Produced by Daniel A. Wentzell. HTML version by Al Haines.
Messer Marco Polo
by
BRIAN OSWALD DONN-BYRNE
BRIAN OSWALD DONN-BYRNE
(1889-1928)
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF MESSER MARCO POLO
So Celtic in feeling and atmosphere are the stories of Donn Byrne that
many of his devotees have come to believe that he never lived anywhere
but in Ireland. Actually, Donn Byrne was born in New York City.
Shortly after his birth, however, his parents took him back to the land
of his forefathers. There he was educated and came to know the people
of whom he wrote so magically. At Dublin University his love for the
Irish language and for a good fight won him many prizes, first as a
writer in Gaelic and second as the University's lightweight boxing
champion. After continuing his studies at the Sorbonne and the
University of Leipzig, he returned to the United States, where, in
1911, he married and established a home in Brooklyn Heights. He earned
his living, while trying to write short stories, as an editor of
dictionaries. Soon his tales began to attract attention and he added to
his collection of boxing prizes many others won in short-story
contests. When MESSER MARCO POLO appeared in 1921 his reputation in
the literary world was firmly established. Thereafter, whatever he
wrote was hailed enthusiastically by his ever-growing public, until
1928, when his tragic death in an automobile accident cut short the
career of one of America's best-loved story-tellers.
JTABLE 4 23 1
MESSER MARCO POLO
The message came to me, at the second check of the hunt, that a
countryman and a clansman needed me. The ground was heavy, the day
raw, and it was a drag, too fast for fun and too tame for sport. So I
blessed the countryman and the clansman, and turned my back on the
field.
But when they told me his name, I all but fell from the saddle.
"But that man's dead!"
But he wasn't dead. He was in New York. He was traveling from the
craigs of Ulster to his grandson, who had an orange-grove on the Indian
River, in Florida. He wasn't dead. And I said to myself with
impatience, "Must every man born ninety years ago be dead?"
"But this is a damned thing," I thought, "to be saddled with a man over
ninety years old. To have to act as GARDE-MALADE at my age! Why
couldn't he have stayed and died at home? Sure, one of these days he
will die, as we all die, and the ghost of him will never be content on
the sluggish river, by the mossy trees, where the blue herons and the
white cranes and the great gray pelicans fly. It will be going back, I
know, to the booming surf and the red-berried rowan-trees and the
barking eagles of Antrim. To die out of Ulster, when one can die in
Ulster, there is a gey foolish thing..."
But the harsh logic of Ulster left me, and the soft mood of Ulster came
on me as I remembered him, and I going into the town on the train. And
the late winter grass, of Westchester, spare, scrofulous; the
jerry-built bungalows; the lines of uncomely linen; the blatant
advertising boards--all the unbeauty of it passed away, and I was again
in the Antrim glens. There was the soft purple of the Irish Channel,
and there the soft, dim outline of Scotland. There was the herring
school silver in the sun, and I could see it from the crags where the
surf boomed like a drum. And underfoot was the springy heather, the
belled and purple heather...
And there came to me again the vision of the old man's thatched
farmhouse when the moon was up and the bats were out, and the winds of
the County Antrim came bellying down the glens... The turf fire burned
on the hearth, now red, now yellow, and there was the golden light of
lamps, and Malachi of the Long Glen was reciting some poem of Blind
Raftery's, or the lament of Pierre Ronsard for Mary, Queen of Scots:
Ta ribin o mo cheadshearc ann mo phocs sios.
Agas mna Eirip ni leigheasfadaois mo bhron, faraor!
Ta me reidh leat go ndeantar comhra caol!
Agas gobhfasfaidh an fear no dhiaidh sin thrid mo lar anios!
There is a ribbon from my only love in my pocket deep,
And the women of Europe they could not cure my grief, alas!
I am done with you until a narrow coffin be made for me.
And until the grass shall grow after that up through my heart!
And I suddenly discovered on the rumbling train that apart from the
hurling and the foot-ball and the jumping of horses, what life I
remembered of Ulster was bound up in Malachi Campbell of the Long
Glen...
A very strange old man, hardy as a blackthorn, immense, bowed
shoulders, the face of some old hawk of the mountains, hair white and
plentiful as some old cardinal's. All his kinsfolk were dead except
for one granddaughter... And he had become a tradition in the glens...
It was said he had been an ecclesiastical student abroad, in
Valladolid...and that he had forsaken that life. And in France he had
been a tutor in the family of MacMahon, roi d' Irlande...and somewhere
he had married, and his wife had died and left him money...and he had
come back to Antrim... He had been in the Papal Zouaves, and fought
also in the American Civil War... A strange old figure who knew Greek
and Latin as well as most professors, and who had never forgotten his
Gaelic...
Antrim will ever color my own writing. My Fifth Avenue will have
something in it of the heather glen. My people will have always a
phrase, a thought, a flash of Scots-Irish mysticism, and for that I
must either thank or blame Malachi Campbell of the Long Glen. The
stories I heard, and I young, were not of Little Rollo and Sir Walter
Scott's, but the horrible tale of the Naked Hangman, who goes through
the Valleys on Midsummer's Eve; of Dermot, and Granye of the Bright
Breasts; of the Cattle Raid of Maeve, Queen of Connacht; of the old age
of Cuchulain in the Island of Skye; grisly, homely stories, such as yon
of the ghostly foot-ballers of Cushendun, whose ball is a skull, and
whose goal is the portals of a ruined graveyard; strange religious
poems, like the Dialogue of Death and the Sinner:
Do thugainn loistin do gach deoraidh treith-lag--
I used to give lodging to every poor wanderer;
Food and drink to him I would see in want,
His proper payment to the man requesting reckoning,
Och! Is not Jesus hard if he condemns me!
All these stories, of all these people he told, had the unreal,
shimmering quality of that mirage that is seen from Portrush cliffs, a
glittering city in a golden desert, surrounded by a strange sea mist.
All these songs, all these words he spoke, were native, had the same
tang as the turf smoke, the Gaelic quality that is in dark lakes on
mountains summits, in plovers nests amid the heather... And to
remember them now in New York, to see him...
Fifteen years had changed him but little: little more tremor and
slowness in the walk, a bow to the great shoulders, an eye that flashed
like a knife.
"And what do you think of New York, Malachi?"
"I was here before, your honor will remember. I fought at the
Wilderness."
I forbore asking him what change he had found. I saw his quivering
nostrils.
In a few days he would proceed south, when he had orientated himself
after the days of shipboard.
That night it seemed every one chose to come in and cluster around the
fire. Randall, the poet; and the two blond Danish girls, with their
hair like flax; Fraser, the golfer, just over from Prestwick; and a
young writer, with his spurs yet to win; and this one...and that one.
They all kept silence as old Malach spoke, sportsmen, artists, men and
women of the world; a hush came on them and their eyes showed they were
not before the crackling fire in the long rooms but amazed in the
Antrim glens.
Yes, old Malachi said, things were changed over there, and a greater
change was liable... People whispered that in the Valley of the Black
Pig the Boar without Bristles had been seen at the close of the day,
and in Templemore there was a bleeding image, and these were ominous
portents... Some folks believed and some didn't... And the great Irish
hunter that had won the Grand National, the greatest horse in the
world... But our Man of War, Malachi?.. Oh, sure, all he could do was
run, and a hare or a greyhound could beat him at that; but Shawn
Spadah, a great jumper him, as well as a runner; in fine, a horse...
And did I know that Red Simon McEwer of Cushundall had gone around
Portrush in eighteen consecutive fours?... A Rathlin Islander had tried
the swim across to Scotland, but didn't make it, and there was great
arguing as to whether it was because of the currents or of lack of
strength... There were rumblings in the Giants' Causeway...very
strange... A woman in Oran had the second sight, the most powerful gift
of second sight in generations... There was a new piper in Islay, and
it was said he was a second McCrimmon... And a new poet had arisen in
Uist, and all over the Highlands they were reciting his songs and his
"Lament for the Bruce"... Was I still as keen for, did I still remember
the poems, and the great stories?...
"'Behold, the night is of great length,'" I quoted, "'Unbearable. Tell
us, therefore, of those wondrous deeds.'"
"If you've remembered your Gaidhlig as you've remembered your Greek!"
"It's a long time since you've had a story of me, twelve long years,
and it's a long time before you'll have another, and I going away
tomorrow. Old Sergeant Death has his warrant out for me this many a
day, and it's only the wisdom of an old dog fox that eludes him; but
he'll lay me by the heels one of these days...then there'll be an end
to the grand stories... So after this, if you're wanting a story, you
must be writing it yourself...
"But before I die, I'll leave you the story of Marco Polo. There's
been a power of books written about Marco Polo. The scholars have
pushed up their spectacles and brushed the cobwebs from their ears, and
they've said, 'There's all there is about Marco Polo.'
"But the scholars are a queer and blind people, Brian Oge. I've heard
tell there's a doctor in Spain can weigh the earth. But he can't plow
a furrow that is needful, for planting corn. The scholars can tell how
many are the feathers in a bird's wing, but it takes me to inform the
doctors why the call comes to them, and they fly over oceans without
compass or sextant or sight of land.
"Did you ever see a scholar standing in front of a slip of a girl? In
all his learning he can find nothing to say to her. And every penny
poet in the country knows.
"Let you be listening now, Brian Oge, and let also the scholars be
listening. But whether the scholars do or not, I'm not caring. A pope
once listened to me with great respect, and a marshal of France and
poets without number. But the scholars do be turning up their noses.
And, mind you, I've got as much scholarship as the next man, as you'll
see from my story.
"Barring myself, is there no one in this house that takes snuff? No!
Ah, well, times do be changing."
CHAPTER I
Now it's nearing night on the first day of spring, and you could see
how loath day was to be going for even the short time until the rising
of the sun again. And though there was a chill on the canals, yet
there was great color to the sunset, the red of it on the water ebbing
into orange, and then to purple, and losing itself in the olive pools
near the mooring-ties. And a little wind came up from the Greek
islands, and now surged and fluttered, the way you'd think a harper
might be playing. You'd hear no sound, but the melody was there. It
was the rhythm of spring, that the old people recognize.
But the young people would know it was spring, too, by token of the
gaiety that was in the air. For nothing brings joy to the heart like
the coming of spring. The folk who do be blind all the rest of the
year, their eyes do open then, and a sunset takes them, and the wee
virgin flowers coming up between the stones, or the twitter of a bird
upon the bough... And young women do be preening themselves, and young
men do be singing, even they that have the voices of rooks. There is
something stirring in them that is stirring, in the ground, with the
bursting of the seeds...
And young Marco Polo threw down the quill in the counting house where
he was learning his trade. The night was coming on. He was only a
strip of a lad, and to lads the night is not rest from work, and the
quietness of sleeping, but gaming, and drinking, and courting young
women. Now, there were two women he might have gone to, and one was a
great Venetian lady, with hair the red of a queen's cloak, and a great
noble shape to her and great dignity. But with her he would only be
reciting verses or making grand, stilted compliments, the like of those
you would hear in a play. And while that seemed to fit in with winter
and candlelight, it was poor sport for spring. The other one was a
black, plump little gown-maker, a pleasant, singing little woman, very
affectionate, and very proud to have one of the great Polos loving her.
She was eager for kissing, and always asking the lad to be careful of
himself, to be putting his cloak on, or to be sure and drink something
warm when he got home that night, for the air from the canals was
chill. The great lady was too much of the mind, and the little
gown-maker was too much of the body, either of them, to be pleasing
young Marco on the first night of spring.
Now, it is a queer thing will be pleasing a young man on the first
night of spring. The wandering foot itches, and the mind and body are
keen to follow. There is that inside a young man that makes the
hunting dog rise from the hearth on a moonlit night: "Begor! it's
myself'll take a turn through the fields on the chance of a bit of
coursing. A weasel, maybe, or an otter, would be out the night. Or a
hare itself. Ay, there would be sport for you! The hare running
hell-for-leather, and me after him over brake and dell. Ay! Ay! Ay!
A good hunt's a jewel! I'll take a stretch along the road."
Or there is in him what does be troubling the birds, and they on tropic
islands. "Tweet-tweet," they grumble. "A grand place this surely, and
very comfortable for the winter. The palm-trees are green, but I'd
rather have the green of young grass. And the sea, you ken, it becomes
monotonous. Do you remember the peaches of Champagne, wife, and the
cherry-trees of Antrim? Do you remember the farmer who was such a bad
shot, and his wife with the red petticoat? I'm feeling fine and strong
in the wings, AVOURNEEN. What do you say? Let's bundle and go!"
He wandered out with the discontent of the season on him. The sun had
dropped at last, and everywhere you'd see torches, and the image of
torches in the water. On the canals of the town great barges moved.
Everywhere were fine, noble shadows and the splashing of oars. There
was a great admiral's galley, ready to put to sea against Genoa. There
a big merchantman back from Africa. And along the canals went all the
people in the world, you'd think. Now it was a Frenchman, all silks
and satins and 'la-di-da, monsieur!' Or a Spaniard with a pointed
beard and long, lean legs and a long, lean sword. And now it was a
Greek courtesan, white as milk, sitting in her gondola as on a throne.
Here was a Muscovite, hairy, dirty, with fine fur and fine jewels and
teeth sharp as a dog's. And now an effeminate Greek nobleman, languid
as a bride. And here were Moorish captains, Othello's men, great
giants of black marble; and swarthy, hook-nosed merchants of Palestine;
and the squires of Crusaders--pretty, ringleted boys, swearing like
demons. And here and there were Scots and Irish mercenaries, kilted,
sensitive folk, one moment smiling at you and the next a knife in your
gizzard.
And as he went through the courts there were whispers and laughter, and
occasionally a soft voice invited him to enter; but he smiled and shook
his head. Near the Canal de Mestre, which is close by the Ghetto, he
stopped by the wine-shop called The Prince of Bulgaria, and he could
hear great disputation. And some were speaking of Baldwin II, and how
he had no guts to have let Palaeologus take Constantinople from him.
And others were murmuring about Genoa.
"Mark us, they mean trouble, those dogs. Better wipe them off the face
of the earth now." And a group were discussing the chances of raiding
the Jewish Kingdom of the Yemen. "They've got temples there roofed
with gold."... And an Irish piper was playing on a little silver set
of pipes, and an Indian magician was doing great sleight of hand...
"I'll go in and talk to the strange foreign people," said Marco Polo.