No More Learning

Some of the scholars began coming in then, to see if there would be
any school that day, and Hanrahan rose up and sat on the bench by the
hearth, and they all stood around him.

They thought he would bring out the Virgil or the Mass book or the
primer, but instead of that he held up the little branch of hawthorn he
had in his hand yet. 'Children,' he said, 'this is a new lesson I have
for you to-day.

'You yourselves and the beautiful people of the world are like this
blossom, and old age is the wind that comes and blows the blossom away.
And I have made a curse upon old age and upon the old men, and listen
now while I give it out to you. ' And this is what he said--

The poet, Owen Hanrahan, under a bush of may
Calls down a curse on his own head because it withers grey;
Then on the speckled eagle cock of Ballygawley Hill,
Because it is the oldest thing that knows of cark and ill;
And on the yew that has been green from the times out of mind
By the Steep Place of the Strangers and the Gap of the Wind;
And on the great grey pike that broods in Castle Dargan Lake
Having in his long body a many a hook and ache;
Then curses he old Paddy Bruen of the Well of Bride
Because no hair is on his head and drowsiness inside.
Then Paddy's neighbour, Peter Hart, and Michael Gill, his friend,
Because their wandering histories are never at an end.
And then old Shemus Cullinan, shepherd of the Green Lands
Because he holds two crutches between his crooked hands;
Then calls a curse from the dark North upon old Paddy Doe,
Who plans to lay his withering head upon a breast of snow,
Who plans to wreck a singing voice and break a merry heart,
He bids a curse hang over him till breath and body part;
But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may,
Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.

He said it over to the children verse by verse till all of them could
say a part of it, and some that were the quickest could say the whole
of it.

'That will do for to-day,' he said then. 'And what you have to do now
is to go out and sing that song for a while, to the tune of the Green
Bunch of Rushes, to everyone you meet, and to the old men themselves. '

'I will do that,' said one of the little lads; 'I know old Paddy Doe
well. Last Saint John's Eve we dropped a mouse down his chimney, but
this is better than a mouse. '

'I will go into the town of Sligo and sing it in the street,' said
another of the boys. 'Do that,' said Hanrahan, 'and go into the
Burrough and tell it to Margaret Rooney and Mary Gillis, and bid them
sing to it, and to make the beggars and the bacachs sing it wherever
they go.
' The children ran out then, full of pride and of mischief,
calling out the song as they ran, and Hanrahan knew there was no
danger it would not be heard.

He was sitting outside the door the next morning, looking at his
scholars as they came by in twos and threes. They were nearly all come,
and he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to know
whether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was like the
buzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a hidden river
in time of flood. Then he saw a crowd coming up to the cabin from the
road, and he took notice that all the crowd was made up of old men, and
that the leaders of it were Paddy Bruen, Michael Gill and Paddy Doe,
and there was not one in the crowd but had in his hand an ash stick or
a blackthorn. As soon as they caught sight of him, the sticks began to
wave hither and thither like branches in a storm, and the old feet to
run.

He waited no longer, but made off up the hill behind the cabin till he
was out of their sight.

After a while he came back round the hill, where he was hidden by the
furze growing along a ditch. And when he came in sight of his cabin he
saw that all the old men had gathered around it, and one of them was
just at that time thrusting a rake with a wisp of lighted straw on it
into the thatch.

'My grief,' he said, 'I have set Old Age and Time and Weariness and
Sickness against me, and I must go wandering again. And, O Blessed
Queen of Heaven,' he said, 'protect me from the Eagle of Ballygawley,
the Yew Tree of the Steep Place of the Strangers, the Pike of Castle
Dargan Lake, and from the lighted wisps of their kindred, the Old Men! '




HANRAHAN'S VISION


IT was in the month of June Hanrahan was on the road near Sligo, but he
did not go into the town, but turned towards Beinn Bulben; for there
were thoughts of the old times coming upon him, and he had no mind to
meet with common men. And as he walked he was singing to himself a song
that had come to him one time in his dreams:

O Death's old bony finger
Will never find us there
In the high hollow townland
Where love's to give and to spare;
Where boughs have fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Where rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
An old man plays the bagpipes
In a gold and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.

The little fox he murmured,
'O what of the world's bane? '
The sun was laughing sweetly,
The moon plucked at my rein;
But the little red fox murmured,
'O do not pluck at his rein,
He is riding to the townland
That is the world's bane. '

When their hearts are so high
That they would come to blows,
They unhook their heavy swords
From golden and silver boughs:
But all that are killed in battle
Awaken to life again:
It is lucky that their story
Is not known among men.