No More Learning

' A few nights after this I awoke to see the loveliest people
I have ever seen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green
raiment, cut like old Greek raiment, were standing at my bedside.
I looked at the girl and noticed that her dress was gathered about
her neck into a kind of chain, or perhaps into some kind of stiff
embroidery which represented ivy-leaves. But what filled me with wonder
was the miraculous mildness of her face. There are no such faces now.
It was beautiful, as few faces are beautiful, but it had neither, one
would think, the light that is in desire or in hope or in fear or
in speculation. It was peaceful like the faces of animals, or like
mountain pools at evening, so peaceful that it was a little sad. I
thought for a moment that she might be the beloved of AEngus, but how
could that hunted, alluring, happy, immortal wretch have a face like
this? Doubtless she was from among the children of the Moon, but who
among them I shall never know.

1902.




KIDNAPPERS


A LITTLE north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben
Bulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white
square in the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand;
no sheep or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more
inaccessible place upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to
the deep considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of
night it swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out.
All night the
gay rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless
perhaps where, in some more than commonly 'gentle' place--Drumcliff
or Drum-a-hair--the night-capped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust
from their doors to see what mischief the 'gentry' are doing. To their
trained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and
the air is full of shrill voices--a sound like whistling, as an ancient
Scottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the
angels, who 'speak much in the throat, like the Irish,' as Lilly, the
astrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed
bride in the neighbourhood, the night-capped 'doctors' will peer with
more than common care, for the unearthly troop do not always return
empty-handed. Sometimes a new-wed bride or a new-born baby goes with
them into their mountains; the door swings to behind, and the new-born
or the new-wed moves henceforth in the bloodless land of Faery; happy
enough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright vapour,
for the soul cannot live without sorrow. Through this door of white
stone, and the other doors of that land where _geabbeadh tu an sonas
aer pighin_ ('you can buy joy for a penny'), have gone kings, queens,
and princes, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there
are none but peasants in these sad chronicles of mine.

Somewhere about the beginning of last century appeared at the western
corner of Market Street, Sligo, where the butcher's shop now is, not
a palace, as in Keats's _Lamia_, but an apothecary's shop, ruled over
by a certain unaccountable Dr. Opendon. Where he came from, none ever
knew. There also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name,
whose husband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make
nothing of him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he
grew. Away went the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop
parlour. A black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had
just time to see that the side-board was covered with fruit, and to
say to herself, 'Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much,'
before Dr.