No More Learning

I am filled with a great joy. '

Thereat he began to sing in Latin, and, while he sang, his voice grew
fainter and fainter. Then his eyes closed, and his lips fell apart, and
the lad knew he was dead. 'He has told me a good tale,' he said, 'for
there was fighting in it, but I did not understand much of it, and it
is hard to remember so long a story. '

And, taking the knight's sword, he began to dig a grave in the soft
clay. He dug hard, and a faint light of dawn had touched his hair and
he had almost done his work when a cock crowed in the valley below.
'Ah,' he said, 'I must have that bird'; and he ran down the narrow path
to the valley.


THE WISDOM OF THE KING

THE High-Queen of the Island of Woods had died in childbirth, and her
child was put to nurse with a woman who lived in a hut of mud and
wicker, within the border of the wood. One night the woman sat rocking
the cradle, and pondering over the beauty of the child, and praying
that the gods might grant him wisdom equal to his beauty. There came
a knock at the door, and she got up, not a little wondering, for the
nearest neighbours were in the dun of the High-King a mile away; and
the night was now late. 'Who is knocking? ' she cried, and a thin voice
answered, 'Open! for I am a crone of the grey hawk, and I come from the
darkness of the great wood. ' In terror she drew back the bolt, and a
grey-clad woman, of a great age, and of a height more than human, came
in and stood by the head of the cradle. The nurse shrank back against
the wall, unable to take her eyes from the woman, for she saw by the
gleaming of the firelight that the feathers of the grey hawk were upon
her head instead of hair.
But the child slept, and the fire danced, for
the one was too ignorant and the other too full of gaiety to know what
a dreadful being stood there. 'Open! ' cried another voice, 'for I am a
crone of the grey hawk, and I watch over his nest in the darkness of
the great wood. ' The nurse opened the door again, though her fingers
could scarce hold the bolts for trembling, and another grey woman, not
less old than the other, and with like feathers instead of hair, came
in and stood by the first. In a little, came a third grey woman, and
after her a fourth, and then another and another and another, until
the hut was full of their immense bodies. They stood a long time in
perfect silence and stillness, for they were of those whom the dropping
of the sand has never troubled, but at last one muttered in a low thin
voice: 'Sisters, I knew him far away by the redness of his heart under
his silver skin'; and then another spoke: 'Sisters, I knew him because
his heart fluttered like a bird under a net of silver cords'; and then
another took up the word: 'Sisters, I knew him because his heart sang
like a bird that is happy in a silver cage. ' And after that they sang
together, those who were nearest rocking the cradle with long wrinkled
fingers; and their voices were now tender and caressing, now like the
wind blowing in the great wood, and this was their song:

Out of sight is out of mind:
Long have man and woman-kind,
Heavy of will and light of mood,
Taken away our wheaten food,
Taken away our Altar stone;
Hail and rain and thunder alone,
And red hearts we turn to grey,
Are true till Time gutter away.

When the song had died out, the crone who had first spoken, said: 'We
have nothing more to do but to mix a drop of our blood into his blood. '
And she scratched her arm with the sharp point of a spindle, which
she had made the nurse bring to her, and let a drop of blood, grey as
the mist, fall upon the lips of the child; and passed out into the
darkness. Then the others passed out in silence one by one; and all the
while the child had not opened his pink eyelids or the fire ceased to
dance, for the one was too ignorant and the other too full of gaiety to
know what great beings had bent over the cradle.

When the crones were gone, the nurse came to her courage again, and
hurried to the dun of the High-King, and cried out in the midst of the
assembly hall that the Sidhe, whether for good or evil she knew not,
had bent over the child that night; and the king and his poets and men
of law, and his huntsmen, and his cooks, and his chief warriors went
with her to the hut and gathered about the cradle, and were as noisy as
magpies, and the child sat up and looked at them.

Two years passed over, and the king died fighting against the Fer Bolg;
and the poets and the men of law ruled in the name of the child, but
looked to see him become the master himself before long, for no one
had seen so wise a child, and tales of his endless questions about
the household of the gods and the making of the world went hither and
thither among the wicker houses of the poor. Everything had been well
but for a miracle that began to trouble all men; and all women, who,
indeed, talked of it without ceasing. The feathers of the grey hawk
had begun to grow in the child's hair, and though his nurse cut them
continually, in but a little while they would be more numerous than
ever. This had not been a matter of great moment, for miracles were a
little thing in those days, but for an ancient law of Eri that none
who had any blemish of body could sit upon the throne; and as a grey
hawk was a wild thing of the air which had never sat at the board, or
listened to the songs of the poets in the light of the fire, it was not
possible to think of one in whose hair its feathers grew as other than
marred and blasted; nor could the people separate from their admiration
of the wisdom that grew in him a horror as at one of unhuman blood. Yet
all were resolved that he should reign, for they had suffered much from
foolish kings and their own disorders, and moreover they desired to
watch out the spectacle of his days; and no one had any other fear but
that his great wisdom might bid him obey the law, and call some other,
who had but a common mind, to reign in his stead.