The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Wind BlowethThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Wind BlowethAuthor: Donn ByrneIllustrator: George BellowsRelease date: July 5, 2007 [eBook #21999]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND BLOWETH ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Wind BlowethAuthor: Donn ByrneIllustrator: George BellowsRelease date: July 5, 2007 [eBook #21999]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Title: The Wind Bloweth
Author: Donn ByrneIllustrator: George Bellows
Author: Donn Byrne
Illustrator: George Bellows
Release date: July 5, 2007 [eBook #21999]
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND BLOWETH ***
E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Janet Blenkinship,and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team(http://www.pgdp.net)
frontispiece
NEW YORKTHE CENTURY CO.Copyright, 1922, byThe Century Co.PRINTED IN U. S. A.
Whilst I was working on the various problems of "The Wind Bloweth"—problems of wisdom, of color, of phrasing, and trying to capture the elusive, unbearable ache that is the mainspring of humanity, and doing this through the medium of a race I knew best, a race that affirms the divinity of Jesus and yet believes in the little people of the hills, a race that loves its own land, and yet will wander the wide world over, a race that loves battle, and yet always falls—whilst doing this, it seemed to me that I was capturing for an instant a beauty that was dying slowly, imperceptibly, but would soon be gone.
Perhaps it was the lilt of a Gaelic song in these pages that brought a sorrow on me. That very sweet language will be gone soon, if not gone already, and no book learning will revive the suppleness of idiom, that haunting misty loveliness.... It is a very pathetic thing to see a literature and a romance die.
But then, what ever dies? There is only change. For people in the coming times the economist and the expert in politics may have the beauty and wisdom old men have known in poems and strange tales. A mammoth building is as romantic to a new age as were the subtle carvings of Phidias to Greeks of old. For the master of commerce an oil-driven steel ship has the beauty old folk have seen in cloudy pyramids of sail. What we have considered beautiful will be quaint. And their tolerant smile will hurt us under the wind-swept grass.
To whomever this writing of mine may give a moment's thought, a moment's dreaming, I would ask a privilege, to call out of the romantic sunset the memories of Irish writers whom it is deep in my heart to praise, not masters of verse, but those whom in English we call novelists, being too exact in matters of language to name them poets: the Four Masters of Donegal who dedicated their traditiondo chum gloire De agus onora na h Eireann,—to the glory of God and the honor of Ireland,—so high their motive was. And Thomas Moore, not as author of Irish ballads or of "Lalla Rookh," but as writer of "The Epicurean." And Lever and Lover. And William Carleton from the County of Tyrone. And gentle Gerald Griffin, dead at his desk. And Michael and John Banim, with their "O'Hara Tales." And Sheridan Le Fanu, and Fitz-James O'Brien, who fell fighting for America. And Charles Kickham, who wrote "Knocknagow." And I was all but forgetting Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson's friend.
Old fathers, old masters, I will never believe but that you wrote because it sprang from you as the lark sings in the high air. No little sum of money, no great man's patronage, no doffed caps of the populace, could have moved you to strike out or write in one line. Old fathers, let me say aloud your names; it will give me bravery. And, sirs, take this book kindly to you. It is written caring nothing for money, nothing for light acclaim. Its faults are because I cannot write better yet....
Donn Byrne
PARTPAGEIDancing Town3IIThe Wake at Ardee57IIIThe Mouth of Honey109IVThe Wrestler from Aleppo169VThe Valley of the Black Pig229VIThe Bold Fenian Men287VIIThe Kingdom and the Power and the Glory353
Because it was his fourteenth birthday they had allowed him a day off from school, his mother doubtfully, his uncles Alan and Robin with their understanding grin. And because there was none else for him to play with at hurling or foot-ball, the other children now droning in class over Cæsar's Gallic War, he had gone up the big glen. It was a very adventurous thing to go up the glen while other boys were droning their Latin like a bagpipe being inflated, while the red-bearded schoolmaster drowsed like a dog. First you went down the graveled path, past the greened sun-dial, then through the gate, then a half-mile or so along the road, green along the edges with the green of spring, and lined with the May hawthorn, white, clean as air, with a fragrance like sustained music, a long rill of rolling white cloud. There was nothing in the world like the hawthorn. First it put out little bluish-green buds firm as elastic, and then came a myriad of white stars. And then the white drift turned a delicate red, dropped, and the scarlet haws came out, a tasteless bread-like fruit you shared with the birds, and the stone of it you could whip through your lips like a bullet....
He left the main road and turned into a loaning that came down the mountain-side, a thing that once might have been a road, if there had been any need for it, or energy to make it. But now it was only a wedge of common land bounded on both sides by a low stone wall. Inside one wall was a path, and inside the other a little rill, and betwixt the two of them were firm moss and stones. And here the moss was yellowish-green and there red as blood. And the rill was edged with ferns and queer blue flowers whose names he did not know in English, and now the water just gurgled over the rounded stones, and now it dropped into a well where it was colorless and cold and fresh as the air itself, and oftentimes at the bottom of a pool like that would be a great green frog with eyes that popped like the schoolmaster's....
And to the left of the loaning as he walked toward the mountain was a plantation of fir-trees, twenty acres or more, the property of the third cousin of his mother's brother-in-law, amelancholy, thin-handed man who lived on the Mediterranean—a Campbell, too, though one would never take him for an Ulster Scot, with his la-di-da ways and his Spanish lady. But the queer thing about the plantation was this, that within, half a mile through the trees, were the ruins of a house, bare walls and bracken and a wee place where there were five graves, two of them children's. A strange thing the lonely graves. In summer the sun would shine through the clearing of the trees, and there was always a bird singing somewhere near. But it was a gey lonely place for five folk to lie there, at all times and seasons, and in the moonlight and in the sunlight, and when the rain dripped from the fir-trees. And all the company they had was the red fox slipping through the trees or the rabbit hopping like a child at play or the hare-wide-eyed in the bracken. They must have been an unsociable folk in life to build a house in the woods, and they were an unsociable folk in death not to go to the common graveyard, where the dead folk were together, warm and kindly lying gently as in their beds....
He turned now from the loaning to the mountain-side, passing through the heather on a little path the sheep made with their sharp cloven hoofs. In single file the sheep would go up themountain-side, obedient as nuns, following the tinkle of the wether's bell, and they hunting a new pasture they would crop like rabbits. Now was a stunted ash, now a rowan-tree with its red berries—crann caorthainnthey call it in Gaidhlig,—and now was a holly bush would have red berries when all the bitter fruit of the rowan-tree was gone and the rolling sleets of winter came over Antrim like a shroud. Everywhere about him now was the heather, the brown, the purple heather with the perfect little flower that people called bells, all shades of red it was, and not often you would come across a sprig of white heather, and white heather brought you luck, just as much luck as a four-leaved shamrock brought, and fairer, more gallant luck.
A very silent place a mountain was, wee Shane Campbell thought, not a lonely but a silent place. A lonely place was a place you might be afraid, as in a wood, but a mountain was only a place apart. Down in the fields were the big brooks, with the willow branches and great trout in the streams; and fat cattle would low with a foolish cry like a man wouldn't be all there, and come home in the evenings to be milked, satisfied and comfortable as a minister; wee calves shy as babies; donkeys with the cross of Christ ontheir back; goats would butt you and you not looking; hens a-cackle, and cocks strutting like a militiaman and him back from the camp; quiet horses had the strength of twenty men, and scampering colts had legs on them like withes. Up here was nothing, but you never missed them.
The only thing to break the silence up here was the cry of an occasional bird, the plaintive call of the plover, the barking of an eagle, the note of the curlew, a whinny as of a horse of Lilliput, the strange noise a pheasant makes and it rising from the heather:whir-r-r, like a piece of elastic snapping. Barring these you'd hear nothing at all. And barring a mountainy man or woman, and they cutting turf, you'd meet nothing unless it were the sheep.
You'd never hear the sheep, and you coming; you'd turn a wee bluff in the hill, and there they were looking, a long, solemn, grayish-white line, with aloof, cold eyes. You could never faze them. They'd look at you cool as anything, and "What license have you to be here?" you'd think they were saying. Very stupid, but unco dignified, the sheep.
But up to the top of the mountain, where wee Shane was going, you'd find no sheep; too bare and rocky there. There'd be nothing there buta passing bird. On the top of the mountain was a little dark lake into which you couldn't see more than a foot, though they said the depth of it went down to the sea. There were no fish in it, people said, and that was a queer thing, water without fish in it, wee Shane thought, like a country without inhabitants. In the sea were a power of fish, and in the rivers were salmon, long and thick as a man, and pike with snouts and ominous teeth, and furry otters, about which there was great discussion as to whether they were fish or animal ... In the lake in the lowlands—Lochkewn, the Quiet Lake—were trout with red and gold and black speckles; and perch with spiked fins; and dark roach were easy to catch with a worm; and big gray bream were tasty as to bait, needing paste held by sheep's wool; and big eels would put a catch in your breath.
But in the lake on the mountain-top were no fish at all, and that was a strange thing ...
There was another eery thing about the mountain, and a thing wee Shane was slightly afraid of. Oftentimes you'd be sitting by that lake, and sunlight all around you, and you'd turn to come down, and there'd be a cloud beneath you, a cloud that rolled in armfuls of wool that bound the mountain as by a ring; and the lonely call ofa bird ... and you'd feel shut off from the kindly earth, as if you were on another planet maybe, or caught up into the air by some flying demon, and you knew the world was spinning like a ball through the treeless fields of space.
And what could a wee fellow do up there then but sit quiet and cry and be terribly afraid? And your cry would be heard no more than the whinnying of the curlew.... Or you might venture down through it, and that was more terrible still, for the strange host of the air had their domicile in the clouds, and there they held cruel congress, speaking in their speechless tongue, and out of the clouds they took shape and substance ... their cold, malevolent eyes, their smoky antennæ of hands ... and nothing to turn to for company, not even the moody badger or the unfriendly sheep. There was no going down. You must stay there by the lake, and even then the cloud might creep upward until it capped mountain and lake, and enveloped a wee fellow scared out of his wits....
Nevertheless, he was going to the top of that mountain, clouds or no clouds. For he had heard it said that the mirage of Portcausey was being seen again—the Devil's Troopers, and theOilean-gan-talamh-ar-bith, the Isle of No LandAt All, and the Swinging City, and they were to be seen in the blue heat haze over the sea from the Mountain of Fionn....
And wee Shane was going to see it, clouds or no clouds, host or no host of the air.
He had won half-ways up the mountain now, and from the brae of heather he could see the glen stretch like a furrow to the sea. The Irish Channel they called it on the maps in school, butStruth na Maoileit was to every one in the country-side, the waters of Moyle. Very green, very near, very gentle they seemed to-day, but often they roared like giants in frenzy, fanned to fury by the winds of the nine glens, as a bellows livens a fire. But to-day it was like a lake, so gentle.... And there was purple Scotland, hardly, you'd think, a stone's throw from the shore—the Mull of Cantyre, a resounding name, like a line in a poem. It was from Mull that Moyle came,maolin Gaidhlig, bald or bluff ... a moyley was a cow without horns. The Lowlanders were coming into the Mull now, and the Highlanders being pushed north to Argyll, andwestward to the islands, like Oran and Islay. He knew the Islay men, great rugged fishers with immense hands and their feet small as a girl's. They sang the saddest sea-chanty in the world:
'S tric mi sealltuinn o'n chnoc a's airde,Dh' fheuch am faic mi fear a'bhata;An tig thu'n aniugh, no'n tig thu amaireach,'S mur tig thu idir, gur truagh a ta mi.
"From the highest hilltop I watched to see my boatman," went the sense of it. "Will you come to-day or will you come to-morrow? And if you never come—O God! help me!"
And there was a chorus to it that was like a keening for the dead:
Fhir a' bhata na horo eile! Fhir a' bhata na horo eile!Fhir a' bhata na horo eile! Mo shoraidh slan leat, fhir a' bhata!
My heart's good-by to you, O man of the boat!
But nearer than Islay was their own Raghery—Rathlin Island the maps had it—he could see it now to the north. A strange little world of its own, with great caves where the wind howled like a starving wolf, and the black divers went into the water like a bullet. It was in the caves of Raghery that the Bruce took refuge, and it was there he saw the spider of Scots legend.... Rathlin was queer and queer.... There weremany women with the second sight, it was told, and the men were very big, very shy, very gentle, except when the drink was in them, and then they would rage like the sea.
A strange, mystical water, the Moyle, to have two isles in it like Islay of the pipers and Raghery of the black caves. It was over Moyle that Columkill went in his little coracle to be a hermit in Iona, the gentlest saint that Ireland ever knew. And it was over the Moyle that Patrick came, landing whilst the Druids turned their cursing stones and could not prevail against him. And it was on the Moyle that the Children of Lir swam and they turned into three white swans, with their great white wings like sails and their black feet like sweeps.... And in the night-time they sang a strange, sad music, and the echoes of it were still in the nine glens....
And northerly again were the pillars of the Giant's Causeway, blue-black against the sun. They were made so that the Finn MacCool, the champion of the giants, could take a running jump over to Scotland and he going deer-hunting in the forests of Argyll. So the country folk said, but wee Shane thought different, knew different. The Druids had made it for their own occult designs, the Druids, that terrible, powerful clan with their magic batons, and their sinistercursing-stones, and their long, white, benevolent beards....
And there, green and well kept as a duke's garden, was the Royal Links of Portrush. And the Irish golfers said that it was harder than St. Andrew's in Scotland and better kept. There King James had played a game before he went down to the defeat of the Boyne Water.
"And if he golfed as well as he fought," Shane's Uncle Robin used to laugh, "they s'ould never have let him tee up a ball on the course!"
Eigh!how wonderful it all was! wee Shane felt: Raghery and the waters of Moyle; Portrush and the Giant's Causeway; the nine glens with the purple heather, and the streams that sang as they cantered to the sea; the crowing grouse and the whinnying curlew, and the eagles barking on the cliffs; the trout that rose in the summer's evening, and the red berries of the rowan; the cold, clear lakes, and the braes where the blueberries grow. He could well understand the stories they told of Napper Tandy, and the great rebel in the gardens of Versailles. Napoleon had found him weeping amid all that beauty.
"Don't be afraid, Napper Tandy. I shall keep my word and send General Hoche to Ireland."
"It's not that, sir; it's not that." And Tandycould not keep the tears back. "Och, County Antrim, it's far I'm from you now!"
He had reached the cairn of round stones that marks the town land of Drimsleive, and was turning the brae when a voice called to him:
"Eh, wee fellow, is it mitching from school you are?"
An old woman in a plaid shawl was coming slowly down the hillside. He recognized her for Bridget Roe MacFarlane of Cushendhu, a cotter tenant of his Uncle Alan's.
"No, cummer," he told her; "I'm not mitching. I got the day off."
"For God's sake! if it isn't wee Shane Campbell! And what are doing up the mountain, wee Shane?"
"Ah, just dandering."
"I was up mysel'," she went on, "to the top of it, because I heard tell there was a cure for sore eyes in the bit lake on the top. Not that I put much store in such cures, but there's no use letting anything by. I got a pair of specs from a peddling man of Ballymena," said she, "but theydon't seem to do me much good. I'm queer and afeared about my eyes, hinny. It would be a hard thing for me to go blind and none about the wee bit house but mysel'."
"Ay! I should think it would be a terrible thing to be a dark person," wee Shane nodded.
"Och, it wouldn't be so bad if you were born that way, for you'd know no different. And if you went blind and you young, there's things you could take up to take the strain from your head like a man takes up piping. When you're old it's gey hard. If you're an old man itself, it's not so bad, for there'll always be a soft woman to take care of you. But if you're an old cummer, without chick or child, it's hard,agra vig. My little love, it's hard."
"Maybe it's in your head, Bridget Roe. My Uncle Robin says there's a lot of sickness that's just in your head."
"I trust to my God so, and maybe your Uncle Robin's right, for there does be a lot in my head, and it going around like a spinning-wheel. I'm a experienced woman, wee Shane, too experienced, and that's the trouble. You've no' heard because you're too young and you would no' understand. I was away from here for twenty years," she said, "for more nor twenty. And I knew a power of men in my time, big men, were needfulof me. And a power of trouble I raised, too, and it does be coming back to me and me in my old days.... But you'll be wanting to be getting on?"
"Och, no, Bridgeen Roe; there's no hurry."
"It does me good to have a wee crack, the folk I see are so few ... Aye! There was a power of trouble. There were two men killed themselves and families broken up all by reason of me. I meant no harm, wee Shane, but it happened, and it does be troubling me in my old days. And I sit there afeared by the peat fire, and when I've thought too much on it, I get up and go to the half-door. And I look out on the Moyle, wee Shane, and I think: that's been roaring since the first tick of time, and I see the stars so many of them, and the moon that never changed its shape or size, and it comes to me that nothing matters in the long run, that the killed men were no more nor caught trout, and the rent families no more nor birds' nests fallen from a tree.... None of us are big enough that anything we do matters.... And then another feeling comes on me, that God is around, and that He'll be dreadful hard.... And a wee bit of luck comes my way. The hens, maybe, are laying well, and there's a high price on the eggs, and I think,sure He's the Kindly Man, after all.... But if my eyes leave me, Shane Beg, what will I do? Sure, I won't have the moon or the stars or the waters of Moyle to put things in their place. And there'll be no luck about me, so as I'll know Himself is the Unforgiving Man."
"But some one will take care of you, Bridget Roe."
"And who,agra? 'Tis not me to go to the poorhouse, and take charity like a cold potato. And my name is MacFarlane, wee Shane, and they're a clan that fights till it dies, that never gives in. And it isn't to the big ones I knew I'd be writing for help.... Sure I see them now, what's left alive of them, sitting by their firesides, figuring out their life, and tired with the puzzle of it; and then they'll remember me for an instant, and a wee joy will come to them in the dim twilight. They'll remember as you'd remember an old song you hadn't rightly got the air of. But you knew it was sweet and there was a grand swing to it.... Aye, they'll remember me, and they looking into the heart of the fire.... And you wouldn't have me write them now and tell them I'm only an oldcailleachin a cabin on the mountain-side, and my eyes, that they'll remember, are dull like marbles.... You wouldn'tunderstand, wee Shane.... But I'm blethering too much about myself. And where is it you were going, my little jo? Where is it?"
"I heard tell the Dancers were to be seen from the mountain-top over the sea, and I thought maybe I'd go up and gi'e them a look, cummer ... just a look."
"So you would, wee Shane, so you would. You wouldn't be your father's son or your uncles' nephew if you were to let a marvel like that pass by. It's after adventure you are, and you only four and ten years old. 'T is early you begin, the Campbells of Cosnamara.
"But sure that isn't adventure, cummer, to be seeing the Dancers in the heat haze of the day. Adventures are robbers and fighting Indians and things like in Sir Walter Scott."
"Oh, sure everything's adventure, hinny, every time you go looking for something queer and strange, and something with a fine shape and color to it. Adventure isn't in the quick fist and the nimble foot; it's in the hungry heart and the itching mind. Isn't it myself that knows, that was a wild and wilful girl, and went out into the world for more nor twenty years, and came back the like of an old bitch fox, harried by hunting, and looking for and mindful of the burrow where she was thrown?... As we're made, we'remade, wee fellow; you're either a salmon that hungers for the sea, or a cunning old trout that kens its own pool and is content.... Adventures! Hech aye!"
"Well, I hope your eyes get better, cummer. I do so."
"I know you mean it, Shaneen Beg, and maybe your wish will help them, maybe it will."
"Well, I'll be going on my way, Bridget Roe."
"And I'll be finishing mines, wee Shane Campbell. And I hope to my God you're better off at the end nor me—me that once talked to earls and barons, and now clucks to a wheen o' hens; me that once had my coach and pair, and now have only an ass with a creel o' turf; and no care of money once on me, and now all I have is my spinning-wheel, and the flax not what it used to be, but getting coarser. And my eyes going out, that were the delight of many ... I hope you're better off nor me at the end of the hard and dusty road, wee Shane. I hope to my God so...."
He thought hard of what the cummer of Cushendhu had said about his family, and he on thelast leg of the mountain. That he was his father's son puzzled him more than that he was his uncles' nephew, for there was little mention of his father in the house. At the dead man's name his prim Huguenot mother from Nantes pursed her mouth, and in her presence even his uncles were uncomfortable, those great, gallant men. All he knew was that his father, Colquitto Campbell, had been a great Gaelic poet, and that his father and mother had not quite been good friends. Once his Uncle Robin had stopped before a ballad-singer in Ballycastle when the man was striking up a tune:
On the deck of this lonely ship to America bound,A husk in my throat and a mist of tears in my eyes—
His Uncle Robin had given the man a guinea.
"Why for did you give the singing man a golden piece, Uncle Robin?"
"For the sake of an old song, laddie, an old and sad song.... A song your father made.... It was like seeing his ghost...."
"But my father, Uncle Robin—"
"Your father was the heart of corn, wee Shane, for all they say against him.... I never knew a higher, cleaner heart, but he was easy discourag't.... Aye, easy thrown down and easy led away.... I was fond of him.... Am ...always, and no matter.... However ... shall we go and see the racing boats, wee fellow?"
And that was all he ever got from Uncle Robin. But he knew some of his father's songs that were sung in the country-side ...
Is truagh, a ghradh, gan me agas thu im Bla chliath!No air an traigh bhain an ait nach robh duine riamh,Seachd oidhche, seachd la, gan tamh, gan chodal, gan bhiadh,Ach thusa bhi 'm ghraidh's lamh geal thardam gu fial!
"O God! my loved one, that you and I were in Dublin town! Or on a white strand, where no foot ever touched before. Day in, night in, without food or sleep, what mattered it? But you to be loving me and your white arm around me so generously!"
He couldn't understand the song, though the lilt of the words captured him. What should people accept being without food or sleep? And what good was a white arm generously around one? However, that was love, and it was a mystery.... But that song could not have been to his mother. He could not imagine her being generous with even a white arm. And none would want to be with her on a strand without food or sleep; that he instinctively felt. She was a high, proud cliff, stern and proud and beautiful, and that song was a song of May-time and the green rushes....
And other songs of his father's were sung: "Maidne Fhoghmhair—Autumn Mornings," and "In Uir-chill an Chreagain—In the Green Graveyard of Creggan...."
A queer thing that all that should be left of his father was a chill silence and a song a man might raise at the rising of the moon....
Silent he was in his grave, dumb as a stone, and all his uncles were silent, too, barring the little smile at the corners of their mouths, that was but the murmuring of the soul.... There were paintings of them all and they young in the house, their high heads, their hawks' eyes, Alan and Robin and Mungo.... And Mungo, too, was dead with Wellington in the Peninsula. He and three of his men were all left of the Antrim company. "Christ! have I lost this fight, too?" He laughed and a French ball took him in the gullet. "Be damned to that!" He coughed. "He might have got me in a cleaner place!" And that was the end of Mungo....
And Alan had gone with Sir John Franklin to the polar seas, and come back with the twisted grin. "'T was a grand thing you did, Alan, to live through and come back from the wasted lands." "'T was a grand thing they did, to findthe channel o' trade. But me, I went to find the north pole, with the white bear by the side of it, like you see in the story-books. And I never got within the length of Ireland o' 't! Trade, aye; but what's trade to me? It's a unco place, the world!"
His father he could imagine: "Poor Colquitto Campbell! He wanted to bark like an eagle, and he made a wee sweet sound, like a canary-bird! Ah, well, give the bottle the sunwise turn, man o' the house, and come closer to me, abheilin tana nan bpog, O slender mouth of the kisses!" His father, wee Shane thought, must have worn the twisted grin, too.
He knew what the twisted grin meant. It meant defeat. He had seen it on his Uncle Alan's face when he lost the championship of Ireland on the golf links of Portrush. And that morning he had been so confident! "'T is the grand golf I'll play the day, and the life tingling in my finger-tips!" And great golf he did play, with his ripping passionate shots, but a thirty-foot putt on the home green beat him. All through the match his face had been dour, but now came the outstretched hand and the smile at the corner of the mouth:
"Congratulations, sir! 'T is yourself has the grand eye for the hard putt on the tricky green!"
The wee grin meant that Alan had been beaten.
And Uncle Robin, too, the wisest and oldest of them all, who had been to Arabia and had been all through Europe and was Goethe's friend, he had the twisted grin of the beaten man. Only occasionally you could get past the grin of Uncle Robin, as he had gotten past it the day Uncle Robin had spoken of his brother, Shane's father. And sometimes when a great hush was on the mountains and the Moyle was silent, Uncle Robin would murmer a verse of his great poet friend's:
Über allen GipfelnIst Ruh,In allen WipfelnSpürest duKaum einen Hauch;Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.Warte nur, baldeRuhest du auch.
The sharp u's and heavy gutturals were so like Gaidhlig, it seemed queer wee Shane could not understand the poem; but Uncle Robin translated it into Gaidhlig:
Os cionn na morbheannaTa sith—
And the melody of it was like the plucking of a harper's strings. So much in so little, and every note counted, and the last line like a dim quaint bar:
Beidh sith agad fein!"You will rest, too!"
A queer thing, the men who were beaten and smiled. A queer thing the men who, beaten, were more gallant than the winners. A queer thing for the cummer of Cushendhu to say, she who was so wise after the hot foolishness of youth, that he was his uncles' nephew and his father's son. A queer thing that. A queer, dark, and secret thing.
The memory of his Uncle Robin stuck in his mind and he going up the mountain. His Uncle Robin knew all there was to be known in the world, the immense learned man. When he was spoken to of anything strange, he had always an explanation for it. When the mirage off Portrush was mentioned, he could talk at length of strange African mirages that the travelers see in the desert at the close of day, oases and palm-trees and minarets, so you would think you werenear to a town or a green pasture and you miles and miles away. And there was a sight to be seen off Sicily that the ignorant Italian people thought was the work of Morgan le Fay. And in the Alps was a horror men spoke of and called the Specter of the Brocken.
All these strange occurrences were as simple as the alphabet to Uncle Robin. He would explain it as a sight reflected on the cloud and thrown on a sea of mist or a desert as on a screen, using difficult words, like "refraction," and words from Euclid, like "angles." But Uncle Alan would object, Uncle Alan mistrusting difficult words and words from Euclid. Alan would raise his head from splicing a fishing-rod or cleaning the lock of a gun or polishing a snaffle:
"You were ay the one for explanations, Robin. Maybe you've got an explanation for the gift?" By the gift Uncle Alan meant the second sight.
"Ah, sure; 't is only mind reading and sympathy."
"O my God! Now listen, Robin. You ken when you dragged me from the horse-show the last time we were in Dublin, to the library of the What-you-may-call-him—Archæological Society or so'thin'. You ken the book you showed me about Antrim, and what was seen off the cliffs one time. There wasa great black arm in the air, and a hand to the wrist of it, and to the shoulder a crosspiece with a ring, like one end of an anchor. And that disappeared. And then immediately there showed a ship, with the masts and sails and tackles and men, and it sailed stern foremost and it sank stern foremost, all in the red sky. And then there was a fort with a castle on the top of it and there were fire and smoke coming out of it, as if a grand fight was on. And the fort divided into two ships, that chased each other, and then sank. Then there was a chariot with two horses, and chasing that was a strange thing like a serpent, a snake's head at one end, and a bulk at the other like a snail's house. And it gained on the chariot and gave it a blow. And out of the chariot came a bull, and after it came a dog, and the bull and the dog fought as in a gaming-pit. And then suddenly all was clear, no cloud or mist or anything in the northern air. Am I right or am n't I? Wasn't that in the book, Robin More?"
"It was."
"And now, Robin, my man, wasn't that signed by respectable people: Mr. Allye, a minister, and a Lieutenant Dunsterville and a Lieutenant Dwine and Mr. Bates and twelve others, all of whom saw it near or around the time of the BoyneWater? Wasn't it signed by the decent people?"
"It was."
"And what explanation have you got for that, you and your master of arts of Trinity College!"
"They were daft—gone in the head. Daft or drunk."
"My song! And maybe John was daft when he saw the vision of Patmos!"
"I would no' be surprised."
"Na, Robin More; you would not be surprised if you saw a trout that cantered or a horse that flew. You'd have an explanation. You're the queer hard man to live with, Robin, with your explanations."
Willie John Boyd, the servant boy, removed his cutty pipe and hazarded a suggestion.
"Queer things happened in the auld days."
"If there were queerer things nor you in the auld days," Alan laughed, "it must have been like a circus."
But mightn't they both be right? wee Shane thought, and he trudging up the mountain-side. His Uncle Alan knew an awful lot. There was none could coax a trout from a glass-clear pool with a dry fly like Alan Campbell. He knew the weather, when it would storm and when it wouldclear, and from what point the wind would blow to-morrow. He could nurse along the difficult flax and knew the lair of the otter and had a great eye for hunting fox and a better eye for a horse than a Gipsy. Might there not be things in nature, as he said, that none knew of? And mightn't there be explanations for them, as Uncle Robin, who had read every book, claimed there were? Mightn't they both be right, who thought each other wrong, and they arguing by the red fire, fighting and snarling like dogs and loving each other with the strange soft love of lovers when the trees are a-rustle and the moon high?
He had thought to come up to the top of the mountain where the cairn was, and the dark and deepest lake, and to sit down in the heather and wait half an hour maybe while the curlew called, and then have Dancing Town take form and color before his eyes, hold it until every detail was visible, and then fade gently out as twilight fades into night. He had thought to be prepared and receptive.
But suddenly it was upon him, in the air, over the waters of Moyle....
A sweep of fear ran over him, and he grew cold, so strange it was, so against nature. Clear and high, as in some old print, and white and green, the town and shore came to him. The May afternoon was in it, hot and golden, but the town itself was in morning sunlight. A clutter of great houses and little houses, all white, a great church, and a squat dun fort, and about it and in it were green spaces and palm-trees that swayed to a ghostly breeze. And the green ran down to a white beach, and on the beach foamy waves curled like a man's beard. And in the air the town quivered and danced, as imaged trees seem to dance on running water....
On one side was Ireland, andon oneside was Scotland, and high in the air between them was Dancing Town....
No one was in the streets that wee Shane could see, and yet the town was lifeful, some tropical city where the green jalousies were closed in the heat of the midday sun, and where no one was on the streets, barring some unseen old beggar or peddling woman drowsing in the shade. The town was sleeping not with the sleep of Scotland, that is the sleep of dead majestic, melancholy kings, nor with the sleep of Ireland, that is tiredand harassed and old. It was not as lonely as sleeping lakes are where the bittern booms like a drum.... It slept as a child sleeps, lips apart and chubby fingers uncurled, and happy.... And all the time it quivered in the clear air....
In the morning, wee Shane thought, it woke to bright happiness, the green parrakeets chattered, the monkeys whistled, the lizards basked in the sun. And the generation of the town came out and gossiped and worked merrily, until the heat of the sun began to strike with the strokes of a mallet, and then they went into the cool, dark houses and slept as children sleep. And then came blue twilight, and lamps were lit in the green spaces, and into the odorous night would come the golden rounded women with smiles like honey, and the graceful feline men.... A woman's laughter, a man's song.... And the moon rising on tropic seas, while a guitar hummed with a deep vibrant note.... And the perfume of strange tropic trees....
But meantime the town danced in the clear air.... And—
"It's gone!" said wee Shane.
One moment it was there, and the next there were only Ireland and Scotland and the waters of Moyle, and a ship going drowsily for the Clyde.
And for a long time he waited, thinking Dancing Town might come again. But it did not come. The schooner off the Mull lay over, and the Moyle awoke. A breeze rambled up the mountain, and the heather tinkled its strange dry tinkle. And afar off a curlew called, and a grouse crowed in defiance.
The moment of magic was by, and wee Shane went down the mountain.
As he went down the mountain he tried to puzzle out the why and wherefore of Dancing Town.
Of course there were things you could not explain, like the banshee; or the Naked Hangman, who strides through the valleys on midsummer's eve with his gallows under his arm; or the Death Coach, with its headless horses and its headless driver. There was no use bringing these matters up to Uncle Robin. Uncle Robin would only laugh and shout: "Havers, bairn! Wha's been filling your wee head with nonsense?" But you could no more deny their existence than you could that of Apollyon, whom you read about in "Pilgrim's Progress," and who wandered up and down the world and to and fro in it; or of the fairies, whose sweet little piping many heard at night as they passed the forts of the little people; or of the tiny cobbling leprechawns, who knew where the Danes had hid their store of gold in crocks such as hold butter.... Of these there was no explanation but the Act of God. And Uncle Robin was queer. He put no store in the Act of God.