No More Learning

Just as he said that, there came in at
the half-door Oona, the daughter of the house, having a few bits of
bog deal from Connemara in her arms for the fire. She threw them on
the hearth and the flame rose up, and showed her to be very comely
and smiling, and two or three of the young men rose up and asked for
a dance. But Hanrahan crossed the floor and brushed the others away,
and said it was with him she must dance, after the long road he had
travelled before he came to her. And it is likely he said some soft
word in her ear, for she said nothing against it, and stood out with
him, and there were little blushes in her cheeks. Then other couples
stood up, but when the dance was going to begin, Hanrahan chanced to
look down, and he took notice of his boots that were worn and broken,
and the ragged grey socks showing through them; and he said angrily it
was a bad floor, and the music no great things, and he sat down in the
dark place beside the hearth. But if he did, the girl sat down there
with him.

The dancing went on, and when that dance was over another was called
for, and no one took much notice of Oona and Red Hanrahan for a while,
in the corner where they were. But the mother grew to be uneasy, and
she called to Oona to come and help her to set the table in the inner
room. But Oona that had never refused her before, said she would come
soon, but not yet, for she was listening to whatever he was saying
in her ear. The mother grew yet more uneasy then, and she would come
nearer them, and let on to be stirring the fire or sweeping the hearth,
and she would listen for a minute to hear what the poet was saying
to her child. And one time she heard him telling about white-handed
Deirdre, and how she brought the sons of Usnach to their death; and
how the blush in her cheeks was not so red as the blood of kings' sons
that was shed for her, and her sorrows had never gone out of mind;
and he said it was maybe the memory of her that made the cry of the
plover on the bog as sorrowful in the ear of the poets as the keening
of young men for a comrade. And there would never have been that memory
of her, he said, if it was not for the poets that had put her beauty
in their songs. And the next time she did not well understand what he
was saying, but as far as she could hear, it had the sound of poetry
though it was not rhymed, and this is what she heard him say: 'The sun
and the moon are the man and the girl, they are my life and your life,
they are travelling and ever travelling through the skies as if under
the one hood. It was God made them for one another. He made your life
and my life before the beginning of the world, he made them that they
might go through the world, up and down, like the two best dancers that
go on with the dance up and down the long floor of the barn, fresh and
laughing, when all the rest are tired out and leaning against the wall.
'

The old woman went then to where her husband was playing cards, but
he would take no notice of her, and then she went to a woman of
the neighbours and said: 'Is there no way we can get them from one
another? ' and without waiting for an answer she said to some young men
that were talking together: 'What good are you when you cannot make
the best girl in the house come out and dance with you? And go now
the whole of you,' she said, 'and see can you bring her away from the
poet's talk. ' But Oona would not listen to any of them, but only moved
her hand as if to send them away. Then they called to Hanrahan and said
he had best dance with the girl himself, or let her dance with one of
them. When Hanrahan heard what they were saying he said: 'That is so, I
will dance with her; there is no man in the house must dance with her
but myself. '

He stood up with her then, and led her out by the hand, and some of the
young men were vexed, and some began mocking at his ragged coat and his
broken boots. But he took no notice, and Oona took no notice, but they
looked at one another as if all the world belonged to themselves alone.
But another couple that had been sitting together like lovers stood out
on the floor at the same time, holding one another's hands and moving
their feet to keep time with the music. But Hanrahan turned his back on
them as if angry, and in place of dancing he began to sing, and as he
sang he held her hand, and his voice grew louder, and the mocking of
the young men stopped, and the fiddle stopped, and there was nothing
heard but his voice that had in it the sound of the wind. And what he
sang was a song he had heard or had made one time in his wanderings on
Slieve Echtge, and the words of it as they can be put into English were
like this:

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.

And while he was singing it Oona moved nearer to him, and the colour
had gone from her cheek, and her eyes were not blue now, but grey with
the tears that were in them, and anyone that saw her would have thought
she was ready to follow him there and then from the west to the east of
the world.

But one of the young men called out: 'Where is that country he is
singing about? Mind yourself, Oona, it is a long way off, you might
be a long time on the road before you would reach to it. ' And another
said: 'It is not to the Country of the Young you will be going if you
go with him, but to Mayo of the bogs.