Mearing Stones Part 3

THE FESTIVAL OF DEATH

I met an old man on the road, and his face as yellow as dyer's rocket. "Walk easy past that little house beyond," says he in a whisper, turning round and pointing with his staff into the valley. "There's a young girl in it, and she celebrating the festival of death."

IN GLEN-COLUMCILLE

Through blown rain and darkness I see the Atlantic tumble in white, ghost-like ma.s.ses on the strand. Beevna is a shadow, the crosses shadows. Only one friendly light burns in the valley. The patter of rain and the dull boom of the surf ring ceaselessly in my ears. The hills brood: my thoughts brood with them. I stare into the sunset--a far-drawn, scarlet trail--with mute, wondering eyes. Remoteness grips me, and is become a reality in this ultimate mearing of a grey, ultimate land.

THE BRINK OF WATER

I have often heard it said that what pa.s.ses for folk-lore is in reality book-lore, or what began as book-lore got into the oral tradition and handed down through the generations by word of mouth. A young Ardara man, a poet and dreamer in his way, told me that poetry most frequently came to him when he was near water; wandering, say, by the edge of Lochros, or looking down from Bracky Bridge at the stream as it forced its way through impeding boulders to the sea. I asked him had he ever read "The Colloquy of the Two Sages(1)"? He said that he had not. I told him that in that MS. occurred the pa.s.sage: _ar ba baile fallsigthe eicsi dogres lasna filedu for bru uisci_, _i.e._, "for the poets thought that the place where poetry was revealed always was upon the brink of water." Nettled somewhat, he confessed that he got the idea from his father, a _seanchaidhe_, since dead, who knew something of Irish MSS., and who perhaps had read the "Colloquy," or at all events, had heard of it. But apart from the fact of the thing having been given him by his father, he felt that it was true in his own experience--that poetry always came to him more readily when he was near water.

(1) Book of Leinster.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEAR ALTON LOCH.]

A DARK MORNING

A dark, wet morning, with the mist driving in swaths over the hills. I met an old man on the road. "There's somebody a-hanging this morning,"

says he. "It's fearful dark!"

THE SWALLOW-MARK

There is a lot of the wanderer in me, and no wonder, I suppose; for I have the swallow-mark--a wise man once showed it to me on my hand--and that means that I must always be going journeys, whether in the flesh or in the spirit, or both. "The swallow-mark is on you,"

says he. "You will go wandering with the airs of the world. You will cheat the Adversary himself, even that he drops his corroding-drop on you!" And as I am a wanderer, so the heart in me opens to its kind. I love a brown face, a clear eye, and an honest walk more than anything; if in a man, good; if in a woman, better. And why people look for the cover of a roof, and the sun shining, I never can make out. Sunshine and the open, the wind blowing, travelling betimes and resting betimes, with my back to the field and my knees to the sky, a copy of Raftery or Borrow in my pocket to dip into when the mood is on me--and I am supremely happy!

WOMEN BEETLING CLOTHES

I see three women by a river: they are so close to me that I can hear them talking and laughing. One of them is an oldish creature, the other two are young and dark. They are on their knees on the bank, beetling clothes. One of them gets up--a fine, white-skinned girl--and tucking her petticoats about her thighs, goes into the stream and swishes the clothes several times to and fro in the brown-clear water. Then she throws them out to her companions on the bank, and the beetling process is repeated--each garment being laid on a flat stone and pounded vigorously until clean. The women do not see me (I am standing on a bridge, with a rowan-bush partly between them and me), so I can watch them to my heart's content.

THE SEA

The sea is one of those things you cannot argue with. You must accept it on its own terms, or leave it alone. And I like a man to be that way: calm at times, rough at times, kind at times, treacherous at times, but at heart unchanging: _not to be argued with, but accepted_. Is not the comparison apter than one thinks? Is not a man and his pa.s.sions as divine and turbulent as anything under the sun?

A BALLAD-SINGER

A ballad-singer has come into Ardara. It is late afternoon. He stands in the middle of the Diamond--a sunburnt, dusty figure, a typical Ishmael and stroller of the roads. The women have come to their doors to hear him, and a benchful of police, for lack of something better to do, are laughing at him from the barrack front. The ballad he is singing is about Bonaparte and the Poor Old Woman. Then he changes his tune to "The Spanish Lady"--a Dublin street-song:

As I walked down thro' Dublin city At the hour of twelve in the night, Who should I spy but a Spanish lady, Washing her feet by candlelight.

First she washed them, and then she dried them Over a fire of amber coal: Never in all my life did I see A maid so neat about the sole!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STREET IN ARDARA.]

Finally he gives "I'm a Good Old Rebel," a ballad of the type that became so popular in the Southern States of America after the Civil war:

I'm a good old rebel--that's what I am, And for this fair land of freedom I don't care a d.a.m.n; I'm glad I fought agin it, I only wish we'd won, And I don't want no one-horse pardon for anything I done.

I followed old Ma.r.s.e Robert for four years nigh about, Got wounded in three places and starved at Point Look-Out: I cotched the rheumatism a-campin' in the snow, But I killed a chance of Yankees, and I'd like to kill some moe.

Two hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust, We got two hundred thousand before they conquered us: They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot-- I wish it was two millions instead of what we got!

And now the war is over and I can't fight them any more, But I ain't a-goin' to love them--that's sartin shor'; And I don't want no one-horse pardon for what I was and am, And I won't be reconstructed, and I don't care a d.a.m.n!

He howls out the verses in disjointed, unmusical bursts. He acts with head and arms, and at places where he is worked up to a particular frenzy he takes a run and gives a buck-jump in the air, blissfully unconscious, I suppose, that he is imitating the manner in which the _ballistea_, or ancient dancing-songs, were sung by the Romans. At the end of each verse he breaks into a curious chanted refrain like: "Yum tilly-yum-yum-yum-yum-yum"--and then there are more sidlings and buck-jumps. Some of the women throw him money, which he acknowledges by lifting his hat grandiosely. Others of them pa.s.s remarks, quite the reverse of complimentary, about his voice and ragged appearance. "Isn't it terrible he is!" says one woman. "Look at him with the seat out of his trousers, and he lepping like a good one. I could choke him, I could!" Another woman comes out of a shop with a crying child in her arms, and shouts at him: "Will you go away, then? You're wakening the childer." "Well, ma'am," says he, stopping in the middle of a verse, "you may thank the Lord for His mercy that you have childer to waken!" The ducks quack, the dogs howl, the poor ballad-singer roars louder than ever. I listen for a while, amused and interested. Then I get tired of it, and pa.s.s on towards Bracky Bridge.

SUNLIGHT

Unless you have seen the sun you cannot know anything. Sunlight is better than wisdom, and the red of the fairy-thimble more than painted fans.

TURF-CUTTING