No More Learning

I
no longer live an elaborate and haughty life, but seek to lose myself
among the prayers and the sorrows of the multitude. I pray best in poor
chapels, where the frieze coats brush by me as I kneel, and when I pray
against the demons I repeat a prayer which was made I know not how many
centuries ago to help some poor Gaelic man or woman who had suffered
with a suffering like mine.

_Seacht b-paidreacha fo seacht
Chuir Muire faoi n-a Mac,
Chuir Brighid faoi n-a brat,
Chuir Dia faoi n-a neart,
Eidir sinn 'san Sluagh Sidhe,
Eidir sinn 'san Sluagh Gaoith. _

Seven paters seven times,
Send Mary by her Son,
Send Bridget by her mantle,
Send God by His strength,
Between us and the faery host,
Between us and the demons of the air.




JOHN SHERMAN

AND

DHOYA:

TWO EARLY STORIES


_Republished by kind permission of Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. _


Having been persuaded somewhat against my judgment to include these
early stories, I have read them for the first time these many years.
They have come to interest me very deeply; for I am something of an
astrologer, and can see in them a young man--was I twenty-three? and
we Irish ripen slowly--born when the Water-Carrier was on the horizon,
at pains to overcome Saturn in Saturn's hour, just as I can see in
much that follows his struggle with the still all-too-unconquered
Moon, and at last, as I think, the summons of the prouder Sun. Sligo,
where I had lived as a child and spent some months or weeks of every
year till long after, is Ballah, and Pool Dhoya is at the river mouth
there, and he who gave me all of Sherman that was not born at the
rising of the Water-Carrier has still the bronze upon his face, and is
at this moment, it may be, in his walled garden, wondering, as he did
twenty years ago, whether he will ever mend the broken glass of the
conservatory, where I am not too young to recollect the vine-trees and
grapes that did not ripen.

W. B. YEATS.

_November 14th, 1907.
_




JOHN SHERMAN


FIRST PART

JOHN SHERMAN LEAVES BALLAH


I

IN the west of Ireland, on the 9th of December, in the town of Ballah,
in the Imperial Hotel there was a single guest, clerical and youthful.
With the exception of a stray commercial traveller, who stopped once
for a night, there had been nobody for a whole month but this guest,
and now he was thinking of going away. The town, full enough in summer
of trout and salmon fishers, slept all winter like the bears.

On the evening of the 9th of December, in the coffee-room of the
Imperial Hotel, there was nobody but this guest. The guest was
irritated. It had rained all day, and now that it was clearing up night
had almost fallen. He had packed his portmanteau; his stockings, his
clothes-brush, his razor, his dress shoes were each in their corner,
and now he had nothing to do. He had tried the paper that was lying on
the table. He did not agree with its politics.

The waiter was playing an accordion in a little room over the stairs.
The guest's irritation increased, for the more he thought about it
the more he perceived that the accordion was badly played. There was
a piano in the coffee-room; he sat down at it and played the tune
correctly, as loudly as possible. The waiter took no notice. He did not
know that he was being played for. He was wholly absorbed in his own
playing, and besides he was old, obstinate, and deaf. The guest could
stand it no longer.