The Wind Bloweth Part 1

The Wind Bloweth.

by Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne.

A DEDICATION: A PRAYER

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 s.h.i.+p 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 gra.s.s.

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 tradition _do chum gloire De agus onora na h Eireann_,--to the glory of G.o.d 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...b..ien, 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

PART ONE

DANCING TOWN

-- 1

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 cla.s.s over Caesar'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, a melancholy, 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 s.h.i.+ne 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, pa.s.sing through the heather on a little path the sheep made with their sharp cloven hoofs.

In single file the sheep would go up the mountain-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 caorthainn_ they 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 on their back; goats would b.u.t.t you and you not looking; hens a-cackle, and c.o.c.ks 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 but a pa.s.sing 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 of a 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 antennae 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 the _Oilean-gan-talamh-ar-bith_, the Isle of No Land At 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.

-- 2

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, but _Struth na Maoile_ it 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 sh.o.r.e--the Mull of Cantyre, a resounding name, like a line in a poem. It was from Mull that Moyle came, _maol_ in 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, and westward 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 G.o.d! 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 were many 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 sinister cursing-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 Tandy could not keep the tears back. "Och, County Antrim, it's far I'm from you now!"

-- 3

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.