pitiless rain that prudence, in the shape
of Mr. Linton, forbade any excursion to patients so newly recovered as
Jim and Wally.
Even in the most homelike of boarding-houses a wet day is apt to be
depressing to open-air people. It was with relief, mingled with
amazement, that they saw the motor coming up the dripping avenue in the
afternoon; and a moment later Bridget, obviously impressed, ushered Sir
John into the drawing-room. The Lintons were established as favourites
in the household on their own merits; but it was placing them on quite a
different standard of respect to find that they were visited by the
“ould stock.”
Every one enjoyed the visit. Sir John was better, the lines of pain that
Wally had seen nearly gone from his face. There was an almost boyish
eagerness about him; he was keen to know them all, to hear their frank
talk, to make friends with them. David Linton and his son liked him from
the moment they met his eyes; brown eyes, with something of the mute
appeal that lies in the eyes of a dog. As for Norah, in all her life she
had not known what it meant to be so sorry for anyone as she felt for
this brave, crippled man, with his high-bred face and gallant bearing.
Afterwards, when John O’Neill looked back at heir meeting, one of his
memories of Norah was that she had never seemed to see his misshapen
shoulders.
That first visit had stretched over the whole afternoon, no one quite
knew how. Outside, the rain streamed down the window-panes and lashed
the lough into waves; but within the old house a fire of turf and
bog-wood blazed, casting ruddy lights on the furniture, and sending its
pleasant, acrid smell into the room. They gathered round it in a
half-circle and “yarned”—exchanging stories of Ireland, and Australia,
and London and war. There could be no talk in those grim days without
war-stories and war-rumours; but after a time they drifted away to
far-off times, and Sir John, beginning half-timidly with an old Irish
legend, found that he had a suddenly enthralled circle of listeners, who
demanded more, and yet more—tales of high and far-off times and of the
mighty heroes of Ireland: Finn MacCool and the Fianna, Cuchulain, Angus
Og, and the half-real, half-legendary past that holds Ireland in a mist
of romance. He knew it all, and loved it, telling the stories with the
quiet pride of a descendant of a race whose roots were deep in the soil
of the land that had borne them: and the children of the country that
had no history hung upon his words.
“What must you think of me?” he said at last, when, in a pause, the
clock in the hall boomed out six strokes. “I come to call, and I remain
to an unseemly hour spinning yarns. The fact is, you—well, you just
aren’t strangers at all, and I certainly knew you before. Were you in
Ireland in a previous incarnation, Miss Norah?”
Norah laughed.
“I would love to think so,” she said. “One would like to have had some
part in the Ireland you can talk about. Will you come again and tell us
more, Sir John?”
His eyes were grateful.
“If I don’t bore you. I fastened upon this poor boy”—indicating Wally
with a friendly nod—“the other day when I was desperately sick of my
own company, and now I seem to have done the same to you all; and you’re
very good to a lonely man. But I want all of you at Rathcullen.”
“We’re coming,” said Wally, solemnly.
“Will you? I timed my call to-day, because I didn’t think even
half-amphibious Australians would be out in such weather—and see what
luck I’ve had!” He looked no older than the boys, his eager face glowing
in the firelight. “But please don’t come to Rathcullen formally, Mr.
Linton; if I bring the car over can I carry you all off to-morrow for
lunch? There are horses simply spoiling to be ridden, Miss Norah.”
“Oh-h!” said Norah. “But I’ve no riding-things with me.”
“That doesn’t matter: I have two young cousins who occasionally pay me a
visit, and their riding-kit is at Rathcullen, since they can’t use it in
London. I’m sure you can manage with it; details of fit don’t signify
much in Donegal.” He rose, and stood on the hearthrug looking eagerly at
them. When he was sitting, his finely-modelled head and clever face made
it easy to forget his dwarfed body: standing, among the lithe, tall
Australians, it was suddenly pitifully evident. He felt it, for he
flushed, and for a moment his eyes dropped; then he faced them again,
bravely. Mr. Linton spoke, hurriedly.
“We would be delighted to go to you. But are we not rather a numerous
party? I think we ought to send a detachment!”
“No, indeed—I wouldn’t know which to choose!” returned the Irishman,
whimsically. “You see, you are just a godsend to me, if you will spare
me a little of your time; I have been so long shut up alone. And it’s
not good to be alone when one is spoiling to be in the thick of things;
I grow horribly bad-tempered. When I know that these young giants are
out of the hunt, too, I become more reconciled to circumstances. You see
my complete selfishness!” He smiled at them delightfully. “So, may I
come for you all to-morrow?”
“Thanks—but there is really no reason why we should trouble you to
bring the motor. We can easily walk over.”
“There’s every reason; I’ll get you earlier!” said O’Neill, laughing.
The motor slid down the avenue in the driving rain, and the Australians
looked at each other.
“Did you ever make friends so quickly with anyone, dad?” Jim asked.
“I don’t think I did,” David Linton answered. “There’s something about
him one can’t quite express: so much of the child left in the man. Poor
fellow—poor fellow!”
“I think he’s the bravest man I ever saw,” said Norah.
The day at Rathcullen House was the first of many. Sir John was so
frankly eager to have them there, and his welcome was so spontaneous and
heart-felt, that the Australians suddenly felt themselves “belong,” and
the beautiful old house became to them an Irish version of their own
Billabong. Ireland, always many-sided, showed them a new and fascinating
face. They had loved the lanes and bogs and moors where they had been
free to wander. But now they found themselves free of a wide demesne
where wealth and art had done all that was possible to aid Nature, with
a perfect understanding of where it was best to leave Nature alone. The
park, with its splendid old trees, and the well-kept fields around it,
gave opportunities for trying Sir John’s horses; and Norah and the boys
were soon under the spell of jumping the big banks that the hunters took
so cleverly,—although, at first, to see them jump on to a bank, change
feet with lightning rapidity, and leap down the far side, seemed to
Antipodean eyes more like a circus performance than ordinary riding!
Beyond the park stretched miles of deer-forest, unlike an ordinary
forest in that it had no trees,—being a great expanse of heathery hills
and moor, seamed and studded with rocks, streams babbling here and
there, half-hidden in deep channels fringed with long grass and heather
and ling. As land, it Was worthless; nothing would grow in the stony
barren soil save the moorland plants; but it formed a glorious ground
for long rambles. O’Neill was fast recovering his normal strength, and
his energy was always like a devouring fire; he could not, however, walk
far, and he and David Linton would find rocky seats on the moor while
Norah and the boys rambled far over the deer-forest, often stalking
patiently for an hour, armed with field-glasses, to catch a glimpse of
the shy red-deer.
“A don’t know why people want to shoot them,” Norah said, after a long
crawl through the rough heather, which had resulted in a splendid view
of a magnificent stag. “They’re so beautiful; and it’s just as much fun
to stalk them like this!” To which Jim and Wally returned non-committal
grunts, and exchanged, privately, glances of amazement at the
strangeness of the feminine outlook.
Sometimes there were days on the lough at the far end of the Rathcullen
bog: a well-stocked lough where no outside fishing was permitted, and
which yielded them trout of a weight far beyond their dreams; and there
were motor-drives far afield, exploring the country-side, with Sir John
always ready with legends and stories of the “ould ancient” times. Even
on wet days the big Rolls-Royce would appear early in the morning,
bearing an urgent invitation; and wet days were easy to spend in
Rathcullen—in the great hall, the well-stocked library, the
conservatories, or the picture-gallery, where faces of long-dead
O’Neills, some of them startlingly like their host, stared down at them
from the panelled walls. In the billiard-room Wally and Jim fought
cheerful battles, while Mr. Linton would write Australian letters in the
library, and Norah and Sir John explore other nooks and corners of the
great house, or discourse music after their own fashion. His friendship
seemed fitted to each: with Mr. Linton he could be the man of affairs,
deeply-read and thoughtful; while to the boys and Norah he was the most
delightful of chums, as full of fun even as Wally.
“He fits in so,” said Jim. “He’s never in our way, and—what is a good
deal more wonderful—I don’t believe we’re ever in his!”
Many times Sir John begged them to transfer themselves altogether to
Rathcullen. But something of Australian independence held them back;
they preferred to retain their rooms at the Lough Aniller house, though
it saw less and less of them in the daytime, and Timsy openly bewailed
their constant absence—until the sergeant came home on furlough, when
Timsy promptly forgot every one else in the world, and walked with his
head in clouds of glory.
“Indeed,” Mr. Linton said, one day, in answer to a renewed
invitation—“I am frequently ashamed to think how completely we seem to
have quartered ourselves on you, O’Neill. It’s hardly fair to inflict
you still further.”
“If you could but guess what you have done for me, you might be
surprised,” Sir John answered.
They were in the motor, running along a smooth high road near the little
narrow-gauge railway line. Ahead, Norah and the boys could be seen
across a field, riding; they had come across country, taking banks and
ditches as they came, and were making towards a point where they were
all to meet. John O’Neill looked at the racing trio with a smile.
“I was in a pretty bad way when Wally dropped on me in the boreen that
morning,” he said, presently.
“He said you were suffering terribly,” David Linton said.
“Oh—that was nothing. I’m fairly well used to pain when my stupid
attacks come on, though that had certainly been a stiff one. But—well,
I think I was beginning to lose heart. My physical disadvantages have
always been in my way, naturally; but I have managed to keep them in the
background to a certain extent and live a man’s life, even in a
second-rate fashion. But since the war began I couldn’t do it. I was so
useless—a cumberer of the ground, when every man was needed. My people
have always been fighters, until——until I came, to blot the record.”
“You have no right to say that,” said David Linton, sharply. “You did
more than thousands of men are doing.”
“I did what I could. But I wanted to fight, man—to fight! If you knew
how I envied every private I saw marching through London! every lucky
youngster with a sound heart and a pair of straight shoulders. I had
always set my teeth, before, and got through a man’s work, somehow or
other. But here was something I couldn’t do—they wouldn’t have me. And
even over what work I was able to tackle, I went to pieces. When I came
back to Ireland I felt like rubbish, flung out of the way—out of the
way of men who were men.”
“It’s not fair to feel like that,” David Linton said. “And it is not
true.”
“Well—you have all helped me to believe that perhaps I am not
altogether on the dust-heap. You came when I was desperate; every day in
Rathcullen was making me worse. I couldn’t go into the picture-gallery;
the fighting-men on the walls seemed to look at me in scorn to see to
what a poor thing the old house had come down. And then you all came,
and you didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong with me. You made
me one of you—even those youngsters, full of all the energy and
laughter and youth of that big young country of yours. They have made a
chum of me: I haven’t laughed for years as I’ve laughed in the last
fortnight. And I’m fitter than I’ve been for years—I’ve forgotten to
think of myself, and when you all go I also am going back, to work.
There must be work, even for me.”
“For you! Why, you’re a young man, full of energy, even if you can’t
have active service,” said David Linton. “And I am a grey old man, but
there’s work for me. Don’t think that you have no job, because you can’t
get the job you like; that’s an easy attitude to adopt. Every man can
find his job if he looks for it with his eyes open.”
“Well, you have helped mine to open,” O’Neill said. “I was miserable
because I had hitched my wagon to a star and had found I couldn’t drive
it. The old servants—bless their kind hearts!—were purring over me and
pitying me, and I was feeling raw; and then you all walked into my life
and declined to notice that I was a useless dwarf——”
“Because you aren’t,” said the other man, sharply. “Don’t talk utter
nonsense!”
O’Neill laughed.
“Well—I won’t forget,” he said. “But I am grateful; only I sometimes
wonder if I ask for too much of your time. Do you think the youngsters
are bored?”
“Bored!” Mr. Linton said in amazement. “Why, they are having the time of
their lives! I could not possibly have given them half the pleasure you
have Put in their way. You talk of gratitude, but to my mind it should
be entirely on our side.”
“No,” said O’Neill firmly. “Still, I’m glad to think they are enjoying
themselves,—not merely being polite and benevolent!” Whereat David
Linton broke into laughter.
“I trust they’d be polite in any circumstances,” he said. “But even
politeness has its limits. You wouldn’t call that sort of thing forced,
would you? Look.”
He pointed across a field. Norah and the boys were galloping to meet
them. They flashed up a little hill, dipped down into a hollow, and
scurried up another rise, where a stiff bank met them, with a deep drop
into the next field. Norah’s brown pony got over it with the cleverness
of a cat, and she raced ahead of the boys, who set sail after her,
vociferating quite unintelligible remarks about people who took unfair
short cuts. Their merry voices brought echoes from the hills. Norah
maintained her advantage until a low bank brought them out into the
road, and all together they trotted towards the waiting motor. Their
glowing faces sufficiently answered Sir John’s doubts.
“Why, of course you beat them, Norah—easily!” he said, shamelessly
ignoring the boys’ side of the race. “Didn’t I tell you that pony could
beat most things in Donegal, if she got the chance?”
“I did cut a corner,” Norah admitted, laughing. “But ’tis themselves has
the animals of great size—and they flippant leppers!” She dropped into
brogue with an ease born of close association with Timsy and his
parents. “Sir John, is that the Doon Rock?”
She pointed with her whip to a great rocky eminence half a mile away.
“Yes, that’s the Rock,” O’Neill answered. “It’s rather a landmark, isn’t
it? We’ll wait for you at the foot, if you’ll jog on after us.”
The riders followed the motor slowly. The road led past the great mass,
half hill, half rock, that towered over the little fields. It was about
three hundred feet high, with sparse vegetation endeavouring to find a
footing on its rugged sides, and grey boulders, weather-worn and clothed
with lichen, jutting out, grim and bleak. The motor halted under its
shadow, and the groom who occupied the front seat with Con, the lame
chauffeur, led the horses away to a cottage close by.
A few hundred yards away a curious sight puzzled the Australians. On a
little green, where some grey stones marked a well, was a little
plantation of sticks stuck in the ground. Fluttering rags waved from
many of them, and ornamented the ragged brambles near the well.
“You haven’t seen a holy well, have you?” O’Neill asked. “That is one of
the most famous—the Well of Doon.”
“But what are the sticks?” Wally asked.
“Come and see.”
They walked over to the well. A deeply marked path led to it, and all
about it the ground was beaten hard by the feet of many people, save in
the patch of ground where the sticks stood upright. There were all kinds
of sticks; rough stakes, cut from a hedge, ash-plants, blackthorns—some
of no value, others well-finished and costly. Rags, white and coloured,
fluttered from them. And there was more than one crutch, standing
straight and stiff among the lesser sticks.
“But what is it?” breathed Norah.
“It’s a holy well. Hundreds of years ago there was a great sickness in
the country, and the people sent to a saint who had originally come from
these parts, begging him to come and help them. The saint was in Rome,
and he could not come. But he was sorry for the people; and the legend
goes that he threw his staff into a well in Rome, and it sank, and
emerged from the water of the Well of Doon here: and ever since then the
people believe that the water has healing power, and that it will heal
anyone who pilgrimages to it barefoot.”
“But does it?” asked Wally, incredulously.
“Well—they say the age of miracles is past. But the age of
faith-healing is not; and you won’t find an Irishman, whatever his
religion, sneering at the old holy places of Ireland. I don’t pretend to
understand these things, but I respect them. And then—there is no doubt
whatever as to the genuineness, and the permanence, of many of the
cures.” He pointed to the little forest of sticks. “Look at those
sticks: each one left here by a grateful man or woman who came leaning
on the stick, and went away not needing it.”
“Great Scott!” said Wally. “And the rags?”
“They are votive offerings. If you look on that flat stone near the well
you’ll find hundreds of others—tokens, medals, little ornaments, even
hairpins: all valueless, but left by people too poor to give even a
penny. They believe the saint understands: and I think he would be a
hard saint if he did not.”
The stone was almost covered with tiny offerings.
“Does no one touch them?” Jim asked.
“They’re sacred. If you left money there it would not be touched.” He
pointed to a handful of wilting daisies. “I expect those were left by
children on their way to school. All the poor know that it is the
spirit, not the letter, of an offering that counts: and even those
daisies are left in perfect faith that the saint will see to the matter
if trouble should come to them.”
“I never thought such beliefs still existed,” said Mr. Linton, greatly
interested. “Look at this crutch—it’s quite good, and looks
newly-planted.”
A woman, barefooted and with a shawl over her head, had come across the
grass from the cottage. She curtseyed to O’Neill.
“It was left this morning, sir,” she said, indicating the crutch. “Sure,
the man that owned it was in a bad way: he come from Dublin, an’ he
crippled in his hip. On a side-car they brought him, and there was two
men to lift him on and off it, and he yellow with the dint of the pain
he had. I seen him limping on his crutch across to the well. And when he
went away he walked over to the car as aisy as you or me, and not a limp
on him at all, and him throwing a leg on to the car like a boy.”
“You mean to say he went away cured?” exclaimed Mr. Linton.
“Sure, there’s his crutch,” said the woman, simply. “He’d no more use at
all for it.”
“Well-l!” The Australians looked blankly at each other.
“’Tis fourteen years I’ve been living over beyant,” said the woman.
“I’ve seen them come on sticks and on crutches; some of them carried,
and some of them put on cars: but they all walked away—all that had
faith in the saint. Why wouldn’t they?”
It was a brief question that somehow left them without any answer, since
simple faith is too big a thing to meddle with. They said good-bye to
the woman and went back to the Rock, where the groom was waiting to help
his master in the climb—an old groom with a face like a withered rosy
apple. The ascent was not difficult: a winding path led to the summit of
the Rock, and they were soon at the top.
“Between them, Elizabeth and Cromwell didn’t leave us many of our old
monuments,” said O’Neill, looking away across the country. “But thank
goodness they couldn’t touch the Doon Rock!”
The summit was almost flat; a long narrow plateau with soft grass
growing in its hollows. One end was wider than the other, with a kind of
saddle connecting the two: and in the middle of the smaller end was a
great flat stone that looked almost like an altar. All about the high,
precipitous eminence the country lay like an unrolled map far beneath
them: a wide expanse of flat moor and field and fallow, in the midst of
which the great Rock showed, almost startling in its rugged steepness.
Little villages were dotted here and there, and sometimes could be seen
the blue gleam of water. The white smoke of a train made a creeping line
against the dark bog.
Con and the groom had placed the luncheon-basket in a grassy hollow
where there was shelter from the breeze that swept keenly across the
high Rock; and had retreated with the instinctive delicacy of the Irish
peasant, who never intrudes upon “the genthry” when eating, and himself
prefers to eat alone. After lunch, Norah and Wally collected the débris
of the feast and burned it under the lee side of a boulder, in the
belief that no decent person leaves such things as picnic-papers for the
next comer to see: and then they strolled across the narrow saddle to
the stone on the farther side, where the others had already wandered.
“Tell us about it, Sir John, please,” Norah begged.
“It was here that the old O’Donnell chiefs were inaugurated,” O’Neill
said. “They were the rulers of Tyrconnell, which is now north-west
Ulster: the old name is still used in a good deal of Irish poetry. All
the clan used to gather when a new leader was to be installed, the
people clustering down in the plain below, and the chieftain and his
principal men up here on the Rock. It must have been worth seeing.”
Jim drew a long breath.
“I should just think so,” he said, “Tell us more, O’Neill: I want to
reconstruct it. This old Rock must have looked just the same as it does
to-day. It’s something to have seen even that!”
“Just the same,” said Sir John, his eyes kindling at the boy’s
enthusiasm. “The Inauguration Stone may have been in better
preservation, but a few dozen centuries can’t do much to the Rock.
Well—you can picture the people down below, thousands of them. All the
country would be a great unfenced plain—no banks and hedges such as you
see to-day, and very likely no roads worth calling roads. There would be
forests, most probably, and, in them, animals that became extinct long
ago, like the wild boar and wolf. The ground below would be a great
camp—every one making merry and dressed in their best.”
“I should think that even in those days it wouldn’t take much to make an
Irish crowd merry,” Wally said.
“They would have plenty of entertainment: jugglers, fortune-tellers,
buffoons in painted masks, and champions, showing feats with weapons and
strength—probably ‘spoiling for a fight.’ Music there would be in
abundance: pipes, tube-players, harps, and bands of chorus-singers.
There would be any amount of fun in the crowd. But, of course, the Rock
would be the centre of everyone’s thoughts.”
“It’s all coming quite distinctly,” said Norah, who was sitting on the
grass, gazing out over the plain. “If you look hard you can see them
all, in saffron kilts and flowing cloaks like you told us, Sir John. Now
tell us who is up here on the Rock.”
“The new chief is where Wally is, sitting on the great stone,” said
O’Neill, smiling at her. “Do you want to know what he’s wearing?”
“Oh, please!”
“Well, you can picture him a goodly man, to begin with, for no chief
could reign unless he were a champion, free from the slightest physical
defect. ‘He was graceful and beautiful of form, without blemish or
reproach,’ one old chronicle says. ‘Fair yellow hair he had, and it
bound with a golden band to keep it from loosening. A red buckler upon
him, with stars and animals of gold thereon, and fastenings of silver. A
crimson cloak in wide descending folds around him, fastened at his neck
with precious stones. A torque of gold round his neck’—that’s a broad
twisted band: you can see them to-day in the Museum in Dublin. ‘A white
shirt with a full collar upon him, intertwined with red gold thread. A
girdle of gold, inlaid with precious stones, around him. Two wonderful
shoes of gold, with golden loops, about the feet. Two spears with golden
sockets in his hands, with rivets of red bronze.’ There—can you see
him, Norah?”
“I’m trying, but he dazzles me!” Norah said. “Go on, please. Who else is
there?”
“All his nobles and councillors, dressed almost as splendidly as the
chief himself. The old books are full of details of the richness of
their apparel: gold and silver and fine clothing must have been an
ordinary thing with them—and not only was it so, but the workmanship
was exquisite. They had ‘shirts ribbed with gold thread, crimson fringed
cloaks, embroidered coats of rejoicing, clothing of red silk, and shirts
of the dearest silk.’ They wore helmets, and carried spears, ’sharp,
thin, hard-pointed, with rivets of gold and silk thongs for throwing’;
‘long swords, with hilts and guards of gold; and shields of silver, with
rim and boss of gold.’ One man is described as ‘having in his hand a
small-headed, white-breasted hound, with a collar of rubbed gold and a
chain of old silver’: and a horse had a bridle of silver rings and a
gold bit. They had shoes of white bronze, and great golden brooches,
with ‘gold chains about their necks and bands of gold above them
again.’”
O’Neill stopped and laughed.
“I could go on for a long time,” he said. “But I’m afraid it begins to
sound like the description of Solomon’s Temple!”
“And to think,” said Jim, unheeding him, “that we had a vague idea that
Ireland had been inhabited only by savages!”
“Schools don’t teach you anything about Ireland,” said O’Neill,
contemptuously. “A few hours among the exquisite old things in the
Dublin Museum would open your eyes: the finest goldsmiths and
silversmiths of the present world cannot touch the beauty of the
workmanship of the treasures there;—and some of them were dug up out of
bogs, after lying there no one knows how many hundred or thousand years.
They were craftsmen in those days, and they loved the work. You don’t
get that spirit in Trades Union times!”
“Oh, don’t talk about Trades Unions!” Norah cried. “We’re on the Doon
Rock, and I can see all those people round the chief, and the crowd on
the plain below, looking up. What else, Sir John?”
“There would be white-robed Druids,” O’Neill said; “and the King’s bards
or poets would be about him. The bard was a very important person and a
high functionary, with wide powers. In a sense he was the
war-correspondent of his day: he never fought, but he was always present
at a battle, and very much in it, noting the heroic deeds of the
warriors, and afterwards recording them in his songs. Poetry in those
days was a most business-like and practical thing, for everything of any
importance was written in verse, such as the laws, the genealogies of
the clans, and their history. The poet held an exalted position, and was
educated for it from his boyhood by a course of careful study: and the
chief poet ranked next to the king, and went about with almost as fine a
retinue. They were the professors of their day, and kept schools for
training lads for their order. A man had to be very careful not to
offend one, or he would write a satire against the culprit; and these
satires were dreaded extremely, since they were believed to cause
disaster and desolation to fall not only on a man but on his whole
family. Nowadays, editors are said to keep special wastepaper baskets
for dealing with poets, but it wouldn’t have done in the ould ancient
times—the post of an editor would have been too unhealthy!”
“I suppose it is through them that the old stories have come down,” Jim
said.
“Of course. They had to write the verse-tales, and they had to tell
them, too; they were obliged to learn and teach three hundred and fifty
kinds of versification, and an Ollave, or chief poet, could recite at
any moment any of three hundred and fifty stories. They did a lot of
harm, because they abused their power; and at last, in the sixth
century, were nearly banished from Ireland altogether. Columcille saved
them from that fate, but they were made much less important. However,
the poets that you are looking at with your mind’s eye, Norah, were ages
before that, and you can imagine them as gorgeous and as haughty as
possible, and every one is very polite to them.”
“I’m going to get off this stone and make room for the chief,” said
Wally, solemnly, rising. “There’s the ghost of a poet, glaring at me,
and he’s going to burst into a satire.” He subsided on the grass beside
Norah. “Go on, please.”
“Well, that is the crowd on top of the Rock,” Sir John said: “nobles,
councillors, poets, and Druids, all in order of rank: the Rock would
hold three or four hundred, all told. And the crowd below, gazing up.
I’m glad you got off the stone, Wally, because the chief wants it now.
He takes off his wonderful shoes of gold, and places one foot on the
stone, and swears to preserve all ancient customs inviolable, to deliver
up the rulership peaceably, when the time comes, to his successor, to
rule the people with justice, and to maintain the laws. Then he puts
away his weapons, and the highest of his nobles, an hereditary official,
gives him a straight white rod in token of authority—straight, to
remind him that his administration should be just, and white, that his
actions should be pure and upright. Then he gives him new sandals: and
keeping one of the golden shoes, he throws the other over the new
chief’s head and proclaims him O’Donnell. All the nobles repeat the
title—can’t you hear the mighty shout, and the crowd below taking it
up, so that it rings over Tyrconnell!”
“Oh-h!” breathed Norah. “And it was here, where we are sitting!” She put
her hand on the ground that had felt the tramp of the hosts of ancient
days. “Was that all, Sir John?”
“That ended the ceremony; except that each subject paid a cow as
rod-money, a sort of tribute to the new chief. But of course there was
high feasting and festival, probably for days. They had splendid feasts,
too. Once, when one of the great nobles entertained the chief and all
the men of Tyrconnel, the preparations took a whole year. A special
house was built, surpassing all other buildings in beauty of
architecture, with splendid pillars and carvings: in the banqueting-hall
the wainscotting was of bronze thirty feet high, overlaid with gold. It
took a wagon-team to carry each beam, and the strength of seven men to
fix each pole; and the royal couch was set with precious stones ‘radiant
with every hue, making night bright as day.’”
O’Neill broke off, and hesitated.
“Do I tell you too much?” he asked. “I’m afraid my tongue runs away with
me—but I did want you to realize something of what Ireland was. There
were great men in those days, and the fighting-men had high ideals of
what great champions should be. It is what kept us all through our
lifetime,’ one said—‘truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our
arms, and fulfilment on our tongues.’”
He was silent, looking away. The proud soul, pent in the misshapen body,
found comfort in turning from the present, that held so little for him,
back to the mighty past when the O’Neills, too, had been chieftains and
champions.
Presently he stood up, with a shrug.
“Time we went down, I’m afraid,” he said, cheerfully. “Before we go,
Norah, I will proceed to relate for your benefit the six womanly gifts
which were demanded of properly-brought-up young women in the high and
far-off times in Ireland. They were, the gift of modest behaviour, the
gift of singing, the gift of sweet speech, the gift of beauty, the gift
of wisdom, and the gift of needlework!”
“Wow!” said poor Norah, in dismay. “Perhaps it’s as well I got born in
Australia!”