by George Moore
Thou shalt learn harp-playing, my boy, from Finn Lorcan, my harper, who is too old now to play but not too old to teach. And six months afterwards I was playing in the minstrels’ gallery and a great assembly listening to me. Didn’t the Red Hand of Ulster offer a great sum of money to the Earl for me? But the Earl wouldn’t take money for his harper, for I was to teach his son, Ulick de Burgo. And when the good lady his mother died another great day was in store for me, for wasn’t I chosen to take the young Earl, or him who should be the young Earl, to France and look after him? Now, isn’t it the wonderful thing that a poor boy should be taken from the pigs at Ardrahan for no reason at all but to be left stranded on the shores of this lake without strength or hope that he might ever see his dear master again? There’s no sense, no reason, no anything, in this world. We are all unhappy, and perhaps my master is as unhappy as I am. Maria is still sporting with a gander, and if she will waste her time thus, let her waste it. I shall journey easier without her. He rose from the stone on which he was seated, but he had not walked far before Maria overtook him; and after travelling with her for a mile or more, he said: This must be the river the harper told me to look out for, the Bann and none other, and I might do worse than ask for a day’s work from the fishers. Come, Maria, thou’rt tired, and wouldst rest a while in the lap of my arm.... If you should want a man to drag a net or pull an oar — Canst pull an oar? I can pull an oar as well as another, Tadhg answered. If thy work be as good as thy promises, thou shalt have a ten-pound fish for two days’ work. But my goose, said Tadhg. She never lets me out of her sight, following me like a dog. Well, shut her in you shieling. She’ll cry all day — There’ll be none to hear her crying, the man answered. And when Tadhg had shut Maria into the shieling he was told to take the bow oar and keep the boat steady in the current so that the spearmen might not miss the fish. And at the end of the next day Tadhg asked: Have I earned my fish? The fishers would have had him stop another day with them, but he went to the shieling, and bringing back Maria with him he asked for his fish and a loaf of bread for Maria, which they gave him, saying: Thou wouldst do well to leave Maria with us; a goose is no companion for a long journey. A month of soft foods, the man continued, feeling Maria’s breast — No, said Tadhg, I will not leave my goose to be eaten; she has followed me so far and she shall follow me to the end. I have come from Scotland in search of my master away in Connaught, and she has come with me. She flew over the cliffs after my boat, and a bad day it would be when I’d leave her to be eaten by you. Well, it would not be good for us to come between a man and his luck, and if the bird be thy luck, care for her, for a man without his luck is a poor thing in this world. And that is the difference between this world and the next, said Tadhg; in the next world there’s all the luck, and in this world there’s little of it, if there’s any at all. At which they laughed and returned to their fishing, leaving Tadhg and his goose to continue their journey, Tadhg searching amid his disjointed memories and the goose quacking from time to time to be carried.
So thou wouldst have me carry thee? Tadhg said at last, picking up the bird, and with his sleepy Maria tucked under his arm he pursued his way through the sullen end of a March day towards a grim wood that he had been told at the Bann to keep outside of, wolves and foxes abounding therein. Worse enemies to thee than to me, he said to Maria. And whilst walking towards the wood he remembered that the weather had favoured him from the day he had set out from Scotland, a sunny sea and fine winds; and on land, too, he had enjoyed some fine days when the wind was southerly and the sky blue, veiled with transparent vapours drifting to the north. But those fine days were followed by harsh winds and cold rains; snow had fallen; and remembering the wet winter they had passed through, when it had rained all day and begun to rain again in the middle of the night, he said a rainy winter truly — and one not over yet. A winter of floods, rivers overflowing their banks, torrents, rills, runnels, and no sound in the country from bird or beast, only the cold sound of water. Can it be that God is once more minded to drown the world for its sins. Up above he is making ready for another big downpour. A wet night for us, Maria; thou in thy feathers will not heed it, but in these rags I will come on my death if I find not a dry ditch. Not one is to be seen, nor even a hawthorn. So into the wood we go, though we lose our lives in it. But I can carry thee no farther, asthore; thou must trust to thine own legs. Maria’s webbed claws were ill suited to clambering through bushes and tall tangled grasses, but she reached her master at last at the edge of the wood, which she seemed to recognise as dangerous for her, for she kept to his heels closely whilst he sought for a holly bush under which to pass the night, never finding one, only forest pools which Maria would have liked to voyage about in. There’s no finer shelter in a forest than a holly tree, shelter from the rain and the wind. We have come upon one, my pulse, that will suit us as well as a house; and sleeping together, side by side, we won’t feel the night passing.
So tired were the travellers that sleep came to them without their seeking it, and they slept for many hours, the darkness of the holly deceiving Maria as to the time of day; she had never overslept herself before, not as she did that night; and Tadhg, too, might have slept for another hour if Maria had not clapped her wings and screamed, a fear of the wood having awakened in her. And Tadhg, rising, said: Well, then, keep close to my heels, and we’ll try to find the other side of the forest; and be saved many a mile of tramping. And with lighter hearts the two of them set out, but after walking through the trees for an hour the thought came to Tadhg that he ought to return to the holly where he had slept, for from the holly he knew his way out of the wood. But he could not find the holly and began to think he was lost. A hateful place to be lost in is this same wood, he said, tall trees straining to get a glimpse of the sky; elms I think they must be, but so thick is the ivy on them that there is no telling. An evilsmelling place it is; not much better than a swamp, he added, looking into a hollow overgrown with briars. Water is in the bottom, and it stinking water; and he wondered that so white and beautiful a goose as Maria should scramble down to it. After the frogs, he said; and he waited on the bank for her, taking note of the trees, not having anything better to do. At a little distance from him was a decaying pine, and he remembered the beautiful pine trees of Galway near Ardrahan and the beech wood whither he used to lead his swine, and wondered why no word of endearment or reproof could persuade Maria to relinquish her divings in the dirty pool below him. After all, there is not much to complain of when a man is free, he said, and his thoughts returned once more to Ardrahan and the pigs running before him, knowing well the delicious mast they would find. Beyond the beech wood was Tirconnel’s oak wood, littered in October with acorns. How the swine crunched, and how fat they were towards Christmas when their term of life began to close. Poor swine, he thought, they live only to get their throats stuck! And to escape from his memories of their squeals, he remembered that he had never liked an oak tree. A squat, harsh tree, not much shelter for man or beast beneath it, but good for acorns; fine food there is in acorns for pigs. And there are no other trees here but tall elms swathed in swart ivy; the ivy loves the elm better than any other tree. No larches are there; larches thrive not in a wood but on the fringe of a wood.
Is Maria never coming out of that bog-hole? He was wronging Maria, for as he spoke the words she clambered up the steep bank, and they went on together through the mud about the roots of the trees. No secure foothold is there for the trees, but they grow so closely, he said, that each protects the other against the big winds that blow up from the sea. An evil-smelling wood, he said again, but the smell that comes up is not of rotten leaves. A fox has been by here. Maria, keep to my heels. Thou hast had a fine feed of frogs, and thou hast drunk thy fill of a water that would poison any human belly, but does no harm to a goose’s, so it would seem. But there must be an issue out of this wood. And wandering on they came to many blackthorns covered with little white flowers. Like roses, he said, only smaller. To escap
e from the thought that he was lost in the forest he climbed a tree, and the hen-hawk waited till he was within a few feet of the nest and then flew away with a scream that roused other hawks, and he said: Maybe I did wrong to disturb the bird, for if they catch a glimpse of Maria they might come down through the branches to be at her with beaks and talons. But no hawk came down, and the man and the goose plodded on, the man eating the salmon the fishers had given him on the Ban, offering a piece now and then to Maria. Salmon puts a great thirst into a man, he said, and it may be that it is of thirst I shall die in this wood. But we must surely come upon a brook or a well, for the whole wood cannot be a bog; in every wood there are hills. And sooner than he hoped for they came upon some rocks, and in the rocks was a trickle of water, at which he drank his fill. And after eating, he said: The day is no time for finding a way out of a lonesome wood. The nights are fine and the north star will show between the branches. Let us rest now, Maria, and travel during the night.
In this spirit of hope Tadhg and Maria dozed by the rill, but he had not been long asleep when Maria woke him with loud cries and clapping of wings, and he said: She has got the smell of a fox; we had better move on. Maria cried to be carried and he took her under his arm for safety, and walked on till fatigue again overcame him. Now, he said, I know which is the west and which is the east, for the sun is setting yonder, so I am headed for the west. And it cannot be more than a day’s walk out of this wood. We’ll both be better for a good sleep, for to-morrow will be long travelling; and once more Tadhg and Maria lay down to sleep, for the last time, for at the deepest darkness, about midnight, Tadhg was awakened by Maria’s screams. A fox has her! he said, and seized his staff; but he knew not where to seek her, and as he stumbled he heard her ever-weakening screams and guessed the fox had got her by the throat. The screams ceased, and he picked her up bleeding in his arms. Maria’s eyes closed, and he carried her a long way, seeking a big stone under which he could hide her, for he could not bear to think that a fox would feed upon her. But to stand with one’s back against a tree, nursing a dead goose, and waiting for the dawn, is lonely and is tedious, and a stout heart is needed to bear the length of the slow hours. But Tadhg’s heart was still stout and at daybreak he started again, and coming soon after to a hillside covered with rocks and stones of all sorts, he said: A great place for the dead; every kind of tomb is here. And choosing a cleft where the fox would not be able to dig her out, he put a stone over her. I am not the man that I was, he said, for it is surely a foolish thing to mourn a goose. But there was never a goose like Maria, the one good soul in this world. And if God is willing to take me I am willing to go, for I am tired of this bleak, sorrowful world, as evil for the rich as for the poor, evil for all, I am thinking. He thought of his master, whom everybody loved, and of his master’s father, the greatest man in Ireland, though some of his own were against him, saying that he was for the Scots. But if the world is evil for the great, there is but one good thing in it for the little: the hope of getting into heaven. And it may be that it was God’s own will that kept me from the love of women, making me different from those that love and are loved. All the same, he might have left me Maria, for hers was a sinless love. The poor creature, like myself, never cared for one of her own kind; no gander ever tempted her, no woman me. We were alike and lonely and we were good to each other. And his grief became so intense that he thought he must die of it, and leaning over the rocks among which he had found a seat he wept upon them for his goose and for himself until he could weep no more. And then he wandered without heed or care whither he was going, not awakening out of the stupor of his grief till the sound of rooks in the branches caught on his ear and he said: Wherever there are rooks there is a house, for like poor Maria they are lonely away from the homes of men. And wandering round the rookery he asked himself how it was that so many of the creatures of the earth had given up their freedom to dwell with men. Mayhap, he said, it is because we have souls and they have not; maybe it is our souls that draw them to us.
The rookery was among the last trees of the wood, and beyond it in a scoop of the land was a cottage; and going round it Tadhg said: There are people here, for I can hear them snoring. But to awaken them out of a good sleep would bring me no welcome; an outhouse with a lock of straw in it will suit me well. He lay down, and the sun was shining brightly through the chinks in the roof when he awoke. He slept again, and hours passed before anybody came to the outhouse. A child’s voice! he said, struggling to his feet, and leaving the outhouse he came upon the child’s mother. Back to the wood, rapparee! she cried, brandishing a weapon, for she had mistaken Tadhg for one of the outlaws or the madmen that roamed the woods in the times I am telling, and it needed Tadhg’s quiet, winning voice to reassure the woman that he was merely a traveller come from Scotland and on his way to Mayo. And the woman hearing fair words, answered: Look at thyself and say if any child wouldn’t scream to see thee. And Tadhg looking down saw that in clambering over rocks and through bushes he had left few clothes upon himself, some rags that hardly covered him, and these all foul with the mud and filth of many days’ travelling; through wet and sleet, and the droppings of Maria, too, were all over him.
I am ashamed of myself, he said; my clothes are worse than I thought for, though I knew them to be bad enough, and thou’lt be indeed a kind woman to give me a needle and thread and let me rest myself for a few hours more, a rest that I need surely, and during these hours I’ll sew my rags. I might give thee a few clothes, she answered, and Tadhg said: Troth they’d be welcome. I’ll seek them, she said; and if they are not much to look at, they will be better than those on thy back. My husband is away burning a castle for his lord or driving somebody’s sheep and cattle, but if he came himself it wouldn’t matter, for he is a kind man; so make thyself at home. And she brought the clothes she had promised to the stable, thinking it would be unpleasant to have him in the house. A dip in the river would do thee no harm, and there is one at Strule, not many hours from here. Be not in a hurry; when thou art rested. ’Tis the kind soul that is in thee; another night on the straw in the stable will give me back my strength. It was next morning, after having thanked the woman, that he took his direction from her. At the ford of Omagh he stripped and waded waist deep through the river, saying to himself when he reached the top: I am cleaner now than I was before. But how cold I am! A little run will get the ice out of me.
He trotted out of Strule wrapt in thoughts of the first meeting — the first sight of Sir Ulick’s face, the first sound of Sir Ulick’s voice. If he died on the journey or from the fatigue of it when he reached Cattle Carra — well, he would have died whilst in search of his master or after having found him. And so intense were his thoughts that he walked almost consumed by them, the reality about him shadowy and confused, the dream all real within him, Castle Carra and Sir Ulick all clear and distinct; and when he met a wayfarer he listened to the story of the burning of ORourke’s castle at Dromahaire and of OGara’s castle at Coolavin, interested vaguely, saying to himself: Whoever is up to-day will be down to-morrow. To give a willing ear to all he heard, to take it all in as if he were listening to a story, saved him from suspicion, and on parting from his travelling companion he would ask that which really concerned him, if he were right in making for the northern shore of Lough Erne and if a path was there that would bring him to BallyShannon. He had a few coins among his rags and these he hoped would pay for the two days’ rest he had promised himself at BallyShannon, if he should be unable to find somebody charitable enough to give him a truss of straw in a stable to lie upon. His fish was now all eaten, but it was in the genius of Tadhg to discover charitable people. The truss of straw was given to him to lie upon, and he said: It is a great thing to sleep under a roof and to meet kind folk. Often kinder they were than he expected them to be, for on the day of his departure they would take nothing from him, and fish being plentiful that year he went away with one on his back.
Well, it’s hard travelling, he sa
id, as he started out on a dim grey morning; if the weather would only brighten a bit I wouldn’t fail to get home. And no doubt God wills me to get home, or he wouldn’t have sent all these people to help me. At that moment his thoughts of God and God’s providence were interrupted by a sudden scent. The smell of the sea, he said, coming over the hills; I got it first after leaving BallyShannon; and if the sun would light up those hills in front of me I’d have better courage to face a night under the stars, for it is the bleak night that is before me. But there have been worse nights in Armagh, wet fields and no more than a scraggy hawthorn to keep the wind off, and why should I be frightened now of a night on a dry hill with this good cloak to wrap me, unless it was the two nights spent in a warm stable that have disheartened me. Or is it that we can suffer for a while and no longer? He continued walking without eyes or ears for the country he was walking through, till the steep of a hillside obliged him to stop to take breath; and it was whilst wiping the sweat from his forehead that he noticed that the sky was blue — Sunny clouds hanging in the wind, he said. And away he went again, faring without a pause till he stood by a lake atop of the last peak. Deep as the earth itself, he continued, filled with big pike, and maybe an eel in it that on certain nights is allowed by God to be a fairy again and speed over the lake to the stone where she sat with her mortal lover and then dragged him down into the depths with her, though she knew he would lose his breath under the water. His thoughts drifted into melodies, melody linking into melody, and the music in his mind did not cease till he came to a rich green plain with woods. A lovely country Ireland is surely and a pleasant country to live in if we had sense enough to leave off fighting. Again he lost his wits in dreams and many miles passed behind him without his seeing or hearing them or anything, but finding the way always as if an instinct guided him; and so strange was the instinct in him that at last it put the words into his mouth: The feeling of home is strong upon me and Sir Ulick; I can see him in my mind plainly — The sound of harp-strings interrupted his seeing, and whilst walking and peering he came upon three harpers tuning their instruments under a hedge breaking into leaf.
