|
Celtic Twilight
by
William Butler Yeats
<<
Back -- Page
29 of 42 -- Next >>
Drumcliff and Rosses
DRUMCLIFF and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please
Heaven! places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them, time
after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore. Drumcliff is a
wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the mountain in whose side
the square white door swings open at nightfall to loose the faery riders on the
world. The great St. Columba himself, the builder of many of the old ruins in
the valley, climbed the mountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his
prayers. Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,
like a green tablecloth, and lying in the foam midway between the round
cairn-headed Knocknarea and "Ben Bulben, famous for hawks":
But for Benbulben and Knocknarea
Many a poor sailor'd be cast away,
as the rhyme goes.
At the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of
sand and rocks and grass: a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall
asleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake "silly,"
the "good people" having carried off his soul. There is no more ready
shortcut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered and
smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes thither "full
of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and drawing-rooms."
Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and was heard yelping
helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland. These forts or raths, made
before modem history had begun, cover all Rosses and all Columkille. The one
where the dog yelped has, like most others, an underground beehive chamber in
the midst. Once when I was poking about there, an unusually intelligent and
"reading" peasant who had come with me, and waited outside, knelt down
by the opening, and whispered in a timid voice, "Are you all right,
sir?" I had been some little while underground, and he feared I had been
carried off like the dog.
No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by
ill-boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose northern slope
lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer's young son came from one of them
and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards it, but the "glamour"
fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence, cross-legged, and commenced beating it
with a stick, for he imagined the fence was a horse, and that all night long he
went on the most wonderful ride through the country. in the morning he was still
beating his fence, and they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for
three years before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer tried to
level the fort. His cows and horses died, and an manner of trouble overtook him,
and finally he himself was led home, and left useless with "his head on his
knees by the fire to the day of his death."
A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses
is another angle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with sand.
About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or four fishermen
were put to watch the deserted hulk through the darkness. At midnight they saw
sitting on a stone at the. cave's mouth two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with
all their might. The men fled. A great crowd of villagers rushed down to the
cave to see the fiddlers, but the creatures had gone.
To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are
full of never-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door in
the evening, and, in her own words, "looks at the mountains and thinks of
the goodness of God," God is all the nearer, because the pagan powers are
not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for hawks, the white square
door swings open at sundown, and those wild unchristian riders rush forth upon
the fields, while southward the White Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself,
wanders under the broad cloud nightcap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these
things, even though the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no
long while since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of her
dress touched him. "He fell down, and was dead three days." But this
is merely the small gossip of faerydom--the little stitches that join this world
and the other.
One night as I sat eating Mrs. H-----'s soda-bread, her
husband told me a longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a
poor man from Fin M'Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell of,
for those creatures, the "good people," love to repeat themselves. At
any rate the story-tellers do. "In the times when we used to travel by the
canal," he said, "I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to
Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued I was
after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then we walked, now
and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls milking cows, and
stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked them for a drink of milk. 'We
have nothing to put it in here,' they said, 'but come to the house with us.' We
went home with them, and sat round the fire talking. After a while the others
went, and left me, loath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for
something to eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and
put it on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head. When
I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It grew darker
and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave the good fire, and
after a while two men came in, carrying between them a corpse. When I saw them,
coming I hid behind the door. Says one to the other, putting the corpse on the
spit, 'Who'll turn the spit? Says the other, 'Michael H-----, come out of that
and turn the meat.' I came out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit.
'Michael H------,' says the one who spoke first, 'if you let it burn we'll have
to put you on the spit instead'; and on that they went out. I sat there
trembling and turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and
the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But having
fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that time; and,
sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: 'Michael H-----, can you tell me a
story?' 'Divil a one,' said I. On which he caught me by the shoulder, and put me
out like a shot. It was a wild blowing night. Never in all my born days did I
see such a night-the darkest night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not
know where I was for the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and
touched me on the shoulder, with a 'Michael H----, can you tell a story now?' 'I
can,' says I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says: 'Begin.' 'I
have no story but the one,' says 1, 'that I was sitting here, and you two men
brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and set me turning it.' 'That will
do,' says he; 'ye may go in there and lie down on the bed.' And I went, nothing
loath; and in the morning where was I but in the middle of a green field!"
"Drumcliff" is a great place for omens. Before a
prosperous fishing season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a
storm-cloud; and at a place called Columkille's Strand, a place of marsh and
mire, an ancient boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a
moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread portents
too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon, renowned Hy
Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or care, nor cynic
laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest boscage, and enjoy the
conversation of Cuchullin and his heroes. A vision of Hy Brazel forebodes
national troubles.
Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road,
rath, hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men in
armour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on. A
whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there is a very ancient
graveyard. The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse about a soldier
named Denadhach, who died in 871: "A pious soldier of the race of Con lies
under hazel crosses at Drumcliff." Not very long ago an old woman, turning
to go into the churchyard at night to pray, saw standing before her a man in
armour, who asked her where she was going. It was the "pious soldier of the
race of Con," says local wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient
piety, over the graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of
sprinkling the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young
child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from the too
weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut your hand on a
stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.
There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the
snipe-ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well: for
excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on the slope of
Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea. There is a history concerning
the house and the bush. A man once lived there who found on the quay of Sligo a
package containing three hundred pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign
sea captain. This my man knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and
the sea captain, not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean.
Shortly afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange
sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered since the
freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive out in the garden
praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade of the dead man appeared
there at times. The bush remains to this day: once portion of a hedge, it now
stands by itself, for no one dare put spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the
strange sounds and voices, they did not cease till. a few years ago, when,
during some repairs, a snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the
troubled ghost, say the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.
My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and
Drumcliff these many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and
can find nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of the few
stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben: "They always
mind their own affairs and I always mind mine": for it is dangerous to talk
of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or knowledge of your forebears
will loosen these cautious tongues. My friend, "the sweet Harp-String"
(I give no more than his Irish name for fear of gaugers), has the science of
unpacking the stubbornest heart, but then he supplies the potheen-makers
with grain from his own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic
magician who raised the "dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a
kind of prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures.
They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of
magicians be true.
<<
Back -- Page
29 of 42 -- Next >>
|
