The Wind Bloweth Part 32

Forests of cows' horns and drovers' sticks, clamor of frightened cattle, emphatic slapping of palms. Clouds of dust where the horse fair was carried on. Stands of fruit and cakes. Stalls of religious ornaments, prayer-books, and rosary beads ... A shooting gallery ... A three-card trickster, white and pimpled of face ... A trick-of-the-loop man, with soap-box and greasy string ... A man who sold a gold watch, a sovereign, and some silver for the sum of fifteen s.h.i.+llings ... An old man with the Irish bagpipes, bellows strapped to arm, playing "The Birds Among the Trees," "The Swallow-tail Coat," "The Green Fields of America"

... small boys regarding him curiously ... later young farmers and girls would be dancing sets to his piping ... At the end of the street a ballad-monger declaiming, not singing--his head thrown back, his voice issuing in a measured chant ... "The Lament for the Earl of Lucan":

Patrick Sarsfield, Ireland's wonder!

Fought in the field like bolts of thunder!

One of Ireland's best commanders!

Now is food for the crows of Flanders!

Och! Ochone!

A knot of older people had gathered around him, white-headed farmers, bent turf-cutters of the glens, a girl-child with eyes like saucers. A priest stopped to listen ... The crude English of the ballad faded out, until there was nothing but disheveled agony ... rhythm ... a wail ...

Somewhere a leaping current of feeling ... There was a woman on the edge of the crowd, a lady ... She came nearer, as though hypnotized ...

The country bard stopped suddenly, exalted, and swung dramatically into Gaelic ... Dropping the alien tongue he seemed to have dropped fetters.... His voice rose to a paean ... he took on stature ... he looked straight in the eye of the sun ... And for Shane the clamor of the drovers ceased ... And there was the plucked note of harpers ... And fires of ancient oak ... and wolf-dogs sleeping on skins of elk ... And there was a wasted place in the twilight, and gra.s.s through a split hearthstone ... And a warrior-poet, beaten, thinking bitter under the stars ...

_Do threasgar an saoghal agas do thainic an gaoth mar smal-- Alastrom, Caesar, 's an mead do bhi da bpairt; Ta an Teamhair na fear agas feach an Traoi mar ta!

'S na Sasanaigh fein, do b' fheidir go bhfaigh dis bas!_

A voice spoke excitedly, imperiously to Shane:

"What is he saying? Do you know Gaelic?"

"I'm afraid I've forgotten my Gaelic, but I know this song."

"Then what is it? Please tell me. I must know."

"He says:

"The world conquers them all. The wind whirls like dust.

Alexander, Caesar, and the companies whom they led.

Tara is gra.s.s, and see how Troy is now!

And the English themselves, even they may die."

"How great!" she said. "How very great!" She turned to Shane, and as he saw the dark imperious face, he knew intuitively he was speaking to the Woman of Tusa hErin. She seemed puzzled for an instant. Something in Shane's clothes, his carriage ...

"You don't look as if you understood Gaelic? How is it you can translate this poem?"

"I knew it as a boy. My father was a Gaelic poet."

"Then you are Shane Campbell."

"And you are the woman of Tusa hErin!"

"You know Tusa hErin?"

"I know every blade of gra.s.s in the glens."

"If you are ever near Tusa hErin, come and see me."

"I should like to."

"Will you really?"

"Yes."

She left him as abruptly as she spoke to him, going over to the ballad-monger. She left him a little dazed ... He was aware of vitality ... He was like a man on a wintry day who experiences a sudden shaft of warm sun, or somebody in quiet darkness whose eye is caught by the rising of the moon.

-- 6

As in a story from some old unsubtle book, in pa.s.sing the gates of Tusa hErin, he had gone into another world, a grave and courteous world, not antique--that was not the word, but just older ... A change of tempo ...

A change of atmosphere ... The _Bois Dormant_, the Sleeping Wood of the French fairy-tale?... Not that, for the Sleeping Wood should be a gray wood, a wood of twilight, with the birds a-drowse in their nests ... And here were clipped rich yew-trees, and turf firm as a putting-green's, and rows of dignified flowers, like pretty gracious ladies; and a little lake where a swan moved, as to music; and the suns.h.i.+ne was rich as wine here ... all golden and green ... But the atmosphere? He thought of the cave of Gearod Oge, the Wizard Earl in the Rath of Mullaghmast, and the story of it ... A farmer man had noticed a light from the old fort, and creeping in he had seen men in armor sleeping with their horses beside them ... And he examined the armor and the saddlery, and cautiously half drew a sword from its sheath ... And the soldier's head rose and: "_Bhfuil an trath ann?_" his voice cried ... "Has the time come?" "It is not, your Honor," the farmer said in terror, and shoved the sword back and fled ... An old man said for a surety that had the farmer drawn the blade from the scabbard, the Wizard Earl would have awakened, and Ireland been free ... There was great beauty and great Irishness to that story, but there was terror to it, and there was no terror on this sweet place ...

He said: It is a trick of my head, an illusion that this is different.

Some shading that comes from the yews, some phenomenon of cliff and water ... But even that did not circ.u.mscribe the rich grave look of grounds and house. A song from "The Tempest" came to him:

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange ...

That was it, something rich and strange, like some old cloister into which one might turn from an inquiet and hubbubby street ... A knock at an oaken wicket; a peering shy brother, and one was on green lawns and the shadows of a gabled monastery. Cowled, meditative friars, and the quiet of Christ like spread wings ... But there was a reason for the cloister's glamour: cool thoughts and the rhythm of quiet praying, and the ringing of the little bell of ma.s.s, and the cadenced sacramental.

All these were sympathetic magic ... But whence came the glamour of Tusa hErin?

-- 7

And she said: "I am glad you came. I knew somehow you would."

"I am glad, too. I knew Tusa hErin as a boy. It was then a weird old place. The yew-trees were unclipped, the turf riotous, the little lake ungraveled ... It had an eeriness. But now--it is very different."

"Any place is different for being loved, tended."

"I suppose so. One loves but one gets careless toward ... I know Antrim has always had an immense attraction for me ..."

"Antrim--alone?"

"Yes, of course, Antrim."

"Not all Ireland, then?"

"I never thought of Ireland as all Ireland."

"O Shane Campbell, you've sailed so much and seen so much--China, they tell me, and South America, and the Levant. And in the North, Archangel.

I'll warrant you don't know Ireland."

"I never saw much, though, in any place outside Antrim."

"You never saw much in the little towns of the Pale, or gray Dublin, with the Parliament where Grattan spoke now a money-changer's business house, and the bulk of Trinity of Goldsmith and Burke--or the great wide streets where four-in-hands used to go. And Three-Rock Mountain. And Bray. And the beauty of the Boyne Valley. And the little safe harbors of the South. And the mountains of Kerry. And all the kingdom of Connacht.

And the great winds of Donegal."

"But it's so eery, deserted, a dead country. All like Tusa hErin was before you took it."