1
All through the summer, Henry and John Marsh worked together, making
Irishry, as Marsh called it. They studied the conventional subjects in
preparation for T. C. D. but their chief studies were of the Irish
tongue and Irish history. Marsh was a Gaelic scholar, and he had made
many translations of Gaelic poems and stories, some of which seemed to
Henry to be of extraordinary beauty, but most of which seemed to him to
be so thoughtless that they were merely lengths of words. There appeared
to be no connexion between these poems and tales and the life he himself
led--and Marsh's point was that the connexion was vital. One evening,
Henry, who had been reading "The Trojan Women" of Euripides, turned to
Marsh and said that the Greek tragedy seemed nearer to him than any of
the Gaelic stories and poems. He expressed his meaning badly, but what
it came to was this, that the continuity of life was not broken in the
Euripidean plays: the life of which Henry was part flowed directly from
the life of which Euripides was part; he had not got the sensation that
he was a stranger looking on at alien things when he had read "The
Trojan Women," "I can imagine all that happening now," he said, "but I
can't imagine any of that Gaelic life recurring. I don't feel any life
in it. It's like something ... something odd suddenly butting into
things ... and then suddenly butting out again ... and leaving no
explanation behind it!"
He tried again, with greater success, to explain what he meant. "It's
like reading topical references in old books," he said. "They mean
nothing to us even when there are footnotes to explain them!"
Marsh had listened patiently to him, though there was anger in his
heart. "You think that all that life is over!" he said, and Henry nodded
his head.
"Listen," said Marsh, taking a letter from his pocket, "here is a poem,
translated from Irish, that was sent to me by a friend of mine in
Dublin. His name is Galway, and I'd like you to know him. Listen! It's
called 'A Song for Mary Magdalene.'"
He read the poem in a slow, crooning voice that seemed always on the
point of becoming ridiculous, but never did become so.
O woman of the gleaming hair
(Wild hair that won men's gaze to thee),
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the Shuiler[2] Christ is calling thee.
O woman with the wild thing's heart,
Old sin hath set a snare for thee:
In the forest ways forespent thou art,
But the hunter Christ shall pity thee.
O woman spendthrift of thyself,
Spendthrift of all the love in thee,
Sold unto sin for little pelf,
The captain Christ shall ransom thee.
O woman that no lover's kiss
(Tho' many a kiss was given thee)
Could slake thy love, is it not for this
The hero Christ shall die for thee?
They were quiet for a while, and then Marsh turned to Henry and said,
"Is that alien to you?"
"No," he answered, "but I did not say that it was all alien!..."
"Or this?" Marsh interrupted, taking up the manuscript again. "Galway
sent these translations to me so that I might be the first to see them.
He always does that. This one is called 'Lullaby of a Woman of the
Mountain.'"
Little gold head, my house's candle,
You will guide all wayfarers that walk this country.
Little soft mouth that my breast has known,
Mary will kiss you as she passes.
Little round cheek, O smoother than satin,
Iosa will lay His hand upon you.
Mary's kiss on my baby's mouth,
Christ's little hand on my darling's cheek!
House, be still, and ye little grey mice,
Lie close to-night in your hidden lairs.
Moths on the window, fold your wings,
Little black chafers, silence your humming.
Plover and curlew fly not over my house,
Do not speak, wild barnacle, passing over this mountain.
Things of the mountain that wake in the night time,
Do not stir to-night till the daylight whitens.
"That's alive, isn't it?" Marsh, now openly angry, demanded. "Do you
think that song doesn't kindle the hearts of mothers all over the
world?... I can imagine Eve crooning it to little Cain and Abel, and I
can imagine a woman in the Combe crooning it to her child!..." The Combe
was a tract of slum in Dublin. "It's universal and everlasting. You
can't kill that!"
"Then why has it got lost?"
"It isn't lost--it's only covered up. Our task is to dig it out. It's
worth digging out, isn't it? The people in the West still sing songs
like that. Isn't it worth while to try and get all our people to sing
them instead of singing English music-hall stuff?..."
2
It was in that spirit that Marsh started the Gaelic class in
Ballymartin. "And the Gaelic games," he said to Henry, "we'll revive
them too!" Twice a week, he taught the rudiments of the Irish language
to a mixed class of boys and girls, and every Saturday he led the
Ballymartin hurley team into one of Mr. Quinn's fields....
There had been difficulty in establishing the mixed classes. The farmers
and the villagers, having first declared that Gaelic was useless to
them--"they'd be a lot better learnin' shorthand!" said John
McCracken--then declared that they did not care to have their daughters
"trapesin' about the loanies, lettin' on to be learnin' Irish, an' them
only up to devilment with the lads!" But Marsh overcame that difficulty,
as he overcame most of his difficulties, by persistent attack; and in
the end, the Gaelic class was established, and the Ballymartin boys and
girls were set to the study of O'Growney's primer. Henry was employed as
Marsh's monitor. His duty was to supervise the elementary pupils,
leaving the more advanced ones to the care of Marsh. It was while he was
teaching the Gaelic alphabet to his class, that Henry first met Sheila
Morgan.
She came into the schoolroom one night out of a drift of rain, and as
she stood in the doorway, laughing because the wind had caught her
umbrella and almost torn it out of her hands, he could see the
raindrops glistening on her cheeks. She put the umbrella in a corner of
the room, leaving it open so that it might dry more quickly, and then
she shook her long dark hair back and wiped the rain from her face. He
waited until she had taken off her mackintosh and hung it up in the
cloakroom, and then he went forward to her.
"Have you come to join the class?" he asked, and she smiled and nodded
her head. "It's a coarse sort of a night," she added, coming into the
classroom.
He did not know her name, and he wondered where her home was. He knew
everybody in Ballymartin, and many of the people in the country outside
it, but he had never seen Sheila Morgan before.
"I thought I might as well come," she said, "but I'm only here for a
while!"
Then she did not belong to the village. "Yes?..." he said.
"It's quaren dull in the country," she continued, "an' the classes'll
help to pass the time. I wish it was dancin', but!"
Dancing! They had not made any arrangements for dancing, though the
Gaels were very nimble on their feet. He glanced at Marsh reproachfully.
Why had Marsh omitted to revive the Gaelic dances?
"Perhaps," he said to Sheila, "we can have dancing classes later on...."
"I'll mebbe be gone before you have them," she answered.
"How long are you staying for?" he asked.
"I don't know. I'm stopping with my uncle Matthew ... it's him has
Hamilton's farm ... an' I'm stoppin' 'til he knows how his health'll be.
He's bad...."
He remembered Matthew Hamilton. "Is he ill?" he said.
"Aye. He's been sick this while past, an' now he's worse, an' my aunt
Kate asked me to come an' stop with them to help them in the house. He's
not near himself at all. You'd think a pity of him if you seen the way
he's failed next to nothin'.... Is it hard to learn Irish?"
"You'd better come an' try for yourself," he replied, and then he led
her up to Marsh and told him that a new pupil had come to join the
class. There was some awkwardness about names.... "Och, I never told you
my name," she said, laughing as she spoke. "Sheila Morgan!" she
continued. "I live in County Down, but I'm stayin' with my uncle
Matthew," she explained to Marsh.
"Do you know any Gaelic at all?" Marsh asked.
"No," she replied. "I never learned it. Are you goin' to have any
dancin' classes?"
Henry insisted that they ought to have had dancing classes as well as a
hurley team. "The hurley's all right for the boys," he said, "but we've
nothing for the girls...."
"But you'd want boys at the dancin' as well," Sheila interrupted. "I
can't bear dancin' with girls!"
"No, of course not," said Henry.
Marsh considered. "Who's to teach the dancing?" he asked, adding, "I
can't!"
"I'd be willin' to do that," Sheila said. "Mebbe you'd join the class
yourself, Mr. Marsh?"
Marsh laughed, but did not answer.
"It'll be great value," she went on. "There's nothin' to do in the
evenin's ... nothin' at all ... an' it's despert dull at night with
nothin' to do!..."
"I'll think about it," said Marsh. "You can begin your Gaelic study
now," he added. "Mr. Quinn'll give you a lesson!..."
3
It was Jamesey McKeown who caused the decision to hold the dancing
classes to be made as quickly as it was. Jamesey was one of the pupils
in the advanced section of the Gaelic class ... a bright-witted boy of
thirteen, with a quick, sharp way. One day, Marsh and Henry had climbed
a steep hill outside the village, and when they reached the top of it,
they found Jamesey lying there, looking down on the fields beneath. His
chin was resting in the cup of his upturned palms.
"God save you, Jamesey!" said Marsh, and "God save you kindly!" Jamesey
answered.
The greeting and the reply are not native to Ulster, but Marsh had made
them part of the Gaelic studies, and whenever he encountered friends he
always saluted them so. His pupils, falling in with his whim, replied
to his salute as he wished them to reply, but the older people merely
nodded their heads or said "It's a soft day!" or "It's a brave day!" or,
more abruptly, "Morra, Mr. Marsh!" The Protestants among them suspected
that the Gaelic salutation was a form of furtive Popery....
They sat down beside the boy. "I suppose you'll be leaving school soon,
Jamesey?" Marsh asked.
"Aye, I will in a while," Jamesey answered.
"What class are you in?"
"I'm a monitor, Mr. Marsh. I'm in my first year!..."
Henry sat up and joined in the conversation. "Then you're going to be a
teacher?" he said.
"No, I'm not," Jamesey replied. "My ma put me in for the monitor to get
the bit of extra education. That's all!"
"What are you going to be, Jamesey? A farmer?" said Marsh.
"No. I wouldn't be a farmer for the world!..."
"But why?"
The boy changed his position and faced round to them. "Sure, there's
nothin' to do but work from the dawn till the dark," he said, "an' you
never get no diversion at all. I'm quaren tired of this place, I can
tell you, an' my ma's tired of it too. She wudden be here if she could
help it, but sure she can't. It's terrible in the winter, an' the win'
fit to blow the head off you, an' you with nothin' to do on'y look after
a lot of oul' cows an' pigs an' things. I'm goin' to a town as soon as
I'm oul' enough!..."
They talked to him of the beauty of the country....
"Och, it's all right for a holiday in the summer," he said.
... and they talked to him of the fineness of a farmer's life, but he
would not agree with them. A farmer's life was too hard and too dull. He
was set on joining his brother in Glasgow....
"What does your brother do, Jamesey?" Marsh asked.
"He's a barman."
"A barman!" they repeated, a little blankly.
"Aye. That's what I'm goin' to be ... in the same place as him!"
They did not speak for a while. It seemed to both of them to be
incredible that any one could wish to exchange the loveliness of the
Antrim country for a Glasgow bar....
"What hours does your brother work?" Marsh asked drily.
"He works from eight in the mornin' till eight at night, an' it's later
on Saturdays, but he has a half-day a week til himself, an' he has all
day Sunday. They don't drink on Sunday in Glasgow!"
Marsh smiled. "Don't they?" he said.
"It's long hours," Jamesey admitted, "but he has great diversion. D'ye
know this, Mr. Marsh!" he continued, rolling over on his side and
speaking more quickly, "he can go to a music-hall twice on the one night
an' hear all the latest songs for tuppence. That's all it costs him. He
goes to the gallery an' he hears gran', an' he can go to two music-halls
in the one night ... _in the one night_, mind you ... for fourpence!
Where would you bate that? You never get no diversion of that sort in
this place ... only an oul' magic-lantern an odd time, or the Band of
Hope singin' songs about teetotallers!..."
That was the principal burden of Jamesey's complaint, that there was no
diversion in Ballymartin. "If you were to go up the street now," he
said, "you'd see the fellas stan'in' at the corner, houl'in' up the
wall, an' wonderin' what the hell to do with themselves, an' never
gettin' no answer!..."
"You never hear noan of the latest songs here," he complained again. "I
got a quare cut from my brother once, me singin' a song that I thought
was new, an' he toul' me it was as oul' as the hills. It was more nor a
year oul', anyway!..."
4
They came away from the hill in a mood of depression. It seemed to Henry
that the Gaelic Movement could never take root in that soil. What was
the good of asking Jamesey McKeown to sing Gaelic songs and till the
land when his heart was hungering for the tuppeny excitements of a
Glasgow music-hall? What would Jamesey McKeown make of Galway's
translations? Would
O woman of the gleaming hair
(Wild hair that won men's gaze to thee),
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the Shuiler Christ is calling thee.
bind him to the nurture of the earth when