No More Learning

DREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL


THE friend who heard about Maive and the hazel-stick went to the
workhouse another day. She found the old people cold and wretched,
'like flies in winter,' she said; but they forgot the cold when they
began to talk. A man had just left them who had played cards in a
rath with the people of faery, who had played 'very fair'; and one
old man had seen an enchanted black pig one night, and there were two
old people my friend had heard quarrelling as to whether Raftery or
Callanan was the better poet. One had said of Raftery, 'He was a big
man, and his songs have gone through the whole world. I remember him
well. He had a voice like the wind'; but the other was certain 'that
you would stand in the snow to listen to Callanan. ' Presently an old
man began to tell my friend a story, and all listened delightedly,
bursting into laughter now and then. The story, which I am going to
tell just as it was told, was one of those old rambling moral-less
tales, which are the delight of the poor and the hard driven, wherever
life is left in its natural simplicity. They tell of a time when
nothing had consequences, when even if you were killed, if only you
had a good heart, somebody would bring you to life again with a touch
of a rod, and when if you were a prince and happened to look exactly
like your brother, you might go to bed with his queen, and have only
a little quarrel afterwards. We too, if we were so weak and poor that
everything threatened us with misfortune, would remember, if foolish
people left us alone, every old dream that has been strong enough to
fling the weight of the world from its shoulders.

There was a king one time who was very much put out because he had no
son, and he went at last to consult his chief adviser. And the chief
adviser said, 'It's easy enough managed if you do as I tell you. Let
you send some one,' says he, 'to such a place to catch a fish. And when
the fish is brought in, give it to the queen, your wife, to eat. '

So the king sent as he was told, and the fish was caught and brought
in, and he gave it to the cook, and bade her put it before the fire,
but to be careful with it, and not to let any blob or blister rise on
it.
But it is impossible to cook a fish before the fire without the
skin of it rising in some place or other, and so there came a blob on
the skin, and the cook put her finger on it to smooth it down, and then
she put her finger into her mouth to cool it, and so she got a taste
of the fish. And then it was sent up to the queen, and she ate it, and
what was left of it was thrown out into the yard, and there was a mare
in the yard and a greyhound, and they ate the bits that were thrown out.

And before a year was out, the queen had a young son, and the cook had
a young son, and the mare had two foals, and the greyhound had two pups.

And the two young sons were sent out for a while to some place to be
cared, and when they came back they were so much like one another no
person could know which was the queen's son and which was the cook's.
And the queen was vexed at that, and she went to the chief adviser and
said, 'Tell me some way that I can know which is my own son, for I
don't like to be giving the same eating and drinking to the cook's son
as to my own. ' 'It is easy to know that,' said the chief adviser, 'if
you will do as I tell you. Go you outside, and stand at the door they
will be coming in by, and when they see you, your own son will bow his
head, but the cook's son will only laugh. '

So she did that, and when her own son bowed his head, her servants put
a mark on him that she would know him again. And when they were all
sitting at their dinner after that, she said to Jack, that was the
cook's son, 'It is time for you to go away out of this, for you are not
my son. ' And her own son, that we will call Bill, said, 'Do not send
him away, are we not brothers? 'But Jack said, 'I would have been long
ago out of this house if I knew it was not my own father and mother
owned it. ' And for all Bill could say to him, he would not stop. But
before he went, they were by the well that was in the garden, and he
said to Bill, 'If harm ever happens to me, that water on the top of the
well will be blood, and the water below will be honey. '

Then he took one of the pups, and one of the two horses, that was
foaled after the mare eating the fish, and the wind that was after him
could not catch him, and he caught the wind that was before him. And
he went on till he came to a weaver's house, and he asked him for
a lodging, and he gave it to him. And then he went on till he came
to a king's house, and he sent in at the door to ask, 'Did he want a
servant?