No More Learning

Only friendship for yourself
or knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
friend, 'the sweet Harp-String' (I give no more than his Irish name
for fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest
heart, but then he supplies the _potheen_-makers with grain from his
own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who
raised the 'dhoul' in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of
prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures.
They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the
parentage of magicians be true.




THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE


I

ONCE a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the
cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made
them feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil
himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows
with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break,
and they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet,
and worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the
Icelanders, or 'Danes' as we call them and all other dwellers in the
Scandinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places,
and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same
way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the
custom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people
of Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland
which once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses
itself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as
Roughley, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red
beards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a
boat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike
each other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint
of hitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing,
only to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a
man from Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row,
and made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so
thin you cannot be responsible for them.
Having turned with a look of
passionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and
cried, 'That little fellow's skull if ye were to hit it would go like
an egg-shell,' he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,
'but a man might wallop away at your lordship's for a fortnight. '


II

I wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories. I
was in Roughley the other day, and found it much like other desolate
places. I may have been thinking of Moughorow, a much wilder place, for
the memories of one's childhood are brittle things to lean upon.

1902.




THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR


A SEA captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his
deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the
valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all
things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow
under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must
needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper
with a Captain Moran on board the ss. _Margaret_, that had put into a
western river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions
all flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He
talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all
his words broke the hard energy of his calling.

'Sur,' said he, 'did you ever hear tell of the sea captain's prayer? '

'No,' said I; 'what is it? '

'It is,' he replied, '"O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip. "'

'And what does that mean? '

'It means,' he said, 'that when they come to me some night and wake me
up, and say, "Captain, we're going down," that I won't make a fool o'
meself.