No More Learning

'

'Tell me who are those that have passed by,' said Hanrahan.

'Those that passed first,' the woman said, 'are the lovers that had the
greatest name in the old times, Blanad and Deirdre and Grania and their
dear comrades, and a great many that are not so well known but are as
well loved. And because it was not only the blossom of youth they were
looking for in one another, but the beauty that is as lasting as the
night and the stars, the night and the stars hold them for ever from
the warring and the perishing, in spite of the wars and the bitterness
their love brought into the world. And those that came next,' she said,
'and that still breathe the sweet air and have the mirrors in their
hearts, are not put in songs by the poets, because they sought only to
triumph one over the other, and so to prove their strength and beauty,
and out of this they made a kind of love. And as to the women with
shadow-bodies, they desired neither to triumph nor to love but only
to be loved, and there is no blood in their hearts or in their bodies
until it flows through them from a kiss, and their life is but for a
moment. All these are unhappy, but I am the unhappiest of all, for
I am Dervadilla, and this is Dermot, and it was our sin brought the
Norman into Ireland. And the curses of all the generations are upon
us, and none are punished as we are punished. It was but the blossom
of the man and of the woman we loved in one another, the dying beauty
of the dust and not the everlasting beauty. When we died there was no
lasting unbreakable quiet about us, and the bitterness of the battles
we brought into Ireland turned to our own punishment. We go wandering
together for ever, but Dermot that was my lover sees me always as a
body that has been a long time in the ground, and I know that is the
way he sees me. Ask me more, ask me more, for all the years have left
their wisdom in my heart, and no one has listened to me for seven
hundred years. '

A great terror had fallen upon Hanrahan, and lifting his arms above his
head he screamed out loud three times, and the cattle in the valley
lifted their heads and lowed, and the birds in the wood at the edge
of the mountain awaked out of their sleep and fluttered through the
trembling leaves. But a little below the edge of the rock, the troop of
rose leaves still fluttered in the air, for the gateway of Eternity had
opened and shut again in one beat of the heart.




THE DEATH OF HANRAHAN


HANRAHAN, that was never long in one place, was back again among the
villages that are at the foot of Slieve Echtge, Illeton and Scalp and
Ballylee, stopping sometimes in one house and sometimes in another,
and finding a welcome in every place for the sake of the old times and
of his poetry and his learning. There was some silver and some copper
money in the little leather bag under his coat, but it was seldom he
needed to take anything from it, for it was little he used, and there
was not one of the people that would have taken payment from him.
His
hand had grown heavy on the blackthorn he leaned on, and his cheeks
were hollow and worn, but so far as food went, potatoes and milk and a
bit of oaten cake, he had what he wanted of it; and it is not on the
edge of so wild and boggy a place as Echtge a mug of spirits would be
wanting, with the taste of the turf smoke on it. He would wander about
the big wood at Kinadife, or he would sit through many hours of the
day among the rushes about Lake Belshragh, listening to the streams
from the hills, or watching the shadows in the brown bog pools; sitting
so quiet as not to startle the deer that came down from the heather
to the grass and the tilled fields at the fall of night. As the days
went by it seemed as if he was beginning to belong to some world out of
sight and misty, that has for its mearing the colours that are beyond
all other colours and the silences that are beyond all silences of
this world. And sometimes he would hear coming and going in the wood
music that when it stopped went from his memory like a dream; and once
in the stillness of midday he heard a sound like the clashing of many
swords, that went on for a long time without any break. And at the fall
of night and at moonrise the lake would grow to be like a gateway of
silver and shining stones, and there would come from its silence the
faint sound of keening and of frightened laughter broken by the wind,
and many pale beckoning hands.

He was sitting looking into the water one evening in harvest time,
thinking of all the secrets that were shut into the lakes and the
mountains, when he heard a cry coming from the south, very faint at
first, but getting louder and clearer as the shadow of the rushes grew
longer, till he could hear the words, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful;
the birds in the air, the moths under the leaves, the flies over the
water look at me, for they never saw any one so beautiful as myself. I
am young; I am young: look upon me, mountains; look upon me, perishing
woods, for my body will shine like the white waters when you have been
hurried away. You and the whole race of men, and the race of the beasts
and the race of the fish and the winged race are dropping like a candle
that is nearly burned out, but I laugh out because I am in my youth. '
The voice would break off from time to time, as if tired, and then it
would begin again, calling out always the same words, 'I am beautiful,
I am beautiful. ' Presently the bushes at the edge of the little lake
trembled for a moment, and a very old woman forced her way among them,
and passed by Hanrahan, walking with very slow steps. Her face was of
the colour of earth, and more wrinkled than the face of any old hag
that was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in wisps, and the
rags she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by
all weathers. She passed by him with her eyes wide open, and her head
high, and her arms hanging straight beside her, and she went into the
shadow of the hills towards the west.

A sort of dread came over Hanrahan when he saw her, for he knew her to
be one Winny Byrne, that went begging from place to place crying always
the same cry, and he had often heard that she had once such wisdom that
all the women of the neighbours used to go looking for advice from her,
and that she had a voice so beautiful that men and women would come
from every part to hear her sing at a wake or a wedding; and that the
Others, the great Sidhe, had stolen her wits one Samhain night many
years ago, when she had fallen asleep on the edge of a rath, and had
seen in her dreams the servants of Echtge of the hills.

And as she vanished away up the hillside, it seemed as if her cry, 'I
am beautiful, I am beautiful,' was coming from among the stars in the
heavens.

There was a cold wind creeping among the rushes, and Hanrahan began to
shiver, and he rose up to go to some house where there would be a fire
on the hearth. But instead of turning down the hill as he was used, he
went on up the hill, along the little track that was maybe a road and
maybe the dry bed of a stream.