The Crock of Gold..............................................................................................................................................1

James Stephens........................................................................................................................................1

BOOK I THE COMING OF PAN ..........................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I .............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II ............................................................................................................................................3

CHAPTER III..........................................................................................................................................6

CHAPTER IV..........................................................................................................................................9

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................11

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................14

CHAPTER VII .......................................................................................................................................18

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................22

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................24

BOOK II. THE PHILOSOPHER'S JOURNEY ...................................................................................29

CHAPTER X ........................................................................................................................................29

CHAPTER XI........................................................................................................................................31

BOOK III. THE TWO GODS ..............................................................................................................43

CHAPTER XII ......................................................................................................................................43

BOOK IV. THE PHILOSOPHER'S RETURN ....................................................................................47

CHAPTER XIII ....................................................................................................................................47

BOOK V. THE POLICEMEN ..............................................................................................................58

CHAPTER XIV ....................................................................................................................................58

CHAPTER XV......................................................................................................................................70

CHAPTER XVI.....................................................................................................................................72

BOOK VI. THE THIN WOMAN'S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH ..................................79

CHAPTER XVII ...................................................................................................................................79

CHAPTER XVIII ...................................................................................................................................88

IN THE CENTRE of the pine wood called Coilla Doraca there lived not long ago two Philosophers. They

were wiser than anything else in the world except the Salmon who lies in the pool of Glyn Cagny into which

the nuts of knowledge fall from the hazel bush on its bank. He, of course, is the most profound of living

creatures, but the two Philosophers are next to him in wisdom. Their faces looked as though they were made

of parchment, there was ink under their nails, and every difficulty that was submitted to them, even by

women, they were able to instantly resolve. The Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis

Magrath asked them the three questions which nobody had ever been able to answer, and they were able to

answer them. That was how they obtained the enmity of these two women which is more valuable than the

friendship of angels. The Grey Woman and the Thin Woman were so incensed at being answered that they

married the two Philosophers in order to be able to pinch them in bed, but the skins of the Philosophers were

so thick that they did not know they were being pinched. They repaid the fury of the women with such tender

affection that these vicious creatures almost expired of chagrin, and once, in a very ecstacy of exasperation,

after having been kissed by their husbands, they uttered the fourteen hundred maledictions which comprised

their wisdom, and these were learned by the Philosophers who thus became even wiser than before.

In due process of time two children were born of these marriages. They were born on the same day and in the

same hour, and they were only different in this, that one of them was a boy and the other one was a girl.

Nobody was able to tell how this had happened, and, for the first time in their lives, the Philosophers were

forced to admire an event which they had been unable to prognosticate; but having proved by many different

methods that the children were really children, that what must be must be, that a fact cannot be controverted,

and that what has happened once may happen twice, they described the occurrence as extraordinary but not

The Philosopher who had the boy was very pleased because, he said, there were too many women in the

world, and the Philosopher who had the girl was very pleased also because, he said, you cannot have too

much of a good thing: the Grey Woman and the Thin Woman, however, were not in the least softened by

maternitythey said that they had not bargained for it, that the children were gotten under false presences,

that they were respectable married women, and that, as a protest against their wrongs, they would not cook

any more food for the Philosophers. This was pleasant news for their husbands, who disliked the women's

cooking very much, but they did not say so, for the women would certainly have insisted on their rights to

cook had they imagined their husbands disliked the results: therefore, the Philosophers besought their wives

every day to cook one of their lovely dinners again, and this the women always refused to do.

They all lived together in a small house in the very centre of a dark pine wood. Into this place the sun never

shone because the shade was too deep, and no wind ever came there either, because the boughs were too

thick, so that it was the most solitary and quiet place in the world, and the Philosophers were able to hear

each other thinking all day long, or making speeches to each other, and these were the pleasantest sounds

they knew of. To them there were only two kinds of sounds anywherethese were conversation and noise:

they liked the first very much indeed, but they spoke of the second with stern disapproval, and, even when it

was made by a bird, a breeze, or a shower of rain, they grew angry and demanded that it should be abolished.

Their wives seldom spoke at all and yet they were never silent: they communicated with each other by a kind

of physical telegraphy which they had learned among the Sheethey cracked their fingerjoints quickly or

slowly and so were able to communicate with each other over immense distances, for by dint of long practice

they could make great explosive sounds which were nearly like thunder, and gentler sounds like the tapping

of grey ashes on a hearthstone. The Thin Woman hated her own child, but she loved the Grey Woman's baby,

and the Grey Woman loved the Thin Woman's infant but could not abide her own. A compromise may put an

end to the most perplexing of situations, and, consequently, the two women swapped children, and at once

became the most tender and amiable mothers imaginable, and the families were able to live together in a

The children grew in grace and comeliness. At first the little boy was short and fat and the little girl was long

and thin, then the little girl became round and chubby while the little boy grew lanky and wiry. This was

because the little girl used to sit very quiet and be good and the little boy used not.

They lived for many years in the deep seclusion of the pine wood wherein a perpetual twilight reigned, and

here they were wont to play their childish games, flitting among the shadowy trees like little quick shadows.

At times their mothers, the Grey Woman and the Thin Woman, played with them, but this was seldom, and

sometimes their fathers, the two Philosophers, came out and looked at them through spectacles which were

very round and very glassy, and had immense circles of horn all round the edges. They had, however, other

playmates with whom they could romp all day long. There were hundreds of rabbits running about in the

brushwood; they were full of fun and were very fond of playing with the children. There were squirrels who

joined cheerfully in their games, and some goats, having one day strayed in from the big world, were made so

welcome that they always came again whenever they got the chance. There were birds also, crows and

blackbirds and willywagtails, who were well acquainted with the youngsters, and visited them as frequently

At a short distance from their home there was a clearing in the wood about ten feet square; through this

clearing, as through a funnel, the sun for a few hours in the summer time blazed down. It was the boy who

first discovered the strange radiant shaft in the wood. One day he had been sent out to collect pine cones for

the fire. As these were gathered daily the supply immediately near the house was scanty, therefore he had,

while searching for more, wandered further from his home than usual. The first sight of the extraordinary

blaze astonished him. He had never seen anything like it before, and the steady, unwinking glare aroused his

fear and curiosity equally. Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will; indeed, it has led many

people into dangers which mere physical courage would shudder away from, for hunger and love and

curiosity are the great impelling forces of life. When the little boy found that the light did not move he drew

closer to it, and at last, emboldened by curiosity, he stepped right into it and found that it was not a thing at

all. The instant that he stepped into the light he found it was hot, and this so frightened him that he jumped

out of it again and ran behind a tree. Then he jumped into it for a moment and out of it again, and for nearly

half an hour he played a splendid game of tip and tig with the sunlight. At last he grew quite bold and stood

in it and found that it did not burn him at all, but he did not like to remain in it, fearing that he might be

cooked. When he went home with the pine cones he said nothing to the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin or to the

Thin Woman of Inis Magrath or to the two Philosophers, but he told the little girl all about it when they went

to bed, and every day afterwards they used to go and play with the sunlight, and the rabbits and the squirrels

would follow them there and join in their games with twice the interest they had shown before.

TO THE LONELY house in the pine wood people sometimes came for advice on subjects too recondite for

even those extremes of elucidation, the parish priest and the tavern. These people were always well received,

and their perplexities were attended to instantly, for the Philosophers liked being wise and they were not

ashamed to put their learning to the proof, nor were they, as so many wise people are, fearful lest they should

become poor or less respected by giving away their knowledge. These were favourite maxims with them:

The Grey Woman and the Thin Woman, however, held opinions quite contrary to these, and their maxims

Holding these opposed views it seemed likely that visitors seeking for advice from the Philosophers might be

astonished and captured by their wives; but the women were true to their own doctrines and refused to part

with information to any persons saving only those of high rank, such as policemen, gombeen men, and

district and county councillors; but even to these they charged high prices for their information, and a bonus

on any gains which accrued through the following of their advices. It is unnecessary to state that their

following was small when compared with those who sought the assistance of their husbands, for scarcely a

week passed but some person came through the pine wood with his brows in a tangle of perplexity.

In these people the children were deeply interested. They used to go apart afterwards and talk about them,

and would try to remember what they looked like, how they talked, and their manner of walking or taking

snuff. After a time they became interested in the problems which these people submitted to their parents and

the replies or instructions wherewith the latter relieved them. Long training had made the children able to sit

perfectly quiet, so that when the talk came to the interesting part they were entirely forgotten, and ideas

which might otherwise have been spared their youth became the commonplaces of their conversation.

When the children were ten years of age one of the Philosophers died. He called the household together and

announced that the time had come when he must bid them all goodbye, and that his intention was to die as

quickly as might be. It was, he continued, an unfortunate thing that his health was at the moment more robust

than it had been for a long time, but that, of course, was no obstacle to his resolution, for death did not

depend upon illhealth but upon a multitude of other factors with the details whereof he would not trouble

His wife, the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin, applauded this resolution and added as an amendment that it was

high time he did something, that the life he had been leading was an arid and unprofitable one, that he had

stolen her fourteen hundred maledictions for which he had no use and presented her with a child for which

she had none, and that, all things concerned, the sooner he did die and stop talking the sooner everybody

The other Philosopher replied mildly as he lit his pipe: "Brother, the greatest of all virtues is curiosity, and the

end of all desire is wisdom; tell us, therefore, by what steps you have arrived at this commendable

To this the Philosopher replied: "I have attained to all the wisdom which I am fitted to bear. In the space of

one week no new truth has come to me. All that I have read lately I knew before; all that I have thought has

been but a recapitulation of old and wearisome ideas. There is no longer an horizon before my eves. Space

has narrowed to the petty dimensions of my thumb. Time is the tick of a clock. Good and evil are two peas in

the one pod. My wife's face is the same for ever. I want to play with the children, and yet I do not want to.

Your conversation with me, brother, is like the droning of a bee in a dark cell. The pine trees take root and

"Brother, these are weighty reflections, and I do clearly perceive that the time has come for you to stop. I

might observe, not in order to combat your views, but merely to continue an interesting conversation, that

there are still some knowledges which you have not assimilated you do not yet know how to play the

tambourine, nor how to be nice to your wife, nor how to get up first in the morning and cook the breakfast.

Have you learned how to smoke strong tobacco as I do? or can you dance in the moonlight with a woman of

the Shee? To understand the theory which underlies all things is not sufficient. It has occurred to me, brother,

that wisdom may not be the end of everything. Goodness and kindliness are, perhaps, beyond wisdom. Is it

not possible that the ultimate end is gaiety and music and a dance of joy? Wisdom is the oldest of all things.

Wisdom is all head and no heart. Behold, brother, you are being crushed under the weight of your head. You

"Brother," replied the other Philosopher, "your voice is like the droning of a bee in a dark cell. If in my latter

days I am reduced to playing on the tambourine and running after a hag in the moonlight, and cooking your

breakfast in the grey morning, then it is indeed time that I should die. Goodbye, brother."

So saying, the Philosopher arose and removed all the furniture to the sides of the room so that there was a

clear space left in the centre. He then took off his boots and his coat, and standing on his toes he commenced

to gyrate with extraordinary rapidity. In a few moments his movements became steady and swift, and a sound

came from him like the humming of a swift saw; this sound grew deeper and deeper, and at last continuous,

so that the room was filled with a thrilling noise. In a quarter of an hour the movement began to noticeably

slacken. In another three minutes it was quite slow. In two more minutes he grew visible again as a body, and

then he wobbled to and fro, and at last dropped in a heap on the floor. He was quite dead, and on his face was

"God be with you, brother," said the remaining Philosopher, and he lit his pipe, focused his vision on the

extreme tip of his nose, and began to meditate profoundly on the aphorism whether the good is the all or the

all is the good. In another moment he would have become oblivious of the room, the company, and the

corpse, but the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin shattered his meditation by a demand for advice as to what

should next be done. The Philosopher, with an effort, detached his eyes from his nose and his mind from his

"Chaos," said he, "is the first condition. Order is the first law. Continuity is the first reflection. Quietude is the

first happiness. Our brother is deadbury him." So saying, he returned his eyes to his nose, and his mind to

his maxim, and lapsed to a profound reflection wherein nothing sat perched on insubstantiality, and the Spirit

The Grey Woman of Dun Gortin took a pinch of snuff from her box and raised the keen over her husband:

"If I had anything better you should have it," said she politely to the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath.

"Thank you," said the Thin Woman, "it was very nice. Shall I begin now? My husband is meditating and we

"Don't trouble yourself," replied the other, "I am past enjoyment and am, moreover, a respectable woman."

"Very well, then," said the Grey Woman, and she commenced to take off her boots. She stood in the centre of

"You are a decent, respectable lady," said the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath, and then the Grey Woman began

to gyrate rapidly and more rapidly until she was a very fervour of motion, and in threequarters of an hour

(for she was very tough) she began to slacken, grew visible, wobbled, and fell beside her dead husband, and

The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath smacked the children and put them to bed, next she buried the two bodies

under the hearthstone, and then, with some trouble, detached her husband from his meditations. When he

became capable of ordinary occurrences she detailed all that had happened, and said that he alone was to

"The toxin generates the antitoxin. The end lies concealed in the beginning. All bodies grow around a

ON THE DAY following this melancholy occurrence Meehawl MacMurrachu, a small farmer in the

neighbourhood, came through the pine trees with tangled brows. At the door of the little house he said, "God

"Well, it doesn't matter," said the visitor, "for you have enough knowledge by yourself to stock a shop. The

reason I came here today was to ask your honoured advice about my wife's washingboard. She only has it

a couple of years, and the last time she used it was when she washed out my Sunday shirt and her black skirt

"Well, anyhow, the washboard is gone, and my wife says it was either taken by the fairies or by Bessie

"No matter," said Meehawl MacMurrachu. "She didn't take it, because my wife got her out yesterday and

kept her talking for two hours while I went through everything in her bit of a housethe washboard wasn't

The Philosopher drew his chair closer to the visitor until their knees were jammed together. He laid both his

"Washing is an extraordinary custom," said he. "We are washed both on coming into the world and on going

out of it, and we take no pleasure from the first washing nor any profit from the last."

"Many people consider that scourings supplementary to these are only due to habit. Now, habit is continuity

of action, it is a most detestable thing and is very difficult to get away from. A proverb will run where a writ

will not, and the follies of our forefathers are of greater importance to us than is the wellbeing of our

"Cats are a philosophic and thoughtful race, but they do not admit the efficacy of either water or soap, and yet

it is usually conceded that they are cleanly folk. There are exceptions to every rule, and I once knew a cat

who lusted after water and bathed daily: he was an unnatural brute and died ultimately of the head staggers.

Children are nearly as wise as cats. It is true that they will utilize water in a variety of ways, for instance, the

destruction of a tablecloth or a pinafore, and I have observed them greasing a ladder with soap, showing in

"Why shouldn't they, to be sure?" said Meehawl MacMurrachu. "Have you got a match, sir?"

"I have not," said the Philosopher. "Sparrows, again, are a highly acute and reasonable folk. They use water

to quench thirst, but when they are dirty they take a dust bath and are at once cleansed. Of course, birds are

often seen in the water, but they go there to catch fish and not to wash. I have often fancied that fish are a

dirty, sly, and unintelligent peoplethis is due to their staying so much in the water, and it has been

observed that on being removed from this element they at once expire through sheer ecstasy at escaping from

"I have seen them doing it myself," said Meehawl. "Did you ever hear, sir, about the fish that Paudeen

"I did not," said the Philosopher. "The first person who washed was possibly a person seeking a cheap

notoriety. Any fool can wash himself, but every wise man knows that it is an unnecessary labour,for nature

will quickly reduce him to a natural and healthy dirtiness again. We should seek, therefore, not how to make

ourselves clean, but how to attain a more unique and splendid dirtiness, and perhaps the accumulated layers

of matter might, by ordinary geologic compulsion, become incorporated with the human cuticle and so render

"It doesn't matter," said the Philosopher. "In its proper place I admit the necessity for water. As a thing to sail

a ship on it can scarcely be surpassed (not, you will understand, that I entirely approve of ships, they tend to

create and perpetuate international curiosity and the smaller vermin of different latitudes). As an element

wherewith to put out a fire, or brew tea, or make a slide in winter it is useful, but in a tin basin it has a

"You say that this unhealthy woman has not got your wife's washboard. It remains, therefore, that the fairies

"There are six clans of fairies living in this neighbourhood; but the process of elimination, which has shaped

the world to a globe, the ant to its environment, and man to the captaincy of the vertebrates, will not fail in

"Did you ever see anything like the way wasps have increased this season?" said Meehawl; "faith, you can't

"I did not," said the Philosopher. "Did you leave out a pan of milk on last Tuesday?"

"I'd sooner cut my eye out," said Meehawl, "and go about as walleyed as Lorcan O'Nualain's ass: I would

"Never,'" said Meehawl. "By the pipers," he added, "that old skinny cat of mine caught a bird on the roof

"Hah!'' cried the Philosopher, moving, if it were possible, even closer to his client, "now we have it. It is the

Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora took your washboard. Go to the Gort at once. There is a hole under a tree

So Meehawl MacMurrachu went away and did as he had been bidden, and underneath the tree of Gort na

By reason of this incident the fame of the Philosopher became even greater than it had been before, and also

by reason of it many singular events were to happen with which you shall duly become acquainted.

IT SO HAPPENED that the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora were not thankful to the Philosopher for

having sent Meehawl MacMurrachu to their field. In stealing Meehawl's property they were quite within their

rights because their bird had undoubtedly been slain by his cat. Not alone, therefore, was their righteous

vengeance nullified, but the crock of gold which had taken their community many thousands of years to

amass was stolen. A Leprecaun without a pot of gold is like a rose without perfume, a bird without a wing, or

an inside without an outside. They considered that the Philosopher had treated them badly, that his action was

mischievous and unneighbourly, and that until they were adequately compensated for their loss both of

treasure and dignity, no conditions other than those of enmity could exist between their people and the little

house in the pine wood. Furthermore, for them the situation was cruelly complicated. They were unable to

organise a direct, personal hostility against their new enemy, because the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath would

certainly protect her husband. She belonged to the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, who had relatives in every

fairy fort in Ireland, and were also strongly represented in the forts and duns of their immediate neighbours.

They could, of course, have called an extraordinary meeting of the Sheogs, Leprecauns, and Cluricauns, and

presented their case with a claim for damages against the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, but that Clann would

assuredly repudiate any liability on the ground that no member of their fraternity was responsible for the

outrage, as it was the Philosopher, and not the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath, who had done the deed.

Notwithstanding this they were unwilling to let the matter rest, and the fact that justice was out of reach only

One of their number was sent to interview the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath, and the others concentrated

nightly about the dwelling of Meehawl MacMurrachu in an endeavour to recapture the treasure which they

were quite satisfied was hopeless. They found that Meehawl, who understood the customs of the Earth Folk

very well, had buried the crock of gold beneath a thorn bush, thereby placing it under the protection of every

fairy in the worldthe Leprecauns themselves included, and until it was removed from this place by human

hands they were bound to respect its hidingplace, and even guarantee its safety with their blood.

They afflicted Meehawl with an extraordinary attack of rheumatism and his wife with an equally virulent

The Leprecaun, who had been detailed to visit the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath, duly arrived at the cottage in

the pine wood and made his complaint. The little man wept as he told the story, and the two children wept out

of sympathy for him. The Thin Woman said she was desperately grieved by the whole unpleasant transaction,

and that all her sympathies were with Gort na Cloca Mora, but that she must disassociate herself from any

responsibility in the matter as it was her husband who was the culpable person, and that she had no control

over his mental processes, which, she concluded, was one of the seven curious things in the world.

As her husband was away in a distant part of the wood nothing further could be done at that time, so the

Leprecaun returned again to his fellows without any good news, but he promised to come back early on the

following day. When the Philosopher come home late that night the Thin Woman was waiting up for him.

"Ought I indeed?" said the Thin Woman. "I'd have you know that I'll go to bed when I like and get up when I

"That is not true," said the Philosopher. "You get sleepy whether you like it or not, and you awaken again

without your permission being asked. Like many other customs such as singing, dancing, music, and acting,

sleep has crept into popular favour as part of a religious ceremonial. Nowhere can one go to sleep more easily

"I do not," said the Philosopher, "and notwithstanding the innumerable centuries which have elapsed since

that first sleeper (probably with extreme difficulty) sank into his religious trance, we can today sleep

through a religious ceremony with an ease which would have been a source of wealth and fame to that

"Are you going to listen to what I am telling you about the Leprecaun?" said the Thin Woman.

"I am not," said the Philosopher. "It has been suggested that we go to sleep at night because it is then too dark

to do anything else; but owls, who are a venerably sagacious folk, do not sleep in the night time. Bats, also,

are a very clearminded race; they sleep in the broadest day, and they do it in a charming manner. They

clutch the branch of a tree with their toes and hang head downwardsa position which I consider singularly

happy, for the rush of blood to the head consequent on this inverted position should engender a drowsiness

"I will not," said the Philosopher. "In certain ways sleep is useful. It is an excellent way of listening to an

opera or seeing pictures on a bioscope. As a medium for daydreams I know of nothing that can equal it. As

an accomplishment it is graceful, but as a means of spending a night it is intolerably ridiculous. If you were

going to say anything, my love, please say it now, but you should always remember to think before you

speak. A woman should be seen seldom but never heard. Quietness is the beginning of virtue. To be silent is

to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise. Children should always be in bed. These are serious truths, which

"Your stirabout is on the hob," said the Thin Woman. "You can get it for yourself. I would not move the

breadth of my nail if you were dying of hunger. I hope there's lumps in it. A Leprecaun from Gort na Cloca

Mora was here today. They'll give it to you for robbing their pot of gold. You old thief, you! you lobeared,

The Thin Woman whizzed suddenly from where she stood and leaped into bed. From beneath the blanket she

turned a vivid, furious eye on her husband. She was trying to give him rheumatism and toothache and

lockjaw all at once. If she had been satisfied to concentrate her attention on one only of these torments she

might have succeeded in afflicting her husband according to her wish, but she was not able to do that.

"Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it," said the Philosopher.

WHEN THE LEPRECAUN came through the pine wood on the following day he met two children at a little

distance from the house. He raised his open right hand above his head (this is both the fairy and the Gaelic

form of salutation), and would have passed on but that a thought brought him to a halt. Sitting down before

the two children he stared at them for a long time, and they stared back at him. At last he said to the boy:

"It's a big name," said the Leprecaun, and he turned to the little girl. "What is your name, a cailin vig O?"

"Well, Seumaseen and Breedeen, you are good little children, and I like you very much. Health be with you

And then the Leprecaun went back the way he had come. As he went he made little jumps and cracked his

"Listen," said Seumas, "let me be the Leprecaun, and you be the two children, and I will ask you our names."

The next day the Leprecaun came again. He sat down beside the children and, as before, he was silent for a

His sister smoothed out her dress shyly. "My name, sir, is Brigid Beg," said she.

"I'll teach you how to play Jackstones," said the Leprecaun, and he picked up some pine cones and taught the

"Did you ever play 'I can make a nail with my reeroraddyO, I can make a nail with my reeroray'?"

"It's a nice game," said the Leprecaun, "and so is Capontheback, and Twentyfour yards on the

Billygoat's Tail, and Towns, and Relievo, and Leapfrog. I'll teach you all these games," said the

Leprecaun, "and I'll teach you how to play Knifey, and Holeandtaw, and Horneys and Robbers.

"Leapfrog is the best one to start with, so I'll teach it to you at once. Let you bend down like this, Breedeen,

and you bend down like that a good distance away, Seumas. Now I jump over Breedeen's back, and then I run

and jump over Seumaseen's back like this, and then I run ahead again and I bend down. Now, Breedeen, you

jump over your brother, and then you jump over me, and run a good bit on and bend down again. Now,

Seumas, it's your turn; you jump over me and then over your sister, and then you run on and bend down again

"It is, a vic vig,keep in your head," said the Leprecaun. "That's a good jump, you couldn't beat that jump,

"I can jump better than Brigid already," replied Seumas, "and I'll jump as well as you do when I get more

Almost without noticing it they had passed through the edge of the wood, and were playing into a rough field

which was cumbered with big, grey rocks. It was the very last field in sight, and behind it the rough,

heatherpacked mountain sloped distantly away to the skyline. There was a raggedy blackberry hedge all

round the field, and there were long, tough, haggardlooking plants growing in clumps here and there. Near a

corner of this field there was a broad, low tree, and as they played they came near and nearer to it. The

Leprecaun gave a back very close to the tree. Seumas ran and jumped and slid down a hole at the side of the

The Leprecaun cracked his fingers and rubbed one leg against the other, and then he also dived into the hole

When the time at which the children usually went home had passed, the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath became

a little anxious. She had never known them to be late for dinner before. There was one of the children whom

she hated; it was her own child, but as she had forgotten which of them was hers, and as she loved one of

them, she was compelled to love both for fear of making a mistake and chastising the child for whom her

heart secretly yearned. Therefore, she was equally concerned about both of them.

Dmner time passed and supper time arrived, but the children did not. Again and again the Thin Woman went

out through the dark pine trees and called until she was so hoarse that she could not even hear herself when

she roared. The evening wore on to the night, and while she waited for the Philosopher to come in she

reviewed the situation. Her husband had not come in, the chilren had not come in, the Leprecaun had not

returned as arranged. . . . A light flashed upon her. The Leprecaun nad kidnapped her children! She

announced a vengeance against the Leprecauns which would stagger humanity. While in the extreme centre

"Husband," said she, "the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora have kidnapped our children."

"Kidnapping," said he, "has been for many centuries a favourite occupation of fairies, gypsies, and the

brigands of the East. The usual procedure is to attach a person and hold it to ransom. If the ransom is not paid

an ear or a finger may be cut from the captive and despatched to those interested, with the statement that an

arm or a leg will follow in a week unless suitable arrangements are entered into."

"Do you understand," said the Thin Woman passionatelv, "that it is your own children who have been

"I do not," said the Philosopher. "This course, however, is rarely followed by the fairy people: they do not

ordinarily steal for ransom, but for love of thieving, or from some other obscure and possibly functional

causes, and the victim is retained in their forts or duns until by the effluxion of time they forget their origin

and become peaceable citizens of the fairy state. Kidnapping is not by any means confined to either humanity

"I will not," said the Philosopher. "Many of the insectivora also practice this custom. Ants, for example, are a

respectable race living in wellordered communities. They have attained to a most complex and artificial

civilization, and will frequently adventure far afield on colonising or other expeditions from whence they

return with a rich booty of aphides and other stock, who thenceforward become the servants and domestic

creatures of the republic. As they neither kill nor eat their captives, this practice will be termed kidnapping.

The same may be said of bees, a hardy and industrious race living in hexagonal cells which are very difficult

to make. Sometimes, on lacking a queen of their own, they have been observed to abduct one from a less

powerful neighbour, and use her for their own purposes without shame, mercy, or remorse."

"I will not," said the Philosopher. "Semitropical apes have been rumoured to kidnap children, and are

reported to use them very tenderly indeed, sharing their coconuts, yams, plantains, and other equatorial

provender with the largest generosity, and conveying their delicate captives from tree to tree (often at great

distances from each other and from the ground) with the most guarded solicitude and benevolence."

That night the Philosopher was afflicted with the most extraordinary attack of rheumatism he had ever

known, nor did he get any ease until the grey morning wearied his lady into a reluctant slumber.

THE THIN WOMAN of Inis Magrath slept very late that morning, but when she did awaken her impatience

was so urgent that she could scarcely delay to eat her breakfast. Immediately after she had eaten she put on

her bonnet and shawl and went through the pine wood in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. In a short time

she reached the rocky field, and, walking over to the tree in the southeast corner, she picked up a small stone

and hammered loudly against the trunk of the tree. She hammered in a peculiar fashion, giving two knocks

"I am coming up, Noble Woman," said the voice, and in another moment the Leprecaun leaped out of the

"How would I know where they are?" replied the Leprecaun. "Wouldn't they be at home now?"

"If they were at home I wouldn't have come here looking for them," was her reply. "It is my belief that

"They are down there in your little house," said the Thin Woman angrily, "and the sooner you let them up the

"Noble Woman," said the Leprecaun, "you can go down yourself into our little house and look. I can't say

"But I mightn't be able to make myself big again," said the Thin Woman, "and then you and your dirty

brothers would have it all your own way. If you don't let the children up," she continued, "I'll raise the Shee

of Croghan Conghaile against you. You know what happened to the Cluricauns of Oilean na Glas when they

stole the Queen's babyIt will be a worse thing than that for you. If the children are not back in my house

before moonrise this night, I'll go round to my people. Just tell that to your five ugly brothers. Health with

"Health with yourself, Noble Woman," said the Leprecaun, and he stood on one leg until she was out of sight

When the Thin Woman was going back through the pine wood she saw Meehawl MacMurrachu travelling in

"God and Mary be with you, ma'am," he replied, "I am in great trouble this day."

After a few minutes the Thin Woman spoke again. "I can get the reek of his pipe from here. Let you go right

in to him now and I'll stay outside for a while, for the sound of your two voices would give me a pain in my

"Whatever will please you will please me, ma'am," said her companion, and he went into the little house.

Meehawl MacMurrachu had good reason to be perplexed. He was the father of one child only, and she was

the most beautiful girl in the whole world. The pity of it was that no one at all knew she was beautiful, and

she did not even know it herself. At times when she bathed in the eddy of a mountain stream and saw her

reflection looking up from the placid water she thought that she looked very nice, and then a great sadness

would come upon her, for what is the use of looking nice if there is nobody to see one's beauty? Beauty, also,

is usefulness. The arts as well as the crafts, the graces equally with the utilities must stand up in the

The only house near to her father's was that occupied by Bessie Hannigan. The other few houses were

scattered widely with long, quiet miles of hill and bog between them, so that she had hardly seen more than a

couple of men beside her father since she was born. She helped her father and mother in all the small

businesses of their house, and every day also she drove their three cows and two goats to pasture on the

mountain slopes. Here through the sunny days the years had passed in a slow, warm thoughtlessness wherein,

without thinking, many thoughts had entered into her mind and many pictures hung for a moment like birds

in the thin air. At first, and for a long time, she had been happy enough; there were many things in which a

child might be interested: the spacious heavens which never wore the same beauty on any day; the

innumerable little creatures living among the grasses or in the heather; the steep swing of a bird down from

the mountain to the infinite plains below; the little flowers which were so contented each in its peaceful

place; the bees gathering food for their houses, and the stout beetles who are always losing their way in the

dusk. These things, and many others, interested her. The three cows after they had grazed for a long time

would come and lie by her side and look at her as they chewed their cud, and the goats would prance from the

Indeed, everything in her quiet world loved this girl: but very slowly there was growing in her consciousness

an unrest, a disquietude to which she had hitherto been a stranger. Sometimes an infinite weariness oppressed

her to the earth. A thought was born in her mind and it had no name. It was growing and could not be

expressed. She had no words wherewith to meet it, to exorcise or greet this stranger who, more and more

insistently and pleadingly, tapped upon her doors and begged to be spoken to, admitted and caressed and

nourished. A thought is a real thing and words are only its raiment, but a thought is as shy as a virgin; unless

it is fittingly apparelled we may not look on its shadowy nakedness: it will fly from us and only return again

in the darkness crying in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with aching minds,

listening and divining, we at last fashion for it those symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she

could not understand the touch that came to her from afar and yet how intimately, the whisper so aloof and

yet so thrillingly personal. The standard of either language or experience was not hers; she could listen but

not think, she could feel but not know, her eyes looked forward and did not see, her hands groped in the

sunlight and felt nothing. It was like the edge of a little wind which stirred her tresses but could not lift them,

or the first white peep of the dawn which is neither light nor darkness. But she listened, not with her ears but

with her blood. The fingers of her soul stretched out to clasp a stranger's hand, and her disquietude was

quickened through with an eagerness which was neither physical nor mental, for neither her body nor her

mind was definitely interested. Some dim region between these grew alarmed and watched and waited and

One morning she lay among the long, warm grasses. She watched a bird who soared and sang for a little time,

and then it sped swiftly away down the steep air and out of sight in the blue distance. Even when it was gone

the song seemed to ring in her ears. It seemed to linger with her as a faint, sweet echo, coming fitfully, with

little pauses as though a wind disturbed it, and careless, distant eddies. After a few moments she knew it was

not a bird. No bird's song had that consecutive melody, for their themes are as careless as their wings. She sat

up and looked about her, but there was nothing in sight: the mountains sloped gently above her and away to

the clear sky; around her the scattered clumps of heather were drowsing in the sunlight; far below she could

see her father's house, a little grey patch near some treesand then the music stopped and left her

She could not find her goats anywhere although for a long time she searched. They came to her at last of their

own accord from behind a fold in the hills, and they were more wildly excited than she had ever seen them

before. Even the cows forsook their solemnity and broke into awkward gambols around her. As she walked

home that evening a strange elation taught her feet to dance. Hither and thither she flitted in front of the

beasts and behind them. Her feet tripped to a wayward measure. There was a tune in her ears and she danced

to it, throwing her arms out and above her head and swaying and bending as she went. The full freedom of

her body was hers now: the lightness and poise and certainty of her limbs delighted her, and the strength that

did not tire delighted her also. The evening was full of peace and quietude, the mellow, dusky sunlight made

a path for her feet, and everywhere through the wide fields birds were flashing and singing, and she sang with

The following day she heard the music again, faint and thin, wonderfully sweet and as wild as the song of a

bird, but it was a melody which no bird would adhere to. A theme was repeated again and again. In the

middle of trills, gracenotes, runs and catches it recurred with a strange, almost holy, solemnity,a hushing,

slender melody full of austerity and aloofness. There was something in it to set her heart beating. She yearned

to it with her ears and her lips. Was it joy, menace, carelessness? She did not know, but this she did know,

that however terrible it was personal to her. It was her unborn thought strangely audible and felt rather than

On that day she did not see anybody either. She drove her charges home in the evening listlessly and the

When the music came again she made no effort to discover where it came from. She only listened, and when

the tune was ended she saw a figure rise from the fold of a little hill. The sunlight was gleaming from his

arms and shoulders but the rest of his body was hidden by the bracken, and he did not look at her as he went

The next day he did look at her. He stood waistdeep in greenery fronting her squarely. She had never seen

so strange a face before. Her eyes almost died on him as she gazed and he returned her look for a long minute

with an intent, expressionless regard. His hair was a cluster of brown curls, his nose was little and straight,

and his wide mouth drooped sadly at the corners. His eyes were wide and most mournful, and his forehead

When he turned away he smiled at her, and it was as though the sun had shone suddenly in a dark place,

banishing all sadness and gloom. Then he went mincingly away. As he went he lifted the slender double reed

The next day he fronted her as before, looking down to her eyes from a short distance. He played for only a

few moments, and fitfully, and then he came to her. When he left the bracken the girl suddenly clapped her

hands against her eyes affrighted. There was something different, terrible about him. The upper part of his

body was beautiful, but the lower part. . . . She dared not look at him again. She would have risen and fled

away but she feared he might pursue her, and the thought of such a chase and the inevitable capture froze her

blood. The thought of anything behind us is always terrible. The sound of pursuing feet is worse than the

murder from which we flySo she sat still and waited but nothing happened. At last, desperately, she

dropped her hands. He was sitting on the ground a few paces from her. He was not looking at her but far

away sidewards across the spreading hill. His legs were crossed; they were shaggy and hoofed like the legs of

a goat: but she would not look at these because of his wonderful, sad, grotesque face. Gaiety is good to look

upon and an innocent face is delightful to our souls, but no woman can resist sadness or weakness, and

ugliness she dare not resist. Her nature leaps to be the comforter. It is her reason. It exalts her to an ecstasy

wherein nothing but the sacrifice of herself has any proportion. Men are not fathers by instinct but by chance,

but women are mothers beyond thought, beyond instinct which is the father of thought. Motherliness, pity,

selfsacrifice these are the charges of her primal cell, and not even the discovery that men are comedians,

liars, and egotists will wean her from this. As she looked at the pathos of his face she repudiated the

hideousness of his body. The beast which is in all men is glossed by women; it is his childishness, the

destructive energy inseparable from youth and high spirits, and it is always forgiven by women, often

After a few moments of this silence he placed the reed to his lips and played a plaintive little air, and then he

"Daughter of Murrachu," said he, "I have come from a far place where there are high hills. The men and

maidens who follow their flocks in that place know me and love me for I am the Master of the Shepherds.

They sing and dance and are glad when I come to them in the sunlight; but in this country no people have

done any reverence to me. The shepherds fly away when they hear my pipes in the pastures; the maidens

scream in fear when I dance to them in the meadows. I am very lonely in this strange country. You also,

although you danced to the music of my pipes, have covered your face against me and made no reverence."

"You must not do anything because it is right, but because it is your wish. Right is a word and Wrong is a

word, but the sun shines in the morning and the dew falls in the dusk without thinking of these words which

have no meaning. The bee flies to the flower and the seed goes abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd

Girl?it is wrong also. I come to you because the bee goes to the flowerit is wrong! If I did not come to

you to whom would I go? There is no right and no wrong but only the will of the gods."

"You fear me because my legs are shaggy like the legs of a goat. Look at them well, O Maiden, and know

that they are indeed the legs of a beast and then you will not be afraid any more. Do you not love beasts?

Surely you should love them for they yearn to you humbly or fiercely, craving your hand upon their heads as

I do. If I were not fashioned thus I would not come to you because I would not need you. Man is a god and a

brute. He aspires to the stars with his head but his feet are contented in the grasses of the field, and when he

forsakes the brute upon which he stands then there will be no more men and no more women and the

"I want you to want me. I want you to forget right and wrong; to be as happy as the beasts, as careless as the

flowers and the birds. To live to the depths of your nature as well as to the heights. Truly there are stars in the

heights and they will be a garland for your forehead. But the depths are equal to the heights. Wondrous deep

are the depths, very fertile is the lowest deep. There are stars there also, brighter than the stars on high. The

name of the heights is Wisdom and the name of the depths is Love. How shall they come together and be

fruitful if you do not plunge deeply and fearlessly? Wisdom is the spirit and the wings of the spirit, Love is

the shaggy beast that goes down. Gallantly he dives, below thought, beyond Wisdom, to rise again as high

above these as he had first descended. Wisdom is righteous and clean, but Love is unclean and holy. I sing of

the beast and the descent: the great unclean purging itself in fire: the thought that is not born in the measure

or the ice or the head, but in the feet and the hot blood and the pulse of fury. The Crown of Life is not lodged

in the sun: the wise gods have buried it deeply where the thoughtful will not find it, nor the good: but the Gay

Ones, the Adventurous Ones, the Careless Plungers, they will bring it to the wise and astonish them. All

things are seen in the lightHow shall we value that which is easy to see? But the precious things which are

hidden, they will be more precious for our search: they will be beautiful with our sorrow: they will be noble

because of our desire for them. Come away with me, Shepherd Girl, through the fields, and we will be

careless and happy, and we will leave thought to find us when it can, for that is the duty of thought, and it is

So Caitilin Ni Murrachu arose and went with him through the fields, and she did not go with him because of

love, nor because his words had been understood by her, but only because he was naked and unashamed.

IT WAS ON account of his daughter that Meehawl MacMurrachu had come to visit the Philosopher. He did

not know what had become of her, and the facts he had to lay before his adviser were very few.

He left the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath taking snuff under a pine tree and went into the house.

"I am in great trouble this day, sir," said Meehawl, "and if you would give me an advice I'd be greatly

"None better than your honour and no trouble to you either. It was a powerful advice you gave me about the

washboard, and if I didn't come here to thank you before this it was not because I didn't want to come, but

that I couldn't move hand or foot by dint of the cruel rheumatism put upon me by the Leprecauns of Gort na

Cloca Mora, bad cess to them for ever: twisted I was the way you'd get a squint in your eye if you only

"No matter," said Meehawl. "What I came about was my young daughter Caitilin. Sight or light of her I

haven't had for three days. My wife said first, that it was the fairies had taken her, and then she said it was a

travelling man that had a musical instrument she went away with, and after that she said, that maybe the girl

was lying dead in the butt of a ditch with her eyes wide open, and she staring broadly at the moon in the night

"Daughters," said he, "have been a cause of anxiety to their parents ever since they were instituted. The

flightiness of the female temperament is very evident in those who have not arrived at the years which teach

how to hide faults and frailties, and, therefore, indiscretions bristle from a young girl the way branches do

"Female children, however, have the particular sanction of nature. They are produced in astonishing excess

over males, and may, accordingly, be admitted as dominant to the male; but the wellproven law that the

minority shall always control the majority will relieve our minds from a fear which might otherwise become

"It's true enough," said Meehawl. "Have you noticed, sir, that in a litter of pups"

"I have not," said the Philosopher. "Certain trades and professions, it is curious to note, tend to be perpetuated

in the female line. The sovereign profession among bees and ants is always female, and publicans also

descend on the distaff side. You will have noticed that every publican has three daughters of extraordinary

charms. Lacking these signs we would do well to look askance at such a man's liquor, divining that in his

brew there will be an undue percentage of water, for if his primogeniture is infected how shall his honesty

"It would not," said the Philosopher. "Throughout nature the female tends to polygamy."

"If," said Meehawl, "that unfortunate daughter of mine is lying dead in a ditch"

"It doesn't matter," said the Philosopher. "Many races have endeavoured to place some limits to this increase

in females. Certain Oriental peoples have conferred the titles of divinity on crocodiles, serpents, and tigers of

the jungle, and have fed these with their surplusage of daughters. In China, likewise, such sacrifices are

defended as honourable and economic practices. But, broadly speaking, if daughters have to be curtailed I

prefer your method of losing them rather than the religiohysterical compromises of the Orient."

"I give you my word, sir," said Meehawl, "that I don't know what you are talking about at all."

"That," said the Philosopher, "may be accounted for in three waysfirstly, there is a lack of cerebral

continuity: that is, faulty attention; secondly, it might be due to a local peculiarity in the conformation of the

skull, or, perhaps, a superficial instead of a deep indenting of the cerebral coil; and thirdly"

"Did you ever hear," said Meehawl, "of the man that had the scalp of his head blown off by a gun, and they

soldered the bottom of a tin dish to the top of his skull the way you could hear his brains ticking inside of it

"It's my daughter, Caitilin, sir," said Meehawl humbly. "Maybe she is lying in the butt of a ditch and the

"My wife only put it that maybe she was dead, and that maybe she was taken by the fairies, and that maybe

she went away with the travelling man that had the musical instrument. She said it was a concertina, but I

"I never saw him," said Meehawl, "but one day I went a few perches up the hill and I heard him

playingthin, squeaky music it was like you'd be blowing out of a tin whistle. I looked about for him

"They were pucking each other across the field, and standing on their hind legs and cutting such capers that I

"I do," said the Philosopher, "and for this reasonmost of the races of the world have at one time or

"Most of the races of the world have at one time or another been visited by this deity, whose title is the 'Great

God Pan,' but there is no record of his ever having journeyed to Ireland, and, certainly within historic times,

he has not set foot on these shores. He lived for a great number of years in Egypt, Persia, and Greece, and

although his empire is supposed to be worldwide, this universal sway has always been, and always will be,

contested; but nevertheless, however sharply his empire may be curtailed, he will never be without a kingdom

wherein his exercise of sovereign rights will be gladly and passionately acclaimed."

"He is," replied the Philosopher, "and his coming intends no good to this country. Have you any idea why he

"I couldn't tell you, because I never thought of looking at her that way. But she is a good milker, and as

strong as a man. She can lift a bag of meal under her arm easier than I can; but she's a timid creature for all

"Whatever the reason is I am certain that he has the girl, and I am inclined to think that he was directed to her

by the Leprecauns of the Gort. You know they are at feud with you ever since their bird was killed?"

"I am not likely to forget it, and they racking me day and night with torments."

"You may be sure," said the Philosopher, "that if he's anywhere at all it's at Gort na Cloca Mora he is, for,

being a stranger, he wouldn't know where to go unless he was directed, and they know every hole and corner

of this countryside since ancient times. I'd go up myself and have a talk with him, but it wouldn't be a bit of

good, and it wouldn't be any use your going either. He has power over all grown people so that they either go

and get drunk or else they fall in love with every person they meet, and commit assaults and things I wouldn't

like to be telling you about. The only folk who can go near him at all are little children, because he has no

power over them until they grow to the sensual age, and then he exercises lordship over them as over every

one else. I'll send my two children with a message to him to say that he isn't doing the decent thing, and that

if he doesn't let the girl alone and go back to his own country we'll send for Angus �g."

"Well, I'd sooner he had her than the other one, for he's one of ourselves anyhow, and the devil you know is

"I know that, sir," replied Meehawl; "it's only a way of talking I have. But how will your honour get at

Angus? for I heard say that he hadn't been seen for a hundred years, except one night only when he talked to

"I'll warrant you will," replied Meehawl heartily as he stood up. "Long life and good health to your honour,"

"We live as long as we are let," said he, "and we get the health we deserve. Your salutation embodies a

reflection on death which is not philosophic. We must acquiesce in all logical progressions. The merging of

opposites is completion. Life runs to death as to its goal, and we should go towards that next stage of

experience either carelessly as to what must be, or with a good, honest curiosity as to what may be."

WHEN THE CHILDREN leaped into the hole at the foot of the tree they found themselves sliding down a

dark, narrow slant which dropped them softly enough into a little room. This room was hollowed out

immediately under the tree, and great care had been taken not to disturb any of the roots which ran here and

there through the chamber in the strangest crisscross, twisted fashion. To get across such a place one had to

walk round, and jump over, and duck under perpetually. Some of the roots had formed themselves very

conveniently into low seats and narrow, uneven tables, and at the bottom all the roots ran into the floor and

away again in the direction required by their business. After the clear air outside this place was very dark to

the children's eyes, so that they could not see anything for a few minutes, but after a little time their eyes

became accustomed to the semiobscurity and they were able to see quite well. The first things they became

aware of were six small men who were seated on low roots. They were all dressed in tight green clothes and

little leathern aprons, and they wore tall green hats which wobbled when they moved. They were all busily

engaged making shoes. One was drawing out wax ends on his knee, another was softening pieces of leather in

a bucket of water, another was polishing the instep of a shoe with a piece of curved bone, another was paring

down a heel with a short broadbladed knife, and another was hammering wooden pegs into a sole. He had

all the pegs in his mouth, which gave him a widefaced, jolly expression, and according as a peg was wanted

he blew it into his hand and hit it twice with his hammer, and then he blew another peg, and he always blew

the peg with the right end uppermost, and never had to hit it more than twice. He was a person well worth

The children had slid down so unexpectedly that they almost forgot their good manners, but as soon as

Seumas Beg discovered that he was really in a room he removed his cap and stood up.

The Leprecaun who had brought them lifted Brigid from the floor to which amazement still constrained her.

"Sit down on that little root, child of my heart," said he, "and you can knit stockings for us."

The Leprecaun took four knitting needles and a ball of green wool from the top of a high, horizontal root. He

had to climb over one, go round three and climb up two roots to get at it, and he did this so easily that it did

The other six Leprecauns had ceased work and were looking at the children. Seumas turned to them.

One of the Leprecauns, who had a grey, puckered face and a thin fringe of grey whisker very far under his

"Come over here, Seumas Beg," said he, "and I'll measure you for a pair of shoes. Put your foot up on that

The boy did so, and the Leprecaun took the measure of his foot with a wooden rule.

"Now, Brigid Beg, show me your foot," and he measured her also. "They'll be ready for you in the morning."

"We do not," replied the Leprecaun, "except when we want new clothes, and then we have to make them, but

we grudge every minute spent making anything else except shoes, because that is the proper work for a

Leprecaun. In the night time we go about the country into people's houses and we clip little pieces off their

money, and so, bit by bit, we get a crock of gold together, because, do you see, a Leprecaun has to have a

crock of gold so that if he's captured by men folk he may be able to ransom himself. But that seldom happens,

because it's a great disgrace altogether to be captured by a man, and we've practiced so long dodging among

the roots here that we can easily get away from them. Of course, now and again we are caught; but men are

fools, and we always escape without having to pay the ransom at all. We wear green clothes because it's the

colour of the grass and the leaves, and when we sit down under a bush or lie in the grass they just walk by

"Then you had better have some," and the Leprecaun took a piece of griddle bread from the shelf and filled

It was at this point the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath knocked on the tree trunk and demanded that the

When she had gone away the Leprecauns held a consultation, whereat it was decided that they could not

afford to anger the Thin Woman and the Shee of Croghan Conghaile, so they shook hands with the children

and bade them goodbye. The Leprecaun who had enticed them away from home brought them back again,

and on parting he begged the children to visit Gort na Cloca Mora whenever they felt inclined.

"There's always a bit of griddle bread or potato cake, and a noggin of milk for a friend," said he.

"Do you remember," said Seumas, "the way he hopped and waggled his leg the last time he was here?"

When they went into the house the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath was very glad to see them, and she baked a

cake with currants in it, and also gave them both stirabout and potatoes; but the Philosopher did not notice

that they had been away at all. He said at last that "talking was bad wit, that women were always making a

fuss, that children should be fed, but not fattened, and that beds were meant to be slept in." The Thin Woman

replied "that he was a grisly old man without bowels, that she did not know what she had married him for,

that he was three times her age, and that no one would believe what she had to put up with."

PURSUANT TO HIS arrangement with Meehawl MacMurrachu, the Philosopher sent the children in search

of Pan. He gave them the fullest instructions as to how they should address the Sylvan Deity, and then,

having received the admonishments of the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath, the children departed in the early

When they reached the clearing in the pine wood, through which the sun was blazing, they sat down for a

little while to rest in the heat. Birds were continually darting down this leafy shaft, and diving away into the

dark wood. These birds always had something in their beaks. One would have a worm, or a snail, or a

grasshopper, or a little piece of wool torn off a sheep, or a scrap of cloth, or a piece of hay; and when they

had put these things in a certain place they flew up the sunshaft again and looked for something else to bring

home. On seeing the children each of the birds waggled his wings, and made a particular sound. They said

"caw" and "chip" and "twit" and "tut" and "what" and "pit"; and one, whom the youngsters liked very much,

always said "tittittittittit." The children were fond of him because he was so allofasudden. They

never knew where he was going to fly next, and they did not believe he knew himself. He would fly

backwards and forwards, and up and down, and sideways and bawwaysall, so to speak, in the one breath.

He did this because he was curious to see what was happening everywhere, and, as something is always

happening everywhere, he was never able to fly in a straight line for more than the littlest distance. He was a

cowardly bird too, and continually fancied that some person was going to throw a stone at him from behind a

bush, or a wall, or a tree, and these imaginary dangers tended to make his journeyings still more wayward and

erratic. He never flew where he wanted to go himself, but only where God directed him, and so he did not

The children knew each of the birds by their sounds, and always said these words to them when they came

near. For a little time they had difficulty in saying the right word to the right bird, and sometimes said "chip"

when the salutation should have been "tut." The birds always resented this, and would scold them angrily, but

after a little practice they never made any mistakes at all. There was one bird, a big, black fellow, who loved

to be talked to. He used to sit on the ground beside the children, and say "caw" as long as they would repeat it

after him. He often wasted a whole morning in talk, but none of the other birds remained for more than a few

minutes at a time. They were always busy in the morning, but in the evening they had more leisure, and

would stay and chat as long as the children wanted them. The awkward thing was that in the evening all the

birds wanted to talk at the same moment, so that the youngsters never knew which of them to answer. Seumas

Beg got out of that difficulty for a while by learning to whistle their notes, but, even so, they spoke with such

rapidity that he could not by any means keep pace with them. Brigid could only whistle one note; it was a

little flat "whoo" sound, which the birds all laughed at, and after a few trials she refused to whistle any more.

While they were sitting two rabbits came to play about in the brush. They ran round and round in a circle, and

all their movements were very quick and twisty. Sometimes they jumped over each other six or seven times

in succession, and every now and then they sat upright on their hind legs, and washed their faces with their

paws. At other times they picked up a blade of grass, which they ate with great deliberation, pretending all

While the children were playing with the rabbits an ancient, stalwart hegoat came prancing through the

bracken. He was an old acquaintance of theirs, and he enjoyed lying beside them to have his forehead

scratched with a piece of sharp stick. His forehead was hard as rock, and the hair grew there as sparse as grass

does on a wall, or rather the way moss grows on a wallit was a mat instead of a crop. His horns were long

and very sharp, and brilliantly polished. On this day the hegoat had two chains around his neckone was

made of buttercups and the other was made of daisies, and the children wondered to each other who it was

could have woven these so carefully. They asked the hegoat this question, but he only looked at them and

did not say a word. The children liked examining this goat's eyes; they were very big, and of the queerest

lightgray colour. They had a strange steadfast look, and had also at times a look of queer, deep intelligence,

and at other times they had a fatherly and benevolent expression, and at other times again, especially when he

looked sidewards, they had a mischievous, lightandairy, daring, mocking, inviting and terrifying look; but

he always looked brave and unconcerned. When the hegoat's forehead had been scratched as much as he

desired he arose from between the children and went pacing away lightly through the wood. The children ran

after him and each caught hold of one of his horns, and he ambled and reared between them while they

danced along on his either side singing snatches of bird songs, and scraps of old tunes which the Thin

In a little time they came to Gort na Cloca Mora, but here the hegoat did not stop. They went past the big

tree of the Leprecauns, through a broken part of the hedge and into another rough field. The sun was shining

gloriously. There was scarcely a wind at all to stir the harsh grasses. Far and near was silence and warmth, an

immense, cheerful peace. Across the sky a few light clouds sailed gently on a blue so vast that the eye failed

before that horizon. A few bees sounded their deep chant, and now and again a wasp rasped hastily on his

journey. Than these there was no sound of any kind. So peaceful, innocent and safe did everything appear

The children, still clinging to the friendly goat, came near the edge of the field, which here sloped more

steeply to the mountain top. Great boulders, slightly covered with lichen and moss, were strewn about, and

around them the bracken and gorse were growing, and in every crevice of these rocks there were plants

whose little, tightfisted roots gripped a desperate, adventurous habitation in a soil scarcely more than half an

inch deep. At some time these rocks had been smitten so fiercely that the solid granite surfaces had shattered

into fragments. At one place a sheer wall of stone, ragged and battered, looked harshly out from the thin

vegetation. To this rocky wall the hegoat danced. At one place there was a hole in the wall covered by a

thick brush. The goat pushed his way behind this growth and disappeared. Then the children, curious to see

where he had gone, pushed through also. Behind the bush they found a high, narrow opening, and when they

had rubbed their legs, which smarted from the stings of nettles, thistles and gorse prickles, they went into the

hole which they thought was a place the goat had for sleeping in on cold, wet nights. After a few paces they

found the passage was quite comfortably big, and then they saw a light, and in another moment they were

"O, Seumas Beg," she cried reproachfully, "how dirty you have let your feet get. Why don't you walk in the

grassy places? And you, Brigid, have a right to be ashamed of yourself to have your hands the way they are.

Every child knows that every grown female person in the world has authority to wash children and to give

them food; that is what grown people were made for, consequently Seumas and Brigid Beg submitted to the

scouring for which Caitilin made instant preparation. When they were cleaned she pointed to a couple of flat

stones against the wall of the cave and bade them sit down and be good, and this the children did, fixing their

eyes on Pan with the cheerful gravity and curiosity which goodnatured youngsters always give to a stranger.

Pan, who had been lying on a couch of dried grass, sat up and bent an equally cheerful regard on the children.

"They are the children of the Philosophers of Coilla Doraca; the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin

Woman of Inis Magrath are their mothers, and they are decent, poor children, God bless them."

The children questioned one another with their eyes to see which of them would reply, and then Seumas Beg

"My father sent me to see you, sir, and to say that you were not doing a good thing in keeping Caitilin Ni

"Your father came to see our father, and he said that he didn't know what had become of you at all, and that

maybe you were lying flat in a ditch with the black crows picking at your flesh."

"He doesn't mind us at all," broke in Seumas Beg, "and so we don't know whether we love him or not."

"I like you also, little children," said Pan. "Come over here and sit beside me, and we will talk."

So the two children went over to Pan and sat down one each side of him, and he put his arms about them.

"There is a cake of bread, a little goat's milk and some cheese," she replied, and she set about getting these

"Surely it is," replied Pan. "The cheese that is made from goat's milk is rather strong, and it is good to be

eaten by people who live in the open air, but not by those who live in houses, for such people do not have any

"So do I," said Pan. "All good people like eating. Every person who is hungry is a good person, and every

Caitilin having supplied the children with food, seated herself in front of them. "I don't think that is right,"

"If you had always been full you would like it even less," he replied, "because when you are hungry you are

"One has to be poor to be hungry," replied Caitilin. "My father is poor and gets no good of it but to work

"It is bad for a wise person to be poor," said Pan, "and it is bad for a fool to be rich. A rich fool will think of

nothing else at first but to find a dark house wherein to hide away, and there he will satisfy his hunger, and he

will continue to do that until his hunger is dead and he is no better than dead but a wise person who is rich

will carefully preserve his appetite. All people who have been rich for a long time, or who are rich from birth,

live a great deal outside of their houses, and so they are always hungry and healthy."

"Because he is always talking," replied Seumas. "Do you always listen, my dear?"

"It is clever of you also, my darling. Do you go to sleep when your mother talks?"

"Oh, no," she answered. "If we went to sleep then our mother would pinch us and say that we were a bad

"I think your mother is wise," said Pan. "What do you like best in the world, Seumas Beg?"

"I don't know what I like best either," said he. "What do you like best in the world, Shepherd Girl?"

"Why would you say that?" she replied. "One must find out all things, and when we find out a thing we know

"That is the beginning of knowledge," said Pan, "but it is not the beginning of wisdom."

"I do not know, I do not know," said he sharply. "I am tired of talking," and, so saying, he turned his face

Caitilin in great concern hurried the children to the door of the cave and kissed them goodbye.

WHEN THE CHILDREN reached home they told the Philosopher the result of their visit. He questioned

them minutely as to the appearance of Pan, how he had received them, and what he had said in defence of his

iniquities; but when he found that Pan had not returned any answer to his message he became very angry. He

tried to persuade his wife to undertake another embassy setting forth his abhorrence and defiance of the god,

but the Thin Woman replied sourly that she was a respectable married woman, that having been already

bereaved of her wisdom she had no desire to be further curtailed of her virtue, that a husband would go any

length to asperse his wife's reputation, and that although she was married to a fool her selfrespect had

survived even that calamity. The Philosopher pointed out that her age, her appearance, and her tongue were

sufficient guarantees of immunity against the machinations of either Pan or slander, and that he had no

personal feelings in the matter beyond a scientific and benevolent interest in the troubles of Meehawl

MacMurrachu; but this was discounted by his wife as the malignant and subtle tactics customary to all

Matters appeared to be thus at a deadlock so far as they were immediately concerned, and the Philosopher

decided that he would lay the case before Angus �g and implore his protection and assistance on behalf of

the Clann MacMurrachu. He therefore directed the Thin Woman to bake him two cakes of bread, and set

The Thin Woman baked the cakes, and put them in a bag, and early on the following morning the Philosopher

When he came to the edge of the pine wood he halted for a few moments, not being quite certain of his

bearings, and then went forward again in the direction of Gort na Cloca Mora. It came into his mind as he

crossed the Gort that he ought to call on the Leprecauns and have a talk with them, but a remembrance of

Meehawl MacMurrachu and the troubles under which he laboured (all directly to be traced to the Leprecauns)

hardened his heart against his neighbours, so that he passed by the yew tree without any stay. In a short time

he came to the rough, heatherclumped field wherein the children had found Pan, and as he was proceeding

up the hill, he saw Caitilin Ni Murrachu walking a little way in front with a small vessel in her hand. The

shegoat which she had just milked was bending again to the herbage, and as Caitilin trod lightly in front of

him the Philosopher closed his eyes in virtuous anger and opened them again in a not unnatural curiosity, for

the girl had no clothes on. He watched her going behind the brush and disappearing in the cleft of the rock,

and his anger, both with her and Pan, mastering him he forsook the path of prudence which soared to the

mountain top, and followed that leading to the cave. The sound of his feet brought Caitilin out hastily, but he

pushed her by with a harsh word. "Hussy," said he, and he went into the cave where Pan was.

"The human body is an aggregation of flesh and sinew, around a central bony structure. The use of clothing is

primarily to protect this organism from rain and cold, and it may not be regarded as the banner of morality

without danger to this fundamental premise. If a person does not desire to be so protected who will quarrel

with an honourable liberty? Decency is not clothing but Mind. Morality is behaviour. Virtue is thought

"I have often fancied," he continued to Pan, whom he was now confronting, "that the effect of clothing on

mind must be very considerable, and that it must have a modifying rather than an expanding effect, or, even,

an intensifying as against an exuberant effect. With clothing the whole environment is immediately affected.

The air, which is our proper medium, is only filtered to our bodies in an abated and niggardly fashion which

can scarcely be as beneficial as the generous and unintermitted elemental play. The question naturally arises

whether clothing is as unknown to nature as we have fancied? Viewed as a protective measure against

atmospheric rigour we find that many creatures grow, by their own central impulse, some kind of exterior

panoply which may be regarded as their proper clothing. Bears, cats, dogs, mice, sheep and beavers are

wrapped in fur, hair, fell, fleece or pelt, so these creatures cannot by any means be regarded as being naked.

Crabs, cockroaches, snails and cockles have ordered around them a crusty habiliment, wherein their original

nakedness is only to be discovered by force, and other creatures have similarly provided themselves with

some species of covering. Clothing, therefore, is not an art, but an instinct, and the fact that man is born

naked and does not grow his clothing upon himself from within but collects it from various distant and

haphazard sources is not any reason to call this necessity an instinct for decency. These, you will admit, are

weighty reflections and worthy of consideration before we proceed to the wide and thorny subject of moral

Pan, who had listened with great courtesy to these Remarks, here broke in on the Philosopher.

"If this be so," the other commented, "philosophy has up to the present been on the wrong track."

"That is so," said Pan. "Philosophy is an immoral practice because it suggests a standard of practice

impossible of being followed, and which, if it could be followed, would lead to the great sin of sterility."

"The idea of virtue," said the Philosopher, with some indignation, "has animated the noblest intellects of the

"It has not animated them," replied Pan; "it has hypnotised them so that they have conceived virtue as

repression and selfsacrifice as an honourable thing instead of the suicide which it is."

"Indeed," said the Philosopher; "this is very interesting, and if it is true the whole conduct of life will have to

"Life is already very simple," said Pan; "it is to be born and to die, and in the interval to eat and drink, to

"You leave out the new thing," said the Philosopher. "You leave out brains. I believe in mind above matter.

The Philosopher ran to the opening of the passage and thrust Caitilin aside. "Hussy," said he fiercely to her,

As he went up the rugged path he could hear the pipes of Pan, calling and sobbing and making high

"SHE DOES NOT deserve to be rescued," said the Philosopher, "but I will rescue her. Indeed," he thought a

moment later, "she does not want to be rescued, and, therefore, I will rescue her."

As he went down the road her shapely figure floated before his eyes as beautiful and simple as an old statue.

He wagged his head angrily at the apparition, but it would not go away. He tried to concentrate his mind on a

deep, philosophical maxim, but her disturbing image came between him and his thought, blotting out the

latter so completely that a moment after he had stated his aphorism he could not remember what it had been.

"Is a mind, then, so unstable," said he, "that a mere figure, an animated geometrical arrangement can shake it

The idea horrified him: he saw civilisation building its temples over a volcano. . .

"A puff," said he, "and it is gone. Beneath all is chaos and red anarchy, over all a devouring and insistent

appetite. Our eyes tell us what to think about, and our wisdom is no more than a catalogue of sensual

He would have been in a state of deep dejection were it not that through his perturbation there bubbled a

stream of such amazing wellbeing as he had not felt since childhood. Years had toppled from his shoulders.

He left one pound of solid matter behind at every stride. His very skin grew flexuous, and he found a pleasure

in taking long steps such as he could not have accounted for by thought. Indeed, thought was the one thing he

felt unequal to, and it was not precisely that he could not think but that he did not want to. All the importance

and authority of his mind seemed to have faded away, and the activity which had once belonged to that organ

was now transferred to his eyes. He saw, amazedly, the sunshine bathing the hills and the valleys. A bird in

the hedge held himbeak, head, eyes, legs, and the wings that tapered widely at angles to the wind. For the

first time in his life he really saw a bird, and one minute after it had flown away he could have reproduced its

strident note. With every step along the curving road the landscape was changing. He saw and noted it almost

in an ecstasy. A sharp hill jutted out into the road, it dissolved into a sloping meadow, rolled down into a

valley and then climbed easily and peacefully into a hill again. On this side a clump of trees nodded together

in the friendliest fashion. Yonder a solitary tree, wellgrown and clean, was contented with its own bright

company. A bush crouched tightly on the ground as though, at a word, it would scamper from its place and

chase rabbits across the sward with shouts and laughter. Great spaces of sunshine were everywhere, and

everywhere there were deep wells of shadow; and the one did not seem more beautiful than the other. That

sunshine! Oh, the glory of it, the goodness and bravery of it, how broadly and grandly it shone, without stint,

without care; he saw its measureless generosity and gloried in it as though himself had been the flinger of that

largesse. And was he not? Did the sunlight not stream from his head and life from his fingertips? Surely the

wellbeing that was in him did bubble out to an activity beyond the universe. Thought! Oh! the petty thing!

but motion! emotion! these were the realities. To feel, to do, to stride forward in elation chanting a paean of

After a time he felt hungry, and thrusting his hand into his wallet he broke off a piece of one of his cakes and

looked about for a place where he might happily eat it. By the side of the road there was a well; just a little

corner filled with water. Over it was a rough stone coping, and around, hugging it on three sides almost from

sight, were thick, quiet bushes. He would not have noticed the well at all but for a thin stream, the breadth of

two hands, which tiptoed away from it through a field. By this well he sat down and scooped the water in his

He was eating his cake when a sound touched his ear from some distance, and shortly a woman came down

She was a big, comely woman, and she walked as one who had no misfortunes and no misgivings. When she

saw the Philosopher sitting by the well she halted a moment in surprise and then came forward with a

"Good morrow to you too, ma'am," replied the Philosopher. "Sit down beside me here and eat some of my

The Philosopher cracked a large piece off his cake and gave it to her and she ate some.

"Well, now!" said she, looking at him. "Do you know, you don't look a bit like a married man."

"Not a bit. A married man looks comfortable and settled: he looks finished, if you understand me, and a

bachelor looks unsettled and funny, and he always wants to be running round seeing things. I'd know a

"Easily," said she, with a nod. "It's the way they look at a woman. A married man looks at you quietly as if he

knew all about you. There isn't any strangeness about him with a woman at all; but a bachelor man looks at

you very sharp and looks away and then looks back again, the way you'd know he was thinking about you

and didn't know what you were thinking about him; and so they are always strange, and that's why women

"Why!" said the Philosopher, astonished, "do women like bachelors better than married men?"

"Of course they do," she replied heartily. "They wouldn't look at the side of the road a married man was on if

"And the queer thing is," she continued, "that when I came up the road and saw you I said to myself 'it's a

"Ten years married and only one child," said she. "Why, man dear, you're not a married man. What were you

doing at all, at all! I wouldn't like to be telling you the children I have living and dead. But what I say is that

married or not you're a bachelor man. I knew it the minute I looked at you. What sort of a woman is herself?"

"And," the Philosopher continued, "the reason I talked to you is because you are a fat woman."

"I think," he continued, looking at her admiringly, "that women ought to be fat."

"Tell you the truth," said she eagerly, "I think that myself. I never met a thin woman but she was a sour one,

and I never met a fat man but he was a fool. Fat women and thin men; it's nature," said she.

The Philosopher drew back abashed. "Forgive me," he began, "if I have alarmed your virtue"

"It's the married man's word," said she, rising hastily: "now I know you; but there's a lot of the bachelor in

you all the same, God help you! I'm going home." And, so saying, she dipped her vessel in the well and

"Maybe," said the Philosopher, "I ought to wait until your husband comes home and ask his forgiveness for

"What do you say?" said she. "Follow me if you dare and I'll set the dog on you; I will so," and she strode

The day was now well advanced, and as he trudged forward the happy quietude of his surroundings stole into

his heart again and so toned down his recollection of the fat woman that in a little time she was no more than

a pleasant and curious memory. His mind was exercised superficially, not in thinking, but in wondering how

it was he had come to kiss a strange woman. He said to himself that such conduct was not right; but this

statement was no more than the automatic working of a mind long exercised in the distinctions of right and

wrong, for, almost in the same breath, he assured himself that what he had done did not matter in the least.

His opinions were undergoing a curious change. Right and wrong were meeting and blending together so

closely that it became difficult to dissever them, and the obloquy attaching to the one seemed out of

proportion altogether to its importance, while the other by no means justified the eulogy wherewith it was

connected. Was there any immediate or even distant, effect on life caused by evil which was not instantly

swung into equipoise by goodness? But these slender reflections troubled him only for a little time. He had

little desire for any introspective quarryings. To feel so well was sufficient in itself. Why should thought be

so apparent to us, so insistent? We do not know we have digestive or circulatory organs until these go out of

order, and then the knowledge torments us. Should not the labours of a healthy brain be equally subterranean

and equally competent? Why have we to think aloud and travel laboriously from syllogism to ergo, chary of

our conclusions and distrustful of our premises? Thought, as we know it, is a disease and no more. The

healthy mentality should register its convictions and not its labours. Our ears should not hear the clamour of

its doubts nor be forced to listen to the pro and con wherewith we are eternally badgered and perplexed.

The road was winding like a ribbon in and out of the mountains. On either side there were hedges and

bushes,little, stiff trees which held their foliage in their hands and dared the winds snatch a leaf from that

grip. The hills were swelling and sinking, folding and soaring on every view. Now the silence was startled by

the falling tinkle of a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or a goat's call trembled from

nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small winged life.

Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient, stamping vigorously as he trod, almost

snorting like a bull in the pride of successful energy. Coming down the slope he braced back and let his legs

loose to do as they pleased. Didn't they know their businessGood luck to them, and away!

As he walked along he saw an old woman hobbling in front of him. She was leaning on a stick and her hand

was red and swollen with rheumatism. She hobbled by reason of the fact that there were stones in her

shapeless boots. She was draped in the sorriest miscellaneous rags that could be imagined, and these were

knotted together so intricately that her clothing, having once been attached to her body, could never again be

detached from it. As she walked she was mumbling and grumbling to herself, so that her mouth moved round

But she did not hear him: she seemed to be listening to the pain which the stones in her boots gave her.

This time she heard him and replied, turning her old, bleared eyes slowly in his direction

"Good morrow to yourself, sir," said she, and the Philosopher thought her old face was a very kindly one.

"It's my boots, sir," she replied. "Full of stones they are, the way I can hardly walk at all, God help me!"

"Ah, sure, I couldn't be bothered, sir, for there are so many holes in the boots that more would get in before I

could take two steps, and an old woman can't be always fidgeting, God help her!"

There was a little house on one side of the road, and when the old woman saw this place she brightened up a

"I do not," she replied, "but it's a real nice house with clean windows and a shiny knocker on the door, and

smoke in the chimneyI wonder would herself give me a cup of tea now if I asked herA poor old woman

"Maybe I will, too," said she, and she sat down by the road just outside the house and the Philosopher also sat

A little puppy dog came from behind the house and approached them cautiously. Its intentions were friendly

but it had already found that amicable advances are sometimes indifferently received, for, as it drew near, it

wagged its dubious tail and rolled humbly on the ground. But very soon the dog discovered that here there

was no evil, for it trotted over to the old woman, and without any more preparation jumped into her lap.

"Ah, you thing you!" said she, and she gave it her finger to bite. The delighted puppy chewed her bony

finger, and then instituted a mimic warfare against a piece of rag that fluttered from her breast, barking and

The door of the house opposite opened quickly, and a woman with a frostbitten face came out.

"Put down that dog," said the woman, "and go about your businessthe likes of you ought to be arrested."

A man in shirt sleeves appeared behind her, and at him the old woman grinned even more humbly.

"Let me sit here for a while and play with the little dog, sir," said she; "sure the roads do be lonesome"

The man stalked close and grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck. It hung between his finger and thumb

with its tail tucked between its legs and its eyes screwed round on one side in amazement.

So the old woman rose painfully to her feet again, and as she went hobbling along the dusty road she began to

The Philosopher also arose; he was very indignant but did not know what to do. A singular lassitude also

prevented him from interfering. As they paced along his companion began mumbling, more to herself than to

"Ah, God be with me," said she, "an old woman on a stick, that hasn't a place in the wide world to go to or a

neighbour itself. . . . I wish I could get a cup of tea, so I do. I wish to God I could get a cup of tea. . . . Me

sitting down in my own little house, with the white tablecloth on the table, and the butter in the dish, and the

strong, red tea in the teacup; and me pouring cream into it, and, maybe, telling the children not to be wasting

the sugar, the things! and himself saying he'd got to mow the big field today, or that the red cow was going

to calve, the poor thing! and that if the boys went to school, who was going to weed the turnipsand me

sitting drinking my strong cup of tea, and telling him where that old trapesing hen was laying. . . . Ah, God be

with me! an old creature hobbling along the roads on a stick. I wish I was a young girl again, so I do, and

himself coming courting me, and him saying that I was a real nice little girl surely, and that nothing would

make him happy or easy at all but me to be loving him.Ah, the kind man that he was, to be sure, the kind,

decent man. . . . And Sorca Reilly to be trying to get him from me, and Kate Finnegan with her bold eyes

looking after him in the Chapel; and him to be saying that along with me they were only a pair of old nanny

goats. . . . And then me to be getting married and going home to my own little house with my manah, God

be with me! and him kissing me, and laughing, and frightening me with his goingson. Ah, the kind man,

with his soft eyes, and his nice voice, and his jokes and laughing, and him thinking the world and all of

meay, indeed. . . . And the neighbours to be coming in and sitting round the fire in the night time, putting

the world through each other, and talking about France and Russia and them other queer places, and him

holding up the discourse like a learned man, and them all listening to him and nodding their heads at each

other, and wondering at his education and all: or, maybe, the neighbours to be singing, or him making me

sing the Coulin, and him to be proud of me . . . and then him to be killed on me with a cold on his chest. . . .

Ah, then, God be with me, a lone, old creature on a stick, and the sun shining into her eyes and she thirsty I

wish I had a cup of tea, so I do. I wish to God I had a cup of tea and a bit of meat . . . or, maybe, an egg. A

nice fresh egg laid by the speckeldy hen that used to be giving me all the trouble, the thing! . . . Sixteen hens I

had, and they were the ones for laying, surely. . . . It's the queer world, so it is, the queer worldand the

things that do happen for no reason at all. . . . Ah, God be with me! I wish there weren't stones in my boots,

so I do, and I wish to God I had a cup of tea and a fresh egg. Ah, glory be, my old legs are getting tireder

every day, so they are. Wisha, one timewhen himself was in itI could go about the house all day long,

cleaning the place, and feeding the pigs, and the hens and all, and then dance half the night, so I could: and

The old woman turned up a little rambling road and went on still talking to herself, and the Philosopher

watched her go up that road for a long time. He was very glad she had gone away, and as he tramped forward

he banished her sad image so that in a little time he was happy again. The sun was still shining, the birds were

A small, narrow road cut at right angles into his path, and as he approached this he heard the bustle and

movement of a host, the trample of feet, the rolling and creaking of wheels, and the long unwearied drone of

voices. In a few minutes he came abreast of this small road, and saw an ass and cart piled with pots and pans,

and walking beside this there were two men and a woman. The men and the woman were talking together

loudly, even fiercely, and the ass was drawing his cart along the road without requiring assistance or

direction. While there was a road he walked on it: when he might come to a cross road he would turn to the

right: when a man said "whoh" he would stop: when he said "hike" he would go backwards, and when he said

"yep" he would go on again. That was life, and if one questioned it, one was hit with a stick, or a boot, or a

lump of rock: if one continued walking nothing happened, and that was happiness.

The ass, however, did not say a thing. As the word "whoh" had not entered into the conversation he knew it

was none of his business, and so he turned to the right on the new path and continued his journey.

"Well," said he, "that's the queerest story I ever heard. Listen here," he called to the others, "this man is

There was silence for a few minutes, and they all stepped onwards behind the ass and cart.

"How do you know where to look for himself?" said the first man again: "maybe you got the place where he

"Or did you find the staff of Amergin or of Ossian in a bog and it written from the top to the bottom with

"No," said the Philosopher, "it isn't that way you'd go visiting a god. What you do is, you go out from your

house and walk straight away in any direction with your shadow behind you so long as it is towards a

mountain, for the gods will not stay in a valley or a level plain, but only in high places; and then, if the god

wants you to see him, you will go to his rath as direct as if you knew where it was, for he will be leading you

with an airy thread reaching from his own place to wherever you are, and if he doesn't want to see you, you

will never find out where he is, not if you were to walk for a year or twenty years."

"Maybe, Mister Honey," said the woman, "you are a holy sort of a man that a god would like well."

"Why would I be that?" said the Philosopher. "The gods like a man whether he's holy or not if he's only

"Ah, well, there's plenty of that sort," said the first man. "What do you happen to have in your bag, stranger?"

"Nothing," replied the Philosopher, "but a cake and a half that was baked for my journey."

"Give me a bit of your cake, Mister Honey," said the woman. "I like to have a taste of everybody's cake."

"You may as well give us all a bit while you are about it," said the second man. "That woman hasn't got all

"There's a sup of water up yonder," said the first man, "and it will do to moisten the cakeWhoh, you devil,"

There was a thin fringe of grass along the road near a wall, and towards this the ass began to edge very

"Hike, you beast, you," shouted the man, and the ass at once hiked, but he did it in a way that brought him

close to the grass. The first man took a tin can out of the cart and climbed over the little wall for water.

Before he went he gave the ass three kicks on the nose, but the ass did not say a word, he only hiked still

more which brought him directly on to the grass, and when the man climbed over the wall the ass

commenced to crop the grass. There was a spider sitting on a hot stone in the grass. He had a small body and

"Ay does there," said the spider; "you and your like that are always walking on me, or lying down on me, or

"She'd eat me," said the spider, "and, anyhow, the competition on the wall is dreadful, and the flies are getting

"You like your wife for the first while," said the spider, "and after that you hate her."

"It's bachelor's talk," said the spider; "all the same, we can't keep away from them," and so saying he began to

move all his legs at once in the direction of the wall. "You can only die once," said he.

"She'd be doing something else then," replied the spider, and he climbed up the wall.

The first man came back with the can of water and they sat down on the grass and ate the cake and drank the

The other two men sat upright and looked at each other and then with equal intentness they looked at the

"We were having a great argument along the road, and if we were to be talking from now to the dav of doom

"It must have been a great argument. Was it about predestination or where consciousness comes from?"

"Isn't it," said the woman. "For seven days and six nights we didn't talk about anything else, and that's a great

"It's this," she replied, "that I can't make up my mind which of the men I'll take, for I like one as well as the

"Because, Mister Honey, when a woman has two men to choose from she doesn't know what to do, for two

men always become like brothers so that you wouldn't know which of them was which: there isn't any more

difference between two men than there is between a couple of hares. But when there's three men to choose

from, there's no trouble at all; and so I say that it's yourself I'll marry this night and no one elseand let you

two men be sitting quiet in your places, for I'm telling you what I'll do and that's the end of it."

"I'll give you my word," said the first man, "that I'm just as glad as you are to have it over and done with."

"Moidered I was," said the second man, "with the whole argument, and the this and that of it, and you not

able to say a word butmaybe I will and maybe I won't, and this is true and that is true, and why not to me

The first man looked fiercely at the Philosopher, and then motioned to his companion.

"Keep your hands to yourself," said she, "or it'll be the worse for you. I'm well able to take care of my own

At that moment the Philosopher's cake lost all its savour, and he packed the remnant into his wallet. They all

sat silently looking at their feet and thinking each one according to his nature. The Philosopher's mind, which

for the past day had been in eclipse, stirred faintly to meet these new circumstances, but without much result.

There was a flutter at his heart which was terrifying, but not unpleasant. Quickening through his

apprehension was an expectancy which stirred his pulses into speed. So rapidly did his blood flow, so quickly

were an hundred impressions visualized and recorded, so violent was the surface movement of his brain that

he did not realize he was unable to think and that he was only seeing and feeling.

"The night will be coming on soon," said he, "and we had better be walking on if we want to get a good place

to sleep. Yep, you devil," he roared at the ass, and the ass began to move almost before he lifted his head

from the grass. The two men walked one on either side of the cart, and the woman and the Philosopher

"If you were feeling tired, or anything like that, Mister Honey," said the woman, "you could climb up into the

little cart, and nobody would say a word to you, for I can see that you are not used to travelling."

"I am not indeed, ma'am," he replied; "this is the first time I ever came on a journey, and if it wasn't for

"Put Angus �g out of your head, my dear," she replied, "for what would the likes of you and me be saying to

a god. He might put a curse on us would sink us into the ground or burn us up like a grip of straw. Be

contented now, I'm saying, for if there is a woman in the world who knows all things I am that woman

myself, and if you tell your trouble to me I'll tell you the thing to do just as good as Angus himself, and better

"That is very interesting," said the Philosopher. "What kind of things do you know best?"

"If you were to ask one of them two men walking beside the ass they'd tell you plenty of things they saw me

do when they could do nothing themselves. When there wasn't a road to take anywhere I showed them a road,

and when there wasn't a bit of food in the world I gave them food, and when they were bet to the last I put

"Why wouldn't I?" said she. "Isn't it wisdom to go through the world without fear and not to be hungry in a

"I couldn't rightly say now," he replied, "but I think it was not to mind about the world, and not to care

whether you were hungry or not, and not to live in the world at all but only in your own head, for the world is

a tyrannous place. You have to raise yourself above things instead of letting things raise themselves above

you. We must not be slaves to each other, and we must not be slaves to our necessities either. That is the

problem of existence. There is no dignity in life at all if hunger can shout 'stop' at every turn of the road and

the day's journey is measured by the distance between one sleep and the next sleep. Life is all slavery, and

Nature is driving us with the whips of appetite and weariness; but when a slave rebels he ceases to be a slave,

and when we are too hungry to live we can die and have our laugh. I believe that Nature is just as alive as we

are, and that she is as much frightened of us as we are of her, and, mind you this, mankind has declared war

against Nature and we will win. She does not understand yet that her geologic periods won't do any longer,

and that while she is pattering along the line of least resistance we are going to travel fast and far until we

find her, and then, being a female, she is bound to give in when she is challenged."

"It's good talk," said the woman, "but it's foolishness. Women never give in unless they get what they want,

and where's the harm to them then? You have to live in the world, my dear, whether you like it or not, and,

believe me now, that there isn't any wisdom but to keep clear of the hunger, for if that gets near enough it will

make a hare of you. Sure, listen to reason now like a good man. What is Nature at all but a word that learned

men have made to talk about. There's clay and gods and men, and they are good friends enough."

The sun had long since gone down, and the grey evening was bowing over the land, hiding the mountain

peaks, and putting a shadow round the scattered bushes and the wide clumps of heather.

"I know a place up here where we can stop for the night," said she, "and there's a little shebeen round the

At the word "whoh" the ass stopped and one of the men took the harness off him. When he was unyoked the

man gave him two kicks: "Be off with you, you devil, and see if you can get anything to eat," he roared. The

ass trotted a few paces off and searched about until he found some grass. He ate this, and when he had eaten

as much as he wanted he returned and lay down under a wall. He lay for a long time looking in the one

direction, and at last he put his head down and went to sleep. While he was sleeping he kept one ear up and

the other ear down for about twenty minutes, and then he put the first ear down and the other one up, and he

kept on doing this all the night. If he had anything to lose you wouldn't mind him setting up sentries, but he

hadn't a thing in the world except his skin and his bones, and no one would be bothered stealing them.

One of the men took a long bottle out of the cart and walked up the road with it. The other man lifted out a tin

bucket which was punched all over with jagged holes. Then he took out some sods of turf and lumps of wood

and he put these in the bucket, and in a few minutes he had a very nice fire lit. A pot of water was put on to

boil, and the woman cut up a great lump of bacon which she put into the pot. She had eight eggs in a place in

the cart, and a flat loaf of bread, and some cold boiled potatoes, and she spread her apron on the ground and

The other man came down the road again with his big bottle filled with porter, and he put this in a safe place.

Then they emptied everything out of the cart and hoisted it over the little wall. They turned the cart on one

side and pulled it near to the fire, and they all sat inside the cart and ate their supper. When supper was done

they lit their pipes, and the woman lit a pipe also. The bottle of porter was brought forward, and they took

There was no moon that night, and no stars, so that just beyond the fire there was a thick darkness which one

would not like to look at, it was so cold and empty. While talking they all kept their eyes fixed on the red fire,

or watched the smoke from their pipes drifting and curling away against the blackness, and disappearing as

"I wonder," said the first man, "what it was gave you the idea of marrying this man instead of myself or my

"Aye, indeed," said the second man; "he's as grey as a badger, and there's no flesh on his bones."

"You have a right to ask that," said she, "and I'll tell you why I didn't marry either of you. You are only a pair

of tinkers going from one place to another, and not knowing anything at all of fine things; but himself was

walking along the road looking for strange, high adventures, and it's a man like that a woman would be

wishing to marry if he was twice as old as he is. When did either of you go out in the daylight looking for a

"What I'm thinking," said the second man, "is that if you leave the gods alone they'll leave you alone. It's no

trouble to them to do whatever is right themselves, and what call would men like us have to go mixing or

"I thought all along that you were a timid man," said she, "and now I know it." She turned again to the

Philosopher"Take off your boots, Mister Honey, the way you'll rest easy, and I'll be making down a soft

In order to take off his boots the Philosopher had to stand up, for in the cart they were too cramped for

freedom. He moved backwards a space from the fire and took off his boots. He could see the woman

stretching sacks and clothes inside the cart, and the two men smoking quietly and handing the big bottle from

one to the other. Then in his stockinged feet he stepped a little farther from the fire, and, after another look,

he turned and walked quietly away into the blackness. In a few minutes he heard a shout from behind him,

and then a number of shouts and then these died away into a plaintive murmur of voices, and next he was

He put on his boots and walked onwards. He had no idea where the road lay, and every moment he stumbled

into a patch of heather or prickly furze. The ground was very uneven with unexpected mounds and deep

hollows: here and there were watersoaked, soggy places, and into these cold ruins he sank ankle deep. There

was no longer an earth or a sky, but only a black void and a thin wind and a fierce silence which seemed to

listen to him as he went. Out of that silence a thundering laugh might boom at an instant and stop again while

The hill began to grow more steep and rocks were lying everywhere in his path. He could not see an inch in

front, and so he went with his hands outstretched like a blind man who stumbles painfully along. After a

time he was nearly worn out with cold and weariness, but he dared not sit down anywhere; the darkness was

so intense that it frightened him, and the overwhelming, crafty silence frightened him also.

At last, and at a great distance, he saw a flickering, waving light, and he went towards this through drifts of

heather, and over piled rocks and sodden bogland. When he came to the light he saw it was a torch of thick

branches, the flame whereof blew hither and thither on the wind. The torch was fastened against a great cliff

of granite by an iron band. At one side there was a dark opening in the rock, so he said: "I will go in there and

sleep until the morning comes," and he went in. At a very short distance the cleft turned again to the right,

and here there was another torch fixed. When he turned this corner he stood for an instant in speechless

CAITILIN NI MURRACHU was sitting alone in the little cave behind Gort na Cloca Mora. Her companion

had gone out as was his custom to walk in the sunny morning and to sound his pipe in desolate, green spaces

whence, perhaps, the wanderer of his desire might hear the guiding sweetness. As she sat she was thinking.

The last few days had awakened her body, and had also awakened her mind, for with the one awakening

comes the other. The despondency which had touched her previously when tending her father's cattle came to

her again, but recognizably now. She knew the thing which the wind had whispered in the sloping field and

for which she had no nameit was Happiness. Faintly she shadowed it forth, but yet she could not see it. It

was only a pearlpale wraith, almost formless, too tenuous to be touched by her hands, and too aloof to be

spoken to. Pan had told her that he was the giver of happiness, but he had given her only unrest and fever and

a longing which could not be satisfied. Again there was a want, and she could not formulate, or even realize it

with any closeness. Her newborn Thought had promised everything, even as Pan, and it had givenshe

could not say that it had given her nothing or anything. Its limits were too quickly divinable. She had found

the Tree of Knowledge, but about on every side a great wall soared blackly enclosing her in from the Tree of

Lifea wall which her thought was unable to surmount even while instinct urged that it must topple before

her advance; but instinct may not advance when thought has schooled it in the science of unbelief; and this

wall will not be conquered until Thought and Instinct are wed, and the first son of that bridal will be called

So, after the quiet weariness of ignorance, the unquiet weariness of thought had fallen upon her. That travail

of mind which, through countless generations, has throed to the birth of an ecstasy, the prophecy which

humanity has sworn must be fulfilled, seeing through whatever mists and doubtings the vision of a gaiety

wherein the innocence of the morning will not any longer be strange to our maturity.

While she was so thinking Pan returned, a little disheartened that he had found no person to listen to his

pipings. He had been seated but a little time when suddenly, from without, a chorus of birds burst into joyous

singing. Limpid and liquid cadenzas, mellow flutings, and the sweet treble of infancy met and danced and

piped in the airy soundings. A round, soft tenderness of song rose and fell, broadened and soared, and then

the high flight was snatched, eddied a moment, and was borne away to a more slender and wonderful

loftiness, until, from afar, that thrilling song turned on the very apex of sweetness, dipped steeply and flashed

its joyous return to the exultations of its mates below, rolling an ecstasy of song which for one moment

gladdened the whole world and the sad people who moved thereon; then the singing ceased as suddenly as it

Caitilin sprang from her seat affrighted, and Pan also made a half movement towards rising, but instantly

The god was slender and as swift as a wind. His hair swung about his face like golden blossoms. His eyes

were mild and dancing and his lips smiled with quiet sweetness. About his head there flew perpetually a ring

of singing birds, and when he spoke his voice came sweetly from a centre of sweetness.

"I cannot be known until I make myself known," he replied. "I am called Infinite Joy, O daughter of

"Singer of the Vine," said he, "I know your namesthey are Desire and Fever and Lust and Death. Why

Angus �g lifted his hand and from without there came again the triumphant music of the birds.

"It is a sign," said he, "the voice of Dana speaking in the air," and, saying so, he made obeisance to the great

Pan lifted his hand, and from afar there came the lowing of the cattle and the thin voices of the goats.

"It is a sign," said he, "the voice of Demeter speaking from the earth," and he also bowed deeply to the

Again Angus �g lifted his hand, and in it there appeared a spear, bright and very terrible.

But Pan only said, "Can a spear divine the Eternal Will?" and Angus �g put his weapon aside, and he said:

"The girl will choose between us, for the Divine Mood shines in the heart of man."

Then Caitilin Ni Murrachu came forward and sat between the gods, but Pan stretched out his hand and drew

her to him, so that she sat resting against his shoulder and his arm was about her body.

"Shepherd Girl," said Pan, pressing her with his arm, "you will judge between us. Do you know what is the

"I have heard," the girl replied, "two things called the greatest things. You," she continued to Pan, "said it was

Hunger, and long ago my father said that Commonsense was the greatest thing in the world."

"I have not told you," said Angus �g, "what I consider is the greatest thing in the world."

"The greatest thing in the world," said Angus �g, "is the Divine Imagination."

"The daughter of Murrachu," continued Angus �g, "has told us what you think and what her father thinks,

but she has not told us what she thinks herself. Tell us, Caitilin Ni Murrachu, what you think is the greatest

Hearing this they sat in silence for a little time, and then Angus �g spoke again

"The Divine Imagination may only be known through the thoughts of His creatures. A man has said

Commonsense and a woman has said Happiness are the greatest things in the world. These things are male

and female, for Commonsense is Thought and Happiness is Emotion, and until they embrace in Love the will

of Immensity cannot be fruitful. For, behold, there has been no marriage of humanity since time began. Men

have but coupled with their own shadows. The desire that sprang from their heads they pursued, and no man

has yet known the love of a woman. And women have mated with the shadows of their own hearts, thinking

fondly that the arms of men were about them. I saw my son dancing with an Idea, and I said to him, 'With

what do you dance, my son?' and he replied, 'I make merry with the wife of my affection,' and truly she was

shaped as a woman is shaped, but it was an Idea he danced with and not a woman. And presently he went

away to his labours, and then his Idea arose and her humanity came upon her so that she was clothed with

beauty and terror, and she went apart and danced with the servant of my son, and there was great joy of that

dancingfor a person in the wrong place is an Idea and not a person. Man is Thought and woman is

Intuition, and they have never mated. There is a gulf between them and it is called Fear, and what they fear is,

that their strengths shall be taken from them and they may no longer be tyrants. The Eternal has made love

blind, for it is not by science, but by intuition alone, that he may come to his beloved; but desire, which is

science, has many eyes and sees so vastly that he passes his love in the press, saying there is no love, and he

propagates miserably on his own delusions. The fingertips are guided by God, but the devil looks through

the eyes of all creatures so that they may wander in the errors of reason and justify themselves of their

wanderings. The desire of a man shall be Beauty, but he has fashioned a slave in his mind and called it

Virtue. The desire of a woman shall be Wisdom, but she has formed a beast in her blood and called it

Courage: but the real virtue is courage, and the real courage is liberty, and the real liberty is wisdom, and

Wisdom is the son of Thought and Intuition; and his names also are Innocence and Adoration and

When Angus �g had said these words he ceased, and for a time there was silence in the little cave. Caitilin

had covered her face with her hands and would not look at him, but Pan drew the girl closer to his side and

"Daughter of Murrachu," said Angus �g, "will you come away with me from this place?"

Caitilin then looked at the god in great distress. "I do not know what to do," said she. "Why do you both want

"I want you," said Angus �g, "because the world has forgotten me. In all my nation there is no remembrance

of me. I, wandering on the hills of my country, am lonely indeed. I am the desolate god forbidden to utter my

happy laughter. I hide the silver of my speech and the gold of my merriment. I live in the holes of the rocks

and the dark caves of the sea. I weep in the morning because I may not laugh, and in the evening I go abroad

and am not happy. Where I have kissed a bird has flown; where I have trod a flower has sprung. But Thought

has snared my birds in his nets and sold them in the marketplaces. Who will deliver me from Thought, from

the base holiness of Intellect, the maker of chains and traps? Who will save me from the holy impurity of

Emotion, whose daughters are Envy and Jealousy and Hatred, who plucks my flowers to ornament her lusts

and my little leaves to shrivel on the breasts of infamy? Lo, I am sealed in the caves of nonentity until the

head and the heart shall come together in fruitfulness, until Thought has wept for Love, and Emotion has

purified herself to meet her lover. Tirnan�g is the heart of a man and the head of a woman. Widely they

are separated. Selfcentred they stand, and between them the seas of space are flooding desolately. No voice

can shout across those shores. No eye can bridge them, nor any desire bring them together until the blind god

shall find them on the wavering streamnot as an arrow searches straightly from a bow, but gently,

imperceptibly as a feather on the wind reaches the ground on a hundred starts; not with the compass and the

chart, but by the breath of the Almighty which blows from all quarters without care and without ceasing.

Night and day it urges from the outside to the inside. It gathers ever to the centre. From the far without to the

deep within, trembling from the body to the soul until the head of a woman and the heart of a man are filled

with the Divine Imagination. Hymen, Hymenaea! I sing to the ears that are stopped, the eyes that are sealed,

and the minds that do not labour. Sweetly I sing on the hillside. The blind shall look within and not without;

the deaf shall hearken to the murmur of their own veins, and be enchanted with the wisdom of sweetness; the

thoughtless shall think without effort as the lightning flashes, that the hand of Innocence may reach to the

stars, that the feet of Adoration may dance to the Father of Joy, and the laugh of Happiness be answered by

Thus Angus �g sang in the cave, and ere he had ceased Caitilin Ni Murrachu withdrew herself from the arms

of her desires. But so strong was the hold of Pan upon her that when she was free her body bore the marks of

Then Pan arose in silence, taking his double reed in his hand, and the girl wept, beseeching him to stay to be

her brother and the brother of her beloved, but Pan smiled and said: "Your beloved is my father and my son.

He is yesterday and tomorrow. He is the nether and the upper millstone, and I am crushed between until I

kneel again before the throne from whence I came," and, saying so, he embraced Angus �g most tenderly

and went his way to the quiet fields, and across the slopes of the mountains, and beyond the blue distances of

And in a little time Caitilin Ni Murrachu went with her companion across the brow of the hill, and she did not

go with him because she had understood his words, nor because he was naked and unashamed, but only

because his need of her was very great, and, therefore, she loved him, and stayed his feet in the way, and was

WHICH IS, the Earth or the creatures that move upon it, the more important? This is a question prompted

solely by intellectual arrogance, for in life there is no greater and no less. The thing that is has justified its

own importance by mere existence, for that is the great and equal achievement. If life were arranged for us

from without such a question of supremacy would assume importance, but life is always from within, and is

modified or extended by our own appetites, aspirations, and central activities. From without we get pollen

and the refreshment of space and quietudeit is sufficient. We might ask, is the Earth anything more than an

extension of our human consciousness, or are we, moving creatures, only projections of the Earth's antennae?

But these matters have no value save as a field wherein Thought, like a wise lamb, may frolic merrily. And

all would be very well if Thought would but continue to frolic, instead of setting up first as locum tenens for

Intuition and sticking to the job, and afterwards as the counsel and critic of Omnipotence. Everything has two

names, and everything is twofold. The name of male Thought as it faces the world is Philosophy, but the

name it bears in Tirnan�g is Delusion. Female Thought is called Socialism on earth, but in Eternity it is

known as Illusion; and this is so because there has been no matrimony of minds, but only an hermaphroditic

propagation of automatic ideas, which in their due rotation assume dominance and reign severely. To the

world this system of thought, because it is consecutive, is known as Logic, but Eternity has written it down in

the Book of Errors as Mechanism: for life may not be consecutive, but explosive and variable, else it is a

One of the great troubles of life is that Reason has taken charge of the administration of Justice, and by mere

identification it has achieved the crown and sceptre of its master. But the imperceptible usurpation was

recorded, and discriminating minds understand the chasm which still divides the pretender Law from the

exiled King. In a like manner, and with feigned humility, the Cold Demon advanced to serve Religion, and by

guile and violence usurped her throne; but the pure in heart still fly from the spectre Theology to dance in

ecstasy before the starry and eternal goddess. Statecraft, also, that tender Shepherd of the Flocks, has been

despoiled of his crook and bell, and wanders in unknown desolation while, beneath the banner of Politics,

Justice is the maintaining of equilibrium. The blood of Cain must cry, not from the lips of the Avenger, but

from the aggrieved Earth herself who demands that atonement shall be made for a disturbance of her

consciousness. All justice is, therefore, readjustment. A thwarted consciousness has every right to clamour

for assistance, but not for punishment. This latter can only be sought by timorous and egotistic Intellect,

which sees the Earth from which it has emerged and into which it must return again in its own despite, and

so, being selfcentred and envious and a renegade from life, Reason is more cruelly unjust, and more

timorous than any other manifestation of the divinely erratic energyerratic, because, as has been said, "the

crooked roads are the roads of genius." Nature grants to all her creatures an unrestricted liberty, quickened by

competitive appetite, to succeed or to fail; save only to Reason, her Demon of Order, which can do neither,

and whose wings she has clipped for some reason with which I am not yet acquainted. It may be that an

unrestricted mentality would endanger her own intuitive perceptions by shackling all her other organs of

It will, therefore, be understood that when the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora acted in the manner about

to be recorded, they were not prompted by any lewd passion for revenge, but were merely striving to

reconstruct a rhythm which was their very existence, and which must have been of direct importance to the

Earth. Revenge is the vilest passion known to life. It has made Law possible, and by doing so it gave to

Intellect the first grip at that universal dominion which is its ambition. A Leprecaun is of more value to the

Earth than is a Prime Minister or a stockbroker, because a Leprecaun dances and makes merry, while a Prime

Minister knows nothing of these natural virtuesconsequently, an injury done to a Leprecaun afflicts the

Earth with misery, and justice is, for these reasons, an imperative and momentous necessity.

A community of Leprecauns without a crock of gold is a blighted and merriless community, and they are

certainly justified in seeking sympathy and assistance for the recovery of so essential a treasure. But the steps

whereby the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora sought to regain their property must for ever brand their

memory with a certain odium. It should be remembered in their favour that they were cunningly and cruelly

encompassed. Not only was their gold stolen, but it was buried in such a position as placed it under the

protection of their own communal honour, and the household of their enemy was secured against their active

and righteous malice, because the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath belonged to the most powerful Shee of

Ireland. It is in circumstances such as these that dangerous alliances are made, and, for the first time in

They were loath to do it, and justice must record the fact. They were angry when they did it, and anger is both

mental and intuitive blindness. It is not the beneficent blindness which prevents one from seeing without, but

it is that desperate darkness which cloaks the within, and hides the heart and the brain from each other's

husbandry and wifely recognition. But even those mitigating circumstances cannot justify the course they

adopted, and the wider idea must be sought for, that out of evil good must ultimately come, or else evil is

vitiated beyond even the redemption of usage. When they were able to realize of what they had been guilty,

they were very sorry indeed, and endeavoured to publish their repentance in many ways; but, lacking

atonement, repentance is only a postmortem virtue which is good for nothing but burial.

When the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora found they were unable to regain their crock of gold by any

means they laid an anonymous information at the nearest Police Station showing that two dead bodies would

be found under the hearthstone in the hut of Coille Doraca, and the inference to be drawn from their crafty

missive was that these bodies had been murdered by the Philosopher for reasons very discreditable to him.

The Philosopher had been scarcely more than three hours on his journey to Angus �g when four policemen

approached the little house from as many different directions, and without any trouble they effected an

entrance. The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath and the two children heard from afar their badly muffled

advance, and on discovering the character of their visitors they concealed themselves among the thickly

clustering trees. Shortly after the men had entered the hut loud and sustained noises began to issue therefrom,

and in about twenty minutes the invaders emerged again bearing the bodies of the Grey Woman of Dun

Gortin and her husband. They wrenched the door off its hinges, and, placing the bodies on the door,

proceeded at a rapid pace through the trees and disappeared in a short time. When they had departed the Thin

Woman and the children returned to their home and over the yawning hearth the Thin Woman pronounced a

long and fervid malediction wherein policemen were exhibited naked before the blushes of Eternity. . .

Following his interview with Angus �g the Philosopher received the blessing of the god and returned on his

homeward journey. When he left the cave he had no knowledge where he was nor whether he should turn to

the right hand or to the left. This alone was his guiding idea, that as he had come up the mountain on his first

journey his homegoing must, by mere opposition, be down the mountain, and, accordingly, he set his face

downhill and trod lustily forward. He had stamped up the hill with vigour, he strode down it in ecstasy. He

tossed his voice on every wind that went by. From the wells of forgetfulness he regained the shining words

and gay melodies which his childhood had delighted in, and these he sang loudly and unceasingly as he

marched. The sun had not yet risen but, far away, a quiet brightness was creeping over the sky. The daylight,

however, was near the full, one slender veil only remaining of the shadows, and a calm, unmoving quietude

brooded from the grey sky to the whispering earth. The birds had begun to bestir themselves but not to sing.

Now and again a solitary wing feathered the chill air; but for the most part the birds huddled closer in the

swinging nests, or under the bracken, or in the tufty grass. Here a faint twitter was heard and ceased. A little

farther a drowsy voice called "cheepcheep" and turned again to the warmth of its wing. The very

grasshoppers were silent. The creatures who range in the night time had returned to their cells and were

setting their households in order, and those who belonged to the day hugged their comfort for but one minute

longer. Then the first level beam stepped like a mild angel to the mountain top. The slender radiance

brightened and grew strong. The grey veil faded away. The birds leaped from their nests. The grasshoppers

awakened and were busy at a stroke. Voice called to voice without ceasing, and, momently, a song thrilled

for a few wide seconds. But for the most part it was chatterchatter they went as they soared and plunged and

The Philosopher thrust his hand into his wallet and found there the last broken remnants of his cake, and the

instant his hand touched the food he was seized by a hunger so furious that he sat down where he stopped and

The place where he sat was a raised bank under a hedge, and this place directly fronted a clumsy wooden gate

leading into a great field. When the Philosopher had seated himself he raised his eyes and saw through the

gate a small company approaching. There were four men and three women, and each of them carried a metal

In a short time the strangers came near. The foremost of them was a huge man who was bearded to the

eyelids and who moved like a strong wind. He opened the gate by removing a piece of wood wherewith it

was jammed, and he and his companions passed through, whereupon he closed the gate and secured it. To

"I am about to breakfast," said he, "and if you are hungry perhaps you would like to eat with me."

"Why not," said the man, "for the person who would refuse a kind invitation is a dog. These are my three

Saying this he sat down on the bank and his companions, placing their pails behind them, did likewise. The

"A gift," said the bearded man, "is never little," and he courteously ate his piece in three bites although he

"That was a good, satisfying cake," said he when he had finished; "it was well baked and well shared, but," he

continued, "I am in a difficulty and maybe you could advise me what to do, sir?"

"It is this," said the man. "Every morning when we go out to milk the cows the mother of my clann gives to

each of us a parcel of food so that we need not be any hungrier than we like; but now we have had a good

breakfast with you, what shall we do with the food that we brought with us? The woman of the house would

not be pleased if we carried it back to her, and if we threw food away it would be a sin. If it was not

disrespectful to your breakfast the boys and girls here might be able to get rid of it by eating it, for, as you

know, young people can always eat a bit more, no matter how much they have already eaten."

"It would surely be better to eat it than to waste it," said the Philosopher wistfully.

The young people produced large parcels of food from their pockets and opened them, and the bearded man

be wasted if you were kind enough to help me to eat it," and he pulled out his parcel, which was twice as big

He opened the parcel and handed the larger part of its contents to the Philosopher; he then plunged a tin

vessel into one of the milk pails and set this also by the Philosopher, and, instantly, they all began to eat with

When the meal was finished the Philosopher filled his tobacco pipe and the bearded man and his three sons

"Sir," said the bearded man, "I would be glad to know why you are travelling abroad so early in the morning,

for, at this hour, no one stirs but the sun and the birds and the folk who, like ourselves, follow the cattle?"

"I will tell you that gladly," said the Philosopher, "if you will tell me your name."

"Last night," said the Philosopher, "when I came from the house of Angus �g in the Caves of the Sleepers of

Erinn I was bidden say to a man named Mac C�lthat the horses had trampled in their sleep and the sleepers

"Sir," said the bearded man, "your words thrill in my heart like music, but my head does not understand

"I have learned," said the Philosopher, "that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and

"All the birds of the world are singing in my soul," said the bearded man, "and I bless you because you have

So the Philosopher shook him by the hand, and he shook the hands of his sons and daughters who bowed

before him at the mild command of their father, and when he had gone a little way he looked around again

and he saw that group of people standing where he had left them, and the bearded man was embracing his

A bend in the path soon shut them from view, and then the Philosopher, fortified by food and the freshness of

the morning, strode onwards singing for very joy. It was still early, but now the birds had eaten their

breakfasts and were devoting themselves to each other. They rested side by side on the branches of the trees

and on the hedges, they danced in the air in happy brotherhoods and they sang to one another amiable and

When the Philosopher had walked for a long time he felt a little weary and sat down to refresh himself in the

shadow of a great tree. Hard by there was a house of rugged stone. Long years ago it had been a castle, and,

even now, though patched by time and misfortune its front was warlike and frowning. While he sat a young

woman came along the road and stood gazing earnestly at this house. Her hair was as black as night and as

smooth as still water, but her face came so stormily forward that her quiet attitude had yet no quietness in it.

"I did not notice you sitting under the tree," said she, and she came slowly forward.

"Sit down by me," said the Philosopher, "and we will talk. If you are in any trouble tell it to me, and perhaps

"It is good to talk trouble over," he continued. "Do you know that talk is a real thing? There is more power in

speech than many people conceive. Thoughts come from God, they are born through the marriage of the head

and the lungs. The head moulds the thought into the form of words, then it is borne and sounded on the air

which has been already in the secret kingdoms of the body, which goes in bearing life and come out freighted

with wisdom. For this reason a lie is very terrible, because it is turning mighty and incomprehensible things

to base uses, and is burdening the lifegiving element with a foul return for its goodness; but those who speak

the truth and whose words are the symbols of wisdom and beauty, these purify the whole world and daunt

contagion. The only trouble the body can know is disease. All other miseries come from the brain, and, as

these belong to thought, they can be driven out by their master as unruly and unpleasant vagabonds; for a

mental trouble should be spoken to, confronted, reprimanded and so dismissed. The brain cannot afford to

harbour any but pleasant and eager citizens who will do their part in making laughter and holiness for the

"Sir," said she, "we tell our hearts to a young man and our heads to an old man, and when the heart is a fool

the head is bound to be a liar. I can tell you the things I know, but how will I tell you the things I feel when I

myself do not understand them? If I say these words to you 'I love a man' I do not say anything at all, and you

do not hear one of the words which my heart is repeating over and over to itself in the silence of my body.

Young people are fools in their heads and old people are fools in their hearts, and they can only look at each

"You are wrong," said the Philosopher. "An old person can take your hand like this and say, 'May every good

thing come to you, my daughter.' For all trouble there is sympathy, and for love there is memory, and these

are the head and the heart talking to each other in quiet friendship. What the heart knows today the head will

understand tomorrow, and as the head must be the scholar of the heart it is necessary that our hearts be

purified and free from every false thing, else we are tainted beyond personal redemption."

"Sir," said the girl, "I know of two great folliesthey are love and speech, for when these are given they can

never be taken back again, and the person to whom these are given is not any richer, but the giver is made

poor and abashed. I gave my love to a man who did not want it. I told him of my love, and he lifted his

For a moment the Philosopher sat in stricken silence looking on the ground. He had a strange disinclination to

look at the girl although he felt her eyes fixed steadily on him. But in a little while he did look at her and

"To carry gifts to an ungrateful person cannot be justified and need not be mourned for. If your love is noble

"There is a thing," said the Philosopher, "and it is both the biggest and the littlest thing in the world."

"It is pride," he answered. "It lives in an empty house. The head which has never been visited by the heart is

the house pride lives in. You are in error, my dear, and not in love. Drive out the knave pride, put a flower in

The girl laughed, and suddenly her pale face became rosy as the dawn and as radiant and lovely as a cloud.

"You are wrong," she whispered, "because he does love me; but he does not know it yet. He is young and full

of fury, and has no time to look at women, but he looked at me. My heart knows it and my head knows it, but

I am impatient and yearn for him to look at me again. His heart will remember me tomorrow, and he will

come searching for me with prayers and tears, with shouts and threats. I will be very hard to find tomorrow

when he holds out his arms to the air and the sky, and is astonished and frightened to find me nowhere. I will

hide from him tomorrow, and frown at him when he speaks, and turn aside when he follows me: until the

day after tomorrow when he will frighten me with his anger, and hold me with his furious hands, and make

"He is in that house," said she, "and I would not let him see me here for anything in the world."

"What else is time for?" said the girl, and she kissed the Philosopher and ran swiftly down the road.

She had been gone but a few moments when a man came out of the grey house and walked quickly across the

grass. When he reached the hedge separating the field from the road he tossed his two arms in the air, swung

them down, and jumped over the hedge into the roadway. He was a short, dark youth, and so swift and

sudden were his movements that he seemed to look on every side at the one moment although he bore

The young man spun around from where he stood, and was by the Philosopher's side in an instant.

"It would be a good jump for other men," said he, "but it is only a little jump for me. You are very dusty, sir;

"A long distance," replied the Philosopher. "Sit down here, my friend, and keep me company for a little

"I do not like sitting down," said the young man, "but I always consent to a request, and I always accept

"I do," he replied. "I train the hounds for a fat, jovial man, full of laughter and insolence."

"Believe, sir, that I do not like any master; but this man I hate. I have been a week in his service, and he has

not once looked on me as on a friend. This very day, in the kennel, he passed me as though I were a tree or a

stone. I almost leaped to catch him by the throat and say: 'Dog, do you not salute your fellowman?' But I

looked after him and let him go, for it would be an unpleasant thing to strangle a fat person."

"If you are displeased with your master should you not look for another occupation?" said the Philosopher.

"I was thinking of that, and I was thinking whether I ought to kill him or marry his daughter. She would have

passed me by as her father did, but I would not let a woman do that to me: no man would."

"I did not look at her the first time, and when she came near me the second time I looked another way, and on

the third day she spoke to me, and while she stood I looked over her shoulder distantly. She said she hoped I

would be happy in my new home, and she made her voice sound pleasant while she said it; but I thanked her

"I do not know," he replied; "I have not looked at her yet, although now I see her everywhere. I think she is a

"She has tame feet," said the youth. "I looked at them and they got frightened. Where have you travelled

"When I came last night," said the Philosopher, "from the place of Angus �g in the cave of the Sleepers of

Erinn I was bidden say to a man named MacCulain that The Grey of Macha had neighed in his sleep and the

"Sir," said he in a strained voice, "I do not understand your words, but they make my heart to dance and sing

"If you listen to your heart," said the Philosopher, "you will learn every good thing, for the heart is the

fountain of wisdom tossing its thoughts up to the brain which gives them form,"and, so saying, he saluted

Now the day had advanced, noon was long past, and the strong sunlight blazed ceaselessly on the world. His

path was still on the high mountains, running on for a short distance and twisting perpetually to the right hand

and to the left. One might scarcely call it a path, it grew so narrow. Sometimes, indeed, it almost ceased to be

a path, for the grass had stolen forward inch by inch to cover up the tracks of man. There were no hedges but

rough, tumbled ground only, which was patched by trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and

hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun

shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod,

The Philosopher was very hungry, and he looked about on all sides to see if there was anything he might eat.

"If I were a goat or a cow," said he, "I could eat this grass and be nourished. If I were a donkey I could crop

the hard thistles which are growing on every hand, or if I were a bird I could feed on the caterpillars and

creeping things which stir innumerably everywhere. But a man may not eat even in the midst of plenty,

Speaking in this manner he chanced to lift his eyes from the ground and saw, far away, a solitary figure

which melted into the folding earth and reappeared again in a different place. So peculiar and erratic were the

movements of this figure that the Philosopher had great difficulty in following it, and, indeed, would have

been unable to follow, but that the other chanced in his direction. When they came nearer he saw it was a

young boy, who was dancing hither and thither in any and every direction. A bushy mound hid him for an

instant, and the next they were standing face to face staring at each other. After a moment's silence the boy,

who was about twelve years of age, and as beautiful as the morning, saluted the Philosopher.

"All paths," the Philosopher replied, "are on the earth, and so one can never be lostbut I have lost my

"Because," he replied, "I am bringing you your dinner. I wondered what sent me out in this direction, for I

"I have," said the boy: "I ate my own dinner at home, and I put your dinner in my pocket. I thought," he

The Philosopher instantly sat down, and the boy handed him the parcel. He opened this and found bread and

"I would like a little piece," said the boy, and he sat down before the Philosopher, and they ate together

When they had finished the Philosopher praised the gods, and then said, more to himself than to the boy:

"There is a stream four paces from here," said his companion. "I will get some water in my cap," and he

In a few moments he came back holding his cap tenderly, and the Philosopher took this and drank the water.

"I want nothing more in the world," said he, "except to talk with you. The sun is shining, the wind is pleasant,

"Not far," said the boy. "You could see my mother's house from this place if you were as tall as a tree, and

even from the ground you can see a shape of smoke yonder that floats over our cottage."

"I don't know," the Philosopher replied after a few moments' silence. "Can you tell me what it looks like to be

"Why not?" said the boy, and then a slight look of perplexity crossed his face, and he continued, "I don't think

"Young people," said the Philosopher, "do not know what age is, and old people forget what youth was.

When you begin to grow old always think deeply of your youth, for an old man without memories is a wasted

life, and nothing is worth remembering but our childhood. I will tell you some of the differences between

being old and young, and then you can ask me questions, and so we will get at both sides of the matter. First,

"That is not a great difference either," the boy replied, "for they both do eat. Tell me the big difference."

"I do not know it, my son; but I have always thought there was a big difference. Perhaps it is that an old man

"But they both have memories," said the boy, laughing, "and so it is not a big difference."

"That is true," said the Philosopher. "Maybe there is not so much difference after all. Tell me things you do,

"You must know the things you do," said the Philosopher, "but you may not understand how to put them in

order. The great trouble about any kind of examination is to know where to begin, but there are always two

places in everything with which we can commencethey are the beginning and the end. From either of these

points a view may be had which comprehends the entire period. So we will begin with the things you did this

"When you awakened this morning and went out of the house what was the first thing you did?"

"I went out, then I picked up a stone and threw it into the field as far as I could."

"Then I ran after the stone to see could I catch up on it before it hit the ground."

"I lay where I fell and plucked handfuls of the grass with both hands and threw them on my back."

"No, I pressed my face into the grass and shouted a lot of times with my mouth against the ground, and then I

"That," said the Philosopher triumphantly, "is the difference between age and youth. Boys do things for no

reason, and old people do not. I wonder do we get old because we do things by reason instead of instinct?"

"I don't know," said the boy, "everything gets old. Have you travelled very far today, sir?"

"When I came last night," said the Philosopher, "from the place of Angus �g in the Caste of the Sleepers I

was bidden say to one named MacCushin that a son would be born to Angus �g and his wife, Caitilin, and

"I know," said he, "why Angus �g sent me that message. He wants me to make a poem to the people of

"The Sleepers have arisen," said the Philosopher. "They are about us on every side. They are walking now,

but they have forgotten their names and the meanings of their names. You are to tell them their names and

"I will make a poem some day," said the boy, "and every man will shout when he hears it."

"God be with you, my son," said the Philosopher, and he embraced the boy and went forward on his journey.

About half an hour's easy travelling brought him to a point from which he could see far down below to the

pine trees of Coille Doraca. The shadowy evening had crept over the world ere he reached the wood, and

The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath met him as he entered, and was about to speak harshly of his long absence,

but the Philosopher kissed her with such unaccustomed tenderness, and spoke so mildly to her, that, first,

astonishment enchained her tongue, and then delight set it free in a direction to which it had long been a

"Wife," said the Philosopher, "I cannot say how joyful I am to see your good face again."

The Thin Woman was unable at first to reply to this salutation, but, with incredible speed, she put on a pot of

stirabout, began to bake a cake, and tried to roast potatoes. After a little while she wept loudly, and

proclaimed that the world did not contain the equal of her husband for comeliness and goodness, and that she

was herself a sinful person unworthy of the kindness of the gods or of such a mate.

But while the Philosopher was embracing Seumas and Brigid Beg, the door was suddenly burst open with a

great noise, four policemen entered the little room, and after one dumbfoundered minute they retreated again

SOME DISTANCE down the road the policemen halted. The night had fallen before they effected their

capture, and now, in the gathering darkness, they were not at ease. In the first place, they knew that the

occupation upon which they were employed was not a creditable one to a man whatever it might be to a

policeman. The seizure of a criminal may be justified by certain arguments as to the health of society and the

preservation of property, but no person wishes under any circumstances to hale a wise man to prison. They

were further distressed by the knowledge that they were in the very centre of a populous fairy country, and

that on every side the elemental hosts might be ranging, ready to fall upon them with the terrors of war or the

still more awful scourge of their humour. The path leading to their station was a long one, winding through

great alleys of trees, which in some places overhung the road so thickly that even the full moon could not

search out that deep blackness. In the daylight these men would have arrested an Archangel and, if necessary,

bludgeoned him, but in the nighttime a thousand fears afflicted and a multitude of sounds shocked them

Two men were holding the Philosopher, one on either side; the other two walked one before and one behind

him. In this order they were proceeding when just in front through the dim light they saw the road swallowed

up by one of these groves already spoken of. When they came nigh they halted irresolutely: the man who was

"Come on, can't you?" said he; "what the devil are you waiting for?" and he strode forward into the black

"Don't be talking out of you," replied he on the right. "Haven't we got a good grip of him, and isn't he an old

"Well, keep a good tight grip of him, anyhow, for if he gave you the slip in there he'd vanish like a weasel in

a bush. Them old fellows do be slippery customers. Look here, mister," said he to the Philosopher, "if you try

to run away from us I'll give you a clout on the head with my baton; do you mind me now!"

They had taken only a few paces forward when the sound of hasty footsteps brought them again to a halt, and

"Are you going to stay there the whole night, or what are you going to do at all?" said he.

"Let you be quiet now," said another; "we were only settling with the man here the way he wouldn't try to

"Is it thinking of giving us the slip he is?" said the sergeant. "Take your baton in your hand, Shawn, and if he

The Philosopher had been dazed by the suddenness of these occurrences, and the enforced rapidity of his

movements prevented him from either thinking or speaking, but during this brief stoppage his scattered wits

began to return to their allegiance. First, bewilderment at his enforcement had seized him, and the four men,

who were continually running round him and speaking all at once, and each pulling him in a different

direction, gave him the impression that he was surrounded by a great rabble of people, but he could not

discover what they wanted. After a time he found that there were only four men, and gathered from their

remarks that he was being arrested for murderthis precipitated him into another and a deeper gulf of

bewilderment. He was unable to conceive why they should arrest him for murder when he had not committed

"I will not go another step," said he, "unless you tell me where you are bringing me and what I am accused

"Tell me," said the sergeant, "what did you kill them with? for it's a miracle how they came to their ends

"It's mighty innocent you are," he replied. "Who would I be talking about but the man and woman that

used to be living with you beyond in the little house? Is it poison you gave them now, or what was it? Take a

"Can't you have sense, man?" said Shawn. "How would I be writing in the middle of a dark place and me

"Well, we'll take it down at the station, and himself can tell us all about it as we go along. Move on now, for

They paced on again, and in another moment they were swallowed up by the darkness. When they had

proceeded for a little distance there came a peculiar sound in front like the breathing of some enormous

"There's a queer kind of a thing in front of us," said one of the men in a low voice.

"Draw well into the side of the road," said he, "and poke your batons in front of you. Keep a tight hold of that

Just then one of them found a few matches in his pocket, and he struck a light; there was no wind, so that it

blazed easily enough, and they all peered in front. A big black carthorse was lying in the middle of the

road having a gentle sleep, and when the light shone it scrambled to its feet and went thundering away in a

"Isn't that enough to put the heart crossways in you?" said one of the men, with a great sigh.

"Ay," said another; "if you stepped on that beast in the darkness you wouldn't know what to be thinking."

"I don't quite remember the way about here," said the sergeant after a while, "but I think we should take the

first turn to the right. I wonder have we passed the turn yet; these crisscross kinds of roads are the devil, and

"Roscommon," said another, "is my country, and I wish I was there now, so I do."

"Well, if we walk straight on we're bound to get somewhere, so step it out. Have you got a good hold of that

"You are so," returned the Philosopher. "You have a big lump of skin doubled up in the sleeve of my coat,

"You have only let out half of it," replied the Philosopher. "That's better now," he continued, and they

"I do not see any necessity in nature for policemen," said he, "nor do I understand how the custom first

originated. Dogs and cats do not employ these extraordinary mercenaries, and yet their polity is progressive

and orderly. Crows are a gregarious race with settled habitations and an organized commonwealth. They

usually congregate in a ruined tower or on the top of a church, and their civilization is based on mutual aid

and tolerance for each other's idiosyncrasies. Their exceeding mobility and hardiness renders them dangerous

to attack, and thus they are free to devote themselves to the development of their domestic laws and customs.

If policemen were necessary to a civilization crows would certainly have evolved them, but I triumphantly

"It doesn't matter," said the Philosopher. "Ants and bees also live in specialized communities and have an

extreme complexity both of function and occupation. Their experience in governmental matters is enormous,

and yet they have never discovered that a police force is at all essential to their wellbeing"

"Do you know," said the sergeant, "that whatever you say now will be used in evidence against you later on?"

"I do not," said the Philosopher. "It may be said that these races are free from crime, that such vices as they

have are organized and communal instead of individua1 and anarchistic, and that, consequently, there is no

necessity for policecraft, but I cannot believe that these large aggregations of people could have attained their

present high culture without an interval of both national and individual dishonesty"

"Tell me now, as you are talking," said the sergeant, "did you buy the poison at a chemist's shop, or did you

"I did not," said the Philosopher. "If crime is a condition precedent to the evolution of policemen, then I will

submit that jackdaws are a very thievish clanthey are somewhat larger than a blackbird, and will steal wool

off a sheep's back to line their nests with; they have, furthermore, been known to abstract one shilling in

copper and secrete this booty so ingeniously that it has never since been recovered"

"I had a jackdaw myself," said one of the men. "I got it from a woman that came to the door with a basket for

fourpence. My mother stood on its back one day, and she getting out of bed. I split its tongue with a

threepenny bit the way it would talk, but devil the word it ever said for me. It used to hop around letting on it

"If," said the Philosopher, "these people steal both from from sheep and from men, if their peculations range

from wool to money, I do not see how they can avoid stealing from each other, and consequently, if

anywhere, it is amongst jackdaws one should look for the growth of a police force, but there is no such force

in existence. The real reason is that they are a witty and thoughtful race who look temperately on what is

known as crime and evilone eats, one steals; it is all in the order of things, and therefore not to be

"Monkeys are gregarious and thievish and semihuman. They inhabit the equatorial latitudes and eat nuts"

"they ought to have evolved professional thieftakers, but it is common knowledge that they have not done

so. Fishes, squirrels, rats, beavers, and bison have also abstained from this singular growththerefore, when

I insist that I see no necessity for policemen and object to their presence, I base that objection on logic and

"There's a speck of light down yonder, and, maybe, it's a candle in a windowwe'll ask the way at that

In about three minutes they came to a small house which was overhung by trees. If the light had not been

visible they would undoubtedly have passed it in the darkness. As they approached the door the sound of a

The scolding voice ceased instantly. After a few seconds he tapped again; then a voice was heard from just

"Tom�s," said the voice, "go and bring up the two dogs with you before I take the door off the chain."

"Not much, ma'am," said the sergeant; "only a little direction about the road, for we are not sure whether

"Is it policemen ye are? There's no harm in your coming in, I suppose, and if a drink of milk is any good to ye

"I've a little sup of spirits," said she, "but it wouldn't be enough to go around."

"Ah, well," said he, looking sternly at his comrades, "everybody has to take their chance in this world," and

The women gave him a little sup of whisky from a bottle, and to each of the other men she gave a cup of

There were two chairs, a bed, and a table in the room. The Philosopher and his attendants sat on the bed. The

sergeant sat on the table, the fourth man took a chair, and the woman dropped wearily into the remaining

"He's a bad one, ma'am," said the sergeant. "He killed a man and a woman that were staying with him and he

buried their corpses underneath the hearthstone of his house. He's a real malefactor, mind you."

"You never know, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it came to that. But you were in trouble yourself,

ma'am, for we heard your voice lamenting about something as we came along the road."

"I was, indeed," she replied, "for the person that has a son in her house has a trouble in her heart."

"Do you tell me nowWhat did he do on you?" and the sergeant bent a look of grave reprobation on a young

"He's a good boy enough in some ways," said she, "but he's too fond of beasts. He'll go and lie in the kennel

along with them two dogs for hours at a time, petting them and making a lot of them, but if I try to give him a

kiss, or to hug him for a couple of minutes when I do be tired after the work, he'll wriggle like an eel till I let

him outit would make a body hate him, so it would. Sure, there's no nature in him, sir, and I'm his mother."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you young whelp," said the sergeant very severely.

"And then there's the horse," she continued. "Maybe you met it down the road a while ago?"

"Well, when he came in Tom�s went to tie him up, for he's a caution at getting out and wandering about the

road, the way you'd break your neck over him if you weren't minding. After a while I told the boy to come in,

but he didn't come, so I went out myself, and there was himself and the horse with their arms round each

"Faith, he's the queer lad!" said the sergeant. "What do you be making love to the horse for, Tom�s?"

"It was all I could do to make him come in," she continued, "and then I said to him, 'Sit down alongside of me

here, Tom�s, and keep me company for a little while' for I do be lonely in the nighttimebut he

wouldn't stay quiet at all. One minute he'd say, 'Mother, there's a moth flying round the candle and it'll be

burnt,' and then, 'There was a fly going into the spider's web in the corner,' and he'd have to save it, and after

that, 'There's a daddylonglegs hurting himself on the windowpane,' and he'd have to let it out; but when I

try to kiss him he pushes me away. My heart is tormented, so it is, for what have I in the world but him?"

"I'll tell the truth," said she. "I don't know whether he is or not, for a long time ago, when we used to live in

the city of Bla' Cliah, he lost his work one time and he never came back to me again. He was ashamed to

come home I'm thinking, the poor man, because he had no money; as if I would have minded whether he had

any money or notsure, he was very fond of me, sir, and we could have pulled along somehow. After that I

came back to my father's place here; the rest of the children died on me, and then my father died, and I'm

doing the best I can by myself. It's only that I'm a little bit troubled with the boy now and again."

maybe the boy is only a bit wild not having his father over him, and maybe it's just that he's used to yourself,

for there isn't a child at all that doesn't love his mother. Let you behave yourself now, Tom�s; attend to your

mother, and leave the beasts and the insects alone, like a decent boy, for there's no insect in the world will

ever like you as well as she does. Could you tell me, ma'am, if we have passed the first turn on this road, or is

"It's in front of you still," she replied, "about ten minutes down the road; you can't miss it, for you'll see the

"Thank you, ma'am," said the sergeant; "we'd better be moving on, for there's a long tramp in front of us

He stood up and the men rose to follow him when, suddenly, the boy spoke in a whisper.

"Oh, hush, hush," said the woman, "sure, the men can't help it." She dropped quickly on her knees and

"They are going to hang him," he cried in a high, thin voice, and he plucked at her arm violently.

The boy turned suddenly and flew at him with astonishing ferocity. He hurled himself against the sergeant's

legs and bit, and kicked, and struck at him. So furiously sudden was his attack that the man went staggering

back against the wall, then he plucked at the boy and whirled him across the room. In an instant the two dogs

leaped at him snarling with rageone of these he kicked into a corner, from which it rebounded again

bristling and redeyed; the other dog was caught by the woman, and after a few frantic seconds she gripped

the first dog also. To a horrible chorus of howls and snapping teeth the men hustled outside and slammed the

"If he gets away I'll kick the belly out of you; mind that now! Come along with you and no more of your

"From the earliest ages their intelligence has been observed and recorded, so that ancient literatures are bulky

"I will not," said the Philosopher. "Elephants also are credited with an extreme intelligence and devotion to

their masters, and they will build a wall or nurse a baby with equal skill and happiness. Horses have received

high recommendations in this respect, but crocodiles, hens, beetles, armadillos, and fish do not evince any

"I wish," said the sergeant bitterly, "that all them beasts were stuffed down your throttle the way you'd have

"It doesn't matter," said the Philosopher. "I do not know why these animals should attach themselves to men

with gentleness and love and yet be able to preserve intact their initial bloodthirstiness, so that while they will

allow their masters to misuse them in any way they will yet fight most willingly with each other, and are

never really happy saving in the conduct of some private and nonsensical battle of their own. I do not believe

that it is fear which tames these creatures into mildness, but that the most savage animal has a capacity for

love which has not been sufficiently noted, and which, if more intelligent attention had been directed upon it,

would have raised them to the status of intellectual animals as against intelligent ones, and, perhaps, have

"Why can I not exchange ideas with a cow? I am amazed at the incompleteness of my growth when I and a

fellowcreature stand dumbly before each other without one glimmer of comprehension, locked and barred

"Don't interrupt," said the Philosopher; "you are always talking.The lower animals, as they are foolishly

called, have abilities at which we can only wonder. The mind of an ant is one to which I would readily go to

school. Birds have atmospheric and levitational information which millions of years will not render

accessible to us; who that has seen a spider weaving his labyrinth, or a bee voyaging safely in the trackless

air, can refuse to credit that a vivid, trained intelligence animates these small enigmas? and the commonest

earthworm is the heir to a culture before which I bow with the profoundest veneration"

"Shawn," said the sergeant, "say something for goodness' sake to take the sound of that man's clack out of my

"I wouldn't know what to be talking about," said Shawn, "for I never was much of a hand at conversation,

and, barring my prayers, I got no educationI think myself that he was making a remark about a dog. Did

"I knew a man had a dog would count up to a hundred for you. He won lots of money in bets about it, and

he'd have made a fortune, only that I noticed one day he used to be winking at the dog, and when he'd stop

winking the dog would stop counting. We made him turn his back after that, and got the dog to count

sixpence, but he barked for more than five shillings, he did so, and he would have counted up to a pound,

maybe, only that his master turned round and hit him a kick. Every person that ever paid him a bet said they

wanted their money back, but the man went away to America in the night, and I expect he's doing well there

for he took the dog with him. It was a wirehaired terrier bitch, and it was the devil for having pups."

"It is astonishing," said the Philosopher, "on what slender compulsion people will go to America"

"I will so," said Shawn. "I had a cat one time and it used to have kittens every two months."

"If there was any periodicity about these migrations one could understand them. Birds, for example, migrate

from their homes in the late autumn and seek abroad the sustenance and warmth which the winter would

withhold if they remained in their native lands. The salmon also, a dignified fish with a pink skin, emigrates

from the Atlantic Ocean, and betakes himself inland to the streams and lakes, where he recuperates for a

"Cats sometimes eat their kittens, and sometimes they don't. A cat that eats its kittens is a heartless brute. I

knew a cat used to eat its kittensit had four legs and a long tail, and it used to get the headstaggers every

time it had eaten its kittens. I killed it myself one day with a hammer for I couldn't stand the smell it made, so

"Shawn," said the sergeant, "can't you talk about something else besides cats and dogs?"

"Sure, I don't know what to talk about," said Shawn. "I'm sweating this minute trying to please you, so I arm.

"You're a fool," said the sergeant sorrowfully; "you'll never make a constable. I'm thinking that I would

sooner listen to the man himself than to you. Have you got a good hold of him now?"

"Well, step out and maybe we'll reach the barracks this night, unless this is a road that there isn't any end to at

"I thought," said another man, "that I heard something moving in the hedge at the side of the road."

"That's what I heard," said the sergeant. "Maybe it was a weasel. I wish to the devil that we were out of this

place where you can't see as much as your own nose. Now did you hear it, Shawn?"

"I did so," said Shawn; "there's some one in the hedge, for a weasel would make a different kind of a noise if

"Keep together, men," said the sergeant, "and march on; if there's anybody about they've no business with us.

He had scarcely spoken when there came a sudden pattering of feet, and immediately the four men were

surrounded and were being struck at on every side with sticks and hands and feet.

There was no sound of voices from the assailants, only a rapid scuffle of feet, the whistle of sticks as they

swung through the air or slapped smartly against a body or clashed upon each other, and the quick breathing

of many people; but from the four policemen there came noise and to spare as they struck wildly on every

"Let out," cried Shawn suddenly. "Let out or I'll smash your nut for you. There's some one pulling at the

The truncheons of the policemen had been so ferociously exercised that their antagonists departed as swiftly

and as mysteriously as they came. It was just two minutes of frantic, aimless conflict, and then the silent night

was round them again, without any sound but the slow creaking of branches, the swish of leaves as they

"Come on, men," said the sergeant, "we'd better be getting out of this place as quick as we can. Are any of ye

"I will so," said Shawn. "It's a little one by the feel of it. If one of ye would hold the prisoner, I'd get a better

Another man took hold of the Philosopher's arm, and Shawn got both hands on his captive.

"Keep quiet, I'm telling you," said he, "or I'll throttle you, I will so. Faith, it seems like a little boy by the feel

"It must be the young brat from the cottage that set the dogs on us, the one that loves beasts. Now then, boy,

what do you mean by this kind of thing? You'll find yourself in gaol for this, my young bucko. Who was

"Hold up your head, sonny, and talk to the sergeant," said Shawn. "Oh!" he roared, and suddenly he made a

little rush forward. "I've got him," he gasped; "he nearly got away. It isn't a boy at all, sergeant; there's

"I put my hand under its chin and there's whiskers on it. I nearly let him out with the surprise, I did so."

"I don't like touching them," said Shawn. "It's a soft whisker like a billygoat's. Maybe you'd try yourself,

"I'll do that," said Shawn, and he hauled some reluctant object towards his superior.

"It's only a boy's size to be sure," said he, then he slid his hand down the face and withdrew it quickly.

"There are whiskers on it," said he soberly. "What the devil can it be? I never met whiskers so near the

ground before. Maybe they are false ones, and it's just the boy yonder trying to disguise himself." He put out

Instantly there came a yell, so loud, so sudden, that every man of them jumped in a panic.

"They are real whiskers," said the sergeant with a sigh. "I wish I knew what it is. His voice is big enough for

"Be sure and hold him tight, Shawn, the way we can have a good look at him, for this is like to be a queer

"I'm holding him by the two arms," said Shawn, "he can't stir anything but his head, and I've got my chest on

The sergeant struck the match, shading it for a moment with his hand, then he turned it on their new prisoner.

They saw a little man dressed in tight green clothes; he had a broad pale face with staring eyes, and there was

"Do you tell me so?" said he in a musing voice; "that's a queer miracle altogether."

"I do," said the sergeant. "Doesn't it stand to reason that it can't be anything else? You saw it yourself."

"Tell me where the money is?" he hissed. "Tell me where the money is or I'll twist your neck off."

The other men also gathered eagerly around, shouting threats and commands at the Leprecaun.

"Hold your whist," said Shawn fiercely to them. "He can't answer the lot of you, can he?" and he turned again

"None of your lies," roared Shawn. "Tell the truth now or it'll be worse for you."

"I haven't got any money," said the Leprecaun, "for Meehawl MacMurrachu of the Hill stole our crock a

while back, and he buried it under a thorn bush. I can bring you to the place if you don't believe me."

"Very good," said Shawn. "Come on with me now, and I'll clout you if you as much as wriggle; do you mind

"What is it you are going to do with your prisoner, Shawn?" said he sarcastically. "Don't you think we've had

enough tramping of these roads for one night, now? Bring up that Leprecaun to the barracks or it'll be the

"If there's any gold it'll be treasure trove, and belong to the Crown. What kind of a constable are you at all,

Shawn? Mind what you are about now, my man, and no back answers. Step along there. Bring that murderer

"While we were looking at the Leprecaun," said the voice of woe, "I must have forgotten about the other

"Is it my prisoner that's gone?" said Shawn in a deep voice. He leaped forward with a curse and smote his

negligent comrade so terrible a blow in the face, that the man went flying backwards, and the thud of his head

"That will do," said the sergeant, "we'll go home. We're the laughingstock of the world. I'll pay you out for

this some time, every damn man of ye. Bring that Leprecaun along with you, and quick march."

"It's the Leprecaun, sergeant," said Shawn in a whisper"he's got awaywhen I was hitting the man there I

forgot all about the Leprecaun: he must have run into the hedge. Oh, sergeant, dear, don't say anything to me

"Quick march," said the sergeant, and the four men moved on through the darkness in a silence, which was

BY REASON OF the many years which he had spent in the gloomy pine wood, the Philosopher could see a

little in the darkness, and when he found there was no longer any hold on his coat he continued his journey

quietly, marching along with his head sunken on his breast in a deep abstraction. He was meditating on the

word "Me," and endeavouring to pursue it through all its changes and adventures. The fact of "meness" was

one which startled him. He was amazed at his own being. He knew that the hand which he held up and

pinched with another hand was not him and the endeavour to find out what was him was one which had

frequently exercised his leisure. He had not gone far when there came a tug at his sleeve and looking down he

"Noble Sir," said the Leprecaun, "you are terrible hard to get into conversation with. I have been talking to

"You are, indeed," said the Leprecaun heartily. "My brothers are on the other side of the road over there

beyond the hedge, and they want to talk to you: will you come with me, Noble Sir?"

"Why wouldn't I go with you?" said the Philosopher, and he turned aside with the Leprecaun.

"Come this way, sir," said his guide, and the Philosopher followed him across the field. In a few minutes they

came to a thick bush among the leaves of which the other Leprecauns were hiding. They thronged out to meet

the Philosopher's approach and welcomed him with every appearance of joy. With them was the Thin

Woman of Inis Magrath, who embraced her husband tenderly and gave thanks for his escape.

"The night is young yet," remarked one of the Leprecauns. "Let us sit down here and talk about what should

"I am tired enough," said the Philosopher, "for I have been travelling all yesterday, and all this day and the

whole of this night I have been going also, so I would be glad to sit down anywhere."

They sat down under the bush and the Philosopher lit his pipe. In the open space where they were there was

just light enough to see the smoke coming from his pipe, but scarcely more. One recognized a figure as a

deeper shadow than the surrounding darkness; but as the ground was dry and the air just touched with a

pleasant chill, there was no discomfort. After the Philosopher had drawn a few mouthfuls of smoke he passed

his pipe on to the next person, and in this way his pipe made the circuit of the party.

"When I put the children to bed," said the Thin Woman, "I came down the road in your wake with a basin of

stirabout, for you had no time to take your food, God help you! and I was thinking you must have been

"That is so," said the Philosopher in a very anxious voice: "but I don't blame you, my dear, for letting the

"While I was going along," she continued, "I met these good people and when I told them what happened

they came with me to see if anything could be done. The time they ran out of the hedge to fight the policemen

"I did not, indeed," she replied: "I have the stirabout with me this minute. It's rather cold, I'm thinking, but it

"I put sugar in it," said she shyly, "and currants, and I have a spoon in my pocket."

"It tastes well," said the Philosopher, and he cleaned the basin so speedily that his wife wept because of his

"Now we can talk," said he, and he blew a great cloud of smoke into the darkness and sighed happily.

"We were thinking," said the Thin Woman, "that you won't be able to come back to our house for a while yet:

the policemen will be peeping about Coille Doraca for a long time, to be sure; for isn't it true that if there is a

good thing coming to a person, nobody takes much trouble to find him, but if there is a bad thing or a

punishment in store for a man, then the whole world will be searched until he be found?"

"So what we arranged was thisthat you should go to live with these little men in their house under the yew

tree of the Gort. There is not a policeman in the world would find you there; or if you went by night to the

"Noble Sir," said he, "there isn't much room in our house but there's no stint of welcome in it. You would

have a good time with us travelling on moonlit nights and seeing strange things, for we often go to visit the

Shee of the Hills and they come to see us; there is always something to talk about, and we have dances in the

caves and on the tops of the hills. Don't be imagining now that we have a poor life for there is fun and plenty

"I would like to dance, indeed," returned the Philosopher, "for I do believe that dancing is the first and last

duty of man. If we cannot be gay what can we be? Life is not any use at all unless we find a laugh here and

there but this time, decent men of the Gort, I cannot go with you, for it is laid on me to give myself up to

"You would not do that," exclaimed the Thin Woman pitifully: "You wouldn't think of doing that now!"

"An innocent man," said he, "cannot be oppressed, for he is fortified by his mind and his heart cheers him. It

is only on a guilty person that the rigour of punishment can fall, for he punishes himself. This is what I think,

that a man should always obey the law with his body and always disobey it with his mind. I have been

arrested, the men of the law had me in their hands, and I will have to go back to them so that they may do

The Philosopher resumed his pipe, and although the others reasoned with him for a long time they could not

by any means remove him from his purpose. So, when the pale glimmer of dawn had stolen over the sky, they

Outside the village the Leprecauns bade him farewell and the Thin Woman also took her leave of him, saying

she would visit Angus �g and implore his assistance on behalf of her husband, and then the Leprecauns and

the Thin Woman returned again the way they came, and the Philosopher walked on to the barracks.

WHEN HE KNOCKED at the barracks door it was opened by a man with tousled, red hair, who looked as

"A man as old as you are," said he, "oughtn't to be a fool. Go home now, I advise you, and don't say a word to

any one whether you did it or not. Tell me this now, was it found out, or are you only making a clean breast

"If you must, you must, and that's an end of it. Wipe your feet on the rail there and come inI'll take your

"I have no deposition for you," said the Philosopher, "for I didn't do a thing at all."

"If that's so," said he, "you needn't come in at all, and you needn't have wakened me out of my sleep either.

"I am not," replied the Philosopher: "but I was arrested for killing my brother and his wife, although I never

"Is that who you are?" said the policeman; and then, briskly, "You're as welcome as the cuckoo, you are so.

Come in and make yourself comfortable till the men awaken, and they are the lads that'll be glad to see you. I

couldn't make head or tail of what they said when they came in last night, and no one else either, for they did

nothing but fight each other and curse the banshees and cluricauns of Leinster. Sit down there on the settle by

the fire and, maybe, you'll be able to get a sleep; you look as if you were tired, and the mud of every county

The Philosopher thanked him and stretched out on the settle. In a short time, for he was very weary, he fell

Many hours later he was awakened by the sound of voices, and found on rising, that the men who had

captured him on the previous evening were standing by the bed. The sergeant's face beamed with joy. He was

dressed only in his trousers and shirt. His hair was sticking up in some places and sticking out in others which

gave a certain wild look to him, and his feet were bare. He took the Philosopher's two hands in his own and

swore if ever there was anything he could do to comfort him he would do that and more. Shawn, in a similar

state of unclothedness, greeted the Philosopher and proclaimed himself his friend and follower for ever.

Shawn further announced that he did not believe the Philosopher had killed the two people, that if he had

killed them they must have richly deserved it, and that if he was hung he would plant flowers on his grave;

for a decenter, quieter, and wiser man he had never met and never would meet in the world.

These professions of esteem comforted the Philosopher, and he replied to them in terms which made the

He was given a breakfast of bread and cocoa which he ate with his guardians, and then, as they had to take up

their outdoor duties, he was conducted to the backyard and informed he could walk about there and that he

might smoke until he was black in the face. The policemen severally presented him with a pipe, a tin of

tobacco, two boxes of matches and a dictionary, and then they withdrew, leaving him to his own devices.

The garden was about twelve feet square, having high, smooth walls on every side, and into it there came

neither sun nor wind. In one corner a clump of rustylooking sweetpea was climbing up the wallevery

leaf of this plant was riddled with holes, and there were no flowers on it. Another corner was occupied by

dwarf nasturtiums, and on this plant, in despite of every discouragement, two flowers were blooming, but its

leaves also were tattered and dejected. A mass of ivy clung to the third corner, its leaves were big and glossy

at the top, but near the ground there was only grey, naked stalks laced together by cobwebs. The fourth wall

was clothed in a loose Virginia creeper every leaf of which looked like an insect that could crawl if it wanted

to. The centre of this small plot had used every possible artifice to cover itself with grass, and in some places

it had wonderfully succeeded, but the pieces of broken bottles, shattered jampots, and sections of crockery

were so numerous that no attempt at growth could be other than tentative and unpassioned.

Here, for a long time, the Philosopher marched up and down. At one moment he examined the sweetpea and

mourned with it on a wretched existence. Again he congratulated the nasturtium on its two bright children;

but he thought of the gardens wherein they might have bloomed and the remembrance of that spacious, sunny

The blank, soundless yard troubled him so much that at last he called to the redhaired policeman and begged

to be put into a cell in preference; and to the common cell he was, accordingly, conducted.

This place was a small cellar built beneath the level of the ground. An iron grating at the top of the wall

admitted one blanched wink of light, but the place was bathed in obscurity. A wooden ladder led down to the

cell from a hole in the ceiling, and this hole also gave a spark of brightness and some little air to the room.

The walls were of stone covered with plaster, but the plaster had fallen away in many places leaving the

There were two men in the cell, and these the Philosopher saluted; but they did not reply, nor did they speak

to each other. There was a low, wooden form fixed to the wall, running quite round the room, and on this, far

apart from each other, the two men were seated, with their elbows resting on their knees, their heads propped

upon their hands, and each of them with an unwavering gaze fixed on the floor between his feet.

The Philosopher walked for a time up and down the little cell, but soon he also sat down on the low form,

So the day passed. Twice a policeman came down the ladder bearing three portions of food, bread and cocoa;

and by imperceptible gradations the light faded away from the grating and the darkness came. After a great

interval the policeman again approached carrying three mattresses and three rough blankets, and these he

bundled through the hole. Each of the men took a mattress and a blanket and spread them on the floor, and

By this time they could not see each other and all their operations were conducted by the sense of touch

alone. They laid themselves down on the beds and a terrible, dark silence brooded over the room.

But the Philosopher could not sleep, he kept his eyes shut, for the darkness under his eyelids was not so dense

as that which surrounded him; indeed, he could at will illuminate his own darkness and order around him the

sunny roads or the sparkling sky. While his eyes were closed he had the mastery of all pictures of light and

colour and warmth, but an irresistible fascination compelled him every few minutes to reopen them, and in

the sad space around he could not create any happiness. The darkness weighed very sadly upon him so that in

a short time it did creep under his eyelids and drowned his happy pictures until a blackness possessed him

He strove desperately to regain his intellectual freedom, but he could not. He could conjure up no visions but

those of fear. The creatures of the dark invaded him, fantastic terrors were thronging on every side: they came

from the darkness into his eyes and beyond into himself, so that his mind as well as his fancy was captured,

It was with a great start that he heard a voice speaking from the silencea harsh, yet cultivated voice, but he

could not imagine which of his companions was speaking. He had a vision of that man tormented by the

mental imprisonment of the darkness, trying to get away from his ghosts and slimy enemies, goaded into

speech in his own despite lest he should be submerged and finally possessed by the abysmal demons. For a

while the voice spoke of the strangeness of life and the cruelty of men to each otherdisconnected

sentences, odd words of selfpity and selfencouragement, and then the matter became more connected and a

"I knew a man," said the voice, "and he was a clerk. He had thirty shillings a week, and for five years he had

never missed a day going to his work. He was a careful man, but a person with a wife and four children

cannot save much out of thirty shillings a week. The rent of a house is high, a wife and children must be fed,

and they have to get boots and clothes, so that at the end of each week that man's thirty shillings used to be all

gone. But they managed to get along somehowthe man and his wife and the four children were fed and

clothed and educated, and the man often wondered how so much could be done with so little money; but the

reason was that his wife was a careful woman . . . and then the man got sick. A poor person cannot afford to

get sick, and a married man cannot leave his work. If he is sick he has to be sick; but he must go to his work

all the same, for if he stayed away who would pay the wages and feed his family? and when he went back to

work he might find that there was nothing for him to do. This man fell sick, but he made no change in his

way of life: he got up at the same time and went to the office as usual, and he got through the day somehow

without attracting his employer's attention. He didn't know what was wrong with him: he only knew that he

was sick. Sometimes he had sharp, swift pains in his head, and again there would be long hours of languor

when he could scarcely bear to change his position or lift a pen. He would commence a letter with the words

'Dear Sir,' forming the letter 'D' with painful, accurate slowness, elaborating and thickening the up and down

strokes, and being troubled when he had to leave that letter for the next one; he built the next letter by hair

strokes and would start on the third with hatred. The end of a word seemed to that man like the conclusion of

an eventit was a surprising, isolated, individual thing, having no reference to anything else in the world,

and on starting a new word he seemed bound, in order to preserve its individuality, to write it in a different

handwriting. He would sit with his shoulders hunched up and his pen resting on the paper, staring at a letter

until he was nearly mesmerized, and then come to himself with a sense of fear, which started him working

like a madman, so that he might not be behind with his business. The day seemed to be so long. It rolled on

rusty hinges that could scarcely move. Each hour was like a great circle swollen with heavy air, and it droned

and buzzed into an eternity. It seemed to the man that his hand in particular wanted to rest. It was luxury not

to work with it. It was good to lay it down on a sheet of paper with the pen sloping against his finger, and

then watch his hand going to sleep it seemed to the man that it was his hand and not himself wanted to

sleep, but it always awakened when the pen slipped. There was an instinct in him somewhere not to let the

pen slip, and every time the pen moved his hand awakened, and began to work languidly. When he went

home at night he lay down at once and stared for hours at a fly on the wall or a crack on the ceiling. When his

wife spoke to him he heard her speaking as from a great distance, and he answered her dully as though he

was replying through a cloud. He only wanted to be let alone, to be allowed to stare at the fly on the wall, or

"One morning he found that he couldn't get up, or rather, that he didn't want to get up. When his wife called

him he made no reply, and she seemed to call him every ten secondsthe words, 'get up, get up,' were

crackling all round him; they were bursting like bombs on the right hand and on the left of him: they were

scattering from above and all around him, bursting upwards from the floor, swirling, swaying, and jostling

each other. Then the sounds ceased, and one voice only said to him 'You are late!' He saw these words like a

blur hanging in the air, just beyond his eyelids, and he stared at the blur until he fell asleep."

The voice in the cell ceased speaking for a few minutes, and then it went on again.

"For three weeks the man did not leave his bedhe lived faintly in a kind of trance, wherein great forms

moved about slowly and immense words were drumming gently for ever. When he began to take notice again

everything in the house was different. Most of the furniture, paid for so hardly, was gone. He missed a thing

everywherechairs, a mirror, a table: wherever he looked he missed something; and downstairs was worse

there, everything was gone. His wife had sold all her furniture to pay for doctors, for medicine, for food

and rent. And she was changed too: good things had gone from her face; she was gaunt, sharpfeatured,

"There was a flurry in his head when he went to his office. He didn't know what his employer would say for

stopping away. He might blame him for being sick he wondered would his employer pay him for the

weeks he was absent. When he stood at the door he was frightened. Suddenly the thought of his master's eye

grew terrible to him: it was a steady, cold, glassy eye; but he opened the door and went in. His master was

there with another man and he tried to say 'Good morning, sir,' in a natural and calm voice; but he knew that

the strange man had been engaged instead of himself, and this knowledge posted itself between his tongue

and his thought. He heard himself stammering, he felt that his whole bearing had become drooping and

abject. His master was talking swiftly and the other man was looking at him in an embarrassed, stealthy, and

pleading manner: his eyes seemed to be apologising for having supplanted himso he mumbled 'Good day,

"When he got outside he could not think where to go. After a while he went in the direction of the little park

in the centre of the city. It was quite near and he sat down on an iron bench facing a pond. There were

children walking up and down by the water giving pieces of bread to the swans. Now and again a labouring

man or a messenger went by quickly; now and again a middleaged, slovenlydressed man drooped past

aimlessly: sometimes a tattered, selfintent woman with a badgered face flopped by him. When he looked at

these dull people the thought came to him that they were not walking there at all; they were trailing through

hell, and their desperate eyes saw none but devils around them. He saw himself joining these battered

strollers . . . and he could not think what he would tell his wife when he went home. He rehearsed to himself

the terms of his dismissal a hundred times. How his master looked, what he had said: and then the fine,

ironical things he had said to his master. He sat in the park all day, and when evening fell he went home at his

"His wife asked him questions as to how he had got on, and wanted to know was there any chance of being

paid for the weeks of absence; the man answered her volubly, ate his supper and went to bed: but he did not

tell his wife that he had been dismissed and that there would be no money at the end of the week. He tried to

tell her, but when he met her eye he found that he could not say the wordshe was afraid of the look that

might come into her face when she heard itshe, standing terrified in those dismantled rooms . . . !

"In the morning he ate his breakfast and went out againto work, his wife thought. She bid him ask the

master about the three weeks' wages, or to try and get an advance on the present week's wages, for they were

hardly put to it to buy food. He said he would do his best, but he went straight to the park and sat looking at

the pond, looking at the passersby and dreaming. In the middle of the day he started up in a panic and went

about the city asking for work in offices, shops, warehouses, everywhere, but he could not get any. He trailed

"He told his wife more lies about his work that night and what his master had said when he asked for an

advance. He couldn't bear the children to touch him. After a little time he sneaked away to his bed.

"A week went that way. He didn't look for work any more. He sat in the park, dreaming, with his head bowed

into his hands. The next day would be the day he should have been paid his wages. The next day! What

would his wife say when he told her he had no money? She would stare at him and flush and say

'Didn't you go out every day to work?'How would he tell her then so that she could understand quickly and

"Morning came and the man ate his breakfast silently. There was no butter on the bread, and his wife seemed

to be apologising to him for not having any. She said, 'We'll be able to start fair from tomorrow,' and when

"He went to the park and sat there for hours. Now and again he got up and walked into a neighbouring street,

but always, after half an hour or so, he came back. Six o'clock in the evening was his hour for going home.

When six o'clock came he did not move, he still sat opposite the pond with his head bowed down into his

arms. Seven o'clock passed. At nine o'clock a bell was rung and every one had to leave. He went also. He

stood outside the gates looking on this side and on that. Which way would he go? All roads were alike to

him, so he turned at last and walked somewhere. He did not go home that night. He never went home again.

The voice ceased speaking and silence swung down again upon the little cell. The Philosopher had been

"When you go up this road there is a turn to the left and all the path along is bordered with treesthere are

birds in the trees, Glory be to God! There is only one house on that road, and the woman in it gave us milk to

drink. She has but one son, a good boy, and she said the other children were dead; she was speaking of a

husband who went away and left her'Why should he have been afraid to come home?' said she'sure, I

"I don't know what became of the man I was speaking of. I am a thief, and I'm well known to the police

everywhere. I don't think that man would get a welcome at the house up here, for why should he?"

"If I knew a place where there was a welcome I'd go there as quickly as I could, but I don't know a place and

I never will, for what good would a man of my age be to any person? I am a thief also. The first thing I stole

was a hen out of a little yard. I roasted it in a ditch and ate it, and then I stole another one and ate it, and after

that I stole everything I could lay my hands on. I suppose I will steal as long as I live, and I'll die in a ditch at

the heel of the hunt. There was a time, not long ago, and if any one had told me then that I would rob, even

for hunger, I'd have been insulted: but what does it matter now? And the reason I am a thief is because I got

old without noticing it. Other people noticed it, but I did not. I suppose age comes on one so gradually that it

is seldom observed. If there are wrinkles on one's face we do not remember when they were not there: we put

down all kind of little infirmities to sedentary living, and you will see plenty of young people bald. If a man

has no occasion to tell any one his age, and if he never thinks of it himself, he won't see ten years' difference

between his youth and his age, for we live in slow, quiet times, and nothing ever happens to mark the years as

"I lodged in a house for a great many years, and a little girl grew up there, the daughter of my landlady. She

used to slide down the bannisters very well, and she used to play the piano very badly. These two things

worried me many a time. She used to bring me my meals in the morning and the evening, and often enough

she'd stop to talk with me while I was eating. She was a very chatty girl and I was a talkative person myself.

When she was about eighteen years of age I got so used to her that if her mother came with the food I would

be worried for the rest of the day. Her face was as bright as a sunbeam, and her lazy, careless ways, big, free

movements, and girlish chatter were pleasant to a man whose loneliness was only beginning to be apparent to

him through her company. I've thought of it often since, and I suppose that's how it began. She used to listen

to all my opinions and she'd agree with them because she had none of her own yet. She was a good girl, but

lazy in her mind and body; childish, in fact. Her talk was as involved as her actions: she always seemed to be

sliding down mental bannisters; she thought in kinks and spoke in spasms, hopped mentally from one subject

to another without the slightest difficulty, and could use a lot of language in saying nothing at all. I could see

all that at the time, but I suppose I was too pleased with my own sharp business brains, and sick enough,

although I did not know it, of my sharpbrained, business companions dear Lord! I remember them well.

It's easy enough to have brains as they call it, but it is not so easy to have a little gaiety or carelessness or

childishness or whatever it was she had. It is good, too, to feel superior to some one, even a girl.

"One day this thought came to me'It is time that I settled down.' I don't know where the idea came from;

one hears it often enough and it always seems to apply to some one else, but I don't know what brought it to

roost with me. I was foolish, too: I bought ties and differently shaped collars, and took to creasing my

trousers by folding them under the bed and lying on them all nightIt never struck me that I was more than

three times her age. I brought home sweets for her and she was delighted. She said she adored sweets, and she

used to insist on my eating some of them with her; she liked to compare notes as to how they tasted while

eating them. I used to get a toothache from them, but I bore with it although at that time I hated toothache

almost as much as I hated sweets. Then I asked her to come out with me for a walk. She was willing enough

and it was a novel experience for me. Indeed, it was rather exciting. le went out together often after that, and

sometimes we'd meet people I knew, young men from my office or from other offices. I used to be shy when

some of these people winked at me as they saluted. It was pleasant, too, telling the girl who they were, their

business and their salaries: for there was little I didn't know. I used to tell her of my own position in the office

and what the chief said to me through the day. Sometimes we talked of the things that had appeared in the

evening papers. A murder perhaps, some phase of a divorce case, the speech a political person had made, or

the price of stock. She was interested in anything so long as it was talk. And her own share in the

conversation was good to hear. Every lady that passed us had a hat that stirred her to the top of rapture or the

other pinnacle of disgust. She told me what ladies were frights and what were ducks. Under her scampering

tongue I began to learn something of humanity, even though she saw most people as delightfully funny

clowns or superb, majestical princes, but I noticed that she never said a bad word of a man, although many of

the men she looked after were ordinary enough. Until I went walking with her I never knew what a shop

window was. A jeweller's window especially: there were curious things in it. She told me how a tiara should

be worn, and a pendant, and she explained the kind of studs I should wear myself; they were made of gold

and had red stones in them; she showed me the ropes of pearl or diamonds that she thought would look pretty

on herself: and one day she said that she liked me very much. I was pleased and excited that day, but I was a

"She used to go out two nights in the week, Monday and Thursday, dressed in her best clothes. I didn't know

where she went, and I didn't askI thought she visited an acquaintance, a girl friend or some such. The time

went by and I made up my mind to ask her to marry me. I had watched her long enough and she was always

kind and bright. I liked the way she smiled, and I liked her obedient, mannerly bearing. There was something

else I liked, which I did not recognise then, something surrounding all her movements, a graciousness, a

spaciousness: I did not analyse it; but I know now that it was her youth. I remember that when we were out

together she walked slowly, but in the house she would leap up and down the stairsshe moved furiously,

"One evening she dressed to go out as usual, and she called at my door to know had I everything I wanted. I

said I had something to tell her when she came home, something important. She promised to come in early to

hear it, and I laughed at her and she laughed back and went sliding down the bannisters. I don't think I have

had any reason to laugh since that night. A letter came for me after she had gone, and I knew by the shape

and the handwriting that it was from the office. It puzzled me to think why I should be written to. I didn't like

opening it somehow. . . . It was my dismissal on account of advancing age, and it hoped for my future welfare

politely enough. It was signed by the Senior. I didn't grip it at first, and then I thought it was a hoax. For a

long time I sat in my room with an empty mind. I was watching my mind: there were immense distances in it

that drowsed and buzzed; large, soft movements seemed to be made in my mind, and although I was looking

at the letter in my hand I was really trying to focus those great, swinging spaces in my brain, and my ears

were listening for a movement of some kind. I can see back to that time plainly. I went walking up and down

the room. There was a dull, subterranean anger in me. I remember muttering once or twice, 'Shameful!' and

again I said, 'Ridiculous!' At the idea of age I looked at my face in the glass, but I was looking at my mind,

and it seemed to go grey, there was a heaviness there also. I seemed to be peering from beneath a weight at

something strange. I had a feeling that I had let go a grip which I had held tightly for a long time, and I had a

feeling that the letting go was a grave disaster . . . that strange face in the glass! how wrinkled it was! there

were only a few hairs on the head and they were grey ones. There was a constant twitching of the lips and the

eyes were deepset, little and dull. I left the glass and sat down by the window, looking out. I saw nothing in

the street: I just looked into a blackness. My mind was as blank as the night and as soundless. There was a

swirl outside the window, rain tossed by the wind; without noticing, I saw it, and my brain swung with the

rain until it heaved in circles, and then a feeling of faintness awakened me to myself. I did not allow my mind

to think, but now and again a word swooped from immense distances through my brain, swinging like a

comet across a sky and jarring terribly when it struck: 'Sacked' was one word, 'Old' was another word.

"I don't know how long I sat watching the flight of these dreadful words and listening to their clanking

impact, but a movement in the street aroused me. Two people, the girl and a young, slender man, were

coming slowly up to the house. The rain was falling heavily, but they did not seem to mind it. There was a

big puddle of water close to the kerb, and the girl, stepping daintily as a cat, went round this, but the young

man stood for a moment beyond it. He raised both arms, clenched his fists, swung them, and jumped over the

puddle. Then he and the girl stood looking at the water, apparently measuring the jump. I could see them

plainly by a street lamp. They were bidding each other goodbye. The girl put her hand to his neck and

settled the collar of his coat, and while her hand rested on him the young man suddenly and violently flung

his arms about her and hugged her; then they kissed and moved apart. The man walked to the rain puddle and

stood there with his face turned back laughing at her, and then he jumped straight into the middle of the

puddle and began to dance up and down in it, the muddy water splashing up to his knees. She ran over to him

crying 'Stop, silly!' When she came into the house, I bolted my door and I gave no answer to her knock.

"In a few months the money I had saved was spent. I couldn't get any work, I was too old; they put it that

they wanted a younger man. I couldn't pay my rent. I went out into the world again, like a baby, an old baby

in a new world. I stole food, food, food anywhere and everywhere. At first I was always caught. Often I was

sent to gaol; sometimes I was let go; sometimes I was kicked; but I learned to live like a wolf at last. I am not

often caught now when I steal food. But there is something happening every day, whether it is going to gaol

or planning how to steal a hen or a loaf of bread. I find that it is a good life, much better than the one I lived

for nearly sixty years, and I have time to think over every sort of thing. . . ."

When the morning came the Philosopher was taken on a car to the big City in order that he might be put on

THE ABILITY OF the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath for anger was unbounded. She was not one of those

limited creatures who are swept clean by a gust of wrath and left placid and smiling after its passing. She

could store her anger in those caverns of eternity which open into every soul, and which are filled with rage

and violence until the time comes when they may be stored with wisdom and love; for, in the genesis of life,

love is at the beginning and the end of things. First, like a laughing child, love came to labour minutely in the

rocks and sands of the heart, opening the first of those roads which lead inwards for ever, and then, the labour

of his day being done, love fled away and was forgotten. Following came the fierce winds of hate to work

like giants and gnomes among the prodigious debris, quarrying the rocks and levelling the roads which soar

inwards; but when that work is completed love will come radiantly again to live for ever in the human heart,

Before the Thin Woman could undertake the redemption of her husband by wrath, it was necessary that she

should be purified by the performance of that sacrifice which is called the Forgiveness of Enemies, and this

she did by embracing the Leprecauns of the Gort and in the presence of the sun and the wind remitting their

crime against her husband. Thus she became free to devote her malice against the State of Punishment, while

forgiving the individuals who had but acted in obedience to the pressure of their infernal environment, which

This done she set about baking the three cakes against her journey to Angus �g.

While she was baking the cakes, the children, Seumas and Brigid Beg, slipped away into the wood to speak

At first their movements were very careful, for they could not be quite sure that the policemen had really

gone away, or whether they were hiding in dark places waiting to pounce on them and carry them away to

captivity. The word "murder" was almost unknown to them, and its strangeness was rendered still more

strange by reason of the nearness of their father to the term. It was a terrible word and its terror was

magnified by their father's unthinkable implication. What had he done? Almost all his actions and habits were

so familiar to them as to be commonplace, and yet, there was a dark something to which he was a party and

which dashed before them as terrible and ungraspable as a lightningflash. They understood that it had

something to do with that other father and mother whose bodies had been snatched from beneath the

hearthstone, but they knew the Philosopher had done nothing in that instance, and, so, they saw murder as a

No one jumped out on them from behind the trees, so in a little time their confidence returned and they

walked less carefully. When they reached the edge of the pine wood the brilliant sunshine invited them to go

farther, and after a little hesitation they did so. The good spaces and the sweet air dissipated their melancholy

thoughts, and very soon they were racing each other to this point and to that. Their wayward flights had

carried them in the direction of Meehawl MacMurrachu's cottage, and here, breathlessly, they threw

themselves under a small tree to rest. It was a thorn bush, and as they sat beneath it the cessation of

movement gave them opportunity to again consider the terrible position of their father. With children thought

cannot be separated from action for very long. They think as much with their hands as with their heads. They

have to do the thing they speak of in order to visualise the idea, and, consequently, Seumas Beg was soon

reconstructing the earlier visit of the policemen to their house in grand pantomime. The ground beneath the

thorn bush became the hearthstone of their cottage; he and Brigid became four policemen, and in a moment

he was digging furiously with a broad piece of wood to find the two hidden bodies. He had digged for only a

few minutes when the piece of wood struck against something hard. A very little time sufficed to throw the

soil off this, and their delight was great when they unearthed a beautiful little earthen crock filled to the brim

with shining, yellow dust. When they lifted this they were astonished at its great weight. They played for a

long time with it, letting the heavy, yellow shower slip through their fingers and watching it glisten in the

sunshine. After they tired of this they decided to bring the crock home, but by the time they reached the Gort

na Cloca Mora they were so tired that they could not carry it any farther, and they decided to leave it with

their friends the Leprecauns. Seumas Beg gave the taps on the tree trunk which they had learned, and in a

"We have brought this, sir," said Seumas. But he got no further, for the instant the Leprecaun saw the crock

he threw his arms around it and wept in so loud a voice that his comrades swarmed up to see what had

happened to him, and they added their laughter and tears to his, to which chorus the children subjoined their

sympathetic clamour, so that a noise of great complexity rang through all the Gort.

But the Leprecauns' surrender to this happy passion was short. Hard on their gladness came remembrance and

consternation; and then repentance, that dismal virtue, wailed in their ears and their hearts. How could they

thank the children whose father and protector they had delivered to the unilluminated justice of humanity?

that justice which demands not atonement but punishment; which is learned in the Book of Enmity but not in

the Book of Friendship; which calls hatred Nature, and Love a conspiracy; whose law is an iron chain and

whose mercy is debility and chagrin; the blind fiend who would impose his own blindness; that unfruitful

loin which curses fertility; that stony heart which would petrify the generations of man; before whom life

withers away appalled and death would shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the inadequate

ooze from their eyes and danced joyfully for spite. They could do no more, so they fed the children lovingly

The Thin Woman had baked three cakes. One of these she gave to each of the children and one she kept

It was well after midday when they started. The fresh gaiety of the morning was gone, and a tyrannous sun,

whose majesty was almost insupportable, forded it over the world. There was but little shade for the

travellers, and, after a time, they became hot and weary and thirstythat is, the children did, but the Thin

Woman, by reason of her thinness, was proof against every elemental rigour, except hunger, from which no

She strode in the centre of the road, a very volcano of silence, thinking twenty different thoughts at the one

moment, so that the urgency of her desire for utterance kept her terribly quiet; but against this crust of

quietude there was accumulating a mass of speech which must at the last explode or petrify. From this

congestion of thought there arose the first deep rumblings, precursors of uproar, and another moment would

have heard the thunder of her varied malediction, but that Brigid Beg began to cry: for, indeed, the poor child

was both tired and parched to distraction, and Seumas had no barrier against a similar surrender, but two

minutes' worth of boyish pride. This discovery withdrew the Thin Woman from her fiery contemplations, and

It became necessary to find water quickly: no difficult thing, for the Thin Woman, being a Natural, was like

all other creatures able to sense the whereabouts of water, and so she at once led the children in a slightly

different direction. In a few minutes they reached a well by the roadside, and here the children drank deeply

and were comforted. There was a wide, leafy tree growing hard by the well, and in the shade of this tree they

While they rested the Thin Woman advised the children on many important matters. She never addressed her

discourse to both of them at once, but spoke first to Seumas on one subject and then to Brigid on another

subject; for, as she said, the things which a boy must learn are not those which are necessary to a girl. It is

particularly important that a man should understand how to circumvent women, for this and the capture of

food forms the basis of masculine wisdom, and on this subject she spoke to Seumas. It is, however, equally

urgent that a woman should be skilled to keep a man in his proper place, and to this thesis Brigid gave an

She taught that a man must hate all women before he is able to love a woman, but that he is at liberty, or

rather he is under express command, to love all men because they are of his kind. Women also should love all

other women as themselves, and they should hate all men but one man only, and him they should seek to turn

into a woman, because women, by the order of their beings, must be either tyrants or slaves, and it is better

they should be tyrants than slaves. She explained that between men and women there exists a state of

unremitting warfare, and that the endeavour of each sex is to bring the other to subjection; but that women are

possessed by a demon called Pity which severely handicaps their battle and perpetually gives victory to the

male, who is thus constantly rescued on the very ridges of defeat. She said to Seumas that his fatal day would

dawn when he loved a woman, because he would sacrifice his destiny to her caprice, and she begged him for

love of her to beware of all that twisty sex. To Brigid she revealed that a woman's terrible day is upon her

when she knows that a man loves her, for a man in love submits only to a woman, a partial, individual and

temporary submission, but a woman who is loved surrenders more fully to the very god of love himself, and

so she becomes a slave, and is not alone deprived of her personal liberty, but is even infected in her mental

processes by this crafty obsession. The fates work for man, and therefore, she averred, woman must be

victorious, for those who dare to war against the gods are already assured of victory: this being the law of

life, that only the weak shall conquer. The limit of strength is petrifaction and immobility, but there is no

limit to weakness, and cunning or fluidity is its counsellor. For these reasons, and in order that life might not

cease, women should seek to turn their husbands into women; then they would be tyrants and their husbands

As the Thin Woman proceeded with this lesson it became at last so extremely complicated that she was

brought to a stand by the knots, so she decided to resume their journey and disentangle her argument when

They were repacking the cakes in their wallets when they observed a stout, comely female coming towards

the well. This woman, when she drew near, saluted the Thin Woman, and her the Thin Woman saluted again,

"It's hot weather, surely," said she, "and I'm thinking it's as much as a body's life is worth to be travelling this

day and the sun the way it is. Did you come far, now, ma'am, or is it that you are used to going the roads and

"Far or near," said the stranger, "a perch is as much as I'd like to travel this time of the year. That's a fine pair

"I've ten of them myself," the other continued, "and I often wondered where they came from. It's queer to

think of one woman making ten new creatures and she not getting a penny for it, nor any thanks itself."

"Do you ever talk more than two words at the one time, ma'am?" said the stranger.

"I'd give a penny to hear you," replied the other angrily, "for a more badnatured, crossgrained,

cantankerous person than yourself I never met among womankind. It's what I said to a man only yesterday,

that thin ones are bad ones, and there isn't any one could be thinner than you are yourself."

"The reason you say that," said the Thin Woman calmly, "is because you are fat and you have to tell lies to

yourself to hide your misfortune, and let on that you like it. There is no one in the world could like to be fat,

and there I leave you, ma'am. You can poke your finger in your own eye, but you may keep it out of mine if

you please, and, so, goodbye to you; and if I wasn't a quiet woman I'd pull you by the hair of the head up a

hill and down a hill for two hours, and now there's an end of it. I've given you more than two words; let you

take care or I'll give you two more that will put blisters on your body for ever. Come along with me now,

children, and if ever you see a woman like that woman you'll know that she eats until she can't stand, and

drinks until she can't sit, and sleeps until she is stupid; and if that sort of person ever talks to you remember

that two words are all that's due to her, and let them be short ones, for a woman like that would be a traitor

and a thief, only that she's too lazy to be anything but a sot, God help her I and, so, goodbye."

Thereupon the Thin Woman and the children arose, and having saluted the stranger they went down the wide

path; but the other woman stayed where she was sitting, and she did not say a word even to herself.

As she strode along the Thin Woman lapsed again to her anger, and became so distant in her aspect that the

children could get no companionship from her; so, after a while, they ceased to consider her at all and

addressed themselves to their play. They danced before and behind and around her. They ran and doubled,

shouted and laughed and sang. Sometimes they pretended they were husband and wife, and then they plodded

quietly side by side, making wise, occasional remarks on the weather, or the condition of their health, or the

state of the fields of rye. Sometimes one was a horse and the other was a driver, and then they stamped along

the road with loud, fierce snortings and louder and fiercer commands. At another moment one was a cow

being driven with great difficulty to market by a driver whose temper had given way hours before; or they

both became goats and with their heads jammed together they pushed and squealed viciously; and these

changes lapsed into one another so easily that at no moment were they unoccupied. But as the day wore on to

evening the immense surrounding quietude began to weigh heavily upon them. Saving for their own shrill

voices there was no sound, and this unending, wide silence at last commanded them to a corresponding

quietness. Little by little they ceased their play. The scamper became a trot, each run was more and more

curtailed in its length, the race back became swifter than the run forth, and, shortly, they were pacing soberly

enough one on either side of the Thin Woman sending back and forth a few quiet sentences. Soon even these

sentences trailed away into the vast surrounding stillness. Then Brigid Beg clutched the Thin Woman's right

hand, and not long after Seumas gently clasped her left hand, and these mute appeals for protection and

comfort again released her from the valleys of fury through which she had been so fiercely careering.

As they went gently along they saw a cow lying in a field, and, seeing this animal, the Thin Woman stopped

"Everything," said she, "belongs to the wayfarer," and she crossed into the field and milked the cow into a

"The cow owns herself," said the Thin Woman, "for nobody can own a thing that is alive. I am sure she gives

her milk to us with great goodwill, for we are modest, temperate people without greed or pretension."

On being released the cow lay down again in the grass and resumed its interrupted cud. As the evening had

grown chill the Thin Woman and the children huddled close to the warm animal. They drew pieces of cake

from their wallets, and ate these and drank happily from the vessel of milk. Now and then the cow looked

benignantly over its shoulder bidding them a welcome to its hospitable flanks. It had a mild, motherly eye,

and it was very fond of children. The youngsters continually deserted their meal in order to put their arms

about the cow's neck to thank and praise her for her goodness, and to draw each other's attention to various

So they became cows and ate a few blades of grass, but they found that when they were cows they did not

want to say anything but "moo," and they decided that cows did not want to say anything more than that

either, and they became interested in the reflection that, perhaps, nothing else was worth saying.

A long, thin, yellowcoloured fly was going in that direction on a journey, and he stopped to rest himself on

"It's a great night for travelling," said the fly, "but one gets tired alone. Have you seen any of my people

"No," replied the cow, "no one but beetles tonight, and they seldom stop for a talk. You've rather a good

"We all have our troubles," said the fly in a melancholy voice, and he commenced to clean his right wing

"Does any one ever lie against your back the way these people are lying against mine, or do they steal your

"No corner is safe from them; they squat in the grass and pounce on you. I've got a twist, my eye trying to

watch them. They are ugly, voracious people without manners or neighbourliness, terrible, terrible creatures."

"I have seen them," said the cow, "but they never done me any harm. Move up a little bit please, I want to

lick my nose: it's queer how itchy my nose gets"the fly moved up a bit. "If," the cow continued, "you had

stayed there, and if my tongue had hit you, I don't suppose you would ever have recovered."

"Your tongue couldn't have hit me," said the by. "I move very quickly you know."

Hereupon the cow slily whacked her tongue across her nose. She did not see the fly move, but it was

"I do," replied the cow, and she bellowed so sudden and furious a snort of laughter that the fly was blown far

This amused the cow exceedingly, and she chuckled and sniggered to herself for a long time. The children

had listened with great interest to the conversation, and they also laughed delightedly, and the Thin Woman

admitted that the fly had got the worse of it; but, after a while, she said that the part of the cow's back against

which she was resting was bonier than anything she had ever leaned upon before, and that while thinness was

a virtue no one had any right to be thin in lumps, and that on this count the cow was not to be commended.

On hearing this the cow arose, and without another look at them it walked away into the dusky field. The

Thin Woman told the children afterwards that she was sorry she had said anything, but she was unable to

bring her self to apologise to the cow, and so they were forced to resume their journey in order to keep

There was a sickle moon in the sky, a tender sword whose radiance stayed in its own high places and did not

at all illumine the heavy world below; the glimmer of infrequent stars could also be seen with spacious, dark

solitudes between them; but on the earth the darkness gathered in fold on fold of misty veiling, through which

the trees uttered an earnest whisper, and the grasses lifted their little voices, and the wind crooned its thrilling,

As the travellers walked on, their eyes, flinching from the darkness, rested joyfully on the gracious moon, but

that joy lasted only for a little time. The Thin Woman spoke to them curiously about the moon, and, indeed,

she might speak with assurance on that subject, for her ancestors had sported in the cold beam through

"It is not known," said she, "that the fairies seldom dance for joy, but for sadness that they have been expelled

from the sweet dawn, and therefore their midnight revels are only ceremonies to remind them of their happy

state in the morning of the world before thoughtful curiosity and selfrighteous moralities drove them from

the kind face of the sun to the dark exile of midnight. It is strange that we may not be angry while looking on

the moon. Indeed, no mere appetite or passion of any kind dare become imperative in the presence of the

Shining One; and this, in a more limited degree, is true also of every form of beauty; for there is something in

an absolute beauty to chide away the desires of materiality and yet to dissolve the spirit in ecstasies of fear

and sadness. Beauty has no liking for Thought, but will send terror and sorrow on those who look upon her

with intelligent eyes. We may neither be angry nor gay in the presence of the moon, nor may we dare to think

in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely afflict us. I think that she is not benevolent but malign, and

that her mildness is a cloak for many shy infamies. I think that beauty tends to become frightful as it becomes

perfect, and that, if we could see it comprehendingly, the extreme of beauty is a desolating hideousness, and

that the name of ultimate, absolute beauty is Madness. Therefore men should seek loveliness rather than

beauty, and so they would always have a friend to go beside them, to understand and to comfort them, for that

is the business of loveliness: but the business of beautythere is no person at all knows what that is. Beauty

is the extreme which has not yet swung to and become merged in its opposite. The poets have sung of this

beauty and the philosophers have prophesied of it, thinking that the beauty which passes all understanding is

also the peace which passeth understanding; but I think that whatever passes understanding, which is

imagination, is terrible, standing aloof from humanity and from kindness, and that this is the sin against the

Holy Ghost, the great Artist. An isolated perfection is a symbol of terror and pride, and it is followed only by

the head of man, but the heart winces from it aghast, cleaving to that loveliness which is modesty and

righteousness. Every extreme is bad, in order that it may swing to and fertilize its equally horrible opposite."

Thus, speaking more to herself than to the children, the Thin Woman beguiled the way. The moon had

brightened as she spoke, and on either side of the path, wherever there was a tree or a rise in the ground, a

black shadow was crouching tensely watchful, seeming as if it might spring into terrible life at a bound. Of

these shadows the children became so fearful that the Thin Woman forsook the path and adventured on the

open hillside, so that in a short time the road was left behind and around them stretched the quiet slopes in the

When they had walked for a long time the children became sleepy; they were unused to being awake in the

night, and as there was no place where they could rest, and as it was evident that they could not walk much

further, the Thin Woman grew anxious. Already Brigid had made a tiny, whimpering sound, and Seumas had

followed this with a sigh, the slightest prolongation of which might have trailed into a sob, and when children

are overtaken by tears they do not understand how to escape from them until they are simply bored by much

When they topped a slight incline they saw a light shining some distance away, and toward this the Thin

Woman hurried. As they drew near she saw it was a small fire, and around this some figures were seated. In a

few minutes she came into the circle of the firelight, and here she halted suddenly. She would have turned

and fled, but fear loosened her knees so that they would not obey her will; also the people by the fire had

The fire was made of branches of heather, and beside it three figures sat. The Thin Woman, hiding her

perturbation as well as she could, came nigh and sat down by the fire. After a low word of greeting she gave

some of her cake to the children, drew them close to her, wrapped her shawl about their heads and bade them

They were quite naked, and each of them gazed on her with intent earnestness. The first was so beautiful that

the eye failed upon him, flinching aside as from a great brightness. He was of mighty stature, and yet so

nobly proportioned, so exquisitely slender and graceful, that no idea of gravity or bulk went with his height.

His face was kingly and youthful and of a terrifying serenity. The second man was of equal height, but broad

to wonderment. So broad was he that his great height seemed diminished. The tense arm on which he leaned

was knotted and ridged with muscle, and his hand gripped deeply into the ground. His face seemed as though

it had been hammered from hard rock, a massive, blunt face as rigid as his arm. The third man can scarcely

be described. He was neither short nor tall. He was muscled as heavily as the second man. As he sat he

looked like a colossal toad squatting with his arms about his knees, and upon these his chin rested. He had no

shape nor swiftness, and his head was flattened down and was scarcely wider than his neck. He had a

protruding doglike mouth that twitched occasionally, and from his little eyes there glinted a horrible

intelligence. Before this man the soul of the Thin Woman grovelled. She felt herself crawling to him. The last

terrible abasement of which humanity is capable came upon her: a fascination which would have drawn her to

him in screaming adoration. Hardly could she look away from him, but her arms were about the children, and

"Woman," said he, "for what purpose do you go abroad on this night and on this hill?"

"I travel, sir," said the Thin Woman, "searching for the Brugh of Angus the son of the Dagda M�r."

"We are the Three Absolutes, the Three Redeemers, the three Alembicsthe Most Beautiful Man, the

Strongest Man and the Ugliest Man. In the midst of every strife we go unhurt. We count the slain and the

victors and pass on laughing, and to us in the eternal order come all the peoples of the world to be

"I did not call to you, indeed," said the Thin Woman; "but why do you sit in the path so that travellers to the

"There are no paths closed to us," he replied; "even the gods seek us, for they grow weary in their splendid

desolationsaving Him who liveth in all things and in us; Him we serve and before His awful front we

abase ourselves. You, O Woman, who are walking in the valleys of anger, have called to us in your heart,

therefore we are waiting for you on the side of the hill. Choose now one of us to be your mate, and do not

"Why would I choose one of you," replied the Thin Woman, "when I am well married already to the best man

"Beyond us there is no best man," said he, "for we are the best in beauty, and the best in strength, and the best

in ugliness; there is no excellence which is not contained in us three. If you are married what does that matter

to us who are free from the pettiness of jealousy and fear, being at one with ourselves and with every

"If," she replied, "you are the Absolute and are above all pettiness, can you not be superior to me also and let

"We are what all humanity desire," quoth he, "and we desire all humanity. There is nothing, small or great,

disdained by our immortal appetites. It is not lawful, even for the Absolute, to outgrow Desire, which is the

breath of God quick in his creatures and not to be bounded or surmounted by any perfection."

During this conversation the other great figures had leaned forward listening intently but saying nothing. The

Thin Woman could feel the children like little, terrified birds pressing closely and very quietly to her sides.

"Sir," said she, "tell me what is Beauty and what is Strength and what is Ugliness? for, although I can see

"I will tell you that," he replied"Beauty is Thought and Strength is Love and Ugliness is Generation. The

home of Beauty is the head of man. The home of Strength is the heart of man, and in the loins Ugliness keeps

his dreadful state. If you come with me you shall know all delight. You shall live unharmed in the flame of

the spirit, and nothing that is gross shall bind your limbs or hinder your thought. You shall move as a queen

amongst all raging passions without torment or despair. Never shall you be driven or ashamed, but always

you will choose your own paths and walk with me in freedom and contentment and beauty."

"All things," said the Thin Woman, "must act according to the order of their being, and so I say to Thought, if

you hold me against my will presently I will bind you against your will, for the holder of an unwilling mate

"That is true," said he, "and against a thing that is true I cannot contend; therefore, you are free from me, but

"I am Strength and Love," he boomed, "and with me there is safety and peace; my days have honour and my

nights quietness. There is no evil thing walks near my lands, nor is any sound heard but the lowing of my

cattle, the songs of my birds and the laughter of my happy children. Come then to me who gives protection

"I will not go with you," said the Thin Woman, "for I am a mother and my strength cannot be increased; I am

a mother and my love cannot be added to. What have I further to desire from thee, thou great man?"

"You are free of me," said the second man, "but from my brother you are not free."

Then to the third man the Thin Woman addressed herself in terror, for to that hideous one something cringed

within her in an ecstasy of loathing. That repulsion which at its strongest becomes attraction gripped her. A

shiver, a plunge, and she had gone, but the hands of the children withheld her while in woe she abased herself

He spoke, and his voice came clogged and painful as though it urged from the matted pores of the earth itself.

"There is none left to whom you may go but me only. Do not be afraid, but come to me and I will give you

these wild delights which have been long forgotten. All things which are crude and riotous, all that is gross

and without limit is mine. You shall not think and suffer any longer; but you shall feel so surely that the heat

of the sun will be happiness: the taste of food, the wind that blows upon you, the ripe ease of your

bodythese things will amaze you who have forgotten them. My great arms about you will make you

furious and young again; you shall leap on the hillside like a young goat and sing for joy as the birds sing.

Leave this crabbed humanity that is barred and chained away from joy and come with me, to whose ancient

quietude at the last both Strength and Beauty will come like children tired in the evening, returning to the

freedom of the brutes and the birds, with bodies sufficient for their pleasure and with no care for Thought or

"It is not lawful to turn again when the journey is commenced, but to go forward to whatever is appointed;

nor may we return to your meadows and trees and sunny places who have once departed from them. The

torments of the mind may not be renounced for any easement of the body until the smoke that blinds us is

blown away, and the tormenting flame has fitted us for that immortal ecstasy which is the bosom of God. Nor

is it lawful that ye great ones should beset the path of travellers, seeking to lure them away with cunning

promises. It is only at the crossroads ye may sit where the traveller will hesitate and be in doubt, but on the

"You are free of me," said the third man, "until you are ready to come to me again, for I only of all things am

steadfast and patient, and to me all return in their seasons. There are brightnesses in my secret places in the

woods, and lamps in my gardens beneath the hills, tended by the angels of God, and behind my face there is

So the three Absolutes arose and strode mightily away; and as they went their thunderous speech to each

other boomed against the clouds and the earth like a gusty wind, and, even when they had disappeared, that

The Thin Woman and the children went slowly forward on the rugged, sloping way. Far beyond, near the

"Yonder," said the Thin Woman, "is the Brugh of Angus Mac an �g, the son of the Dagda M�r," and toward

In a little she was in the presence of the god and by him refreshed and comforted. She told him all that had

happened to her husband and implored his assistance. This was readily accorded, for the chief business of the

gods is to give protection and assistance to such of their people as require it; but (and this is their limitation)

they cannot give any help until it is demanded, the freewill of mankind being the most jealously guarded and

holy principle in life; therefore, the interference of the loving gods comes only on an equally loving

CAITILIN NI MURRACHU sat alone in the Brugh of Angus much as she had sat on the hillside and in the

cave of Pan, and again she was thinking. She was happy now. There was nothing more she could desire, for

all that the earth contained or the mind could describe was hers. Her thoughts were no longer those shy,

subterranean gropings which elude the hand and the understanding. Each thought was a thing or a person,

visible in its own radiant personal life, and to be seen or felt, welcomed or repulsed, as was its due. But she

had discovered that happiness is not laughter or satisfaction, and that no person can be happy for themselves

alone. So she had come to understand the terrible sadness of the gods, and why Angus wept in secret; for

often in the night she had heard him weeping, and she knew that his tears were for those others who were

unhappy, and that he could not be comforted while there was a woeful person or an evil deed hiding in the

world. Her own happiness also had become infected with this alien misery, until she knew that nothing was

alien to her, and that in truth all persons and all things were her brothers and sisters and that they were living

and dying in distress; and at the last she knew that there was not any man but mankind, nor any human being

but only humanity. Never again could the gratification of a desire give her pleasure for her sense of oneness

was destroyedshe was not an individual only; she was also part of a mighty organism ordained, through

whatever stress, to achieve its oneness, and this great being was threefold, comprising in its mighty units God

and Man and Naturethe immortal trinity. The duty of life is the sacrifice of self: it is to renounce the little

ego that the mighty ego may be freed; and, knowing this, she found at last that she knew Happiness, that

divine discontent which cannot rest nor be at ease until its bourne is attained and the knowledge of a man is

added to the gaiety of a child. Angus had told her that beyond this there lay the great ecstasy which is Love

and God and the beginning and the end of all things; for everything must come from the Liberty into the

Bondage, that it may return again to the Liberty comprehending all things and fitted for that fiery enjoyment.

This cannot be until there are no more fools living, for until the last fool has grown wise wisdom will totter

and freedom will still be invisible. Growth is not by years but by multitudes, and until there is a common eye

no one person can see God, for the eye of all nature will scarcely be great enough to look upon that majesty.

We shall greet Happiness by multitudes, but we can only greet Him by starry systems and a universal love.

She was so thinking when Angus �g came to her from the fields. The god was very radiant, smiling like the

"We will go down to the world of menfrom our quiet dwelling among the hills to the noisy city and the

multitude of people. This will be our first journey, but on a time not distant we will go to them again, and we

will not return from that journey, for we will live among our people and be at peace."

"When thy son is a man he will go before us on that journey," said Angus, and Caitilin shivered with a great

Then Angus �g put upon his bride glorious raiment, and they went out to the sunlight. It was the early

morning, the sun had just risen and the dew was sparkling on the heather and the grass. There was a keen stir

in the air that stung the blood to joy, so that Caitilin danced in uncontrollable gaiety, and Angus, with a merry

voice, chanted to the sky and danced also. About his shining head the birds were flying; for every kiss he

gave to Caitilin became a bird, the messengers of love and wisdom, and they also burst into triumphant

melody, so that the quiet place rang with their glee. Constantly from the circling birds one would go flying

with great speed to all quarters of space. These were his messengers flying to every fort and dun, every rath

and glen and valley of Eir� to raise the Sluaige Shee (the Fairy Host). They were birds of love that flew, for

this was a hosting of happiness, and, therefore the Shee would not bring weapons with them.

It was towards Kilmasheogue their happy steps were directed, and soon they came to the mountain.

After the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath had left the god she visited all the fairy forts of Kilmasheogue, and

directed the Shee who lived there to be in waiting at the dawn on the summit of the mountain; consequently,

when Angus and Caitilin came up the hill, they found the six clans coming to receive them, and with these

were the people of the younger Shee, members of the Tuatha da Danaan, tall and beautiful men and women

who had descended to the quiet underworld when the pressure of the sons of Milith forced them with their

Of those who came were Aine Ni Eog�il of Cnoc Aine and Iv�l of Craglea, the queens of North and South

Munster, and Una the queen of Ormond; these, with their hosts, sang upon the summit of the hill welcoming

the god. There came the five guardians of Ulster, the fomentors of combat:Brier Mac Belgan of

DromonaBreg, Redg Rotbill from the slopes of MaghItar, Tinnel the son of Boclacthna of Slieve Edlicon,

Grici of CruachanAigle, a goodly name, and Gulban Glas Mac Grici, whose dun is in the Ben of Gulban.

These five, matchless in combat, marched up the hill with their tribes, shouting as they went. From north and

south they came, and from east and west, bright and happy beings, a multitude, without fear, without

distraction, so that soon the hill was gay with their voices and their noble raiment.

Among them came the people of the Lupra, the ancient Leprecauns of the world, leaping like goats among

the knees of the heroes. They were headed by their king Ud�n Mac Audain and Beg Mac Beg his tanist, and,

following behind, was Glomhar O'Glomrach of the sea, the strongest man of their people, dressed in the skin

of a weasel; and there were also the chief men of that clan, well known of old, Conan Mac Rihid, Gaerku

Mac Gairid, Mether Mac Mint�n and Esirt Mac Beg, the son of Bueyen, born in a victory. This king was that

same Ud�n the chief of the Lupra who had been placed under bonds to taste the porridge in the great cauldron

of Emania, into which pot he fell, and was taken captive with his wife, and held for five weary years, until he

surrendered that which he most valued in the world, even his boots: the people of the hills laugh still at the

There came Bove Derg, the Fiery, seldom seen, and his harper the son of Trogain, whose music heals the sick

and makes the sad heart merry; Eochy Mac Elathan, Dagda M�r, the Father of Stars, and his daughter from

the Cave of Cruachan; Credh Mac Aedh of Raghery and Cas Corach son of the great Ollav; Mananaan Mac

Lir came from his wide waters shouting louder than the wind, with his daughters Cliona and Aoife and Etain

FairHair; and Coll and Cecht and Mac Greina, the Plough, the Hazel, and the Sun came with their wives,

whose names are not forgotten, even Banba and Fodla and Eir�, names of glory. Lugh of the LongHand,

filled with mysterious wisdom, was not absent, whose father was sadly avenged on the sons of

And one came also to whom the hosts shouted with mighty love, even the Serene One, Dana, the Mother of

the gods, steadfast for ever. Her breath is on the morning, her smile is summer. From her hand the birds of the

air take their food. The mild ox is her friend, and the wolf trots by her friendly side; at her voice the daisy

peeps from her cave and the nettle couches his lance. The rose arrays herself in innocence, scattering abroad

her sweetness with the dew, and the oak tree laughs to her in the air. Thou beautiful! the lambs follow thy

footsteps, they crop thy bounty in the meadows and are not thwarted: the weary men cling to thy bosom

everlasting. Through thee all actions and the deeds of men, through thee all voices come to us, even the

With wonder, with delight, the daughter of Murrachu watched the hosting of the Shee. Sometimes her eyes

were dazzled as a jewelled forehead blazed in the sun, or a shouldertorque of broad gold flamed like a torch.

On fair hair and dark the sun gleamed: white arms tossed and glanced a moment and sank and reappeared.

The eyes of those who did not hesitate nor compute looked into her eyes, not appraising, not questioning, but

mild and unafraid. The voices of free people spoke in her ears and the laughter of happy hearts, unthoughtful

of sin or shame, released from the hard bondage of selfhood. For these people, though many, were one. Each

spoke to the other as to himself, without reservation or subterfuge. They moved freely each in his personal

whim, and they moved also with the unity of one being: for when they shouted to the Mother of the gods they

shouted with one voice, and they bowed to her as one man bows. Through the many minds there went also

one mind, correcting, commanding, so that in a moment the interchangeable and fluid became locked, and

organic with a simultaneous understanding, a collective actionwhich was freedom.

While she looked the dancing ceased, and they turned their faces with one accord down the mountain. Those

in the front leaped forward, and behind them the others went leaping in orderly progression.

"Come, my beloved," said he, and hand in hand they raced among the others, laughing as they ran.

Here there was no green thing growing; a carpet of brown turf spread to the edge of sight on the sloping plain

and away to where another mountain soared in the air. They came to this and descended. In the distance,

groves of trees could be seen, and, very far away, the roofs and towers and spires of the Town of the Ford of

Hurdles, and the little roads that wandered everywhere; but on this height there was only prickly furze

growing softly in the sunlight; the bee droned his loud song, the birds flew and sang occasionally, and the

little streams grew heavy with their falling waters. A little further and the bushes were green and beautiful,

waving their gentle leaves in the quietude, and beyond again, wrapped in sunshine and peace, the trees looked

In a little they reached the grass land and the dance began. Hand sought for hand, feet moved companionably

as though they loved each other; quietly intimate they tripped without faltering, and, then, the loud song

"Come to us, ye who do not know where ye areye who live among strangers in the house of dismay and

selfrighteousness. Poor, awkward ones! How bewildered and bedevilled ye go! Amazed ye look and do not

comprehend, for your eyes are set upon a star and your feet move in the blessed kingdoms of the Shee

Innocents! in what prisons are ye flung? To what lowliness are ye bowed? How are ye ground between the

laws and the customs? The dark people of the Fomor have ye in thrall; and upon your minds they have

fastened a band of lead, your hearts are hung with iron, and about your loins a cincture of brass impressed,

woeful! Believe it, that the sun does shine, the flowers grow, and the birds sing pleasantly in the trees. The

free winds are everywhere, the water tumbles on the hills, the eagle calls aloud through the solitude, and his

mate comes speedily. The bees are gathering honey in the sunlight, the midges dance together, and the great

bull bellows across the river. The crow says a word to his brethren, and the wren snuggles her young in the

hedge. . . . Come to us, ye lovers of life and happiness. Hold out thy handa brother shall seize it from afar.

Leave the plough and the cart for a little time: put aside the needle and the awlIs leather thy brother, O

man? . . . Come away! come away! from the loom and the desk, from the shop where the carcasses are hung,

from the place where raiment is sold and the place where it is sewn in darkness: O bad treachery! Is it for joy

you sit in the broker's den, thou pale man? Has the attorney enchanted thee? . . . Come away! for the dance

has begun lightly, the wind is sounding over the hill, the sun laughs down into the valley, and the sea leaps

They swept through the goat tracks and the little boreens and the curving roads. Down to the city they went

dancing and singing; among the streets and the shops telling their sunny tale; not heeding the malignant eyes

and the cold brows as the sons of Balor looked sidewards. And they took the Philosopher from his prison,

even the Intellect of Man they took from the hands of the doctors and lawyers, from the sly priests, from the

professors whose mouths are gorged with sawdust, and the merchants who sell blades of grassthe awful

people of the Fomor . . . and then they returned again, dancing and singing, to the country of the gods. . . .