No More Learning

'

'God help us,' said the mother, 'and why did I ever let him into the
house at all, and the wild name he has! '

'It would have been no harm at all to have kept him outside, but there
would great harm come upon you if you put him out by force. But listen
to the plan I have to get him out of the house by his own doing,
without anyone putting him from it at all. '

It was not long after that the two women came in again, each of them
having a bundle of hay in her apron. Hanrahan was not singing now, but
he was talking to Oona very fast and soft, and he was saying: 'The
house is narrow but the world is wide, and there is no true lover
that need be afraid of night or morning or sun or stars or shadows
or evening, or any earthly thing. ' 'Hanrahan,' said the mother then,
striking him on the shoulder, 'will you give me a hand here for a
minute? ' 'Do that, Hanrahan,' said the woman of the neighbours, 'and
help us to make this hay into a rope, for you are ready with your
hands, and a blast of wind has loosened the thatch on the haystack. '

'I will do that for you,' said he, and he took the little stick in his
hands, and the mother began giving out the hay, and he twisting it, but
he was hurrying to have done with it, and to be free again. The women
went on talking and giving out the hay, and encouraging him, and saying
what a good twister of a rope he was, better than their own neighbours
or than anyone they had ever seen. And Hanrahan saw that Oona was
watching him, and he began to twist very quick and with his head high,
and to boast of the readiness of his hands, and the learning he had
in his head, and the strength in his arms. And as he was boasting, he
went backward, twisting the rope always till he came to the door that
was open behind him, and without thinking he passed the threshold and
was out on the road. And no sooner was he there than the mother made
a sudden rush, and threw out the rope after him, and she shut the door
and the half-door and put a bolt upon them.

She was well pleased when she had done that, and laughed out loud, and
the neighbours laughed and praised her. But they heard him beating
at the door, and saying words of cursing outside it, and the mother
had but time to stop Oona that had her hand upon the bolt to open it.
She made a sign to the fiddler then, and he began a reel, and one of
the young men asked no leave but caught hold of Oona and brought her
into the thick of the dance.
And when it was over and the fiddle had
stopped, there was no sound at all of anything outside, but the road
was as quiet as before.

As to Hanrahan, when he knew he was shut out and that there was neither
shelter nor drink nor a girl's ear for him that night, the anger and
the courage went out of him, and he went on to where the waves were
beating on the strand.

He sat down on a big stone, and he began swinging his right arm and
singing slowly to himself, the way he did always to hearten himself
when every other thing failed him. And whether it was that time or
another time he made the song that is called to this day 'The Twisting
of the Rope,' and that begins, 'What was the dead cat that put me in
this place,' is not known.

But after he had been singing awhile, mist and shadows seemed to gather
about him, sometimes coming out of the sea, and sometimes moving upon
it. It seemed to him that one of the shadows was the queen-woman he had
seen in her sleep at Slieve Echtge; not in her sleep now, but mocking,
and calling out to them that were behind her: 'He was weak, he was
weak, he had no courage. ' And he felt the strands of the rope in his
hand yet, and went on twisting it, but it seemed to him as he twisted,
that it had all the sorrows of the world in it. And then it seemed to
him as if the rope had changed in his dream into a great water-worm
that came out of the sea, and that twisted itself about him, and held
him closer and closer, and grew from big to bigger till the whole of
the earth and skies were wound up in it, and the stars themselves were
but the shining of the ridges of its skin. And then he got free of it,
and went on, shaking and unsteady, along the edge of the strand, and
the grey shapes were flying here and there around him. And this is what
they were saying, 'It is a pity for him that refuses the call of the
daughters of the Sidhe, for he will find no comfort in the love of the
women of the earth to the end of life and time, and the cold of the
grave is in his heart for ever. It is death he has chosen; let him die,
let him die, let him die. '




HANRAHAN AND CATHLEEN THE DAUGHTER OF HOOLIHAN


IT was travelling northward Hanrahan was one time, giving a hand to a
farmer now and again in the hurried time of the year, and telling his
stories and making his share of songs at wakes and at weddings.

He chanced one day to overtake on the road to Collooney one Margaret
Rooney, a woman he used to know in Munster when he was a young man. She
had no good name at that time, and it was the priest routed her out of
the place at last. He knew her by her walk and by the colour of her
eyes, and by a way she had of putting back the hair off her face with
her left hand. She had been wandering about, she said, selling herrings
and the like, and now she was going back to Sligo, to the place in the
Burrough where she was living with another woman, Mary Gillis, who
had much the same story as herself.