No More Learning

I have heard of the battle over the dying both in County Galway and in
the Isles of Aran, an old Aran fisherman having told me that it was
fought over two of his children, and that he found blood in a box he
had for keeping fish, when it was over; and I have written about it,
and given examples elsewhere. A faery doctor, on the borders of Galway
and Clare, explained it as a battle between the friends and enemies
of the dying, the one party trying to take them, the other trying to
save them from being taken. It may once, when the land of the Sidhe was
the only other world, and when every man who died was carried thither,
have always accompanied death. I suggest that the battle between the
Tuatha De Danaan, the powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness,
and goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of darkness, and cold, and
barrenness, and badness upon the Towery Plain, was the establishment
of the habitable world, the rout of the ancestral darkness; that the
battle among the Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of summer
and winter; that the battle among the Sidhe at a man's death is the
battle of life and death; and that the battle of the Black Pig is the
battle between the manifest world and the ancestral darkness at the
end of all things; and that all these battles are one, the battle of
all things with shadowy decay. Once a symbolism has possessed the
imagination of large numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe, an
embodiment of disembodied powers, and repeats itself in dreams and
visions, age after age.


THE SECRET ROSE (p. 32).

I find that I have unintentionally changed the old story of Conchubar's
death. He did not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told about
it. He had been struck by a ball, made of the dried brain of a dead
enemy, and hurled out of a sling; and this ball had been left in his
head, and his head had been mended, the 'Book of Leinster' says, with
thread of gold because his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer of
the time of Elizabeth, says, 'In that state did he remain seven years,
until the Friday on which Christ was crucified, according to some
historians; and when he saw the unusual changes of the creation and the
eclipse of the sun and the moon at its full, he asked of Bucrach, a
Leinster Druid, who was along with him, what was it that brought that
unusual change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. "Jesus Christ, the
Son of God," said the Druid, "who is now being crucified by the Jews. "
"That is a pity," said Conchubar; "were I in his presence I would kill
those who were putting him to death. " And with that he brought out
his sword, and rushed at a woody grove which was convenient to him,
and began to cut and fell it; and what he said was, that if he were
among the Jews, that was the usage he would give them, and from the
excessiveness of his fury which seized upon him, the ball started out
of his head, and some of the brain came after it, and in that way he
died. The wood of Lanshraigh, in Feara Rois, is the name by which that
shrubby wood is called.
'

I have imagined Cuchulain meeting Fand 'walking among flaming dew. ' The
story of their love is one of the most beautiful of our old tales.

I have founded the man 'who drove the gods out of their Liss,' or fort,
upon something I have read about Caolte after the battle of Gabra, when
almost all his companions were killed, driving the gods out of their
Liss, either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas Ruaidh, now Asseroe,
a waterfall at Ballyshannon, where Ilbreac, one of the children of the
goddess Danu, had a Liss. But maybe I only read it in Mr. Standish
O'Grady, who has a fine imagination, for I find no such story in Lady
Gregory's book.

I have founded 'the proud dreaming king' upon Fergus, the son of Roigh,
the legendary poet of 'the quest of the bull of Cuailgne,' as he is
in the ancient story of Deirdre, and in modern poems by Ferguson. He
married Nessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she took him 'captive in
a single look. '

'I am but an empty shade,
Far from life and passion laid;
Yet does sweet remembrance thrill
All my shadowy being still. '

Presently, because of his great love, he gave up his throne to
Conchubar, her son by another, and lived out his days feasting, and
fighting, and hunting. His promise never to refuse a feast from a
certain comrade, and the mischief that came by his promise, and the
vengeance he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the poets. I
have explained my changing imaginations of him in 'Fergus and the
Druid,' and in a little song in the second act of 'The Countess
Kathleen,' and in 'Deirdre. '

I have founded him 'who sold tillage, and house, and goods,' upon
something in 'The Red Pony,' a folk tale in Mr. Larminie's 'West Irish
Folk Tales. ' A young man 'saw a light before him on the high road. When
he came as far, there was an open box on the road, and a light coming
up out of it. He took up the box.