Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  AE acquiesced, and he was on the ground soon, his legs tucked under him like a Yogi, waiting for the vision, and, not knowing what else to do, I withdrew to the second chamber, and ventured to call upon Angus, Diarmuid’s father, that he or his son might show himself to me. There were moments when it seemed that a divine visitation was about to be vouchsafed to me, and I strove to concentrate all my thoughts upon him that lives in the circle that streams about our circle. But the great being within the light that dawned faded into nothingness. Again I strove; my thoughts were gathered up, and all my soul went out to him, and again the darkness lightened. He is near me; in another moment he will be by me. But that moment did not come, and, fearing my presence in the tomb might endanger AE’s chance of converse with the Immortals, I crept along the passage and climbed into the upper air and lay down, disappointed at my failure, thinking that if I had tried a third time I might have seen Angus or Diarmuid. There are three circles, and it is at the third call that he should appear. But it would be useless to return to the tomb; Angus would not gratify so weak a worshipper with vision, and my hopes were now centred in AE, who was doubtless in the midst of some great spiritual adventure which he would tell me presently.

  The sun stood overhead, and never shall I forget the stillness of that blue day, and the beauty of the blue silence with no troublesome lark in it; a very faint blue when I raised my eyes, fading into grey, perhaps with some pink colour behind the distant trees — a sky nowise more remarkable in colour than any piece of faded silk, but beautiful because of the light that it shed over the green undulations, greener than any I had seen before, yet without a harsh tone, softened by a delicate haze, trees emerging like vapours just as AE had painted them. And as I lay in the warm grass on the tumulus, the green country unfolded before my eyes, mile after mile, dreaming under the sun, half asleep, half awake, trees breaking into leaf, hedgerows into leaf and flower, long herds winding knee-deep in succulent herbage. It is wonderful to sit on a tumulus and see one’s own country under a divine light. An ache came into my heart, and a longing for the time when the ancient Irish gathered about the tumulus on which I was lying to celebrate the marriage of earth and sky. On days as beautiful as this day they came to make thanksgiving for the return of the sun; and as I saw them in my imagination arrive with their Druids, two opaque-looking creatures, the least spiritual of men, with nothing in their heads but some ignorant Christian routine, lifted their bicycles over the stile.

  They’re not going to descend into the sacred places! I said. They shall not interrupt his vision; they shall not!

  As they approached me I saw that they had candles and matches in their hands, and, resolved at any cost to save the tomb from sacrilege, I strove to detain them with speech about the beauty of the summer-time and the endless herbage in which kine were fattening. Fattening was the word I used, thinking to interest them.

  The finest fattening land in all Ireland, one of them said, but we’re going below.

  I should have told them the truth, that a great poet, a great painter, and a great seer was, in their own phraseology, below, and it might be that the Gods would vouchsafe a vision to him. Would they be good enough to wait till he ascended? Mere Christian brutes they were, approvers of the Boer War, but they might have been persuaded to talk with me for ten or fifteen minutes; they might have been persuaded to sit upon the mound if I had told them the truth. I leaned over the opening, listening, hoping their bellies might stick in the narrow passage; but as they seemed to have succeeded in passing through, I returned to the tumulus hopeless. The Gods will not show themselves while Presbyterian ministers are about; AE will not stay in the tomb with them; and at every moment I expected to see him rise out of the earth. But it was the ministers who appeared a few minutes afterwards, and, blowing out their candles in the blue daylight, they asked me if I had been below.

  I have been in the temple, I answered.

  Did you see the fellow below?

  I’m waiting for him — a great writer and a great painter, I answered indignantly.

  Is it a history he’s brooding down there; one of them asked, laughing; and I lay down on the warm grass thinking of the pain their coarse remarks must have caused AE, who came out of the hill soon after. And it was just as I had expected. The vision was about to appear, but the clergymen had interrupted it, and when they left the mood had passed.

  III

  AS WE RODE to Newgrange along smooth roads, between tall hedges, the green undulating country flowing on either side melting into grey distances, AE told me that we should see at Newgrange the greater temples of the Druids; and through his discourses the hope glimmered that perhaps we might be more fortunate at Newgrange than we had been at Dowth. It was only reasonable that the Gods should show themselves to us if they deemed us worthy, and if we were not worthy — AE at least — who were worthy among living men? The Presbyterian ministers would be absent from Newgrange; and we rode on, AE thinking of Angus and his singing-birds, myself of Midir at the feast among the spears and the wine-cups, his arm round Etain, the two passing through the window in the roof, and how all that the host assembled below saw was two white swans circling in the air above the palace.

  Whither did they go?

  Did who go? he answered.

  Etain and Midir.

  Towards the fairy mountain of Slievenamon, where Etain rejoined her kindred on the lake.

  Legends beguile the monotony of endless roads and hedges, but at the next cross roads it was plain that AE was uncertain which road to take, and our eyes sought vainly a man or woman to direct us. Miles went by without a cottage, and if we came upon one it was locked, the herdsman being away, opening gates, changing his cattle from pasture to pasture. The cottages became rarer, and we rode almost in despair through the green wilderness till we came at last to a ruined dwelling, and a curious one — not exactly a cabin, for it was built of brick and stood above the level of the road. A rubble heap had to be scaled to reach the one room that remained, and it was in this lonely tenement that we found our guide, a child of seven or eight, dressed in a little shirt and an immense pair of trousers, which he hitched up from time to time, a sharp-witted little fellow, as alert as a terrier.

  You’ve come out of your road altogether and will have to go back a couple of miles. Or maybe it’d be best for you to go on up this road till you come to the big hill beyant, and then turn to your left.

  The little fellow took our fancy, and, as we were leaving, we turned back to ask who lived with him. He said his mother lived with him, but she went out every day to the neighbours to try to get a bit! We told him that we had ridden many miles and had seen nobody. The little fellow looked puzzled, and, on pressing him to say where his mother had gone, he mentioned the name of some town which AE told me was twenty miles away. Can your mother walk twenty miles?

  Faith she can, sir, and back again.

  And she leaves you all alone?

  We gave him a slice of bread and butter, which he held in his hand, not daring to eat in our presence. We pressed him to eat, and he took a bite timidly, and moved away like a shy animal. As a slice of bread and butter did not seem to us to be a sufficient reward for his directions to Newgrange, I felt in my pocket for a shilling, and asked him how much his mother brought back with her.

  Sometimes a few coppers.

  His eyes lit up when I handed him the shilling, and he said:

  That’ll buy us two grand dinners; she won’t have to be going away again for a long time.

  You don’t like your mother to leave you here all day long? Again the little fellow seemed unwilling to answer us. But she’ll be coming back tonight?

  She will if she don’t get a sup too much.

  And if she does you’ll stay here all night by yourself? Aren’t you afraid all alone at night?

  I am when the big dog does come.

  What dog?

  A mad dog. He does wake me up out of my bed.

  But the dog doesn’t come int
o the room?

  No; but I do be hearing him tearing the stones outside.

  And do you ever see him?

  When he gets up there I do, and he pointed to the broken wall. He was up there last night and he looking down at me, and his eyes red as fire, and his hair all stuck up agin the moon.

  What did you do?

  I got under the clothes.

  A nightmare, I whispered to AE. But if the dog be mad, I said to the little chap, he shouldn’t be allowed to run about the country. He ought to be shot. Why don’t the police?

  How could they shoot him and he dead already?

  But if he be dead how is it that he comes up on the rafters?

  I dunno, sir.

  Whose dog is it?

  Martin Spellacy ownded him. And we learnt that Martin Spellacy lived about a mile down the road and had bought the dog at Drogheda to guard his orchard which was robbed every year; but the dog turned out to be a sleepy old thing that no one was afraid of, and were robbed every year until the dog died.

  Then were they robbed no longer?

  No, because they do be afeard of his ghost; he’s in the orchard every night, a terrible black baste, and nobody would go within a mile of that orchard as soon as the dark evening comes on.

  But if the ghost is in the orchard watching, how is it that he comes here?

  The little fellow looked at me with a puzzled stare, and answered that he didn’t know, but accepted the suggestion that ghosts could be in two places at once. We rode away, a little overcome at the thought of the child asleep that night among the rags in the corner, fearing every moment lest the dog should appear on the rafters. But we couldn’t take him with us; and we bicycled on, thinking how Martin Spellacy’s apples were better watched over by the ghost of a dog than by a real dog; and when we came to a part of the road shaded by trees, we got off our bicycles and went through a gate into a drove-way. A woman came from the cottage and I can still hear her say:

  You won’t be writing your names on the stones?

  On the sacred stones! I answered.

  Well, you see, sir, tourists do be coming from all parts, and my orders are to get a promise from every one visiting the cave not to write on the walls. Of course, one can’t be knowing everybody that comes here, but I’m sure that no gentleman like you would be doing such a thing.

  Don’t stay to expostulate, and AE took me by the arm, and we passed out of the shadow of the trees into the blue daylight. On our left was the tumulus, a small hill overgrown with hazel and blackthorn-thickets, with here and there a young ash coming into leaf. On all sides great stones stood on end, or had fallen, and I would have stayed to examine the carvings or the scratches with which these were covered, but AE pointed to the entrance of the temple — a triangular opening no larger than a fox’s or a badger’s den; and at his bidding I went down on my hands and knees, remembering that we had not come to Newgrange to investigate but to evoke.

  We remained upwards of an hour in the tumulus, and no sign being vouchsafed to us that the Gods were listening, we began our crawl through the long, twisting burrow towards the daylight; and in dejected spirit, wondering at the cause of our failure, asking ourselves secretly why we had been ignored, we climbed over the hill, to discover a robin singing in a blackthorn, the descendant, no doubt, of a robin that had seen the Druids. And it being necessary to say something, I asked AE whence the stones had come for the building of the temple under our feet, for we had not passed anything like a quarry since early morning. But he could not tell me whence they had come, and our talk branched into a learned discussion regarding the antiquity of man, myself muttering that about a million years ago man separated himself from the ape, AE repudiating the ape theory strenuously all the way down the hillside, saying that the world was not old enough to make the theory of evolution possible. At least a billion more years would have to be added to the history of our planet, so it could not be else than that man had been evolved from the Gods — there could be no doubt of it, he said; and we sat down in front of the temple to munch bread and butter. A restless fellow, for no sooner were the slices finished than he began to sketch the stones; and I remember thinking that it was as well he had an occupation, for one cannot talk in front of a Druid temple four thousand years old.

  The same landscape that had astonished me at Dowth lay before me, the same green wilderness, with trees emerging like vapour, just as in AE’s pastels. My eyes closed, and through the lids I began to see strange forms moving towards the altar headed by Druids. Ireland was wonderful then, said my dreams, and on opening my eyes Ireland seemed as wonderful in the blue morning, the sky hanging about her, unfolding like a great convolvulus. My eyes closed; kind and beneficent Gods drew near and I was awakened by a God surely, for when I opened my eyes a giant outline showed through the sun-haze miles away.

  Has Angus risen to greet us, or Mac Lir come up from the sea? I asked, and, shading his eyes with his hand, AE studied the giant outline for a long time.

  It’s Tara, he said, that you’re looking at. On a clear evening Tara can be seen from Newgrange.

  Tara! Tara appearing in person to him who is relating the story of her lovers! And certain that there was more in this apparition than accidental weather, I started to my feet. At that moment sounds of voices called me back again to 1901 — the voices of clergymen coming through the gate; and askance we watched them cross the field and go down on their hands and knees.

  Let us go, AE. Yes, let us go to Tara and escape from these Christian belly-gods.

  But Tara lies out of our road some twenty miles, AE answered as we rode away.

  But the Gods have shown Tara to us because they await us.

  It isn’t there that they’d be waiting for us, he answered, and when I asked him why he thought we should be more likely to meet the Gods elsewhere, he told me that he did not remember that the Gods had ever been seen at Tara.

  And therefore you think that the apparition of the hill as we lay among the cromlechs was accidental? Of course you know best; but even though the hand of Providence be not in it, I’d like to go to Tara, for I could get into my dialogue glimpses of the great plains about the hill.

  He said that any allusions to the woods that Grania roamed with Laban should be drawn from my knowledge of Nature rather than from any particular observation of a particular place.

  No one can imagine a landscape that he has not seen, AE.

  All my best landscapes come to me in a vision. Last night I saw giants rolling great stones up a hillside with intent to destroy a city.

  Perhaps the hillside you saw was Tara.

  No, he said, it wasn’t. Tara was not destroyed by giants but by an ecclesiastic.

  And therefore was worthless, I muttered. And we talked a long while of the monk who had walked round Tara, ringing a bell and cursing the city, which was taken abandoned and Ireland given over to division-which has endured ever since, I added. AE admitted that this memory of Tara did not endear the hill to him, but that was not his reason for not wishing to go there.

  It is at least twenty miles from here, he said, and I don’t think there’s an inn on this side, nor am I sure that there is one on the other. We would have to sleep at —— , and he mentioned the name of some village which I have forgotten. But Monasterboice is only six miles from here, and the herdsman’s wife will be able to give us tea and bread and butter.

  I remember a man telling me that he had gone to Wales to track Borrow from village to village. I shall not be accused by any one, he said, of lacking sympathy for any place visited by Borrow, but all I remember of my walk from Carnarvon to Bethgelert is that the beer at Bethgelert was the best I ever drank. And this story has always seemed to me so human that I am now tempted to fit it into this narrative, turning excellent beer into tea so delicious that its flavour lingers for ever in the palate. But if I were to introduce a thread of fiction into this narrative, the weft would be torn asunder; and any one who knows me at all would not believe that in
a cup of tea, however delicious, I could drink oblivion of the ruins of the great abbey through which we wandered one summer evening, almost within hearing of voices whispering about the arches, the infoliated capitals, and the worn and broken carvings. The darkness of time lightened, and we saw monks reading and painting in their cells, one rising suddenly, delighted, from the Scriptures; he had succeeded in clearing up in a gloss an obscure point that had troubled him for years. And then another appeared, bent over a pattern of endless complexity, his hand moving over the parchment quickly and surely. In the ghostly silence of the ruins we heard — if I heard vaguely, AE must have heard distinctly — the mutter of a monk scanning a poem, a saint, no doubt, that had begun to weary of the promiscuousness of a great monastery, and was meditating further retirement from the world. We rode away, thinking that his poem was in praise of some lake island, whither he would go, like Marban. AE remembered some of Marban’s lines, and he told me that they were written in the halcyon days in which Ireland lay dreaming, century after century, arriving gradually at the art of the jeweller, the illuminator, and the carver of symbols. Marban is a great poet; the lines AE repeated to me are as native as the hazels under which the poet lived, and as sweet as the nuts he gathered from the branches.

  And we rode forgetful of the excellence of the tea that the herdsman’s wife had set before us, full of dreams of a forgotten civilisation, each maintaining to the other that the art of ancient Ireland must have been considerable, since a little handful has come down to us, despite the ravening Dane, and the Norman, worse than the Dane; for the Dane only destroyed, whereas the Norman came with a new culture, when Ireland was beginning to realise herself. If he had come a few centuries later, we should have had an art as original as the Chinese.