by George Moore
CHAPTER 17.
DID ALEC TELL you any stories? my friend asked, and his short, ironical laugh jarred a little. No; I heard no stories, but patience is the virtue of the folk-lorist. You don’t mean that you’re going for another tramp with Alec? Yes, we start to-morrow at nine. Well, you’re an extraordinary fellow, my host said. Every man is extraordinary to his fellow, I answered; our quests are different; and the next day I went forth again, to return with an increased knowledge of ferns but without any stories. Indeed, I had almost begun to believe that a joke was being put upon me. It was often on my tongue to say: in the winter evenings I suppose you tell stories in the cottages but I had restrained myself, and it is not unlikely that it was to break through my studied reserve that he began to speak, some days later, of Liadin and Curithir, saying they used to meet by the druid stone under which we were now sitting eating the food we had brought with us. And who may they be? I asked. You don’t read their names in the stories that are going round about old Ireland, he answered, but ’tis many and many’s the time I’ve heard my father say that there wasn’t the like of that pair for the making of poems.
The names seemed to kindle a new personality in him. The lantern is lighted, I said; we shall see whither it leads us.
In the years back, he continued, it was a favourite story with the people, but they don’t care much about it here. It is out of their minds now like the rest of the old shanachies, and all they have a taste for is the yarns they do be reading in the newspapers and the like; stuff without any diet in them. They are not like the story I’m talking of, the story of Liadin and Curithir. But I would be wearying your honour with it. You might not be caring for old stories. There’s nothing to my mind better than an old story, I answered. The birds are singing overhead; the time is for story-telling; go on, Alec.
CHAPTER 18.
WELL, SINCE YOUR honour is so pleasant I’ll tell it. At the first going off, let you know that Liadin and Curithir were two great poets, as great as any that ever went the round in Ireland, though there has been more talk about others than about them. Usheen was the biggest of the lot, and I’m not comparing Liadin and Curithir to himself. All the same Curithir was a fine poet and Liadin wasn’t far behind him for the telling of stories and the singing of songs in the courts of the kings, and the like, where they’d all be clamouring and shouting for her at the end of their feasts. She was from Corkaguiney, or, as they call it now, the County Cork, and she was on her way there when she met Curithir, who was on his rounds to the west and would be going north shortly with his thousand stories, for he had a stiffer memory than Liadin’s, although his songs weren’t as soothing to men after drinking a gallon or more of ale. A gallon was nothing to people in those days! And so it was with these two that I am telling your honour about, and they sharing the glory of Ireland between them.
Every spring of the year they would be passing this stone, beside which your honour is lying, as they were bound to go, it being the mereing. And every time they passed it Liadin said to herself: Curithir knows more poems than I do but my own songs are sweeter than Curithir’s. And every time Curithir passed it he said: many’s the time I’ve gone by here thinking to meet Liadin, whose songs make game men of all men, though what they be at is love or war, strutting and striving to outdo one and t’other, trailing their coats like a cock his wing. She passes this way every year like I do myself, Curithir said; and we always missing each other as if it was the will of God. And while he was thinking away like I’m telling you, a feeling came over him that it would be well for him to bide his time, it being about the season that she would be on her way to the south. Nor had he long to wait, for before the light was gone he saw two women coming through the dusk, and he knew them to be Liadin and her tiring woman, for no one else would be wandering through a lonesome place at nightfall, unless it was herdsmen that were come to bring the cows home for the milk to be drawn out of them. Isn’t it true, says Curithir, to himself, she is coming to touch this stone like everybody that travels north or south? but though he said to himself — it is she — he wasn’t sure that it was, and his heart was fluttering as if it would burst his breast open and lay him stiff before her. With every step she took the cold sweat was starting on his forehead, and his face was gone as pale as the grass beyond will be in the heel of the year; and then, as she came nearer, and the sight of her face became plain, a great swimming came behind his eyes and he might have fallen, she was that beautiful. He said: her body is like a first night’s snow, her hair is curly as the wool on a ram’s head, her lips are red as the rowan berry, and her voice is sweet and low like the wind whispering among the reeds when the summer is coming in.
At last I am looking at yourself, Curithir, and it is not too soon that I set my eyes on you, for every spring-time, a day, or at the most a week, has been coming between our two bodies and our two souls. Faith, Liadin of the songs, I’ve been thinking that myself, and it was a good thought bade me a while back to wait here where I am lest you might be passing. Do you hear that, Lomna Druth and Curithir asked, turning from Liadin to his dwarf who was cocked up on the druid stone with the poet’s singing robe in a purple bag lying beside him. I’ve half a mind to leave you cocked up there, so that you may be breaking one of your little legs trying to climb down, or if there be no heart in you to dare to climb down, to die up there, and you howling for a bite or a sup and none coming. But my happiness is so great now that I’ll even forgive you for urging me to my journey and making me miss her whom I’ve been waiting for this long time, and who is before us now. He would have said more than that to Lomna Druth, for he was angry at the thought that he had been near to missing Liadin again. But at the sight of her there was no more thought in him for Lomna Druth, and turning from the ugly little fellow he stood gazing and gaping at the beautiful woman before him without a word to say to her, for his throat was like a lime-kiln and hers was hardly better. A spell seemed to be on the two of them, caused by the long waiting and by the spring of the year. At last she got out the words: Brigit, my tiring woman, was to sleep here by this stone. But if you and the Lomna Druth have chosen this place for your bed we would not be Faith, said Curithir, wouldn’t it be the poor thing if we could not spend one night listening to the stories that every person in Ireland has heard but our two selves alone.
But not a story, nor the beginning of a story, could either tell the other, so great was the longing and the uneasiness and the torment that was in them. While they were that way the Lomna Druth was snoring away like a stuck pig, with his mouth wide open, and the moon staring down his gullet; nor was Brigit far behind him, and the noise them two were making with their snores and their snorts put all the stories out of Curithir’s head so that he could not remember one of them at all and was stumbling and forgetting himself until Liadin took pity on him. So she said: let us leave these people where they are and we will go and look out for a quiet place in the wood where we can talk. He knew what was in her mind, and got on his feet, and she came after him saying: I cannot go with you, and he answering: you can, you can, indeed, overcoming her with the story of a place where the grass was thick under the larches: where, he said, we shall be missing the droppings of the rooks, for they have their nests higher up on the hill-side. So cosening was his talk she could not say no to him, and that night they lay with their lips seeking each other’s lips always, his hand never wearying of the shape of her body, nor his eyes wearying either, for the moon shining through the tasselled branches gave light enough for him to enjoy her with his eyes. So he not wearying and she nothing loth spent the night together, taking their joy of each other until the rooks began to clatter out of the high wood and went away one by one and two by two down the valley filled with mist for all the world like a lake. No person, he said, looking from her, would know the mist from a lake that had come in the night to divide us, and she said: a lake come to divide us! And he answered her reproof: no, we’re together for as long as this flesh lasts. On speaking these w
ords there came a piercing in him with the knowledge that he would lose Liadin. How he would lose her he did not know; but there was fear in him that he would lose her surely. It was in her too, but being a woman she kept the thought to herself.
My Brigit and your Lomna Druth, she said, will come this way searching for us; it would be as well that we should go to them instead. It would be as well indeed, he replied angrily, but I wish all the same that the warning had not come from you, and without saying any more they went back in search of their servants. Curithir, guessing Liadin’s thoughts, said: from this day our life will be lonesome for us two, and not one of us knows how we lived our lives up to this day, and we not seeing each other every day and every night; so hazy is it all that I do believe it was but a dream that a reality broke last night. I’m feeling like that myself, she said, but I would have you make your meaning plainer to me. Says he: is it not plain enough what I say that you are the greatest poetess Ireland has ever known and I am the greatest poet; let us go off together for good and all, and we will have a son to our name who’ll be greater than the two of us. I like well, she answered, that you should be thinking such things, but if I said yes to that all my trysts would be broken and your trysts too, and you have many of them in the north and I elsewhere. We have to keep our bonds with the people in whose houses we’ve eaten and whose presents we’ve taken. And this seeming to Curithir well spoken, he kicked his dwarf out of slumber and said: come, follow me; the day has begun and our way is northward. With the same words but without the kick Liadin awoke Brigit: put the harp on your back and sling the bag with my singing robes over your arm and be after me quickly, for there’s a long road in front of us. Brigit did as she was bid and was soon ahead of her mistress, whose thoughts were not on the road before her but back in the pleasant covert where so much delight had come to her. And every step she took away from the place the nearer it was to her, so that to get rid of the languish that was interfering with her journey she began a cronan and a singing to herself, and it was the way that the words and the tune came unknown to her, word for word and note by note, so that she wondered. The like of this never happened to me before, she murmured, though the verses usually came easily to me; nor was the first stretch of the road they were going done with when lo! and behold you! a second and a third song came to her and she not looking for them or thinking about them at all! Other things she was thinking of. Mistress, you’ll be making the king wait for the new songs you promised last year. But to Brigit’s screechings Liadin gave no heed. She continued in her thoughts until they arrived at the Court, where there was a great gathering to meet her. It was proud she was that time, and when she took the harp from Brigit she made a song about love under the larches the way that everyone who heard her that night was troubled under their robes and stood gaping and gazing, every man looking at every other man’s wife and every woman with her eyes at another woman’s husband. Wherever she went it was the same story, from king to serving boy, men were stabbing each other in the streets, and women tearing each other’s hair in the parlours, with Liadin standing by unconcerned about the mischief she was making; rejoicing maybe in the bottom of her heart, for she was wild and raging wild that she hadn’t had a second night with Curithir under the larches. A year is a long time, said she, but if I kissed another man that would spoil it all, and as soon as any man tried to put a hand on her she out with a knife on him. Let you be listening to my songs, she would say, and let you be off and do the same thing underneath the larches, but let me be, for in this world everyone keeps to their own people, the kings with the queens, the poets with the poetesses, and so on that way.
The kissing and the strife continued until the priest hearing that bad work was being done in the courts said: Ireland will go back to the devil and the druids if we don’t put a stop to that one, and from that day out they gave her neither peace nor ease, but kept on talking to her, and preaching to her and barking at her about her soul that would be lasting always, and about the wasting of the flesh and the wasting of all things in the world. It was the truth they were telling her, and she did well to listen to them, for who have we but the clergy to come to us when we’re on the broad of our back, on the last day, with oil to rub on our feet, and strong prayers for the resting of our souls? The time will come to you, Liadin, said the priests, when your voice will be no better than the screeching of gravel under a door, and your fine hair will be no better than seaweed, and it lank and stinking; and your teeth, if they are little itself and like the snowdrops this day, will one day be lengthy and yellow, and after that maybe there won’t be a tooth in your head at all. And not a day but will see the vanishing of a bit of your beauty until there is none left, said the priest. It’s that way and with them arguments they talked to her, and there was no stopping them once they began; and then you will be thinking, Liadin, of the fair hair, about the mischief you did in Erin and in the world, and about your wantoning in the dry ditches in the summer nights, and the fighting and battling you set going up and down the streets of the five provinces. Repent while you’ve got the chance, said they, or it’ll be the worse for you. What would you have me do? said she. Is it to be hanging up my harp on a nail at the back of a door, and leaving it there? she asked them. And they said: it wasn’t that, but to put a good tune on the harp and to make songs about the love of God and the glory of the holy saints and angels: that, said themselves, is what we’d have you do. But if the sort of songs you like do not come into my mind, what way will I be singing them and I thinking of other things? she asked. And that was her gait all the time, till one day a great man, Fergus by name, took his death-blow with a bill-hook in a dispute and a quarrel with another man about her singing.
It was after that she began to listen to the priest: it’s a filthy, bad, black passion is in yourself, and all for another singer, a wanderer and a story-teller of your own kidney. The children you’ll get that way wouldn’t be saints at all but little devils, and the sins they commit will be added to your own ones for the punishment. And so they kept at her until they got the girl frightened. What would I be doing to escape the punishment? she asked, and the words warmed the priest’s heart, for he knew that he’d got her tight. There is only the one, he said, and that’s the vow. And she, being shook in her mind and tormented, took a vow to break with Curithir, but not content with that, the priest would have had a promise from her not to as much as see him. But she stood up to the priest at that, saying: if I have pledged a vow to meet him at the druid’s stone I must keep my vow to him, and no amount of talking out of the priest could get it into her head that one vow wasn’t as good as another. The priest promised that grace would come to her in a convent. But who will be getting me out of the convent when once I am inside of it? she asked, and the priest wasn’t able to answer that question, so she said: no; I’ll not go into a convent until I have seen Curithir, and she stuck to that. The priest in his turn answered her stiff enough that if she didn’t take the pledge to see Curithir no more she would be clapt into a convent with her will or without her will; so she took the pledge of the priest with a “bad cess to you” in her heart all the while she was pledging herself not to keep her tryst, saying to herself: a vow that is put on a person by force is no vow at all, which is true enough, God knows. But a vow is for ever getting its grip on you like a growing disease and you’re tied up well before it’s done with.
Not long after that Liadin hung her harp up on the nail. And the king himself couldn’t get a song out of her, no matter how much he gave. As silent as them old rocks she was in the king’s hall, but when she was alone she could be heard crooning away to herself at one of the old songs. She never got to the end of any one of them, for she would start a prayer in the middle of the song, and not being able to go on with the prayer either, the tears would come rolling down her cheeks. That’s the way it was with Liadin, and it was no better with Curithir. His mind was wrapped up and lost in the whiteness of Liadin’s body, and that was, as I’ve just told
you, as white and whiter than a first night’s snow, and a smile would come to his lips when he remembered the red of her lips that put him in mind of the rowan berry he had seen hanging over Cummins’ cell. Cummins, I must tell you, was a hermit, and he lived that time in an island on Lake Carra, no distance from Ballintubber. You know it well, your honour. As if these thoughts of Liadin were not enough, there was the track of her teeth in his neck, for she had bitten him and drew blood from him the way he would never forget her in his wanderings. The wound was sore enough, and many’s the time his hand went to it, and the thought was never far away that she had rubbed some colour into it that could not be taken out no matter how many times he might wash himself in the River Shannon or any other river. He was glad of the track of her teeth in his neck, and whenever he came to a pool he stopped to admire it, saying: for all the money in the world I would not give up these tracks of her love for me. But misfortune often goes foot by foot with fortune, and while he was thinking so much about Liadin he forgot about his stories, and as he walked the road he was always striving to catch up with them and they always fleeing before him the way the clouds fly before the wind; sometimes he thought he had gotten them again, but when he stood up to tell them there was nothing in his head but herself and nothing before his eyes, neither the king nor his court, but Liadin’s face only.
