THEdarkness was falling as the women raced down the crooked road that ran to Dooey foreshore. A few birch bushes, with trembling branches tossing hither and thither like tangled tresses, bounded the road at intervals. The sky was overcast with low-hanging, slatey clouds, and in the intervening distance between foreshore and horizon no separate object could be distinguished: everything there had blended together in grey, formless mistiness. There was hardly a word spoken; the pattering of bare feet, Judy Farrel’s cough and the hard, laboured breathing of the elder women were all that could be heard.
One of the party, well in advance, barefooted and carrying her shoes hung round her neck with a piece of string, struck her toe sharply against a rock.
“The curse of the devil!” she exclaimed; then in a quieter voice: “It’s God’s blessin’ that I haven’t my brogues on my feet, for they would be ruined entirely.”
A belated bird cried sharply and its call was carried infrom the sea ... somewhere in the distance a cow lowed—the sound was prolonged in a hundred ravines ... the bar moaned fretfully as if in a troubled sleep ... the snow ceased to fall and some stars glittered bright as diamonds in the cold heavens.
“Mother of God! It’s on the turn,” Maire a Crick shouted, and hurried as rapidly as her legs would permit down the hill. At intervals some of the party following her would stumble, fall, turn head over heels and rise rapidly again. They came to the strand, raced across it, making little noise with their feet as they ran and with their bodies as they fell. Norah Ryan’s head shook fitfully from side to side as she tried to keep pace with her companions.
They were not aware of the proximity of the dhan until they were in the water and splashing it all around them. When half-way across Maire a Crick found the water at her breast; another step and it reached her chin. Those behind could only see a black head bobbing in the waves.
“Come back, Maire a Crick!” Biddy Wor shouted. “Ye’ll be drownded if ye go one step at all further.”
The old woman turned, came back slowly and solemnly, without speaking a word.
On reaching the strand she went down on her knees and raised her eyes to heaven, looking up through the snowy flakes that were now falling out of the darkness. Then she spoke, and her voice, rising shrill and terrible, carried far across the dhan:
“May seven curses from the lips of Jesus Christ fall seven times seven on the head of Farley McKeown!”
The waves rolled up to her feet, stretching out like black, sinuous snakes; a long, wailing wind, that put droumy thoughts into the hearts of those who listened to it, swept in from the sea. Behind on the shore, large rocks, frightful and shapeless, stood out amidst stuntedbushes that sobbed in dismal unison. The women went back to the rocks, passing through bent-grass that shook in the breeze like eels. All around the brambles writhed like long arms clutching at their prey with horrible claws. A tuft of withered fern flew by in the air as if escaping from something which followed it, and again the cry of the solitary sea-bird pierced the darkness.
Between the clefts of a large rock, which in some past age had been split by lightning, the women, worn out with their day’s journey, sat down in a circle, their shawls drawn over their heads and their feet tucked well up under their petticoats. The darkness almost overpowered Norah Ryan; she shuddered and the shudder chilled her to the heart. It was not terror that possessed her but something more unendurable than terror; it was the agony of a soul dwarfed by the immensity of the infinite. She was lonely, desperately lonely. In the midst of the women she was far from them. They began to speak and their voices were the voices of dreams.
Maire a Crick, speaking in Gaelic, was telling a story, while wringing the water from her clothes, the story of a barrow that came across the hills of Glenmornan in the year of the famine, and on the barrow, which rolled along of its own accord, there was a large coffin with a door at the bottom of it. Then another of the party told of her grandfather’s wake and the naked man who came to the house in the middle of the night and took up a seat by the chimney corner. He never spoke a word but smoked the pipe of tobacco that was handed to him. When the cock crew with the dawn he got up from his seat and went out and away. Nobody knew the man and no one ever saw him again.
“We might get shelter in one of the houses up there,” said Norah Ryan, rousing herself and pointing to the hillabove, where the short-lived rushlights flickered and shone at intervals in the scattered cabins.
“We might,” said Maire a Crick, “we might indeed, but it’s not in me to go askin’ a night’s shelter under the roof of a Ballybonar man. There was once, years ago, a black word between the Ballybonar people and the people of our side of the water. Since then we haven’t darkened one another’s doorsteps, and we’re not going to do it now.”
“Maybe someone on our side will send a boat across,” said the beansho.
“Maybe they’ll do that if they’re not at the fishin’,” Judy Farrel answered. “And when are they not at the fishin’? They’re always out on the diddy of the sea and never catching a fish atall, atall!”
“We’ll walk about; it will keep our feet warm.”
“And maybe fall down between the rocks and break our bits of legs.”
The rushlights on the hill above went out one by one and the darkness became intense. The Ballybonar people had gone to bed. One of the women on the rock began to snore loudly, and those who remained awake envied her because she slept so soundly.
“I suppose Farley McKeown will have a feather bed under him now,” said Maire a Crick with a broken laugh. It seemed as if she was weeping. The beansho, who was giving suck to her babe, turned to Norah Ryan who sat beside her.
“What are you thinking of, Norah?” she asked in Gaelic.
“I’m just wondering if my mother is better,” answered the child.
“I hope she is,” said the beansho. “Are you sleepy? Would you like to sleep like the earth, like the ground under you?”
“In the grave you mean?”
“No, no, child. But like the world at night; like the ground under you? It’s asleep now; one can almost hear it breathing, and one would like to sleep with it. If ever you think that the earth is asleep, Norah, be careful. Maybe when you grow up some man will say to you: ‘I like you better than anyone else in the world.’ That will be very nice to listen to, Norah. Maybe you’ll walk with the man on a lonely moor or on the strand beside the sea. It will be night, and there will be many stars in the sky, and you’ll not say they’re cold then as you said this morning, Norah. All at once you’ll stop and listen. You’ll not know why you listen for everything will be so quiet. But for a minute it will come to you that the earth is asleep and that everything is in slumber. That will be a dangerous hour, child, for then you may commit the mortal sin of love.”
“Was that your sin, Sheila Carrol?” asked Norah Ryan, calling the woman by her correct name for the first time.
“That was my sin, Norah.”
“But you said this morning——”
“Never mind what I said this morning,” answered the woman in a tone of mild reproof. “I’m only saying that the ground under us and around us is now sleeping.”
“The ground sleeping!” exclaimed Maire a Crick, who overheard the last words of the conversation. “I never heard such silly talk coming out of a mouth in all my life before.”
“Neither have I,” said Norah Ryan, but she spoke so low that no one, not even the beansho, heard her.
Maire a Crick sang a song. It told of a youth who lived in Ireland “when cows were kine, and pigs were swine and eagles of the air built their nests in the beards of giants.” When the youth was born his father planted a tree in honour of the event. The boy grew up, very proud of this tree, and daily he watered and tended it,and one day the boy was hung (why the song never stated) from the branches of his own tree.
“There never was a man hung either in Frosses or Tweedore,” said the woman who had just been snoring. “Never a mother’s son!”
“So I have heard,” Maire a Crick remarked, pulling her feet well up under her petticoats. “In Frosses and Tweedore there never was a tree strong enough to bear the weight of a man, and never a man with a body weighty enough to break his own neck.”
Having said this the old woman, who came from the south of Donegal, chuckled deep down in her throat, and showed the one remaining tooth which she possessed in a hideous grin.
ABOUTthe hour of midnight the heavens cleared and the moon, hardly full, lighted up the coast of Western Donegal. On the bosom of the sea a few dark specks moved to and fro, and at intervals the splash of oars could be heard. When the oars were lifted out of the sea the water, falling from them, looked like molten silver.
“Norah will be warm in bed by now,” said a voice.
“If she caught the tide when it was standing,” a voice clearer and younger replied.
“If she caught the tide,” repeated the first speaker in a thoughtful tone; then after a short silence, “Does not the land look black, back from the sea?”
The youth studied the shore-line attentively, allowing his oar to trail through the water. “Mother of God! but it looks ugly,” he replied. “I hate it! I hate it more than I hate anything!”
On shore most of the women were now asleep amongst the rocks, their shawls drawn tightly over their heads andtheir feet tucked up under their petticoats. Maire a Crick, still awake, hummed a tune deep down in her throat, and Judy Farrel coughed incessantly. One white, youthful face was turned to the heavens, and the moon, glancing for a moment on the pale cheeks of the sleeper, caused a tear falling from the closed eyelids to sparkle like a pearl.
JAMESRyan’scabin lay within half a mile of the sea, and his croft, a long strip of rock-bespattered, sapless land, ran down to the very shore. But this strip of land was so narrow that the house, small though it was, could not be built across, and instead of the cabin-front, an end gable faced the water. In Frosses most of the land is divided into thin strips, for it is the unwritten law that they who have no land touching the sea may not lift any sea-weed to manure their potato patches. In Frosses some of the crofts, measuring two miles in length, are seldom more than eight paces in width at any point.
All over the district gigantic boulders are strewn, huge rocks that might have been flung about in play by monstrous Giants who forgot, when their humour was at an end, to gather them up again. Between these rocks the people till for crops, plots of land which seldom measure more than four yards square, and every rock conceals either a potato patch or cornfield. It was said years ago that Frosses had twenty-one blades of grass to the square foot, but this was contradicted by a sarcastic peasant, who said that if grass grew so plentifully with them they would all be wealthy.
Fishing was indulged in, but very little fish was everlanded: Scottish and English trawlers netted the fish off-shore, and few were picked up by the peasantry, whose boats and nets were of the most primitive pattern. The nets were bad, the boats, mere curraghs, were untrustworthy, and a great deal of the fishermen’s time was usually spent in baling out water. At best fishing was for them an almost profitless trade. They had no markets and no carts to send their fish to town. For the most part the fishers used the fish themselves or traded them in kind with their neighbours.
On the morning following the women’s visit to Greenanore two men came up from the sea towards the door of James Ryan’s cabin. One was an old man, bearded and wrinkled, whose brows were continually contracting as is the habit with those who live by the sea and look on the wrath of many winds. He was dressed in a white wrapper, a woollen shirt, open at the neck, trousers folded up to the knees, and mairteens. The other was a youth of nineteen, dark-haired, supple of limb and barefooted. In the two men a family likeness might be detected; they were father and son, James Ryan and his only boy, Fergus. There were now only four in the family; death had taken away most of the children before they were a year old.
Fergus opened the door of the cabin, to be met with the warm and penetrating breath of the cattle inside. The cows, always curious to see a new-comer, turned round in their beds of fresh heather and fixed their big, soft eyes on the youth. Beside the cow nearest the door, a young calf, spotted black and white, turned round on long, lank, awkward legs and sniffed suspiciously; then, finding that no danger was going to befall him, snuggled up against his mother, who commenced to lick her offspring with a big rough tongue. Suddenly a pig ran in from the outside, rushed between the youth’s legs and disappeared underthe bed. Its back was bleeding as if a dog had bitten it.
“Is not the pig’s flesh like a human’s?” said Fergus, turning to his father. “White; almost without hair and it bleeds just like a man’s. I hate pigs; I wish we could live without keeping them.... Oh! here is Norah at the fire. Have you just got up?”
The child, shivering from cold, was sitting on the hassock, her hands spread out to the peat blaze.
“She has only just come in from the other side of the water,” said the mother, who was sitting up in bed, knitting stockings. “She lay out all night, poor creature! Twenty-seven women in all were lying out on the snow. And she got no yarn! Thanks be to God! but it’s a bad time.”
“A bad time, a hard time, a very hard time!” said the old man, sitting down on an upturned creel and taking off his mairteens. “No yarn! and there was not a fish in all the seas last night.”
“None but the ones we didn’t catch,” said Fergus. “It is that dirty potato-basket of a boat that is to blame.... Are you cold, Norah?”
“I am only shivering; but the fire will do me good.”
“She didn’t ate one bit of her breakfast yesterday,” said the mother. “Left it all for you when you came in from the sea, she did!”
Norah blushed as if she had been caught doing something wrong; then drank from the bowl of milk which was placed on the floor beside her. The father looked greedily at the bowl; the mother spoke.
“It is nice and warm, that milk,” said the old woman. “I wish we had more of it, but at this time of the year the milk runs thin in the cow’s elldurs. But even if we had got enough bread, never mind milk, it would not be sobad.... And there is not one bit for you this morning.... Do you know what the soggarth says, Shemus?”
THEhusband looked at his wife, and an expression of dread appeared on his face. “What does he say, Mary?”
“He is offering up no prayers for your soul.”
“Mother of God, be good to me!”
“You must pay him that pound at once, he says.”
“But barring what we are saving up for the landlord’s rent, bad scran to him! we have not one white shilling in the house.”
“That does not matter to the priest, the damned old pig!” exclaimed Fergus, who had been looking gloomily at the roof since he had spoken to Norah.
“Fergus!” the three occupants of the house exclaimed in one breath.
“What’s coming over the boy at all?” the mother went on. “It must be the books that Micky’s Jim takes over from Scotland that are bringing ruin to the gasair.”
“It is common sense that I am talking,” Fergus hotly replied. “What with the landlord, Farley McKeown, and the priest, you are all in a nice pickle!”
“The priest, Fergus!”
“Robbing you because he is a servant of the Lord; that is the priest’s trick,” the youth exclaimed. “We are feeding here with the cows and the pigs and we are not one bit better than the animals ourselves. I hate the place; I hate it and everything about it.”
“Sure you don’t hate your own people?” asked Norah, rising from her seat and going timidly up to her brother. “Sure you don’t hate me, Fergus?”
“Hate you?” laughed the young man stroking her hair with an awkward hand. “No one could hate you, because you are a little angel.... Now run away and sit down at the fire and warm yourself.... They are going to make you a nun, they say.”
There was a note of scorn in his voice, and he looked defiantly at his mother as he spoke.
“What better than a nun could she be?” asked the mother.
“I would rather see her a beggar on the rainy roads.”
“What is coming over you atall, Fergus?” asked the old man. “Last night, too, you were strange in your talk on the top of the sea.”
“How much money have you in the house?” Fergus asked, taking no heed of his father’s remark. “Ten shillings will be enough to take me out of the country altogether.”
“Fergus, what are you saying?” asked his mother.
“I am going away from here and I am going to push my fortune.” He looked out of the window and his eyes followed the twist of the road that ran like a ribbon away past the door of the house.
“But, Fergus dear—!”
“It does not matter, maghair (mother), what you say,” remarked the youth, interrupting his mother. “I am going away this very day. I have had it in my head for a long while. I’ll make you rich in the years to come. I’ll earn plenty of money.”
“That’s what they all say, child,” the mother interposed, and tears came into her eyes. “It’s more often a grave than a fortune they find in the black foreign country.”
“Could any place under the roof-tree of heaven be as black as this,” asked the youth excitedly. “There is nothing here but rags, poverty, and dirt; pigs under the bed, cows in the house, the rain coming through the thatch insteadof seeping from the eaves, and the winds of night raving and roaring through wall and window. Then if by chance you make one gold guinea, half of it goes to Farley McKeown and the priest, and the other half of it goes to the landlord.”
“But Farley McKeown doesn’t get any money from us at all,” said the mother in a tone of reproof. “It is him that gives us money for the knitting.”
“Knitting!” exclaimed Fergus, rising to his feet and striding up and down the cabin. “God look sideways on the knitting! How much are you paid for your work? One shilling and threepence for a dozen pairs of stockings that takes the two of you more than a whole week to make. You might as well be slaves; you are slaves, slaves to the very middle of your bones! How much does Farley McKeown get for the stockings in the big towns away out of here? Four shillings a pair, I am after hearing. You get a penny farthing a pair; a penny farthing! If you read some of the books that comes home with the harvestmen you would not suffer Farley McKeown for long.”
“That is it,” said the mother, winding the thread round her knitting-irons. “That is it! It is the books that the harvestmen take home that puts the boy astray. It is no wonder that the priest condemns the books.”
“The priest!” said the youth in a tone of contempt. “But what is the good of talking to the likes of you? How much money have you in the house?”
“Sure you are not going to leave us?” Norah exclaimed, gazing with large troubled eyes at her brother.
“I am,” snapped Fergus. “I am going away this evening. I’ll tramp the road to Derry and take the big boat from there to Scotland or some other place beyond the water. What are you crying for? Don’t be a baby, Norah! I’ll come back again and make you a lady. I’llearn big piles of money and send it home at the end of every month.”
James Ryan looked at his wife, and a similar thought struck both of them at the same instant. The son had some book learning, and he might get on well abroad and amass considerable wealth, which he would share with his own people. The old man drew nearer to the fire and held out his bare feet, which were blue with cold, to the flames.
“If Fergus sends home money I’ll get a good strong and warm pair of boots,” he said to himself; then asked: “How much money is there in the teapot, Mary?”
“Twelve white shillings and sevenpence,” answered the wife. “No, it is only twelve shillings and sixpence. Norah took a penny with her to the town yesterday.”
“I have a ha’penny back with me,” said the child, drawing a coin from her weasel-skin purse. “I only spent half of the money on bread yesterday because I was not very hungry.”
“God be merciful to us! but the child is starving herself,” said the old woman, clutching eagerly at the coin which her daughter held towards her. “You can have half a gold guinea, Fergus, if you are going out to push your fortune.”
INthe evening when the moon peeped over the western hills, Fergus Ryan tied his boots round his neck, placed three bannocks in a woollen handkerchief and went out from his father’s door. The mother wept not when he was leaving; she had seen so many of her children go out on a much longer journey. Norah accompanied Fergus for a short distance and stopped where the road streaked with very faint lines of light mergedinto the darkness. The moon rose clear off the hills ... lights could be seen glowing in the distance ... a leafless birch waved its arms in the breeze ... somewhere a cow was lowing and far away, across the water, a Ballybonar dog howled at the stars.
“I never thought that I could like the place as much as I do now,” Fergus said in English.
“It’s the way with everyone when they’re going away,” answered his sister. “And I’m sick at heart that ye are goin’, Fergus. Is Derry far away?”
“A longish way—”
“Out beyont the moon, is it?” asked the child, pointing at the hills and the moon above them.
“Maybe,” said the youth; then in a low voice: “D’ye know what they do in other countries when they are saying ‘Good-bye’?”
“Then I don’t,” answered Norah.
“They do this,” said the young man, and he pressed his lips against his sister’s cheek.
“But they never do that here,” said the girl, and both blushed as if they had been discovered doing something very wrong. “I’ll say a long prayer for you every night, when you are away, Fergus.”
The boy looked at her, rubbed one bare foot on the ground and seemed on the point of saying something further; then without a word he turned and walked off along the wet road. Norah kept looking after him till he was out of sight, then, with her eyes full of tears, she went back to her home.
TOWARDSthe end of the following year a great event took place in Frosses. It was reported that a registered letter addressed to “James Ryan, Esquire, Meenalicknalore” was lying in Frosses post-office. Norah heard the news and spoke of it to her father.
“No one but your own self can get the letter,” she said. “That is what the people at the post-office say. You have to write your name down on white paper too, before the letter crosses the counter.”
“And is it me, a man who was never at school, that has to put down my name?” asked James Ryan in a puzzled voice.
“It will be a letter from the boy himself,” said the old woman, who was sitting up in bed and knitting. Now and again she placed her bright irons down and coughed with such violence as to shake her whole body. “And maybe there is money in the same letter. It is not often that we have a letter coming to us.”
“We had none since the last process for the rent and that was two years aback,” said the husband. “Maybe I will be going into Frosses and getting that letter myself now.”
“Maybe you would,” stammered his wife, still battling with her cough.
James Ryan put on his mairteens and left the house. Norah watched him depart, and her eyes followed him until he turned the corner of the road; then she went to the bedside and sitting on a low stool commenced to turn the heel of a long stocking.
“How many days to a day now is it since Fergus took the road to Derry?” asked the old woman. “I am sure it is near come nine months this very minute.”
“It is ten months all but sixteen days.”
“Under God the day and the night, and is it that?”
“That it is and every hour of it.”
“He will be across the whole flat world since he left,” said the mother, looking fixedly at an awkward, ungainly calf which had just blundered into the house, but seeing far beyond. “He will maybe send five pounds in gold in the letter.”
“Maybe. But you are not thinking of that, mother?” said Norah.
“And what wouldyoube thinking of, then?” asked the old woman.
“I am wondering if he is in good health and happy.”
“The young are always happy, Norah. Are you not?”
“Sometimes. I am happy when out in the open, listening to the birds singing, and the wind running on the heather.”
“Who ever heard of a person listening to things like those? Are you not happy in God’s house on a Sunday?”
“Oh, I am happy there as well,” answered Norah, but there was a hint of hesitation in the answer.
“Everyone that is good of heart is happy in God’s house,” said the mother. “Have you turned the heel of the stocking yet?”
“I am nigh finished with the foot, mother.”
“My own two eyes are getting dim, and I cannot hurry like you these days,” said the woman in the bed. “Run those hens from the house, and the young sturk too.... I wonder what he is coming in here for now, the rascal?”
“Maybe he likes to be near the fire,” said the child, looking at the spotted calf that was nosing at a dish on the dresser. “When Micky’s Jim built a new byre it was not easy to keep the cattle in it, for they always wanted to get back into the warm house again.”
With these words she rose and chased the young animal out of doors, while a few stray hens fluttered wildly about in making their exit. “The cows like the blaze,” Norah went on as she came back and took up her seat by the fire. “Every evening they turn round and look at it, and you can see their big soft eyes shining through the darkness.”
“It is the strange things that you be noticing, alannah, but what you say is very true,” said the mother. “It will be a letter from Fergus, I suppose, with five gold guineas in it,” she went on. “Maybe he will be at the back of America by now.... If he sends five gold guineas we will make a holy nun of you, Norah, and then you can pray day and night with no one at all to ask you to do anything but that alone.”
“I might get tired of it, mother.”
“Son of Mary, listen to her! Tired of saying your prayers, you mean? There is that sturk at the door again. Isn’t he the rascal of the world?”
DARKNESShad fallen before James Ryan returned from Frosses post-office, which was over four miles away. He entered the cabin, breathing heavily, the sweat streaming from his brow and coursing down hisblood-threaded cheeks. He had run most of the way back, and in his hand he carried the letter, the first which he had received for two whole years.
“Mercy be on us, but you are out of breath!” said his wife, laying down her knitting irons, a fault of which she was seldom guilty, save when eating or sleeping. “Put one of the rushlights in the fire, Norah, and read the letter from foreign parts. Is it from the boy himself?”
“Maybe it is,” answered the man, seating himself as usual on an upturned creel in the centre of the cabin. “The man at the post-office, Micky McNelis, first cousin he is to Dony McNelis that works with Farley McKeown, says that it is from a far part, anyway. ‘You must put down your own name,’ said Micky to me, in English. ‘I cannot write, for I never had a pen in my hand,’ said I. ‘You have to make your mark then,’ said he. ‘I don’t know how to do that either,’ said I. ‘I’ll write your name and you have to put a line down this way and a line down that way after what I write,’ said he, and, just by way of showing me, he made a crooked cross with his pen on a piece of paper. Then I made my mark and a good mark it was too, for Micky himself said as much, and I got the letter there and then into my own two hands. If it is from the boy there is not one penny piece in it.”
“Why would you be saying that now?”
“I could not feel anything inside of it,” said the man. “If there were gold pieces in it I could easily find them through that piece of paper.”
The rushlight was now ready; the father took it in his hand and stood beside Norah, to whom he gave the letter. The woman leant forward in the bed; her husband held up the light with a shaky hand; dim shadows danced on the roof; the young sturk again entered the house and took up his stand in the corner. Norah having opened the letter proceeded to read:
“Dear Father and Mother and Norah,“I am writing to say that I am well, hoping to find you all at home in the same state of health. I am far away in the middle of England now, in a place called Liverpool where I have a job as a dock labourer—”
“Dear Father and Mother and Norah,
“I am writing to say that I am well, hoping to find you all at home in the same state of health. I am far away in the middle of England now, in a place called Liverpool where I have a job as a dock labourer—”
“Micky’s Jim had that kind of job the year before last in Glasgow,” said the mother.
“The work is hard enough, heaven knows, but the pay is good. I came here from Derry and I have been working for the most part of the time ever since. I intended to write home sooner but between one thing and another, time passed by, but now I am sending you home twelve pounds, and you can get gold in Frosses post-office for the slip of paper which I enclose——”
“The work is hard enough, heaven knows, but the pay is good. I came here from Derry and I have been working for the most part of the time ever since. I intended to write home sooner but between one thing and another, time passed by, but now I am sending you home twelve pounds, and you can get gold in Frosses post-office for the slip of paper which I enclose——”
“Under God the day and the night!” exclaimed the woman in the bed.
“A pound of this money is for Norah, and she can buy a new dress for it. See and don’t let her go to Greenanore for yarn any more, or it will be the death of her, sleeping out at night on the rocks of Dooey.“I hope my mother is well and that her cold is getting better. I spend all my spare time reading books. It is a great, great world once you are away from Donegal, and here, where I am, as many books as one would want to carry can be had for a mere song——”
“A pound of this money is for Norah, and she can buy a new dress for it. See and don’t let her go to Greenanore for yarn any more, or it will be the death of her, sleeping out at night on the rocks of Dooey.
“I hope my mother is well and that her cold is getting better. I spend all my spare time reading books. It is a great, great world once you are away from Donegal, and here, where I am, as many books as one would want to carry can be had for a mere song——”
“Getting things for a song!” said the man. “That is like the ballad singers——”
“It would be nice to hear from you, but as I am going away to America on the day after to-morrow, I have no fixed address, and it would be next to useless for you to write to me. I’ll send a letter soon again, and more money when I can earn it.“Your loving son“Fergus.”
“It would be nice to hear from you, but as I am going away to America on the day after to-morrow, I have no fixed address, and it would be next to useless for you to write to me. I’ll send a letter soon again, and more money when I can earn it.
“Your loving son“Fergus.”
“THISis the paper which he talks about,” said Norah, handing a money order to her mother.
“A thing like that worth twelve pounds!” exclaimed the old woman, a look of perplexity intensifying the wrinkles of her face. “I would hardly give a white sixpence, no, nor a brown penny for the little thing. Glory be to God! but maybe it is worth twelve golden sovereigns, for there are many strange things that come out of foreign parts.”
“Alive and well he is,” said Norah, reading the letter over again. “Thank God for that, for I was afraid that he might be dead, seeing that it took him so long to write home. Wouldn’t I like to see him again!”
“It will be worth twelve pounds without a doubt,” said the husband, referring to the money order, as he threw the rushlight which was burning his fingers into the fire. “I once heard tell that a man can get hundreds and hundreds of guineas for a piece of paper no bigger than that!”
“Mother of God!” exclaimed the old woman, making the sign of the cross and kissing the money order rapturously.
“Poor Fergus!” said Norah, laying down the letter on the window-sill and taking up her needles. “It is a pity of him so far away from his own home!”
“Twelve gold sovereigns!” said the mother. “A big pile that without a doubt. Hardly a house in Frosses has twelve pounds inside the threshold of its door. Put out that animal to the fields,” she called to her husband. “We’ll have to build a new byre and not have the cattle in the house any longer. A funny thing indeed to have them tied up in a house along with people who can gettwelve pounds in bulk from foreign parts! No decent body would dream of such a thing as having them tied up here now! Norah, leave down that stocking. Let me never see you knitting under this roof again.”
“Why, mother?”
“You are going to be a nun, a holy nun, Norah, and nuns never knit; they just pray all day long and all night too. You have to set about and go to school again. You are not to be like other people’s children any more, knitting stockings in the ashes. You are going to be a nun—and there never was a nun in Frosses yet!”
“I would like to go to school again,” said the child, clinking her irons nervously and following with her eyes the blue flames that rose from the peat fire and disappeared in the chimney. “There is a map of the world in the school, hanging on the wall, and one can see Liverpool on it and America as well. I could look at them and think that I am seeing Fergus away in foreign parts, so far from his own home.”
“And there is a pound due to the priest this minute,” said the old man, who had just chased the calf out into the darkness. “It would be well to give the soggarth the money in the morning.”
“And you’ll go to school again to-morrow,” repeated the mother, who was following up some train of thought, and who, curiously enough, made no mention of her son since the letter had been read. “You’ll go again to-morrow and learn well. The master said that you were getting on fine the last time you were there and that it was a sin to take you away from the books.”
Having said this, the old woman lay back in her bed with a sigh of relief, the man closed the door of the house, and drawing near to the fire he held out his feet to the blaze. Norah, glad to be released from the labour of the knitting irons, looked into the flames, and many strangepictures came and went before her eyes. From time to time the woman in the bed could be heard speaking.
“Twelve pounds for a piece of paper!” she would exclaim. “Mother of God! But there is strange things in foreign lands!”
Suddenly Norah arose and approached the bed. “Am I a good girl, mother?” she asked, with a slight catch in her voice.
“What silliness is entering your head?” enquired the old woman. “Who said that you were not good?”
“You said that good people were happy in God’s house, but I am not always happy there.”
“Did I say that?” asked the mother, who had forgotten all about the remark. “Maybe I did say it, maybe indeed. But run away now and don’t bother me, for I am going to sleep.”
“A little bit of paper to be worth twelve pounds!” she mumbled to herself, after a short interval of silence. “Mother of God! but there are many strange things in foreign parts of the world!”
ONthe Monday of the week following Norah Ryan went to school again. She had been there for two years already but left off going when she became an adept at the needles. Master Diver had control of the school; he was a fat little man, always panting and perspiring, who frightened the children and feared the priest. On the way to school he cut hazel rods by the roadside, and when in a bad mood he used them on the youngsters. After he had caned three or four children he became good tempered, when he caned half a dozen he got tired of his task and allowed the remainder (if any remained) to go scot free. Some of the boys who worked in their spare time at peat saving and fishing had hands hard as horses’ hooves. When these did something wrong their trousers were taken down and awkward chastisement was inflicted with severe simplicity in full view of a breathless school.
The school consisted of a single apartment, at one end of which, on a slightly elevated platform near the fire, the master’s desk and chair were placed. Several maps, two blackboards, a modulator, which no one, not even the master himself, understood, and a thermometer, long deprived of its quicksilver, hung on the walls. In one corner were the pegs on which the boys’ caps were hung;on a large roof-beam which spanned the width of the room the girls’ shawls were piled in a large heap. The room boasted of two wide open fireplaces, but only one of these was ever lighted; the other was used for storing the turf carried to school daily by the scholars. The room was swept twice weekly; then a grey dust rose off the floor and the master and children were seized with prolonged fits of sneezing. Outside and above the door was a large plate with the inscription,
Glenmornan National School. 1872.
Over the plate and under the eaves of the building a sparrow built its nest yearly, and it was even reported that a bat took up its daily residence in the same quarter.
From his seat beside the fire in the schoolroom the master watched his pupils through half-closed eyes, save when now and again he dropped into a sound sleep and snored loudly. Asleep he perspired more freely than when awake. He was very bald, and sometimes a tame robin that had been in the schoolhouse for many years fluttered down and rested on the skinny head which shone brilliantly in the firelight. There the robin preened its feathers. Now and then a mouse nibbled under the boards of the floor, and the children stopped their noisy chatter for a moment to listen to the movements of the little animal.
Prayers were said morning and evening. The children went down on their knees, the master prayed standing like a priest at the altar. The prayers of the morning were repeated in English, those of the evening in Gaelic.
Norah Ryan took her place in the third standard. In the class the boys stood at top, the girls at bottom, and those of each sex were ranged in order of merit. Norah, an apt pupil, easily took her place at the head of the girls,and the most ignorant of the boys, a youth named Dermod Flynn, was placed beside her. Although this lad got caned on an average three times a day, he never cried when he was beaten; still, Norah Ryan felt mutely compassionate for him when she heard the sharp hazel rod strike like a whiplash against his hand. His usual punishment consisted of four slaps of the rod, but always he held out his hand for a fifth; this, no doubt, was done to show the master that he did not fear him. Dermod could not fix his mind on any one subject; there was usually a far-away look in his eyes, which were continually turning towards the window and the country outside. On the calf of his left leg a large red scar showed where he had been bitten by a dog, and it was known that he would become mad one day. When a man is bitten by an angry dog he is sure to become mad at some time or another. So they say in Frosses.
The third class was usually ranged for lessons in a semi-circle facing the map of the world, which, with the exception of the map of Ireland, was the largest in the school. On the corners of the map were pictures of various men and animals with titles underneath; which, going the round of the two hemispheres, could be read as follows: Dromedary; A Russian Moujik; Wild Boar; A Chinaman; Leopard; An Indian; Lion; A Fiji Islander; etc., etc.
ONEday the master asked Dermod Flynn if he knew what race of people lived in Liverpool. As usual Dermod did not know.
“Dockers and Irishmen,” Norah Ryan, whose mind reverted to the letter which had been received from Fergus, whispered under her breath.
“Rockets and Irishmen,” Dermod blurted out.
No one laughed: a rocket had never been seen in Glenmornan, and it would have surprised none of the children if Dermod were correct; it would have surprised none of them if he were wrong. The master reached for the hazel rod.
“Hold out your hand, Dermod Flynn,” he commanded and delivered four blows on the boy’s palm. Flynn held out his hand for a fifth slap: the master took no notice.
“Now, Norah Ryan, hold out your hand,” said the master. “Promptin’ is worse than tellin’ lies.”
Norah received two slaps, much lighter than those delivered to the boy. The master knew that she was going to be a nun one day, and he respected her accordingly, but not to such an extent that he could refrain from using the rod of correction.
Dermod Flynn turned and stared at Norah. A red blush mantled her cheeks, and she looked at him shyly for a moment; then her lashes dropped quickly, for she felt that he was looking into her very soul. He appeared self-possessed, impervious to the pain of the master’s chastisement. After a while Norah looked at him again, but he was gazing vacantly out of the window at a brook tumbling from the rocky hills that fringed the further side of the playground.
When school was dismissed and the scholars were on their way home, Dermod spoke to Norah.
“Why did you help me in the class to-day?” he asked.
She did not answer but turned away and stared at the stream falling from the dark rocks.
“It’s like white smoke against a black cloud,” he said following her gaze.
“What is?”
“The stream falling from the rocks.”
On the day following Dermod got into trouble again.His class was asked to write an essay on fire, and Dermod sat biting his pen until the allotted time was nearly finished. Then he scribbled down a few lines.
“A house without fire is like a man without a stomach; a chimney without smoke is like a man without breath, for——”
That was all. Dermod pondered over the word “stomach” for a while and felt that it made the whole sentence an unseemly one. He was stroking out the word when the master, awakening from his sleep, grabbed the essay and read it. He read it a second time, then took down a hazel rod from the nail on which it hung. The ignorance of the boy who wrote such a sentence was most profound. The master caned Dermod.
Norah Ryan made rapid progress at her work, and when she went home in the evening she sat down on the hassock and learned her lessons by the light of the peat fire. She considered old Master Diver to be a very learned man, but somehow she could not get herself to like him. “Why does he beat Dermod Flynn so often?” she asked herself time and again, and whenever she thought of school she thought of Dermod Flynn.
Her mother, who had improved in health, now that there was food to eat, brought a looking-glass from Greenanore one day. She paid fourpence halfpenny for it in “McKeown’s Great Emporium,” the new business which had just been started by the yarn merchant. Norah dressed her hair in front of this glass, and one day when engaged in the task, she said: “I wish I could see Dermod Flynn now!” Perhaps she really meant to say: “I wish Dermod Flynn could see me now!” In any case she got so red in the face that her mother asked her what was wrong.
Shortly afterwards Dermod Flynn’s school troubles came to an end. His class was standing as usual, facingthe map of the world, and Master Diver asked Dermod to point out Corsica. The boy did not know where Corsica was; he stared at the map, holding the idle pointer in his hand.
“Point out Corsica!” the master repeated, and seized the youth by the ear, which he pulled vigorously. The blood mounted to the boy’s cheeks, and raising the pointer suddenly he hit the master sharply across the face.
“You’ve killed him, Dermod Flynn!” Norah Ryan gasped involuntarily. The old fellow put his hands over his face and sank down limply on the form. Blood trickled through his fingers ... a fly settled on his bald head ... the scholars stared aghast at their fallen master. Dermod gazed at the old man for a moment, then seizing his cap he rushed out of the schoolroom. Most of the boys followed the example, and when the master, who only suffered from a slight flesh wound, regained his feet and looked round, the school was almost deserted.
Dermod Flynn did not return again, and after his departure Norah found that she did not like the school so much as formerly.
THEMay of 1903 came round, and on every twelfth day of May the young boys and girls of Donegal start for the hiring fair of Strabane. The rumour went that Dermod Flynn was going now, but no one knew for certain; the Flynns being a close-mouthed people gave no secrets away. On the evening preceding the twelfth, Norah heard of Dermod’s intended departure and that night she was long in falling asleep. Her bed was made on the floor beside the fire; a grey woollen blanket served a double debt to pay, and was used as a blanket and sheet. But the sleeping place was not cold; the heat of the fire and the breath of the kine kept it warm.
The first bird was twittering on the thatch and the first tint of dawn was tingeing the sky when Norah awoke, sat up in bed and threw part of the blanket aside. At the further end of the house where it was still dark cattle were stamping, and bright eyes could be seen glowing like coals. The child rose, went to the window, pulled up the blind and looked out on the sea. She stood there for a moment rapt in reverie, her pure white bosom showing above her low-cut cotton chemise and her long tresses hanging down loosely over her shoulders. She was now fourteen.
Her short reverie came to an end; she crossed herself many times and proceeded to dress, taking unusual care with her hair, weaving it into two long plaits, and polishing her boots carefully. These, the second pair of her life, were studded with nails which she liked to hear rasping on the ground as she walked. At night she noticed that the nails were bright and shiny; in the mornings they were always brown with rust. She recollected, not without a certain amount of satisfaction, that she was the only girl wearing shoes at Frosses school. But she could well afford it; Fergus had sent twenty pounds to his parents and three pounds to herself since he left home.
Her father and mother were asleep in the bed; the former snoring loudly, the latter coughing drowsily from time to time. The cat, which had been in the house since Norah could remember, was curled atop of the blanket and fast asleep.
A movement occurred in the bed as Norah finished her toilet; the cat stirred itself, stretched its front legs, spreading out its claws, yawned and fell asleep again.
“Son of Mary! but you are up early, Norah!” exclaimed her mother, sitting up in bed; then seeing the cat she gave the blankets a vigorous shake and cried: “Get out, you little devil! You lie in bed as if you were a person and no less!”
“I am going to pull bog-bine on the hills of Glenmornan for your sickness, mother.”
“But would it not be time enough for you to go there come noon?”
“It is as well to go now, mother.”
“Then it is, alannah, if you have the liking for it,” said the old woman. “See and turn the cattle into the holm below the Holy Rocks before you go away.”
“I will do that, mother.”
“And put the blind up on the window again, for the light is getting into my eyes.”
Norah untied the cattle from their stakes and opened the door. The old brindled cow went out first, lazily lashing her legs with her long tail, and smelt the door-post as she passed soberly into the open. The second cow, a fawn-grey beast, was followed by a restless, awkward calf that mischievously nudged the hindquarters of the animal in front with its nose. The Ryans possessed three cattle only, and the byre which the old woman had wanted erected was now in process of construction.
When the young calf got into the field he jumped exultantly into the air and rushed madly off for the distance of a hundred yards; then, planting his forefeet squarely in the earth, as suddenly stopped and turned round to look at the two cows. Surprised that they had not followed him, he scampered back to where they were cropping noisily at the short grass, and with his head dunted the brindled cow on the belly. The old animal turned round, her mouth full of grass, and gave a reproving nudge with her warm, damp nose which sent the calf scampering off again.
The houses of Meenalicknalore were arranged in a row on the top of a brae that swept down to the sea, shoving its toes into the water. A curl of smoke rose from some of the houses; others gave no hint of human activity. “A chimney without smoke is like a man without breath,” quoted Norah. “I wonder how Dermod Flynn thinks of things like that; and to-day he is goin’ away all alone by himself across the mountains.”
She came to the Three Rocks; three large masses of limestone, one long and perpendicular, the other two squat and globular, which the peasantry supposed to represent the Holy Trinity. Here Norah said her prayers, one “Our Father” and three “Hail Mary’s” in front ofeach of the two smaller stones, and the Apostles’ Creed in front of the large rock in the centre. When her prayers were finished she drove the cattle into a holm, put a bush in the gap and resumed her journey.
The sun had just risen ... a wind cool and moist blew in from the bosom of the sea ... little tufts of thistledown trembled through the air, dropped to the ground, rose again and vanished in the distance ... wrens chirped in the juniper ... frogs chuckled in the meadows ... a rabbit with eyes alert, ears aback and tail acock ran along the roadway and disappeared under a clump of furze ... clouds floating across the sky like large, lazy, wingless birds slowly assumed a delicate rosy tint until they looked like mother-of-pearl inside a giant shell.
Norah, very excited and very happy, stood for a moment to look into a clear well by the roadside. On her face was the expectant look of a sweet kitten that waits for the ball to be thrown to it; her two plaits of hair hung over her shoulders, one delicate strand that had fallen away fluttering in the breeze. She looked approvingly into the calm water at the laughing face that smiled up to her.
“How good to be out here, to be alive, to be young,” she seemed to say to herself. “Everything is so fair, so beautiful, so wonderful!”
ABOUTsix o’clock Norah entered Glenmornan. Here she met three boys and two girls bound for the rabble market of Strabane. One of the boys was whistling a tune, the other two chattered noisily; the girls, who were silent, carried each a pair of hob-nailed boots hung over their shoulders.
“Good luck to your journey,” said Norah Ryan, by way of salutation.
“And to yours,” they answered.
“Are there lots of ones a-goin’ this mornin’?” she asked in English.
“Lots,” answered one of the girls, making the sign of the cross on her brow. “Two gasairs of Oiney Dinchy’s, one of Cormac of the Hill’s ones, seven or more from the townland of Dooran, and more besides.”
“Many goin’ from Glenmornan?”
“Lots,” said the boy who had been whistling.
Norah waited for him to proceed, but finding that he remained silent, she enquired as to who was going.
“Condy Dan, Hudy Neddy, Columb Kennedy, Unah Roarty and”—the boy paused for a moment to scratch his head—“and Dermod Flynn, the gasair that struck Master Diver with the pointer.”
“Well, good luck to yer journey,” said Norah, shaking the hand of each of them in turn. “May God be with ye all till ye come back!”
“And with yerself for ever.”
The crooked road twisted round copse and knoll, now bordering the river, now rising well up on the shoulder of the hill, and along this road Norah hurried, her hands hanging idly by her side and her plaits when caught by an errant breeze fluttering over her shoulders. Half-way along the Glenmornan road she met Dermod Flynn.
“Where are ye for this mornin’, Dermod?” she asked. She knew where he was going, and after speaking felt that she should not have asked him that question.
“Beyond the mountains,” answered the youth with a smile which showed his white teeth. In one hand he carried a bundle, in the other an ash-plant with a heavy knob at the end. The young fellows of Glenmornan had got into a habit of carrying sticks in imitation of the cattledrovers who came once every month to the fair of Greenanore.
“Ye’ll not come back for a long while, will ye?” Norah asked.
“I’m never goin’ to come back again,” Dermod answered. At this Norah laughed, but, strangely enough, she felt ready to cry. All that she intended to say to him was forgotten; she held out her hand, stammered a confused good-bye and hurried away.
“His eyes are on me now,” she said several times to herself as she walked away, and every time she spoke a blush mounted to her cheeks. She wanted to look back, but did not do so until she came to the first bend of the road. There she turned round, but Dermod Flynn had gone from sight and a great loneliness entered the girl’s heart. A steer with wide, curious eyes watched her from a field beside the road, the water sang a song, all its own, as it dropped from the hills, and the Glen River, viewed from the point where Norah stood, looked like a streak of silver on a cloth of green. But the girl saw and heard none of these things, her eyes were fixed on the crooked road which ran on through holt and hollow as far as the village of Greenanore, and miles and miles beyond.
She stood there for a long time lost in reverie. Dermod Flynn was gone now, and he would never come back again. So he had told her. Suddenly she recollected why she had come out on the journey. “To pluck bog-bine it was,” she murmured. “I am after forgetting that!”
She went across the river by the ford and climbed the hill. From the top of the knoll she could see the train steam out from the station of Greenanore. In it were the children bound for the rabble market of Strabane. Norah stared and stared at the train, which crawled like a black caterpillar across the brown moor, leaving a trail of white smoke behind it.
“I’m after forgettin’ that I came out to pluck bog-bine,” she repeated when the train had disappeared from sight, and taking off her boots, she picked her way across the soft and spongy moor.
OFTENa youth leaves Donegal and goes out into the world, does well for a time, writes frequently home to his own people, sends them a sum of money in every letter (which shows that he is not a spendthrift), asking them for a little gift in return, a scapular blessed by the priest, or a bottle of water from the holy well (which shows that he has not forgotten the faith in which he was born); but in the end he ceases to write, drops out of the ken of his people and disappears. The father mourns the son for a while, regrets that the usual money-order is not forthcoming, weeps little, for too much sentiment is foreign to the hardened sensibilities of the poor; the mother tells her beads and does not fail to say one extra decade for the boy or to give a hard-earned guinea to the priest for masses for the gasair’s soul. Time rapidly dries their tears of regret, their sorrow disappears and the more pressing problems of their lives take up their whole interests again. In later years they may learn that their boy died of fever in a hospital, or was killed by a broken derrick-jib, or done to death by a railway train. “Them foreign parts were always bad,” they may say. “Black luck be with the big boat, for it’s few it takes back of the many it takes away!”
A year had passed by since James Ryan last heard from Fergus his son. No word came of the youth, andnone of the Frosses people, great travellers though the young of Frosses were, had ever come across him in any corner of the world.
“We are missing the blue pieces of paper,” Mary Ryan said to her husband one evening in the late autumn, fully three years after Fergus’s departure. She now spent her days sitting at the fire, and though her health was not the best it had greatly improved within recent years. “They were the papers!” she exclaimed. “They could buy meal in the town of Greenanore and pay the landlord his rent. Maybe the gasair is dead!”
“Maybe he is,” the husband answered. He was a man of few words and fewer ideas. Life to him, as to the animals of the fields, was naturally simple. He married, became the father of many children, all unnecessary to an overcrowded district, and most of them were flicked out by death before they were a year old. Once every eighteen months James Ryan’s wife became suddenly irritable and querulous and asked her husband to leave the house for a while. The cattle were allowed to remain inside, the husband went out and walked about in the vicinity of his home for two or three hours. From time to time he would go up to the door and call out: “Are you all right, Mary?” through the keyhole. “I am all right, Shemus,” she would answer, and the man would resume his walk. When the wife allowed him to come in he always found that his family had increased in number.
One day a child was born to him, and its third breath killed it. It was the seventh, and the year was a bad one. Potatoes lay rotting in the fields, and the peat being wet refused to burn. Somehow James Ryan felt a great relief when the child was buried. Twelve children in all were born to him, and ten of these died before they reached the age of three. “The hunger took them, I suppose,” he said, and never wept over any of his offspring,and even in time forgot the names of most of those who were dead. The third who came to him was the boy Fergus; Norah was the youngest of all.
“Maybe, indeed, he is dead,” he repeated to his wife. “I suppose there is nothing for it but to put out the curragh to the fishing again.”
“And never catch anything,” said his wife, as if blaming him for the ill-luck. “It is always the way.... If Fergus would send a few gold guineas now it would be a great help.”
“It would be a great help.”
“We could keep Norah at school for another year.”
“We could.”
“And then send her to the convent like a lady.”
“Just.”
“When are you going to put the curragh out again?”
“Maybe this very night,” answered the husband. “It is now Michaelmas a week past. There were blue lights seen out beyond the bar last night, and a sea-gull dropped from the sky and fell dead on the rocks of Dooey. The same happened ten years ago, and at that time there was a big catch out by Arranmore.”
“Then you had better go out to-night, for there is not much money in the tea-pot this minute.”
“The byre cost a big penny,” said James Ryan, and he spoke as if regretting something.
“It did that, and the house does not look half as well with the cattle gone from it.” So saying the woman turned over some live turf on the pile of potatoes that was toasting beside the fire, and rising emptied part of the contents of a jug of milk into a bowl. “It is a wonder that Norah is not in,” she remarked. “She should be back from school over an hour ago.”
ATthat moment Norah entered, placed her cotton satchel and books on the window sill, and sat down to her meal. She was a winsome girl, neat, delicate and good-looking. She had grown taller; her tresses were glossier, her clear grey eyes, out of which the radiance of her pure soul seemed to shine, were dreamy and thoughtful. She was remarkable for a pure and exquisite beauty, not alone of body, but of mind. She was dressed in peasant garb, but her clothes, though patched and shabby, showed the lines of her well-formed figure to advantage. Her feet were small, an unusual thing amongst country children who run about bare-footed, and her dainty little hands matched her feet to perfection. Her accomplishments were the knowledge of a few Irish songs and country dances, and her intellectual gifts could be summed up in the words, simple innocence.
“Are you getting on well with your lessons, Norah?” asked the father.
Every day for the last two years, on her return from school, he asked a similar question and took no heed of the answer, which was always the same.
“I am getting on very well, father.”
“He’s going out to the fishing to-night,” said the mother, handing a bowl of milk to Norah and pointing her finger at her husband.
“Any letter from Fergus?” asked the girl.
“Never a word,” said the mother. “Maybe one will be here to-morrow.”
“To-morrow never comes,” said James Ryan. He had heard somebody use this phrase years ago and he repeated it almost hourly ever since. “It is off on the curragh that I am going now.”
He rose and went out. The dusk had fallen and a heaven of brilliant stars glittered overhead. A light gust of wind surged up angrily for a moment and swept along the ground, crooning amidst rock and boulder. Outside James Ryan stood for a moment and looked up at the sky, his thoughts running on the conversation which had just taken place inside. “To-morrow never comes,” he repeated and hurried towards the sea.
Mary Ryan lit the paraffin lamp which hung from the great beam that stretched across the middle of the house. The rushlight was now used no longer; the oil lamp had taken its place in most of the houses in Frosses. Norah finished her meal and turned to her books. For a long while there was silence in the cabin, but outside the wind was rising, whirling round the corners and sweeping in under the door.
“Tell me a story, mother,” Norah said, putting her books aside and curling up like a pretty ball on the earthen floor in front of the fire.
“All right, I will tell you a story, silly baby that you are!” said the old woman, sitting down on the hassock by the hearth. “Will it be about the wee red-headed man with the flock of goats before him, and the flock of goats behind him, and the salmon tied to the laces of his brogues for supper?”
“Not that one, a maghair, I know it myself.”
“Will it be about Kitty the Ashy pet who said ‘Let you be combing there, mother, and I’ll be combing here,’ and who went up the Bay of Baltic, carrying the Rock of Cattegat on her shoulders?”
“I know that one, mother.”
“And the Bonnie Bull of Norway you know as well. Then it will be about the cat that would not dress its whiskers if it wasn’t in front of the biggest looking-glassin all the world. The biggest looking-glass in all the wide world is the broad ocean in a calm.”
“Not that one, mother.”
“You are hard to please this very night. I will tell you the story of the little green-coated boy who wandered on the rainy roads.... There’s the wind rising. Mercy of God be on your father if the sea is out of order!”
Mary Ryan began the story which she knew by heart, having heard it so often from the lips of her own mother. Here, it may be remarked, most of the folk stories of Donegal are of Norwegian or Danish origin and have in many cases been so well preserved that the Scandinavian names of people and places are retained in the stories until the present day.
“Once upon a time when cows were kine and when eagles of the air built their nests in the beards of Giants, a little green-coated boy with a stick in his hand and a bundle of bannocks over his shoulder went out on the rainy roads to push his fortune——”