by George Moore
Now, gentlemen, ladies, and clergy, he’d say, recalling the address of a shanachie of old time, listen if you would hear how a great man can be undone in body and soul by a sinful woman, sent over from France just as Delilah came over from the Philistines for the undoing of Samson. On the night of a gathering in Richard de Burgo’s castle to welcome the mummers the wicked work was done; for the Earl had no head for a woman, and in the first half of Louise’s song he was like a gossoon after his first noggin of porter, and she wasn’t well into the second half when he was pushing his way through his guests, saying that he must ask the gleemaiden to sing a song he had heard his mother sing in his boyhood. If you will be turning your shoulders a little askew... he’d say to the man in front of him, and the man would move as best he could, for the crowd was very thick. And the Earl continued to struggle through it, never stopping, not even when he came to the big pillar against which his wife was leaning with her children about her; he pushed past her — if the devil were after him he couldn’t have pushed harder. So hot was he after Louise that she had barely finished her song when he was in front of her looking into her eyes, and everybody in the castle asking: Now, what is he going to do next? Will he take her in his arms and carry her off? But they didn’t think he’d go so far as that, with all his friends and family looking on.
Now, gentlemen and ladies and clergy and all who are listening to my story, understand that what these two felt for each other is what you’ll have heard tell of — love at first sight, and a disgraceful sight it was, and shouldn’t have happened before the clergy, and might have ended badly if one of the mummers hadn’t had the good thought to start singing; another, guessing that something was up, began to dance, and whilst these were dancing and singing a third mummer threw knives into the air and caught them by their handles; and between the three of them the eyes of the company were distracted from the Earl and his lutanist at the end of the hall. And when the singers and dancers and jugglers had finished their feats of skill the Earl and the lutanist were no longer in sight; and the night was far gone before they came from the window-seat where they had hidden themselves for talking, maybe for kissing, the Earl promising all the while to build Louise the beautifullest house in Ballinrobe, and fill it with chairs and tables and carpets and pictures of all sorts, and to put gold bracelets on her arms and diamonds on her head and I know not what else — maybe pearls on her ankles, for he was clean out of his senses that evening.
Such is my best memory, Alec, of Timothy’s story of the falling in love of Richard de Burgo and Louise Chastel, the lutanist that came over from France in the ship with the carven prow, but a very poor memory indeed it is of Timothy’s patter, which came like the brook yonder, shaping itself into pools and running away again into bubbling eddies. A great talker he was surely, the best that was ever heard in Mayo, saving your presence, Alec. And your honour’s too, Alec answered. You know Ballinrobe, Alec? I have been through it going to Cong, your honour. And you remember the river Robe at the bottom of the hill, flowing from Lough Carra into Lough Mask under an avenue of limes? Limes are always, and as likely as not there were limes in the days of the great Earl; but there was no bridge, if we are to believe Timothy, who always described the Earl as dashing through the ford as hot as be damned. His own words this time, your honour, I’ll go bail for them! Timothy never used the same words twice over, Alec; he kept to the old framework, introducing new inventions, and it was difficult to say which version, the one you heard last or the one you were listening to, was the better. Nobody could choose between the different versions, for nobody remembered what he had heard before, Timothy himself least of all. I don’t know if you know the word gusto, Alec? Faith, I do not. Well, I can’t give you as good a definition as I’d like to — blarney is as near to gusto as any word I can think of at the moment, and Timothy’s blarney was so soft and winning that his hearers lifted their heads to it, happy as the flowers themselves when the south wind is blowing.
Five words and a smile were enough to capture us, compelling acceptance of the bits we had heard before without question; none but my insistent little self ever thought of interrupting Timothy. He and the times he lived in are coming back to me now. There’s magic in the spoken word, Alec; I remembered Timothy when you told me the story of the nuns of Crith Gaille — And your honour liked the story of the two priests — Yes, I liked them all; and your telling of them often set me thinking not only of Timothy but that the written word is a poor thing compared with the spoken. But it’s a dirty bird, said I to myself, that fouls its own nest, and I fell to thinking that each has its place in art, the spoken word more buoyant and joyful but less precise and complete than the written word — ah, that was the fault with Timothy’s stories. He left out the parts of the story that didn’t come to him as he walked the roads; there was no word about Ulick’s childhood in Ballinrobe. And your honour thinks there should have been? No, Alec, no; Timothy couldn’t have been other than he was; and I being what I am, remember that a child goes to his mother for stories. Louise had no stories to tell her son but French ones, and so a love of France was rooted in him at an early age; and a great love of his mother, too, possessed him, for they were always alone together, and I cannot forget that there must have been times when she could bear her loneliness no longer, waiting for the Earl to come clattering up the street on his horse. But Timothy was not interested in Louise’s loneliness; I am, and therefore I hear her in my thoughts confiding her loneliness to her son, and he espousing her cause with childish enthusiasm as they sat before the fire in their high-backed chairs till Louise started to her feet: Bed-time, my child, bedtime! No, mother, not yet; go on talking about lonesomeness. Your honour is coming to a pretty bit, said Alec, but I’m asking myself how Timothy could tell all that passed between mother and son and he roaming the roads always. Since we are story-telling together I’d say to you that he had to choose three or four things, just as I have to myself, leaving the words to chance. All the same, Alec, he might have told us how questions began to arise in Ulick’s mind, for even in his early teens the child could not have helped asking himself why he lived in a house different from all the other houses in Ballinrobe, alone with his mother, and why his father never remained with them for more than three or four days at a time, saying he had a castle to build at the other end of Mayo. His father and mother would be careful not to say anything before him that would set him thinking, but sooner or later he’d catch a word spoken by the Earl to Louise whilst he waited for his horse to be brought round from the stables, such words as: A castle is needed in the north; I cannot trust — Ulick, in my imagination, failed to catch the man’s name, and sought it till he wearied of seeking it and began to wonder what the man had done to merit a castle being built to lock him up in; I like to think of Ulick asking himself if nobody lived in castles except under lock and key. In the time I am telling, Alec, a great harp-maker lived in Ballinrobe, one Donogh OBrien, and his workshop was such an attraction for Ulick when he came into his teens that he was often truant from his lessons, spending long afternoons learning how to use the adze and chisel and saw when his mother would have had him by her side, her lute between them. But Ulick’s truancy from his lessons was not the reason why she forbade him Donogh’s workshop; she was afraid lest he should hear in the talk always going about the tables at which the apprentices worked that his father was no other than the great Earl. Was there anything in Timothy’s story about the workshop? Alec asked me, and I answered that there must have been some mention of it, for Donogh OBrien was one of the great harp-makers of Ireland; and I continued that the mother could not do else than forbid Ulick to waste his time trying to become a harp-maker, a thing he wished to be. But she could not answer him why he might not become a harp-maker, nor could she keep him from knowing who his father was indefinitely — she knew that; and missing Ulick from the house, she would sit thinking of him in the workshop. Donogh would tell him nothing, but Donogh could not keep the apprentices from spea
king, and even if he succeeded in keeping them from speaking of the Earl in Ulick’s presence, Ulick would not fail to notice that on his approach the apprentices’ talk would change quickly, one asking another if he had taken his chisel; and a hunt for a chisel or an adze or a mislaid harp-string would carry the talk away from the Earl, who would not again be mentioned. This is how the harp-maker’s workshop must have appeared to the mother as she sat thinking of her son, and she would send for him or go and fetch him herself. And the end of all this would be that Ulick would come to his mother, saying: I know my father, but who is my father? His name, mother — tell it to me. Is he the great Earl himself that I hear talked of wherever I go?
Thou art keeping a secret from me; why should I not know my father’s name? Louise may have often sought for a name that would satisfy her son’s curiosity; she may have even asked the Earl to help her, till at last he said: The boy is growing up and must be told. And a great event in the lives of mother and son was when she told him his father was the great Earl de Burgo. My father the great Earl de Burgo! Ulick would answer, his wonder and delight bringing tears to Louise’s eyes; and he’d say: Mother, why dost thou cry? It is a great thing surely to be the son of Earl de Burgo? A great thing it would be, Ulick, if thou Couldst inherit thy father’s title and vast estates, but these must go to the Earl’s son John, and after John to John’s son; and though all the Earl’s children by his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir John de Burgh of Lanvalay, were to die, thou wouldst still be no more than Ulick de Burgo, or Ulick Chastel if thou shouldst choose my name instead of thy father’s. Louise would beg her son not to repeat to his father anything she had told him, but even if we accept Ulick as one who would keep this promise to his mother, the house in Ballinrobe would lose all its innocency and happiness; the son would be constrained in his talk with his father, and when Louise died — So she died? Yes, of a chill caught after a day’s fishing on Lough Corrib, and, according to Timothy, was buried in Ballinrobe at the end of May, 1314. Alec, I have always thought of the Earl and Ulick walking together in the orchard on the hillside above the Robe, Ulick now somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-five, the Earl over fifty. In that walk the Earl must have spoken to his son of his birth, though he had never spoken of it before, and of his future, telling him that when he, the Earl, died, Ulick would find his bitterest enemies among his half-brothers and sisters, and that it would be better for him to seek a career for himself in France, his mother’s country. I shall be better able to help thee in France or in England than I can in Ireland — in every way, with money and by my influence. He might have spoken these very words; most likely he did. He spoke them right enough, your honour; you may bet your bottom dollar on that; for it’s never been otherwise in Ireland from that day to this, the man in the big house sending his bye-blow to America when the time came for him to marry a fortune that would pay for the cards and the port wine. But, Alec, this time it was the opposite, for whereas the hunting squires sent their bastards to dig the American railways, the Earl allowed his son to seek a career for himself in France, none being open to him in Ireland because of his disgraceful birth. Once gone, gone for ever, he would say in the walk through the orchard over against the river. But I cannot let thee go, Ulick; it cannot be in the nature of things that I should lose thee too. Nor can it be that I should remain in Ireland to meet enemies in thy children, should I survive thee, Ulick would answer his father.
Father and son must have spoken openly to each other after the funeral, but for one reason or another we do not know, and we shall never know, why Timothy passed over this part of the story, telling no more than that Louise died in May, 1314 and that at the end of September in the same year Ulick, wearying suddenly of hunting grouse with falcons over the hills of Lough Mask, stepped on board the Earl’s hooker at Cong, his mind made up to leave Ireland for France and seek a career for himself among the trouvères. I shall be the last, he answered his father, and I beseech thee not to oppose my wishes, adding thereby to my misfortunes. And the Earl, seeing that there could be no gainsaying Ulick, said: Son, it breaks my heart to lose thee; after thy mother thou art the dearest thing on earth to me; but I will let thee go to France on a condition. And what condition is that? Thou’lt need a gleeman in France, and what better gleeman could a trouvère have than my harper, Tadhg ODorachy, the greatest in Ireland, the favourite pupil of Finn Lorcan? He will be able to help me, Ulick answered; he will follow my voice in the songs that I shall sing under castle windows or in great assemblies. Thou art a great father and a good father and a kind father (now and again, Alec, I come upon Timothy’s own words). Every day that! Stop in Ireland will be an uneasy day for me, so let me go to-morrow. Art thou in that haste to leave me? Will not the end of the week do as well? At the end of the week, if it be thy will, father, and if thy little tribe of legitimates are not returning from Portumna before then. For the first time the Earl turned a dark face on his son, and in a perilous moment Ulick became aware of his likeness to his father — they were both tall, lean, white men with blond beards. But it was not the likeness to himself in his son that withheld the Earl’s fist, but Ulick’s dark eyes, which reflected his mother; to strike his son, he felt, would be like striking Louise. And seeing that his father’s anger had died out of his face, Ulick kept back the words that came to his lips: Had I been legitimate, father, thou wouldst have struck me! Instead of speaking these words, which might have separated them for ever — for a long time at least, he put forth a curious hand, and lifting the border of his father’s cloak he said: Forgive me, father, but a young man cannot see a cloak handsome as the one hanging from thy shoulders without examining it. Wouldst thou have my cloak as a last present? and lifting it from his shoulders the Earl placed it upon his son’s, and stood in admiration of the sable collar and cuffs and the green silk lining. What suits me suits thee! And they were as dear to each other as they had ever been in the interval between the Earl’s last words and the entrance of a servant with news that Tadhg ODorachy was waiting audience. Bring him to me, the Earl answered, and a moment after a small man with a long, grey face entered, to whom the Earl addressed himself quickly, saying: Tadhg, the news I have for thee to-day is a great advancement in thy fortunes. Thou art bidden by me to France to make known the Irish harp, and thou’lt journey thither with my son. With your son I shall not be separated from you, great Earl, the builder of my destiny, and I would make the Irish harp known all over the world, could I see how it can be done. With thy genius, Tadhg, which thou canst not leave behind. Faith, if my harp-playing were taken from me little would be left of poor Tadhg, and I’d walk as shamed as Adam after the fall. You will ride together to Dublin, where you will find a ship in the harbour ready to sail for the Thames. But isn’t the Thames an English river, my lord? The Thames is an English river and my son goes thither with despatches; and when he has delivered these to Edward of England thou’lt sail with him from Southampton to Honfleur, and on thy arrival in France thou’lt ride with him from castle to castle, following his voice on thy harp when he sings under his lady’s window or stands up in a great assembly. I shall do thy will, great Earl, in exile as I have done it at home. I would not have thee whimper before me, Tadhg. My tears are of joy, my lord, at the honour you do to me. Then weep on, Tadhg, but listen whilst weeping. I can trust thee to remind my son in time of need that it is not my will he should fare without an armed escort, and on arriving at an inn I would have thee keep thine eyes open for the thieves that entice young men with small winnings till they have won all their possessions; even with these they find little content, and are not satisfied till their dupes stake their future fortune on the throw. From the next danger — that of women, my son has naught to fear. His grace and bearing will inspire only thoughts of love; and should it come to pass that my money is not at hand to pay for a needed suit of Italian armour, the lady’s jewels will be given to the Jews, so ardent will she be to see my son lay a champion low. Father, it seems to me that thou dost ask too much
of my gleeman, for in thinking how he can protect me against the dice box and the ladies we shall meet on our journey he will neglect his chief employment: his harp and the writing of my songs for me. I beg thee to keep silence, Ulick, whilst I give my orders to my harper. All the same, there is truth in thy words, and of this truth I will now avail myself. The ladies that will dangle themselves about thee may be left to the care of their own tempers and dispositions, and to keep them from harm is no part of Tadhg’s business; but should thy thoughts turn to the graver issue of love: marriage, I would be warned by him. So, father, thou wouldst not see me married? Till a man weds he is his father’s son, but wedded he is a woman’s thrall. I would not lose my son, Tadhg. There is more to tell, but if my say be prolonged thou’lt forget more than thou mayest retain of my instructions. But should my son fall into sickness I would hear of it without delay.... Something has slipped from my mind that was in it a few moments ago. Now, what can I have forgotten? That if I miss him, said Tadhg, from his place in church at the celebration of the Mass, and from the Communion table — I would have thee keep a friendly watch over my son without spying upon him. Now leave us; my son and I have much to consider, and when Tadhg was without, Ulick said: Father, I did not break thy talk with thy harper to ask why I should go to France by way of England. I would send thee to England with despatches so that Edward may confer a knighthood upon thee, which he will do at my request; and here are letters to many in France that will receive thee more favourably as Sir Ulick than they would...